WEBVTT

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It is 5.30 p.m. on September 21st, 2026 and I'd like to call this finance committee of the whole meeting for the city of Freeport to order. Clerk, may we have the roll call. Mayor Miller. Here. Alderpersons, Clemm. Here. Johnson. Here. Simmons is absent. Parker. Here. Stacy. Here. Shadle and Sanders are absent and Sellers. Here. We have a quorum.

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Let's rise, please, and say the Pledge of Allegiance

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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all

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Item number one is the approval of the agenda. Can I have a motion to approve tonight's agenda as presented?

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Second. Okay. By Clem and seconded by Joy. Okay. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? The agenda has been approved. Second is approval of a revised minutes from October 2025. The minutes should be in your packets. Can I have a motion to approve the revised minutes from October 2025? So moved. Second.

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Okay. Any discussion, corrections, changes in the minutes? Are you saying the minutes are in here? Yeah, the minutes should be. Not in there. And what was emailed to you? Email. Yeah, from the agenda. Yeah. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The revised minutes have been approved.

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item number three public comments on agenda items limited to three minutes per person. We have one person on here. It says general comment. Is that on the items for tonight? General comment. Okay. Would you come to the podium and state your name, please?

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Good evening. I'm Amara Striegel. I have never looked at a city budget before, let alone had anything to say or any questions about one. It's a lot of numbers. It's a lot of departments.

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It's a lot of light items to wrap one's head around, and especially when there's limited information available.

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So while I anticipate and trust that the meeting tonight will answer many questions, both ones that I've thought of and ones that I haven't, I'm just here to voice what I would like to learn from this meeting.

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I'll start with the most glaringly obvious, the computer hardware software line items in nearly every department, ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.

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telephone and communication line item. What does this cover and why the increase? And then other

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technical services. Again, what and why? So there are many in this community concerned with transparency.

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And while most in the general public are not trained in financial matters, myself included,

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having access to more information on major changes in the budget, not only major changes, but the ability

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to reference what a specific line item is referring to would help to create a more transparent

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structure. So I as a citizen may not want to spend hours going through a proposed budget, and most won't.

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However, knowing that if I choose to take that time, the basic information would be available for me to

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research without having to file a FOIA request. So there's not much time allocated for this meeting,

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so I'm not going to take much more and thank you all for the humans that you are, the work that you do and the information that you are going to provide tonight. Thank you. Item number four is discussion of the following budgets by city manager and director Richter, general fund budget, city council, commission, city clerk, mayor and city manager, communications, finance, legal, community development, building, hearing administration, human resources,

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Services, IT, Interdepartmental, Fire Department, Fire Public Safety Fund Budget, Fire Improvement Fund Budget, Foreign Fire, TIF Fund Budgets, Downtown West Avenue, Burchard Meadows, Downtown Loan Budget, and now I will turn it over to Manager Boyer, please. Thank you.

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Thank you, Your Honor. So this will be our first budget meeting for fiscal year 2027, and I'd like to address a comment that was brought up.

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We recently completed the annual comprehensive financial report for 2025 in that it contains all the details, the trending and 10 year span of time for people who are interested in understanding the big picture as well as with the audit and how that all works together.

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So I would recommend to the public, if you're interested in becoming more familiar with the budget, please start with the annual combined financial report that is available online. There is all the information that kind of describes the projects and how it intertwines with the strategic plan and what these numbers mean.

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taken individually. You see a $10,000 here or you see another figure there. There is resolution to that.

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However, there's approximately 200 to 300 bills per meeting that we're processing in finance and those

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are everything from a repair of a truck and a very specific piece of equipment could be a purchase and

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it could be any number of things. So for those who are interested, I recommend you start with the annual combined financial report. We have made changes to each of the individual departments' budgets to include software and telephone communication expenses. So last year, and we had combined the software and like the IT related items under the IT budget last year.

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This year, it is just too difficult to tease out what goes to what department when you look at the budget, and so we're going back to the old way that we used to do it, which was including the software that was applicable to that department within that department's budget, so that also may illuminate some of the questions that were posed.

