Carter, Debbie Leininger, would you please open in prayer?
The Bible verse that I felt led to read tonight is from Proverbs 3, 5 through 6.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.
Let us pray.
Our only Father, we just thank you for today.
We thank you for each member of our city council and all of the city employees that are here today.
We ask that you would bless them and give them wisdom and knowledge to make good judgment.
And Father God, we just declare the promise of your word that if we acknowledge you and are true to what we do, if we diligently know what your word says, that you will direct our paths and make it straight.
And so this evening as we go through our meeting, Lord, we just ask that the decisions that are made here are according to your precepts.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Well, good to show up.
I'm excited to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
You get to leave it today.
Well, you are.
A few minutes left.
I know.
Yeah, it's got you down doing the pledge.
Good.
Yeah.
I was expecting it.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Well, we will call this meeting to order.
Madam Clerk, would you please take the roll?
Mayor Miller?
Here.
Alderpersons, Klemm?
Here.
Johnson?
Here.
Simmons?
Here.
Parker?
Here.
Stacy?
Here.
Shadle?
Here.
Sanders will be marked absent at the moment and Sellers is absent tonight.
I'll entertain a motion to allow Alderman Sanders to attend remotely.
We'll move.
Second.
We have a motion made by Alderman Klemm, seconded by Alderman Shadle.
Madam Clerk, please take the roll.
Klemm?
Aye.
Johnson?
Aye.
Simmons?
Aye.
Parker?
Aye.
Stacy?
Aye.
Shadle?
Aye.
And the motion passes 6 to 0.
Alderman Sanders will be marked present at 6 o 3 PM And if you could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Alderman Simmons.
Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Alderman Sanders, can you hear us?
Curt, can you see if he's on?
He's on.
Alderman Sanders, can you hear us?
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Item number four is approval of the agenda.
Is there such a motion?
So moved.
Second.
We have a motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Klemm.
Madam Clerk, would you please take the roll?
Simmons?
Aye.
Parker?
Aye.
Stacy?
Aye.
Shadle?
Aye.
Sanders?
Aye.
And Klemm?
Aye.
The motion passes seven to zero.
How about me?
I say aye too.
Well that is blank.
I am so sorry.
That's all right.
I say aye.
Okay and it's still seven.
I apologize.
Item number five is the approval of the minutes from the committee of the whole meeting on August 10th, 2026.
Is there a motion?
So moved.
Second.
The motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Johnson.
Madam Clerk, please take the role.
Simmons?
Aye.
Parker?
Aye.
Stacy?
Aye.
Shadle?
Aye.
Sanders?
Klemm?
Aye.
And Johnson?
Aye.
And the motion passes 7 to 0.
Public comment on agenda items we have one that the clerk has for reading.
This email was originally sent to the city on I guess it was September 8th and then it later was requested that it be read as public comment.
Dear Ms. Simmons, I should note it is from NIMCO, Nipko, Leslie Lightwin, and Renee Kane.
Dear Mrs. Simmons, we are writing to kindly ask you to cease all harassment and intimidation tactics regarding our care of the stray cats on Crocker and Wilbur streets.
A member of our organization, Nipko TNR, NFP, works tirelessly to feed and care for several cat colonies in different areas of Freeport.
Fort.
Taking care of these cats is an act of compassion and monetary sacrifice.
NIPCO has been caring for, feeding, vetting, and providing shelter for cats in Stephenson County for the past five years.
When we organized in 2021, we had the blessing of Public Works and the City Council.
To date, we have trapped, spayed, or neutered, and provided vet care to well over 1,500 cats in Stephenson County.
Our goal is to reduce the community cat population, Woods helps the caretakers who selflessly care for these cats and allows the cats to live peacefully without further breeding, fighting, and suffering from disease.
Your recent numerous attacks on one of our members, threatening, intimidating, and telling him, a taxpayer, that he doesn't belong on your side of town and to go back to Cherokee Hills constitute harassment.
We also are very taken aback by the racist tone.
If you were in Cherokee Hills and you were told you didn't belong there, I can only imagine the blowback.
Also Steve doesn't live in Cherokee Hills.
The cats in the colony on Wilbur are also being fed by someone who does live there.
She puts a help-needed post on Facebook in July asking, past tense, she put a help-needed post on Facebook in July asking for help feeding them, which is when we stepped in.
We have fixed and medically treated four of the cats so far out of our own funds.
We will continue to trap and spray neuter the rest to reduce the population and the suffering of these cats.
The hatred and cruelty towards cats in Freeport is profoundly disturbing.
One of our volunteers on Homer found several of her already fixed strays she cares for all dead White, John, St. Louis, and Ron, and I'll be the first one who thinks that a person who was poisoned by a neighbor will have a better life than they were in the past.
Your actions towards the person merely feeding hungry cats are very disturbing and aggressive.
There are much more productive ways to communicate your concerns than yelling, verbally attacking, and harassing a citizen of your county, and the fact that you are a city official makes it even more disturbing.
We are happy to sit down and calmly and politely speak to you about this issue if you want.
We work hard to better the Freeport community and we are at a loss as to why you have so much hostility towards a group trying to help defenseless animals.
Let's work together to keep the neighborhoods peaceful and clean for both the residents and the community cats.
We have also included our local news media outlets if they are interested in bringing awareness to this situation as well.
Thank you for your time.
We would also appreciate acknowledgement of email received.
Leslie Lightwin and Renee Kane, NIPCO TNRNFP.
That concludes public comment.
Number seven is presentation regarding electrical aggregation rates for the wastewater treatment plant.
Twenty-four pumping locations and downtown street lighting.
Darren, would you please just give a quick explanation of electrical aggregate before Mr. Mudge comes.
Certainly.
Thank you.
Good evening, everyone.
Uh, electrical aggregation for the city of Freeport is done throughout, uh, the city residents have options and then the utility itself has options as well.
Um, companies like Mr. Mudge's company represent, uh, third party, uh, people that supply electrical Generally cheaper to our residents and to our utilities by buying, uh, years in advance.
So you're betting on the futures of the markets, basically.
