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This is all based, again, on the current increases. However, we're looking at the budget and putting together a plan for increases. We just don't know what those will be. So I'd like to move down to 6165, which is contracted equipment repair and maintenance. Again, this one here we haven't used, and I don't know if we'll end up needing to use it, but we want to go ahead and keep it there in case we require some type of equipment repair and maintenance.

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Equipment rental, we have $1,000 in here. In the past, we've had up to $3,000, and we purchased our own mini excavator a couple years ago, and that's kind of made it accessible to the cemetery for digging graves, and it's been very useful, but we want to go ahead and keep that $1,000 in case we need to rent a pulverizer for the dirt or something like that.

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so moving down to 7010 machinery and equipment over a thousand we've got three thousand dollars for our Ferris zero turn mowers we're including some upgrades for those any questions on cemetery mowing yes mowers the their Ferris mowers there are zero turn mowers and we have like I said about 26 acres out there that we have to mow weekly

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and we have two or three I think we have three total mowers but two really nice ones that the guys use and they can go quickly. Yes? Are we budgeting anything for grave sites for the veterans? As far as upgrading things or cleaning or what do you mean? No, I thought that we used to have grave sites available for veterans. And we do. We do.

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than this. Yes, but go ahead, Dovie. Veterans are not charged for their burial site. They are charged for the grave opening, so there's just no revenue to the city. Okay. And I guess any normal expense, the excavator or anything, any normal burial expense. Dovie, what's a normal burial? What's a normal plot? A plot is $686. So we don't charge veterans for that?

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Or infants. There's an infant aisle that the grave is free as well. Okay. Any other questions on cemetery? All right. I'd like to move on to forestry. Again, back to the wages. Same story there. I'm going to move down to item 6180. So that's the next. No, there it is. Yeah. We're in good shape there. Contracted vehicle repair and maintenance. We're budgeting $10,000 for our clams.

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truck repair and inspection. We have one of the most important pieces of equipment for the forestry

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department, it's a clam truck, and it is rather old, and it does require a lot of maintenance. We've been

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doing a good job of doing that in-house, unfortunately. Certain components on that require skill sets that

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we don't have, you know, mostly hydraulic. It's got a fancy hydraulic swivel on it, so when that stuff gets

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to leaking, we take the thing, we take off the cylinders or whatever it is that we're, that's

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hydraulically powered, and we send those out and get them repaired, and so that's what this is about.

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And I'd like to just scoot down to 6765 tree assistance. So tree assistance is our contracted tree budget. So this year, like the last, well, since I've been here, which is maybe the fifth year, we contract remove some of the largest, scariest trees in the city.

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One reason for that is we don't have the equipment to take down trees of a certain size, a very large size, and two, they can be very hazardous

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So we contract those out for those reasons, and we're budgeting about $100,000 again this year, and last year we did the same, yep

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And am I understanding that 50, just a little over half, was used this year?

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No, no, all the bills probably haven't arrived yet, we've

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But what you have year to date

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Yes

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Is $50,143

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Yes, that's correct, that's what we've used so far

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Yeah, our tree contract for this year, the bill hasn't come yet, so the trees that are on here are just emergency trees

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We have another tree contract that's going to put that line item over budget this year because we've had so many storm trees this year

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Yeah, what was that, March, where we had that big

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We had two different storms that we had, one had like 28 trees we had to take down and another one we had like 30 trees we had to take down and our crews couldn't handle all of it, it was just, it was too much and some of them are just too big

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So the good news is the faster, the more of these things we keep removing, the fewer we're going to have coming down in windstorms, however, I think the first year I was here, I mean, we would just get a normal thunderstorm

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Storm blowing through and our guys would be out there. I think in 2020 we had a storm sometime in July and I think we had 20 trees come down that storm. And the more we've been taking down these trees on contract, the less we've had come down during storms. It's surprising, too, a very large tree can cost upwards of $10,000 to remove. Yeah, they get very expensive. Okay, with that machinery, over $1,000 were

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We're looking at purchasing a new saw this year for $1,500 and a grinder chopper attachment for the skid steer or the mini excavator and what that's going to allow us to do is take out brush along the road siding so especially Henderson Road is a real problem. There's a lot of brush there. It's very steep. There's not a great way to get to that. This grinder will allow us to more efficiently remove all the

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the debris that grows up along the road siding. So we're planning to purchase that in 25. And then last, we've got a couple of trim saws. So it's equipment under a thousand, a couple of trim saws, or a trim saw and a pole saw. So trim saws are small. And by the way, the saws we buy, they're magnesium framed. We use a lot of, they're used quite a bit. And they're built for continuous use, not like your normal home chainsaw.

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any questions on forestry? All right, I'd like to go to animal control. Thank you, Curt. Again, wages, and there's really not a whole lot here besides wages and withholdings. We are, you know, budgeting some nominal amounts for equipment and maintenance, repair and fuel and vet services and machinery. This year, we're looking to get a tranquilizer gun when you have a very aggressive dog.

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Doug, it's nice to have an extra tool in your tool belt that you can take a dog down without it getting the person in harm's way. The last couple of years we bought some new snares, but having an extra capability is going to be good, so we budgeted for that this year. Any questions on animal control?

