Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call this village board meeting to order for the date of August 18, 2025.
And if we could all please start by rising and saying the Pledge of 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.
Thank you, everyone.
Maggie, if you could please call the roll.
Thank you, Maggie. We have two sets of minutes to review and approve tonight. The first one
is from 8.45, it's a village board meeting.
Are there any corrections or changes from anyone on the board?
Anyone need to pass?
Pass, okay, pass a note if we're Trustee Zick.
Anyone else?
Anyone from the audience?
If not, I'll take a motion for approval.
I would move that we approve the village board meeting
minutes from August 4th, 2025.
Second.
Motion made by Trustee Schwingbeck,
seconded by Trustee Lebedz.
any further discussion. If not, all those in favor say aye.
Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion carries.
Next item is the special village board of trustees meeting minutes from 7.14.25.
Again, any changes or corrections or are there any passes from anyone on the board?
Seeing none. Anyone from the audience that needs anything changed or adjusted?
Seeing none. Then I'll take a motion for approval please.
I would move to approve the minutes of the special village board meeting of July 14th,
2025.
Second.
Motion made by Trustee Manganero, seconded by Trustee Zick.
Any further discussion?
All those in favor say aye, please.
Aye.
opposed so motion carries all right next item is approval of accounts payable
and I'd call on trustee Bertucci please. Mayor I'll move approval of the warrant
register for the check date 8 15 2025 in the amount of two million three hundred
Second.
Motion made by Trustee Bertucci, seconded by Trustee LeBeds.
Any discussion from the Board?
Anyone from the audience?
Seeing none.
This is a roll call vote.
Maggie, please.
Trustee Bertucci.
Yes.
Trustee LeBeds.
Yes.
Trustee Schwimbach.
Yes.
Trustee Shirley.
Yes.
Trustee Menganero.
Aye.
Trustee Donington.
Yes.
Trustee Zick.
Yes.
President Tonalia.
Yes. Okay, thank you. Next item is recognitions communication. We have none. No public hearings.
So we'll go right into Citizens Be Heard. And I do have two blue cards tonight. If anyone is in the audience that would like to speak, you can certainly grab wings in the back.
And if you don't, it's okay. We'll still call and just raise your hand. So the first one is Melissa Care. Melissa, come on up.
I see that.
Okay, we'll hold that for that discussion. Under Citizens Be Heard is Keith Moons.
Thank
you President Tonalia. I just wanted to note you know as we begin to negotiate to
bring the billionaire bears out here I would really appreciate it as a resident if members
of the Board of Trustees would not appear on television and proclaim that residents real
estate taxes will not go up as a result of them coming out here. And this is for
two reasons, two reasons why. First, that board member cannot know for sure where our
real estate taxes are going to go if the bears do come out here. Second, our taxes likely
will go up as a result of their relocation out here. So let's consider the bear's request
for tax certainty over many years, which is a reasonable request from their point
of you, but they have that because there is inherent and unavoidable uncertainty or risk
in real estate tax levels increasing from year to year.
In other words, tax uncertainty is built in to the system, it's just going to be there.
And we all, we all know about this and we all have to cover that risk every year
in our own tax bills.
So by granting the bear's tax certainty through schemes such as pilot or mega projects, I fear it will transfer the bear's tax uncertainty risk onto local taxpayers forcing our taxes higher.
Finally, if the billionaire bears want to come out here and relocate here, they're welcome.
I welcome them with open arms, but we should not accept their uncertainty risk to do so.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moons.
I think that's it for Citizens Be Heard, unless there's someone else.
Yes, come on up and introduce yourself, please.
My name is Robert.
I believe I've expressed this with Randy before.
I communicated to him that the businesses along Arlington Heights Road, there seems to
be a number of people that seem to have privilege to park on Arlington Heights Road no matter
at the time of the day and I tried explaining this to Randy before no
matter if it's a like an Amazon delivery truck or if it's literally somebody
parking there to want to get out of their car to walk to noodles and company to
take all the time of the world to buy food and then come out to their car
and then just leave. Like they're the only ones on the road. I've seen this
time and time again and I've even said something to the police station and I
said well I guess I'm gonna have to mention something to the board. I don't
know if there's something that you guys can do where maybe you can paint some
sort of details into the road like if like the fire station has in front of the
fire station with diagonal lines that would say like no parking and then put no
parking signs there for like you know saying we'll tell you like at your own
discussion things like that or ticket you but I've noticed it becoming more
more problem over the last couple years. People just, what happens is like they can't find
parking in the mall there so they'll come back around to Arlington Heights Road to just
take it upon themselves just to park there, just to like go to a noodles and company
or something and I wondered if there might be some sort of solution for that.
Okay. Thank you, Robert. I think it's a good point. I see it. I think all of us see it happen again.
And yeah, I had actually one more thing.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.
So I as a customer that likes to shop at the Joel in town, just based on our observation, I noticed that the math isn't
mapping with what I see in the store and how many cars are parked out in the parking lot.