Um, Mr. Mudge meets with us regularly, if you don't remember him, um, and gives us an opportunity to bring, um, a vote together to, uh, bring cheaper costs to the utility tonight.
He's going to be presenting, um, aggregation on the and the wastewater treatment plant, electrical, pumping, and then lighting.
Those three options, and he's going to, uh, basically give the city of report several options between, uh, duration and cost that we can vote.
If we want to move forward, that timing does not get decided tonight.
It gets decided on the day that it's locked in, because it's a fluctuating rate that changes every day.
Just like.
And Mr. Mudge has been helping us for several years and to date I don't believe he's steered Freeport in the wrong direction.
Thank you.
Mr. Mudge?
Thank you.
Thank you for putting me on the agenda, Larry, right here.
We are looking at three different bids tonight.
One is for our 24 facilities that the city owns.
Most of the usage is by the water wells and the treatment plant.
Is this on?
Yeah, you got to just tip it up a little bit.
Okay.
So, we have, as I said, three bids.
One is for the 24 accounts.
One bid is for the wastewater treatment plant, which gets special treatment because it has solar there and suppliers don't want to mix that together.
There's some confusion on what it is, but the treatment plant itself gets a special rate.
And then Dust of Dawn Street Lighting is the third contract that's up in December and we're and we're looking at doing that now.
And on that Dusted on Street lighting, that is including the combat lights for just the power that's used.
And for the city owned street lights, your downtown lights and different lights.
So, one of the things that I wanted to mention was about power.
Are excess power is shrinking fast.
The new demand for power is increasing a lot faster than what new power coming online is.
And that's even with all the solar net that we're seeing.
And it's a countrywide problem.
It's not just a state of Illinois.
And we export power or we have, and we will be exporting power to neighboring states about 2029.
We're going to start importing power, which is unusual because of all our nuclear plants have done well.
So that's kind of the state AI and data and electric vehicles are consuming, are the major corporates.
One electric vehicle takes the place of two normal households.
So you don't have to see very many electric cars around before you can see that adding onto the grid.
But on the individual bids, If you want to look at the, the pumping accounts, uh, it, it, it looks like, um, Dynegy, uh, is, is, is like the, the lowest cost provider for us.
I might mention some municipalities have gone out now four and five years.
And so the energy's rate of 56 months would be worth considering for the council.
Nextera is five years, they're actually the lowest.
Now, I just wanted to mention, we've not used Nextera, they're new to our bids.
Bids.
Next door is a utility in Florida, but if you, uh, they're also very large utility that has a retail site.
They have a lot of wind and solar along with generating assets.
So we're pleased to have them in our group.
Um, going next to the wastewater treatment plant that has special bids.
We have, if your sheets looks a little bit different, where we have a bid from a supplier and we have energy only, they're not quite certain.
That's a negative peak load capacity, which cuts that cost down quite a bit.
Um, so we have energy only or energy or full price.
And my thought is we want to show the full energy price because as you set your budgets and so on so Forth, you got to have a little bit of certainty.
When we say energy only, there's capacity and transmission costs that would be added to that bill that can change.
Right now it would be, there would not be any cost added, but we don't know what next year would bring or the year after or down the road three, four or five years.
Um, and then on the dust on street lights.
Uh, it looks like our current provider, um, Constellation has the lowest traditional three year rate at 4.4 cents.
The common rate to compare is a 5.5.
So the difference is about $7,000 savings to the city or the street lights.
So kind of throwing three, three, three pictures to you at the same time.
But this time I'll open it up for any questions that that the committee discussion.
Darren, did you want to add?
I actually have a couple of questions.
So, you know, Mike, we usually ask you for recommendations.
And I've actually been, you know, reading up on futures and stuff.
And right now, you kind of hinted at it that people are really pushing out to five years on these just because of the futures are really unknown and the electrical energy is predicting major costs increases from what I've read due to all the electrical cars, the data centers and comments, inability to keep up with the infrastructure, right?
They need to reinvest in their infrastructure, which is going to be I'm looking at every one of these contracts.
All of them look like that's going to be an increase over some nature because costs have gone up.
Based on rates, are you suggesting that we should look at longer terms?
That, that would be my recommendation.
I don't like to tell anybody what to do though, but, but, but you're right.
And our largest, I won't name any communities, but our largest community in our Northwestern comment area is, is, is looking at doing just that.
Yeah.
They're ending also in December.
Right.
If you, if you can, I'm sorry.
Uh, if you just look at residential rates, what residential rates have done, and everybody's seen a very large increase over the last two to three months on, uh, residential electrical rates.
And if you guys remember, we actually had our electrical aggregation supplier back out on us on the residential contract because costs had increased so much.
That was approximately six, seven months ago that that happened.
So, um, I mean, reviewing this is still council's decision, but I tend to agree with Mike energy Costs are going to go up significantly over the next five years due to the lack of infrastructure or the lack of updated infrastructure.
Data centers aren't going away for anyone.
There's talks of lots of them through, throughout Illinois.
Um, so I just keep that in mind.
And again, I know we can't vote on it as a price, but we do, we will have a recommendation that at the next meeting we'll be giving to city manager Boyer on a price and term that we're kind of hoping to look at and then it'll be based on the market.
So with that, I suppose we just need a motion in a second to move this to the next council meeting and then ultimately then then there'll be the discussion of that at the next council meeting as well so that way it would give Rob the authority, city manager the authority to lock Locken at the lowest rate.
Darren?
And Mike, if I'm remembering correctly from the last ones we did, at the next council meeting Dovie will have updated sheets with the trend at the next meeting.
It still won't be what we end up signing, because that would be the next day or after, but it would be that current rate on those days.
Alderman Stacey?
Yes.
So you're a broker, you're a consultant.
We're a licensed broker agent to sell, assist people to sell power and natural gas in the state of Illinois.
And we've been doing this with the city since actually the Freeport Water and Silver Commission way back in the day.
We've been doing this since about 2005.
And I'll still entertain that motion to move this forward.
So moved.
Second.