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We continue to reclassify expenses in the general fund and departmental budget to move them to a more appropriate area for the individual budgets as well

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We have a few kind of macro changes that are going on

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The IMRF, that's the retirement fund, our percent of contribution is expected to decrease

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So you see some changes there. Unfortunately, there's about a 20% increase in medical care citywide. So you're going to see those numbers reflected throughout the budget in different locations. And some of them are interrelated. Now, when you look at the straight hours or dollars for labor and for staffing, that really relates back to city priorities that are enumerated in the strategic plan.

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and then you can kind of chart the progress through the annual financial report.

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So with that, I also want to mention I would appreciate if we could just as we go along write your questions down as we go and then once I get to the end of this we can go over any questions you might have.

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So with that, I'll start with our first accounting item, which is city council, and you're going to see some adjustments, but according to our ordinance, there's some adjustments that will be made in the 2027 fiscal year, reflecting the increase that council voted for council wages. I believe that was in 24, but that could be maybe 25, 24. Anyway, it was approved in the last three years.

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Also, there's hardware and software. As I mentioned to you earlier on, hardware and software is now going to be enumerated within the account code that it is part of. So there's really not a whole lot of changes in the city council budget. So let's move on to commissions. This fund supports the activity of the Board of Fire and Police and also the Liquor Commission.

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The majority of this goes to paying for your qualifications and testing for fire and police, new fire and police officers.

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So not a whole lot of changes there except to say that we're bringing on new individuals, we're bringing on new firemen and police, and it does become fairly expensive on the qualification process for those roles.

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Curt, could you go to the next one?

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So city clerk, you'll see an adjustment in the city clerk's area related to a part-time FOIA clerk.

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This is due to the very large volume of FOIAs that are coming into the city, and I believe there's some legislation that should help to manage that a little bit, but that is the reason for the addition of the part-time FOIA clerk.

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In addition, there's some standard adjustments for the city clerk wages and then addition of a licensing software and hardware replacement. So as we mentioned before, these are now being included in the budgets for each department. Next one, please.

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Next one, please. So city manager, mayor, this includes the strategic plan expense. So you'll see in the line item in there for about $10,000. We're just estimating for what we'll need for that, but primarily not a whole lot of changes in the city manager or mayor budget item. Communications, please.

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Under communications, there's a reduction in costs for newsletter printing.

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One of the items is, you know, we're sending out like 10,000 to 11,000 newsletters every month.

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And I think that there's, we're looking into what, you know, what we can do to be more efficient with that.

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And one of them is going to be, we're going to reach out to individuals who actually want the paper newsletter.

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We're looking at ways where we can just include it with those individuals that want it, make it available at City Hall and at the library.

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and therefore we don't have to send out 10,900 newsletters to people who just throw them in the garbage when they come in.

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In addition to that, there's reductions in wages in the 26 communications. We had an intern for a brief

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period of time. We will not have an intern in 2027, although that was a very useful program and worked

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out very well this year. We're not looking to do that again in 27. And then again, last one is software,

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We're the new city website. We won't have that one-time expense in 2027. So that'll be going online here

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tonight. So the new website should be going on tonight. Okay, moving on to finance. Bank fees were

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included under finance previously, included under interdepartmental. That's been moved into this item

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for 2027. And then financial software, again, telephones and so on, that has been moved out of

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IT and back into finance. Legal increased. We have a lot of activity with our legal department. So there are some increases reflected there. And then also we're planning on starting union negotiations in 2027. I believe that will be for the police department. So we're keeping ahead of that. Community development added real estate taxes previously recorded in the interdepartmental budget item.

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that is now under community development. And again, software for permits, ordinances, and violations, iWorks, and previously recorded in IT are now enumerated here in the community development category, as well as telephones and communication previously recorded under IT.

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Buildings, under AFSCME, this decreased essentially in 2026. We had budgeted for two nuisance inspectors. There is a tactical pivot on that, and we used those funds for the IT department to have an additional IT individual working in that department, and then with the idea that we're picking up efficiencies through an additional iWorks module.

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And then we also added $10,000 in here for contracted lawn care this last year. We have had more rain than the previous couple years. One of the challenges was that we had temporarily lost a couple of our summer helpers. They left early to pursue other jobs, but then they, at least one of them came back. So, but we, we kind of got into a pinch where at one point during the summer, we had quite a few lots that were getting overgrown.

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and we simply just did not have enough people at one point to get them mowed in a timely fashion. So we're

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putting like $10,000 in there just to make sure that we're able to address that in a timely fashion.