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if I could do we have anything on backup on training and backup on our licensing back for larger animals we are working on with with the staff that's interested at the street department to help us out but right now we're a little bit in a holding pattern as we're waiting for the outcome on on our current animal controls health situation so

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Thank you. You said health situation stuff? Yeah. What does that mean? Just health. He's out for health reasons. Oh, we don't have no one right now. Well, we will cover the calls over the weekend. It's on a rotating basis, but our permanent animal control person is not here. Okay. Okay. Moving on with traffic engineering. Last year, we budgeted for a new signal.

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and Crossing Signals at Birchard and Empire.

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This year we're looking to replace or repair the FHN crosswalk at Stevenson and Route 75 at Honeywell.

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Those signals have been in place for many, many years and are in unreliable condition.

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So we're budgeting about $60,000 for that.

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other than that not much else to talk about in terms of traffic engineering any questions what did you say about route 75 of the walk signal at 75 I get it was Stevenson at Honeywell plant one okay that's commercial Avenue hmm oh okay yes again the budget for this activity looks so low for 24 because the bill for

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for the Birchard Lights is not in yet, and those were just replaced about two weeks ago.

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Okay, with that, I'd like to move on.

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Okay, with that, I'd like to move on to streetlights. So streetlights, again, we're talking about the city-owned streetlights, most of which are in the downtown. We have a handful of other ones sprinkled throughout the city, but almost all other streetlights that you see out there, if they're not in the downtown, they're most likely ComEd lights.

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So each year we budget for the electrical expense. We're budgeting about $300,000 for the streetlight expense, and we're also budgeting $20,000 for repair and maintenance. Every once in a while we'll have a large, we'll have like an ice storm or we'll have some line pull something down and we'll have to go repair it and it can be very expensive. So any questions on streetlights?

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How much did you say downtown street lights were?

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We primarily had those replaced under a grant, a distressed communities grant.

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I'm sorry.

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If you're talking about the downtown LED lights that we installed, those were basically free.

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We had those installed on a ComEd distressed communities grant, and I think we spent about $7,500 on incidentals and some additional labor,

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but overall we didn't have to spend anything on those. As I recall, what do they cost a piece?

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Those are bigger powered ones. Those are, I think, around $300 a head for the Cobra head itself and then the labor but we've been trying to get another distressed community grant to address some of these other ones in the main corridors. We just have not been successful yet.

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Any other questions on streetlight? Yes. Yes. Carriage Hills, that's one of our... Yeah, Carriage Hills light that's out is because the wire's cut, don't know where it is, and we haven't had a chance to really track that down. Okay, that's why. Yeah, you're talking about the one across from the, well, the address schemes in general, but I understand they're different and... Yeah, they had installed those pedestal lights and, you know.

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The ambiance thing.

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So that becomes the city's issue?

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Those are the city lights, so.

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Okay, with that, we could, yes, I mean, there's a handful of city-owned street lights sprinkled out throughout the city of Freeport, but most, like, over 90% of them are ComEd-owned.

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Fund. All right, I'd like to move on to Motor Fuel Fund. So this year we're expecting to receive $480,000 in the Transportation Renewal Fund and $500,000 in MFT tax allotments with an additional $50,000 in income interest, and that comes out to about a million dollars. This has all been budgeted for the 2025 street program.

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so you look down at the next item which is expenses you've got 125,000 in crack ceiling which is just part of maintenance that we need to do so we can make those new streets that we've just done last longer that's why we need to do the crack ceiling and then rock and road material as you can see there is 900,000 those will get that money will be expended on street reconstructs in 2025. And that's coming from the motor fuel fund or that's coming from the street fund?

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That is, that's from motor fuel tax. Any other questions on MFT? Okay, well, that concludes the budget planning session. I did have a question. Sure. On the first page. Yeah. Kurt, could you go back that up? I screwed up on this last page. Sir, at 101, 141, 5000. It was pertaining to us budgeting 60,000.

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yeah hang on one second while we get backed up there I'm just trying to understand it yeah yeah he's backing it up I'm just taking a minute he was on at 141 there you go there you go okay so if you see on the 2024 budget those are items that were budgeted 2024 activity none of them have been expended 2025 we're not budgeting anything for public works in this case this is

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for the public works director, and that is because Darren is our contract public works director, and that comes out in a different place in the budget, and that is, that's why you see that at zeros.

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So the non-bargaining are the people that's not in a union?

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Correct.

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And we budgeted $60,000, but we used none of it?

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that's correct and that'll just be rebudgeted at the end of the year and it'll go in when we when we do the rebudget but on 2025 it says zero that's because we're not spending anything out of this account next year because we have a contract public works tractor it's just going to be out of a different line item there was street improvement funds we had on the agenda here yet I missed it thank you Michelle

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Apologies. We'll have it ready for you next time. Well, the numbers are here, and I don't have it on your sheet.

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That's fine. We don't have it. We'll catch it next. That's fine. Any other discussion? Thank you. Any public comments?

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Nobody here. Nobody here. I would make a motion for adjournment. So moved. Second. Motion by Clemm, second by Parker. All in favor? Aye.

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Opposed?

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We are adjourned.