We have a motion made by Alderman Klemm, seconded by Alderman Parker.
Any further discussion?
Alderman Klemm?
I'd just like to say that I've had the pleasure of working with Mike a number of years, even before being here in the Council.
Mike has been a big representative and been involved in the HVAC industry and all the industries that are involved in this, in buying and selling this.
Wilson, and he's been doing it a number of years.
And doing it a number of years, everything has gone right until MC2, MC Squared came along, right?
Was it?
It was actually Nordic Energy.
Oh, Nordic Energy, okay, yeah.
Okay, I was thinking it was MC, but yes, it's one of those deals you find out you have a contract but they don't necessarily have one.
But I would tend to believe like you're saying with the future unknown and a lot of this and the steady increases to go with with a longer rate.
There's no further discussion.
Madam Clerk, would you please take the role on moving this forward?
Simmons.
Yeah.
Parker.
Yes.
Stacy.
Shadle.
Aye.
Sanders.
Aye.
Klemm.
Aye.
And Johnson.
Aye.
The motion passes seven to zero.
Thank you, Thank you, Mr. Mahudge.
Mayor, can I have one more comment?
Sure.
Quickly.
The chart that's on the bottom of the page, the pumping was the PGM capacity auction results.
This is a federal run auction.
And what capacity does, this is the money they collect from every utility customer, every ComEd customer, and is given to the generators to bid into this auction.
This is to maintain their existing facilities as well as encourage them to build and a couple of new facilities.
And as you can see, the bars on the right jumped way up and those are set and there's a cap on that.
And if there wasn't a cap that the different governors and that in the state that the states that our good operates in our race would be even higher than that.
So we know that cap out to the year June of 2029.
So since we brought up a good point and where are things going?
I think that's one reason to make that extension.
And thank you for the extra minute.
Okay, Alderman Klemm.
Just ask a question, Mike, while you're still here.
I remember we worked with you on moving the thing forward about being able to buy from solar sources and that type of stuff.
Has there ever been any work moved forward on the landfill electricity that that's gone for?
Oh, just while we're on the subject.
Uh, yes.
Um, Mike, uh, hooked us up, um, w with his package, which is a different package than the local landfill supplier.
And I did negotiate with the, uh, local landfill supplier, a company out of, I believe it's New York Luminous bought them.
Um, and we tried to, uh, I don't remember what the term is sponsor.
I believe it is you sponsor a section, you don't pay any money, but that landfill was by the time we discussed it with Luminous, we were talking about some landfill in Indiana, they had already sold all the credits from our landfills prior to that engagement.
And that's kind of how the way it works.
Um, and so, um, when we, when we saw that our landfill was already gone, or those credits were already gone it wasn't as advantageous for us to be part of that with it without it being local.
Okay we will move on to item number eight which is the discussion regarding kennel upgrades at the public works facility on Island Avenue.
Darren?
Yes I have our environmental compliance officer our Multitool, Randy Kolbauer here to help me tonight.
Um, but the gist of it is, uh, there are a lot of changes that are going on with animal control within the city of Freeport.
Um, I know that, you know, anybody that's seen Facebook, there's feral cat representation issues.
Uh, NIBCO, uh, uh, is defending their rights, you know, as an organization throughout the city.
There's also adoption issues going on, kennels are full everywhere, Friends Forever's are full, if you reach out to neighboring communities like Winnebago County, they are overflowing with animals.
Stephenson County just bought a new facility in Freeport.
They are already at max plus capacity.
So it's really leading to a lot of issues.
So one of the things I want to mention tonight, and it does lead back to one of the public comments, so the city of Freeport did, I believe it was in 2021, have an arrangement with Nibco TNR here in Freeport and we've pulled that ordinance just for the record.
It's ordinance 2021-45.
Thank you for the clerk and getting that to us.
There was an ordinance and a memo.
Those are only tied to trap, Neuter Release.
Those are not tied to feeding in other areas of town.
Those are not tied to cat colonies, which I've seen many, many posts about these throughout the community.
I don't actively participate, but I get them.
I read them.
So I want to be clear.
NIPCO has a right to trap, neuter, and release without a permit.
That is in our ordinance currently.
It can be revoked at any Anytime that was wrote into the ordinance 2021-45, there are no rights to feed stray animals throughout the city of Freeport.
That won't be a popular comment, I'm sure after this meeting, but there are no rights.
The county actually defines each individual parcel within Stephenson County that you cannot feed more than three animals or you have to have a kennel or border's license.
I looked that up tonight.
That was interesting.
So, um, our take on it is we're having several sufficient issues with animal control.
Um, you know, you, you really technically cannot feed animals off of your own property.
That, that is what the ordinance says.
Um, so skipping to where we're at with animal control, we roughly spend about a hundred thousand dollars a year on animal control in the city of Freeport.
Um, maybe not quite for that much, but, but it's significant.
And again, we only trap or catch dogs and cats.
We don't do raccoons, we don't do coyotes, we don't do squirrels.
Those are considered wild animals and they're not within our ordinance.
And we do have a co-op program that we've been running for about a year where we have an agent, third party agent that comes in.
It's a co-op cost per animal to remove those.
It's got to be approved by the city.
It's not just a willy nilly effort.
Um, but we are in a predicament.
Um, there's been several changes throughout, uh, our county on animal control.
Uh, currently, um, the animal hospital, which has been taking most of the feral cats in town as they're caught.
So I want to step back a second.
Animal control.
When we get a call, our animal control policies, uh, and codes and ordinances supply.
So if we get a call for a cat or a dog that's on somebody's property and they don't own them, we need to respond to those calls.
That's that's per our ordinance.
Right now we have nowhere to go with cats.
The county will not accept cats any longer.
They're full.
The animal hospital, which is where most of the cats have gone for several years, they are no longer taking cats.
They are full.
We do appreciate NIBCO's efforts.
Roberts, with the trap neuter release and the v-notching of the ears, but it still is a problem when they go on to someone else's property to do their business or colonnade or do whatever they do and that person doesn't want them on their property.