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Under hearing administration, we've increased expense for hearing administration at $30,000

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and this is due to the increased cases. So again, $30,000 sounds like a lot of money. However,

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is what we have to do to enforce our codes and ordinances. This is mainly due to nuisance type of hearing.

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So this goes to our adjudicator. Human resources, we had the addition of HR software to budget for electronic applications.

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This is kind of streamlining the application process and allows us to accomplish more with fewer people.

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information systems. So this is where you're going to see your savings. So you'll see the reduction to hardware, software, and the telephone. These costs, as we mentioned already multiple times, are now incorporated in with the department budgets and wages. Additional one full-time staff member. This was a decision made last this in 2026 and has been working out quite well. Under interdepartmental

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That remaining line items include our liability insurance for the city, that's the general fund portion, and postage and freight. We plan on moving this to the individual departments as well for 2027. And then the transfer to debt service is the city's share of the 2020 pension bonds, the 2016 city hall bond, and the 2015 A library build. So those adjustments have been made in interdepartmental.

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Fire, General Fund Budget, some staffing levels need to revisit the overtime figures and continue to monitor those.

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We have us, again, reflecting the increase in health insurance that we're anticipating coming through with IPVC.

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As I mentioned before, that 20% increase in health care.

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And then fire pension contribution increased based on the sworn officer's wages increase for 2026.

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So when we completed negotiations with the fire department, that has an impact of increasing our pension liability. So that is enumerated here. Also, the PEP is reduced for 2027. That was one of the givebacks during the negotiation. They got certain increases, but then we gained some savings by eliminating the PEP for rank and file.

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firemen, and they were good with that.

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Addition of the fire software, hardware, and telephone, again, same story.

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We have a multitude of the electronic aids that are going back into their rightful budgets instead of in the IT budget.

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The Fire Public Safety Fund, this fund receives donations to alleviate the cost of public education materials

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used during the Fire Prevention Month in public schools.

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So that is what this budget and not much changing there. The Fire Improvement Fund, the city uses this fund to account for ambulance revenues, capital purchases, and per ordinance, a yearly transfer is made to the general fund of 54% of the revenues, not including collection or administrative fees.

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So essentially there's a portion that goes back to pay for wages and administrative costs in the fire department.

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That's what it's used for.

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Foreign Fire Fund.

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The Foreign Fire Fund has its own board that determines how the funds are spent.

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The fund itself is treated as a fiduciary fund on the city's books.

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We track the inflow and outflow of the dollars, but the board makes decisions on the actual expenses.

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What are the foreign fire funds for and where do they come from? By the state statute, all insurance companies not incorporated under the laws of the state of Illinois and provide fire insurance for properties situated within an Illinois municipality that maintain a fire department must remit 2% of the fire portion of the insurance policy premium. The fee must be used for the maintenance and use and benefit of the fire department.

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Essentially what you're having here is an isolated fund that goes into the maintaining of our equipment and our capacity there

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And Chief's got his own individual budget on the Foreign Fire Fund in terms of vehicles and maintenance

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Okay, with that I'd like to go into some of the TIF funds

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The downtown TIF, and this one, the expenses include bank fees for downtown loan bond of $700, added marketing line item for 2027, site improvements, so that includes facades and current redevelopment agreements, there's two of them currently, the Hampton Inn, and additional funds for new RDAs are incorporated into the budget for the downtown TIF,

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and then transfers to debt service for principal and interest. That would include the 215A bond and the

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2018 bond. And Michelle, maybe you can kind of, I guess, trigger everybody's memory a little bit.

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Which one of these was the Germania? Was that 2015A? I think that's, it's a little before my time. I think

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it's 2015A. Okay. So we're still paying off bonds that were used to demo the Germania, for example.

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So

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Okay, with that, we'll move on to the Lamb Road TIF and that is closed for 2027. That is not renewed. So there's no budget there. We have the West Avenue TIF and the expenses there include

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TIF, and the expenses there include professional services, site improvements, so that includes new

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redevelopment agreements and miscellaneous repairs and things that we can do in that TIF to improve

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things for incoming businesses or people locating to that area. Tax disbursement funds go back to the

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other taxing bodies. So how much of that West Avenue TIF goes back to the other taxing bodies? Do you know

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offhand. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Gertrude. Okay. So part of that TIF arrangement was 25% had to go back to the other taxing bodies. So whatever increment it generates, 25% automatically goes back to the school district, the township, the park district, and the city. Next TIF is Burchard TIF. So expenses in this one include professional services, site improvements, and we currently have one redevelopment agreement with FAC.