Because there's just no way by the amount of people that are in the store versus who's
parked out in the parking lot, like there's 20 people maybe in the store and then almost
a full parking lot and I've even talked to people in there you know about that
situation and they told me like yeah that's that's not customers that are you
know for the store and for somebody like me that wants to shop there it there's
There's only a few parking spaces left and it's kind of aggravating and I didn't know
if there'd be some sort of solution with that as well to get that resolved because I've
been noticing this for a while.
So.
Okay.
I didn't want to interrupt you.
Are you...
Is that it?
Yeah, that's it.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thank you for your points.
Yeah, but I interrupted you, so our village manager will take a look at that and if you
want to grab his business card from him later on, I'm sure he can share thoughts with you.
Anyone else from the audience?
Okay.
And we're going to move on then to the consent agenda.
And the consent agenda is one vote with a number of items.
Is there anyone on the board here that wishes to take an item off the consent agenda
for separate discussion. Is there anyone who wants to vote pass or no on an item on that agenda?
Is there anyone in the audience that would like a trustee to remove an item for separate discussion?
Seeing none, is there someone who would like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda?
I'll move approval of the consent agenda.
Motion made by Trustee LeBeds.
Second.
Second by Trustee Zick, sorry.
Sorry. Any further discussion? All right. All those in favor? I'm sorry. We'll have
roll call vote on this one. I knew that. I knew that.
Peggy, it's up to you.
Trustee Labads.
Yes.
Trustee Zick.
Yes.
Trustee Schwingback.
Yes.
Trustee Bertucci.
Yes.
Trustee Dunnington.
Yes.
Trustee Manganero.
Aye.
Trustee Shirley.
Yes.
President Tenalia.
Yes. All right. Very good. So then now we're going to go into new business.
right? And we have five items tonight and the first two are a couple of appointments
and I'm really pleased to call on Jennifer Thomas. Is she here? She is
right there. If you could come up to the podium there, there's two mics that you
can choose from.
Wait a minute. I'm jumping ahead here. There was a
discussion earlier today at the Committee of the Whole and I'm going to
call on Trustee Schwingbeck first.
Thank you, Mayor.
I would move, as I did earlier this evening,
to concur in the Mayor's appointment of Jennifer Thomas
to the Commission for Citizens with Disabilities
with a term ending April 30th, 2028.
Second.
All right.
Motion made by Trustee Schwingbeck,
seconded by Trustee Bertucci.
Is there any further discussion?
Anyone from the audience?
Seeing none, is this a roll call vote again?
This would be a voice vote, Mayor.
Okay. All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
None.
Okay. Motion carries.
That is that.
Now, I'm going to read you your oath.
If you don't mind, you can repeat after me.
Sure.
Ready?
So, aye.
State your name in full.
Aye.
Jennifer Thomas.
Having been appointed to the commission for disabilities.
Having been appointed.
For citizens with disabilities.
Having been appointed to the coalition for citizens with
disabilities, in the village of Arlington Heights, in the county of Cook, I do solemnly
swear and affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution
of the State of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office
according to the best of my ability very good congratulations Jennifer
if you
could come up here I'm gonna give you this pin and your oath and
if you could
take this over to Maggie over there she'll go ahead and take care of your
signature down there with her and you're all set to go
congratulations thanks all right so next is Stella Butler Stella if you
could come on up. And I'm going to call on Trustee LaBette's.
Thank you, Mayor Tonalia. I move now, as I did earlier this evening, to concur in the
Mayor's appointment of Stella Butler to the Environmental Commission with a term ending
April 30th, 2026. Second.
Motion made by Trustee LaBette's and seconded by Trustee Dunnington. All those in favor
say aye.
Aye.
Aye. All right. Sarah, are you ready?
Steal up.
Are you ready? Yes. Here we go.
Raise your right hand. Aye. Stella Butler. Aye. Stella Butler.
Having been appointed to the Environmental Commission. Having been appointed to the Environmental Commission.
In the village of Arlington Heights. In the village of Arlington Heights. In the county of Cook.
In the county of Cook. Do solemnly swear and affirm. Do solemnly swear and affirm. That I will
support the Constitution. That I will support the Constitution. Of the United States. Of the
United States and the constitution of the state of Illinois and the constitution of
the state of Illinois and that I will faithfully discharge the duties and that I will faithfully
discharge the duties of the office according to the best of my ability of the office according
to the best of my ability fabulous congratulations all
right Stella if you would take this over
by Maggie and sign that and that's a pin that you can wear like we all do because
you're part of our whole commission okay and same for you thank you very much everyone
So
now we're going to move on to item C, which is an ordinance amending Chapter 7 of the Municipal Code of the Village of Ireland tonight regarding municipal grocery retailers, occupation taxes, and municipal grocery service occupation taxes.
So I'll call on Village Manager Recklout.
Thank you, Mayor.