So while it's a great effort that they're doing that, it still becomes a problem when the rumor mill says that there's about 1,800 feral cats in Freeport right now between these 27 colonies.
That's a lot of cats.
I see them regularly around town myself.
Um, for the last two months, we have not been able to pick up any cats because we have nowhere to go with them.
Uh, we had just, I want to tell you how big of a situation this is.
We had one house that was condemned about six weeks ago.
That single house had 17 cats inside of it.
So it's become a large issue.
So where that leads to for us.
So we have a great animal control officer, Quez.
He does a good job.
He's got thick skin, in my opinion.
He cares about the animals.
He has asked for remodeling to be done at our animal control facility on Island.
Curt, would you be able to bring up that?
I believe it's the second page in the memo, the exhibit.
Please.
And I can talk while we do it.
But the current facility houses about 12 dogs.
We have no facilities for cats.
We actually have no cat kennels because we've never taken them in.
We've always taken them to the animal hospital or the county.
With the limited space that we have, we're We're asking to remodel.
Our current facility doesn't meet codes.
But we try not, we are not an adoption agency, right?
So we, we, we trap or We try to trap or catch loose dogs.
We try to take pictures of them.
We try to put them on the internet, social media.
We try to get them back to their rightful owner.
When that doesn't fail, we try to get them to friends forever or somewhere that they can be adopted.
But we have, unless it's a court case, we have a whole time of 10 days within the ordinance, right?
We're trying to get them somewhere, um, but COVID has left us a real large effort of a lot of animals that are getting released regularly that people don't want, um, per our ordinance as well.
If somebody surrenders their animals because they can no longer take care of them, which happens quite often in Freeport, we have to take those animals.
If they surrender them, uh, we just had a situation about animals being taken away from us.
So we're trying to get them somewhere.
About four weeks ago where a gentleman surrendered three dogs and I believe one of them was dead or nearly dead and the other two were in very poor condition that we spent quite a bit of money trying to get them back into an adoptable or getting them to an adoption agency to take care of.
So as you can see on the screen, it's not a large picture.
So what we're proposing, right now we have about $40,000 that we have not spent in the public works facility budget this year.
It was supposed to be spent on the really the the workers facility, but the workers facility needs so much work that that's not going to put a dent in that facility.
So, uh, Pat Ingram and Quez came to me and Randy and asked us to, uh, consider, uh, moving this money around, uh, within the budget, um, to animal control, to update this facility.
We'd like to add outdoor indoor kennels within the facility.
Currently we have none, um, which that does not meet code.
Um, uh, we have a outdoor play area that Quez actually takes the dogs that we have and he takes them out there daily.
This would provide them a indoor, outdoor door that they can go in and out themselves.
Cleaning up the facility is very difficult.
We have one floor drain in the center of the building.
So trying to clean the kennels and clean it down every day is very difficult.
So I suggested adding some trash drains so we can clean them up faster.
We can use pressure washers.
Right now Quez, and he does a phenomenal job, but it takes him forever to clean these kennels out.
And we have We have to clean them daily.
Um, it's not something that, uh, we, we can let go.
Um, we are proposing about a 20 foot addition to the south side of the building, um, to have some type of an evaluation room because we currently don't have that.
We usually do the evaluations in the back of Quez's van.
Um, and then because of the fact that we have nowhere to go with these cats and we don't want to become a cat facility, but we have to have somewhere to hold cats.
We currently have no cat kennels.
We're suggesting that we have cat kennels.
And according to the code, they're supposed to be in a separated room without the dogs.
Then you'll see that we have these boxes over to the right hand side.
Those would be for the dangerous dogs, dogs that are very aggressive.
You know, we don't have a lot of contact with our staff with them.
Again, Quest does a really good job with it, but it's a safety issue for our people.
And with that, Randy's here.
Here.
You can ask her and I any questions.
Uh, I would say to be honest and fair to you, um, $40,000 would do about half the work we need to do.
So we would probably have to budget 40 this year and 40 next year.
Uh, this building needs a new roof as part of the issue, uh, as well.
It's, it's completely rusted out.
It has not been updated ever, uh, to my knowledge.
And what I'm suggesting is not doing this with a contractor, uh, but doing this in house with our staff members.
Thank you, Darren.
Is there a motion to move this kennel updates forward?
So moved.
Second.
A motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Klemm.
Discussion and questions for Randy?
I have a question.
Alderman Stacy?
So if you give 40,000 up this year and you already know you're going to need 40,000 next year, where are Are you going to get the funds for the original event that needed repair it so desperately?
So, um, we would, we would re-budget cause it's in the public works department, but we would re-budget the $40,000 that we have parked, uh, for the upgrades to, cause it's still in a public works facility.
We would just change the facilities.
So that's the first $40,000 for 2026.
And then we would budget, we're going through budget cycles right now with Michelle.
And we would budget that in next year's budget to finish the upgrades.
Cause we, again, in order for us to make it affordable, we're going to have to do sweat equity with our internal people to make it affordable.
Um, and this is a facility that we, you know, we're very confident we can do this, uh, with in-house staff from the streets department.
The roof in all?
Yeah.
We would suggest redoing the roof with steel, which our guys can do.
Alderman Simmons.
I think it's a good idea.
I agree with it.
I'm for it and I agree with everything that you said earlier.
However, if we have people that are so entitled to believe that you asking them not to feed cats in your backyard is harassment, We're gonna have we're gonna continue to have this cat problem and we're not gonna be able to build enough shelters and cages to deal deal with them all so I would like to post the council that maybe at some point we consider an ordinance an enforceable ordinance to stop that because first off it's just common decency if someone says hey please don't feed the strays over here you don't do that and if NEPCO was trapping Huffines, To the point that they think that they should be able to feed cats in your backyard, we're going to continue to have this problem because they're just going to continue to mate.
And I mean, maybe if they drive us to a mission.
Okay.
So I want to understand this, are we saying that you can trap these animals, these cats, you can take them to the other side of town and drop them off?
No, no.
Because that's what's.
Go ahead, Darren.
So I can't honestly speak to Nipco's practices.
My understanding is the only two people, it's not my understanding.