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HN that's on the books, probably related to the Birchard Hills Clinic, and then tax disbursement

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funds go back to the other taxing bodies, and what percent goes back on that one, Gertrude?

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It's 25% of unspent.

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Okay.

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So it's 25% for all TIF districts except for downtown, there's no relocation.

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Gotcha.

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Very good.

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Then the next one is the Meadows TIF.

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The expenses there include professional services, site improvements, redevelopment agreements, and we've got several of them out there. In 25, we did an RDA with Culver's for their expansion of their parking lot. Kendall and Grace in 2026, that is the old Joanne fabric, correct? And that was our RDA with them. Then Meadows Mall, currently we have an RDA with Meadows Mall.

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and then the former, I guess it is the Starbucks area, so that little area with the eye clinic and so forth, or I'm sorry, the dental place, there's a different agreement there and then we have some budget for new redevelopment agreements for that TIF.

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Okay, with that, moving to the Downtown Revitalization Loan Fund, the city currently has one active loan from this fund, the fund has approximately $60,000 to offer for a new loan project, and that was, the idea was micro loans, where, you know, you could help small businesses do projects, and then you would lend them money out of this, out of this account, and they would repay it over a period of time, and then it would go back into the account,

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and be there for future development and future businesses. Several years ago when the ABET books

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demolition occurred, a good portion of this fund was used for the demolition of ABET books. I believe it

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started out as a million dollars and I think now we're probably the total value is probably like in

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150 range. So we've got 60,000 in the account and we have outstanding loans of approximately, you know,

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$60,000. All right. Well, that completes tonight's presentation on the budget. And I wanted to let

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everyone know this is going to be the new format. We're going to come in prepared. We're going to hit

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it hot and heavy. We're going to hit the highlights. And if there's any questions, please feel free to get

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a hold of me as soon as your draft agenda comes out or not the draft, but the Friday agenda. If you have

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any questions on it and I'll be happy to work through those questions with you but that's what I've got for tonight and in the interest of time I think we got seven extra minutes so any questions at this point? Cecilia, Alderman, Stacy, go ahead. Yes. What were you saying about the West Avenue TIF fund? So the West Avenue TIF currently has several expenses. One is professional services then we also have

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money set aside for new redevelopment agreements and miscellaneous repairs and also the tax disbursement funds go back to, so we've got about 25% of that goes back to the taxing bodies.

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And that's the school, township, and what?

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Park District and all the taxing bodies.

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Yeah, that would count too.

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Yes, I know when you

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Okay

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I know when you were talking about Meadows, were you saying that Joanne Fabric and Starbucks is included in the Meadows?

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Nope, Meadows, Meadows is the Meadow Mall primarily, yeah

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So Starbucks

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Yeah, Starbucks in that

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Joanne are in what?

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They are in the, go ahead, Gertrude

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They're in the same one

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Oh, I'm sorry

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Yeah, Meadows, Meadows, it's called Meadows, but it incorporates a larger spot, yep, yep

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I stand corrected. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you very much. And I guess we can... One quick question. What does REA mean? Which one are you talking about? I'm talking about metals. REA with metals mall. That's a redevelopment agreement. Yeah. OADA means redevelopment agreement. Okay. Thank you very much. We'll go on to item number five, which is public

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comments. I would like to ask for a motion to waive the three-minute time limit set by rules of council and extend it to five minutes per person for this portion. May I have a motion? So moved. Motion made by Clem. Second. Seconded by Sellers. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Aye. Motion carried. Okay. I think it probably needs five. Oh, do we have to do a roll

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call for that. Okay. That would probably be the safest. Okay. Clem? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Parker? No. Stacy? Aye. Sellers? Aye. And Mayor? Aye. And that makes five to one. Okay. So that motion carries. Okay. Do we have any public comments? Okay.

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Yeah, good thing we extended

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Okay, seeing no public comments

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then may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting

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Made by Sellers, seconded by Clem

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Okay, this meeting is adjourned at