It is the law in Freeport.
The only two people that can trap cats are our animal control officer.
And Nipco that is the only two that can trap it.
Um, we do not catch cats and then release them as the city.
We do not do that.
The, the Nipco or TNR trap new to release.
They do trap the cats at my understanding from only my readings is that they take them to somewhere up in Madison because that's the cheapest resource for them to have them fixed and then they bring them back to Freeport and they release them back into the community into what they call the cat colonies.
Um, which I, again, I'm not educated to know where these cat colonies are, but I've been told there's I believe seven cat colonies.
Maybe Randy knows a little bit more than I do about it, but there are supposedly seven cat colonies and the way you can tell that they're a fixed cat is they get a V-notch cut in the top of their ear that is visible.
If you look at the Facebook feeds and posts, they're very angry that the city of Freeport does trap the V-tipped cats and we only trap them when we have resident complaints and we're forced to trap them because they're on someone's property that doesn't want them.
Rachel, I agree with exactly what you said.
And I talked to a vet, my vet, and my vet told me if you feed cats, they're not hunters anymore and they won't hunt.
And therefore, you know, it's a happy place for them if they're getting fed, right?
Just just like me.
My wife feeds me, I go home, right?
So I'm just saying, you know, if everybody's got their own situation, they're having compassion for the cats.
I understand that.
And the more cats we have, you know, I don't know if the 1800 number is factual, but I believe it's somewhere in the ballpark.
It's a lot of, a lot of cats.
And I think the council is quite aware of a situation we had by the North.
We had a situation we had by the North Walgreens about a year ago with a cat colony and people from out of town, even feeding cats there.
And it became a very large issue, because one person likes them and the next person does not.
And, you know, I don't want to sound insensitive, but our ordinance right now, strictly state that if somebody doesn't want them on their property, Freeport has to remove them in the city of Freeport.
Again, legally, if we have nowhere to go with them, we can't trap them either.
Can you find out where these colonies are?
How do you find out where these colonies are?
That's a good question.
My suggestion would be to try to work with NIBCO because they seem to know where they're at outside of, you know, I, I know where one of them's at, but I don't know the rest, but I agree with you or whoever made the comment about when they bring them back, where do they go?
Like where is that?
I don't know.
You know, I don't, if they pick one up on Harrison street, does it go back to Harrison street or does it, you know, go over to Miami?
I don't know.
Um, yeah.
I thank all of you for the conversation.
It's really great and it's a problem that didn't have to start yesterday.
It started many years ago and has been around.
If we're going to redo the candle, I would highly suggest, like Rachel and Cece do, that we got to put other things intact because, you know, we had the problem out in Platteville Court.
You know, there was a woman that fed them Fettman, Fettman, Fettman, all over out there.
They had cats.
The other real great sign of somebody is feeding cats is drive by and when their garage door is up about that high.
You know, just leaving it open enough so the cats can get in and eat.
It's a bad deal.
You know, and it isn't as though, you know, Darren, NIBCO is spending what, $250 a cat or so?
I don't know what that number is but I had heard that number you know one the last time I think it came up at Walgreens you know but I think the the case that you had with the 17 cats I think was a minor detail to one a number years ago and you know to many people a pet is a person in the family I mean it's It's unbelievable.
I mean, they're attached.
They're a great thing, so on and so forth.
But when they're running stray on the streets and causing problems for other people, that's also a problem.
So all I'd say is let's look as we move forward to try and do something different or find out what we can do different.
Thanks for bringing up a point there.
You know, we do have on record, there are ordinances is about dog and cat leash laws, they're equally the same.
And I know that that's not viewed the same, but that, that is actual law.
There's also other things that we could do.
Um, I believe, uh, uh, dogs have to be chipped.
I don't know that cats fall into that yet.
Um, maybe, maybe Randy knows a little bit about it.
She's actually deals with a little bit more of this than I do, but it is a, it's a much broader issue than, than what people think.
And I'm not gonna lie the last thing the City of Freeport wants to do or the Public Works Department is want to spend our budget euthanizing animals it's it's not productive for us and it's very expensive euthanizations right now are running about $80 a piece.
I understand that I mean this is kind of sensitive on many levels but we have to kind of tighten our conversation up because this is supposed to be about upgrading the kennels.
Alderman Johnson.
Well, I agree with the upgrade of the kennels.
It looks like it's needed.
I just have one question.
Who provides all the money to feed all these dogs and these cats that are in all these facilities that we're feeding and keeping alive?
Public Works.
Do you have any idea how much?
Oh, that's I believe we estimated it, um, because of the cleaning requirements that are very stringent for us.
Um, Randi, do you have that number?
I believe it's around $20 a day per animal.
Right.
I think it's close to that or a little higher.
Yeah.
I have to pull up the CBA again.
Okay.
Thank you.
Right.
And nine times out of 10, if we can't adopt that animal out or we cannot, you know, we don't recover anything.
Okay so madam clerk could you please take the role on moving the upgrades forward Simmons, Parker, Stacey, Shadle, Sanders, Klemm, Johnson, the motion passes 7 to 0 oh may I ask a question it wasn't stated but we're just moving this forward to September 21st?
Yeah.
Okay.
Item number nine is discussion regarding ordinance amending chapters 816,842, 1036, 1248, 1255, 1252, 1254, 1258, 1450, 1475, pertaining to antennas and transmissions.
Director Heimerdinger.
Thank you Madam Mayor.
Mayor, during the last building commission meeting, the commissioners voted in favor of forwarding the proposed text amendments to Chapter 1450 and tenors to the City Council for consideration.
Prior to forwarding the amendments, the building commissioners proposed revisions to Section 1450.10, Governmental Services.
Is presenting the changes made by the building commissioners for council's consideration and seeking which version of the text you guys would you guys would want to be incorporated into the final chapter chapter 1450 tax amendments the reason that we are bringing it to you is that planning commission passed it as it was written which is how the attorney drafted We did that section, but building commission wants it drafted in a different way, and so we thought well since we have two commissions wanting different things, we thought we'd bring it to a cow and have you guys kind of decide how you wanted that final, how you guys would recommend that final version being drafted.
I do have it, it will be up on the on the screen here so you guys can read it as well.
I will read you the proposed, which was passed by planning commission.
And this is for governmental services section of the antennas and transmissions.
So, antenna chapter was so outdated that it was talking about things that don't actually exist anymore and so we went through an evaluation and kind of redid it and made sure that we had provisions in there so that, you know, you would need a variance if you are going over a certain height and everything like that.
Section 10 speaks about governmental services.
The proposed language that Planning Commission approved or wanted to pass to council was the restrictions of this section shall not apply to towers utilized exclusively for municipal services offered by the City of Freeport, including but not limited to towers constructed for and used exclusively by 9-1-1 service, fire department, or police department use.
Any other governmental unit operating within the city shall be required to comply with the provisions of this section.
And then the The Building Commission wanted it to change, and the primary difference in what you'll notice is that the original language exempts city municipal services towers from restrictions, while the Building Commission amended language applies to regulate municipal towers in the same way that any other corporation or business would.
Be regulated.
So this reads, the restrictions of this section shall apply to towers utilized for governmental or municipal services provided to or on behalf of the city of Freeport, including but not limited to emergency services and other essential governmental services.
Existing towers location utilized for such services within the city of Freeport as of the effective date of this section shall be grandfathered with respect to height, location, and zoning, and may be replaced or reconstructed at the same height, location, and under the same zoning status.
This provision shall apply regardless of the governmental entity operating or providing the service, including the city of Freeport, Stephenson County, or any other governmental unit providing services to the city or its residents.
So you can see the two differences in this.
The first one basically In this, the first one basically grants that the City of Freeport, that's using it for 911 services, fire department, police departments, if they were to build the new tower anywhere in the City of Freeport, they would not, and it went over the height or it went over the provisions outlined in the ordinance, they wouldn't have to go to ZBA or go to Planning Commission or go to Council or have a public hearing.
They could put that up because it is a public service.
It's a 911 service fire department.
It's based on emergency services.
The second, the one that the Building Commission has recommended, says no, let's not do that.
Let's have every tower that you would put up that's over that would need a variance because of height or because of the, that it doesn't fulfill the ordinance would need to go through a public hearing, go to ZBA, go to planning commission, go to council to give the public the ability to say, um, to make comments, um, on that tower.
However, in that anything that's already been built for the city of Freeport or, Stephenson County within city limits they can rebuild that tower to the same height, the same zoning, the same placement as they did previously without having to get a variance so they can build it the same way on the same place of land without seeking a variance it's just if they were going to change the tower in any way when they rebuilt it.
I don't look for the city to you know put up we don't have We don't have any future towers that we are putting up or planning to put up in any recent future time.
So, you know, right now it's not something that is top of mind.
The biggest thing is that going through, if we do the Building Commission amended version, the biggest thing would be that it does cost money to publish in the newspaper, to print a sign to host a public hearing.
It does cost staff time and it will cost roughly, not including staff time, but just for the sign and publishing in the journal standard.
It'll be about over $300 for a tower that you would go up and have a public hearing.
And then your staff time as well.
So staff recommends that the city council provide, provide direction on which section and you would rather see in the final amended 1450 chapter for antennas.
So Council, do you have questions versus the Planning Commission versus the Building Commission's recommendations that you want to bring up?
Do we have a preference?
Alderman Klemm?
I'll just mention, I think that, and I know one of the individuals that was involved basically, The thing with saying that in the building commission was basically they didn't think the city should be able to build something that any citizen or anything, anybody else could do, which is a real good point.
The points of the 911, the center, and the emergency things, I mean, they have to be there.
There's no ifs, ands, or buts about that.
But I think this whole thing stems from the one at Park Hills, basically, is where it Gertrude.
Gertrude, Gertrude, The first one, but add in any other towers that the city of Freeport would be putting up, you know, that's not directly related to 911 or the fire department or the police department use anything else that would be put up would have to be, we'd go through the provisions of the ordinance if they fall outside of the variance.
Yeah, I would believe that, yes, it does answer that basically.
Perfect.
Sounds good.
Anybody feel differently?
Do you want a motion to move that thought forward or how do you see this going in the next?
I don't know if I need a vote.
It was just a discussion topic, but I appreciate your feedback.
We didn't know which way to go either, and so we thought, well, let's go to the people who vote.
So we thank you guys for lending your expertise.
Thank you.
Item number 10 is discussion regarding and the 2027 budget process and review of schedule.
Director Richter.
Thank you.
I wanted to bring to council just a outline of how the budget will go this year.
We don't have very many changes from previous years at all.
We started on the budget back in August with the department heads, and those budgets were presented to the city manager, myself, and we are working our way through the rest of and the fiscal year.
I included in the agenda tonight a copy of our budget schedule.
The budget schedule is for the Finance Committee of the Whole meetings.
And these individual budgets will to be discussed at each of the individual finance cows.
We plan on kicking this off next week.
September 21st will be our first finance committee of the whole beginning at 5.30.
The finance committee of the wholes will also have a public comment at the beginning of the meeting and at the end of the meeting.
For our first meeting next week, We are going to request and ask council if they would expand the public input session at the end of the meeting to five minutes instead of three minutes to allow for additional public comment.
But I do want to say that all of the Finance Committee of the Wholes will have public comment at the beginning and the end of the meeting, I believe.
I did start with how the budget is put together with the department's heads.
At this point, all the department heads have met with the city manager once, except for Public Works and Water Sewer.
We always, we do kind of leave them towards the end.
They're a heavy lift.
So as we go through the departments, we're evaluating where they are, what and new programs, new state requirements are out there before we put our budgets together.
Then we bring them to council and as we present them, we try to highlight any significant changes over the years or over the year, what's anticipated for next year.
The once all of the individual budgets are presented, we do kind of a recap because things Things could change from September 21st to the end of October.
Maybe a price came in for an item, a piece of equipment or something that changed.
So we do do a recap before we're looking at the final votes.
It's also kind of a busy time as well.
We're not only working on the budget, we're looking at the tax levy, we're looking at We are looking at getting the budget passed before the end of December, also passing a five-year capital plan before the end of December, and then we'll also look at 2026 for any types of revisions.
And then lastly, the budget schedule that is prepared, that is our best.
It it kind of ebbs and flows if there we are missing a number if we're waiting on a number from a vendor for how much something's going to cost we might swap out one of the budgets and put it to the next meeting but what you've been given tonight is what I'm working with right now and the identified budgets for next week are on target and will be presented on the 21st thank you so please put that on your calendar for next Monday at 530.
Item number 11 is discussion regarding adding city accountant back into ordinance regarding chapter 290 compensation and benefits.
Director Richter.
Thank you.
In May of 2026, Ordinance 2026-30.
Ordinance 2026-30 was passed to create the position of Finance Specialist and delete the City Accountant position within the Finance Department.
The intent at the time was to update the title of the position as the current employee was leaving and we felt the title of Finance Specialist more accurately describe the position.
Shortly after the ordinance was passed, the Deputy Finance Director resigned and we advertised for the position and had a well-suited candidate, but that recently fell through.
Reinstating the city accountant position in our ordinances will allow us to recruit an entry-level accountant.
This approach creates a practical hiring pipeline, excuse me, giving us the ability to bring someone in at the entry level with the potential to promote to a Deputy Finance Director in the Future.
I'd just like to add there are really just three of us in the finance department that do book work as far as myself, the deputy, and the finance specialist.
Finance specialist does payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable.
I have an accountant and I have myself.
And so when we change that, when I suggested the change to the ordinance back then, I wasn't anticipating such a quick change in my deputy finance director.
I think a city accountant would be a more appropriate position to recruit for.
As I said, we had someone lined up, didn't have very many applicants.
I think this is a better choice for my department and I am asking council to forward this to the agenda on the 21st with an ordinance to put that back in.
Okay.
Thank you.
Is there a motion to do that?
So moved.
Second.
Third.
Okay.
We have a motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Parker to move this to the next city council meeting discussion.
Madam Clerk, would you please take the roll?
Johnson, Parker, Stacey, Shadle, Sanders, Klemm, and Johnson.
The motion passes seven to zero.
Item number 12 is public comment.
Madam Clerk, you have three non-agenda to read.
I do and I first will apologize to the three commenters.
I had these last week and I had them signed in and when the time came, I so apologize.
I forgot.
So in the order they were received, this is from Tesha Morgan, Dear City Clerk, Honorable Mayor and members of the Freeport City Council, I am submitting this formal statement to be included in the official record and distributed to the City Council ahead of the next scheduled meeting.
As a resident of the Fifth Ward, I am writing out of an urgent concern for public safety, A severe failure in local law enforcement accountability and potential conflicts of interest within our local judicial system.
For an extended period, a specific individual with an extensive criminal background, who is well known to local police departments and the courts, has been allowed to repeatedly commit crimes against community members with zero legal consequences.
Instead, this individual continues to manipulate the system by filing battery charges against victims they actively seek out prior and after stock and antagonize.
Despite numerous documented reports, victims are being blamed by those that should help, and reports are consistently written incorrectly leading to a total lack of accountability.
Specifically, this individual continues to to knowingly trespass on residential and business properties where they are legally banned, drive completely unlicensed without intervention, solicit and hire third parties to vandalize property and harass citizens, and additionally involve and display weapons, parentheses, witnesses, posing an immediate physical threat.
When victims attempt to follow the rules, law enforcement, the state, and victim advocates has dismissed these repeatedly safety concerns simply telling the victim to, quote, keep documenting, end quotes.
Inside the courtroom, judges have dismissed overt safety issues and inappropriate physical touch and when this physical touch was brought to attention, the victim's advocate stated, in quotes, it's probably too late to do anything now.
This brings about a critical question that this council must address.
Who is this documentation actually for?
Our community should not have to wait for another preventable tragedy or a murder trial before local authorities take action.
The continuous dropping of the ball raises incredibly serious questions regarding systemic negligence, including whether justice is being obstructed due to a family member of this individual being employed inside the courthouse.
As elected officials who oversee municipal operations and the Freeport Police Department, I urge you to launch an immediate review into how these specific complaints, trespass violations, and reports are being handled.
Our community deserves to feel safe and our laws must be enforced equally without bias or protective oversight.
Madam Clerk, your time has expired.
You want to move on to the next one?
This is from Pete Norman, please feel free to read at the next city council meeting.
We want to extend our gratitude and thanks to the city's forestry department and crew.
The crew of three recently removed our dead old oak tree in a professional and efficient manner.
We felt they deserved to be publicly recognized for their hard work and efforts.
Sincerely, Pete and Jen Norman.
I do and actually I meant to talk to attorney Zito about this.
This was hand delivered and it is not signed.
I think we've traditionally not read public comment and we don't know who it's from.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, then we will move on.
Xander Bright.
Hello, everyone.
I'm Xander Bright and I have a serious issue here to discuss.
I'm here regarding a serious concerns involving my brother, and our neighbor in the response of the Freeport Police Department.
On August 9th, 2026, my brother and I heard someone banging on our basement window.
We couldn't figure out what the guy was saying.
We went outside, we found our neighbor intoxicated yelling something at my brother.
He appeared to be intoxicated.
So when we were outside, the first thing the neighbor did was approach him aggressively, began swinging at him, knocked him to the ground, climbed on top of him and remained on his chest and neck, and the police were called immediately.
I must say this is a 30-something year old man who attacked a senior citizen who has serious medical conditions.
He could not defend himself because of the medication he was on.
The officers did not witness how the confrontation began.
But by the time they arrived, our neighbor was already on top of my brother.
I have all video from beginning to end plus pictures in which the responding officer heard when he got out his car, get off of him.
But yet, however, the police report states that the officer witnessed my brother and a neighbor swinging and fighting each other, which is not true.
No officer was on scene at that time.
It also indicates that my brother swung first.
That officer or no officer was present to determine that.
I have, like I say, video showing what all occurred before the police arrived, as well as all during the time that they were there.
I am also seeking the officer's body camera footage because there were five statements on that police report that was completely false and I have proof.
This discrepancy is extremely concerning because it portrays my brother who was attacked as the aggressor in a mutual fight.
My brother, like I said, is a senior citizen with serious medical vulnerabilities.
To the incident, he was required to go to the emergency room, he didn't that day but end up having to go on two different occasions, he suffered injuries of his neck where he was being choked, he had scratches in his eye, which one of his eyes is injury and he is on medication for all of that.
The situation has continued, this is someone well known by the police department, every Every time they respond, they say, oh, we know this guy.
The situation has continued on September 10th, 2026 at possibly 2 PM My brother was cutting a gr- 2 PM my brother was cutting the grass in the front yard, the same neighbor tried to run him over with his vehicle, my brother jumped out the way.
Sandra, I'm sorry, your time has expired.
I will continue.
Thank you.
Wendy?
Good evening, City Council, City of Freeport.
Dovie, I wanted to tell you thank you.
I told you we were going to be on the agenda.
I want to tell you thank you because you have compassion.
You care about people and you show it.
I don't feel the same way about some of you.
We have a child who committed suicide in this town and we're talking about cats.
We had a memorial for this child.
None of you were there, but Dovie was.
And it's not the first time that she's shown up when one of our kids has either killed themselves or took Finanar, and Odeed, or was murdered in these streets, or brutalized by a Freeport police officer.
I'm quite aware of the situation that Zandra is talking about, because I talked to somebody in the state attorney's office about this young man.
And I was told that he was arrested for public intoxication.
And later on the charges were increased to aggravated or some form of battery.
But the officers refused to arrest him initially until a white shirt was called out.
And then he was arrested for public intoxication.
Now what Zandra didn't tell you is, is that the same individual tried to run her brother over while he was mowing grass.
There are tire prints in her yard, not on his driveway, but in her yard.
Now, I'm gonna say this to you guys, and I've been holding this for a while, but anytime you have been in positions that I've been in, in this town, shutting down drug houses, putting lights on streets where people have been shot and killed or shootings were occurring, walking the streets.
And then you have officers.
You talk about protecting city workers.
Who's protecting us?
Who has the compassion to deal with a family who's lost their 13-year-old to suicide?
It doesn't appear that our city council does.
And I'm saying this simply to you because I was out of town or that I would have been there, but my phone blew up.
And when it blew up, wasn't talking about the little girl initially.
It was talking about you, our elected officials, who have no compassion, who hasn't reached out to a family who's lost their child, whose father couldn't hold his composure, and the crowd cried along with him.
I want you guys to think about what you're doing and what you're not doing.
Are there any other public comments this evening?
Hi, my name's Cheryl Altman.
I might have a solution to the cats.
Have you ever thought of reaching out to farmers that are out in the country who are more than willing to take cats might be a suggestion I live out in the country I'd be willing to take some I mean there's always an opportunity somewhere you just have to look and like I said that might be a chance to get rid of some of them might want to look into that thank you any other public comments Oh, Jodi Miller.
This is a special Olympics bank bowling tournament.
What's the date?
It's on November 1st at the Cherryville Mall.
And Tom Crenn, we're going to miss you.
A long way off.
Do you know what they're putting in that they said they're going to put something in or somebody told me?
Any other public comments?
Hi, my name is Sue Cook and I live on Winchester.
Director Darren, how, I do have to ask this question.
I thought I heard you say three mouths to feed in the ordinance in the home.
At home.
Years ago when there was another mayor, a gentleman, prior to Mayor Miller, this had come up and I went in with Nikki Bender and we talked about raising that to four and as far as I knew, that day it was raised to four mouse to feed.
The reason being if people do have service animals and or pets at home when the retired service dog goes into retirement then you have your current service dog that gives you two if you happen to have one pet or one pet and a cat that brings you up to four so it it can or if you happen to have a pet that brings you up to three if something happens with your service Stuck, your new service such as it gets hit, it gets bit, it gets traumatized, that can put you up to four and that's why I was questioning if that they had said at least the mayor had said yes that's possible they voted it came up to four we did get that vote but it appears it was never changed in the ordinance is that kind of correct okay so I was wondering how How would you bring up an amendment to an ordinance to bring that up to four so that we could have four mouths to feed in case there was a situation where there were issues with service dogs or a service dog and a pet?
I'd like you to consider that.
The other thing with the cats, sorry, Wendy, the other thing with the cats is that If they are being trapped, spayed, and released, your colonies are gonna decrease because they're spayed.
There's not gonna be kittens, so they're just gonna die out.
The life of a street cat is three years, approximately.
So that's a possibility what the colonies are.
Eventually, you're gonna see the colonies decrease because there's no babies.
It's just a matter of getting those animals neutered or spayed.
But I want to thank you for mentioning that this evening because I really was under the impression that it had gone up to four because of the prior.
So if you could let me know what to do to maybe, I don't know, put that forward, make an amendment to that, I would appreciate it.
Thank you.
Any other public comments this evening?
Cecelia, Stacy, Fifth Ward, Alderwoman.
What Ms. Pearson said tonight was a little disturbing to me because not only was I affected in the community, I was also affected on my job.
I worked for the Freeport School District and it'll be 25 years this October.
And I am sorry that I was not there because I was in town.
Saturday, I went to the 100th celebration of the high school and had praise and worship with the Cole family.
So if I could take time out of my busy schedule to do that, then surely for the death of one of ours, Oh of ours.
I would have been there, but I didn't know.
I don't know where it was posted for me to know.
Not everybody is on Facebook.
There has to be a better way to get information out other than Facebook because I would have been there.
Any other public comment?
I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.
So moved.
Second.
We have a motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Klemm.
Madam Clerk, would you please take the roll?
Simmons?
Aye.
Parker?
Aye.
Stacy?
Aye.
Shadle?
Aye.
Sanders?
Aye.
Klemm?
Aye.
And Johnson?
Aye.
Motion passed.