So these are two separate items but the discussion is related so we're going to
have one general presentation and then the board if it's so chooses can vote on
the two items separately. You know the question is I think this is unique you
know why are we discussing these you know outside of the budget process
outside of kind of our normal way of discussing budgetary items and it's
both of these are relatively unique. Back in June the board discussed and
approved our budget ceilings for the 2026 budget. And they included the revenue that these two
revenue sources would produce. However, at that time, the board indicated that it wanted
to examine alternatives for both of these prior to approving them. These are unique
for a couple of reasons. The grocery tax is not a new revenue. It is a revenue that
that we've had for many years in the state of Illinois enacted a law recently where if
municipalities want to retain the grocery tax, they have to take affirmative action.
We're going to talk a little bit about the impact of that and the timing of that, but
that's why that issue is before us.
The second issue is the potential of a streaming tax.
If you recall over the last several years, after a lot of analysis, it was determined
that the village needed to put into operation a fifth ambulance.
Currently, we've had four full-time ambulances,
and this has been part of a multi-year process
where we've been ramping up to a fifth ambulance.
Currently, we have the fifth ambulance working
on about 260 days a year during peak hours and peak days,
and we staffed that ambulance with overtime,
and if we happen to have overages on staffing,
if we're above minimums,
we can use those individuals to staff it.
The goal as part of our three year plan
was to have a fully staffed ambulance in operation
January 1st of 2026.
That will require additional revenue.
And as we've been talking about,
we've looked at different options
and streaming tax is the one
that the staff has recommended.
The reason we are looking at putting that tax
into effect now,
and that's always been the plan,
is firefighters have a long what I'll call incubation period. They require a lot
of training before they can be available on the street and so we're
actually making those hireings now so that we can have people ready to go come
January 1st and so that was always a plan to have something in effect the
middle part of this year so we can cover those expenses. The streaming
tax itself we're gonna be talking about the merits of that in a minute
but that was something we've talked about for a while and so that's why this is a little bit
different of a process and why we're talking about this this year. Right now staff as part of
our budget process is developing the 2026 budget and it's being developed based on the 2026 budget
ceilings that the board adopted back in June and so the each department has now completed
They've submitted their budget, they've submitted that to myself and Director of Finance Melissa Gallagher.
What's going to be happening soon is those are going to be reviewed for completion and then our internal budget committee is going to be going through those.
So that process is well underway so that we can have a balanced budget proposed to you all in usually the end of October for discussion in November.
So that's going underway and so we're being able to talk about these revenues
situationally is difficult because we're still we're in the process of
developing that 2026 budget and we always do that under the direction of the
board based on that 2026 budget ceiling that you've already developed. So the
question here tonight is more how we will meet the needs of those 2026
budget ceiling levels based on the board's direction back in June. So with
With that, I will turn things over to Ms. Gallagher who is going to be walking through
our analysis on these items and then obviously there will be the opportunity to discuss them
further by the board and then vote if the board so chooses this evening.
Thank you, Manager Recklaus.
And yes, so we're in the midst of our budget development process and want to walk through
this presentation with you.
So one of the things as Manager Recklossom mentioned is that within the actual ceilings
of for 2026 are the projections for the local grocery tax which has been part of our revenue
stream for many, many years.
And as we've mentioned, as part of the funding of the fifth ambulance we have proposed
as one of the agenda items, the streaming tax is a two-year operational plan.
So, what we wanted to do is walk through some of those revenue alternatives, kind of listening
to what the board kind of had mentioned to us during our budget ceiling discussion and
look at things also from other different means, which would also be looking at our peer communities
in market considerations and discuss those alternatives with you as well.
This is kind of, as Manager Reckles mentioned, we typically will kind of take a look
at revenues just in general through the budget ceiling process and then come back to you
with a proposed budget. But this is a little bit unique and we want to make sure we're
kind of going through those notes from the budget ceiling discussion we had in June.
So I wanted to first start with the local grocery tax in terms of the fiscal impact.
And in the memo and in the agenda packet itself, we have been looking at a 1% local grocery
tax as we're retaining the current tax.
This, as we've mentioned before, would create a significant shortfall within our general fund
operations.
And this is not just one year, but it's every single year.
So we have to think of it that way.
It's not just a one-year loss of revenue.
revenue. When we look at our general fund revenues just in total, local grocery tax
is part of sales tax and sales tax makes up roughly about 25% of our overall general
fund revenue so it's a very important revenue stream along with property tax which is about
29% and then income tax which is about 14%. So our major revenues are about almost
70% and so that's where we're kind of focusing in on the major revenues and what
that might look like.
When we're also looking at things also in terms of revenue streams, we take a look at
what we can do to actively reduce any impacts for the property tax levy as well, and so you're
going to hear a little bit about that as we walk through this.
But the local grocery tax is direct money into the general fund paying for all our
critical services.
And what we are going to show you as well is that there are visitors to Arlington
in height to shop here and they also do pay for grocery, food and other items in the village.
And so as we mentioned during the ceiling discussion that should we have to look at
other revenue sources, we mentioned property tax, we're not suggesting that in terms of
making up the shortfall, what we are suggesting is to retain the local grocery tax. We're
not suggesting service reductions but those are the types of things and when we say
service reductions. We always take a look at that in a global way, and that would be
through personnel. But we're not suggesting that. Again, this is just more of the fiscal
impact showing about a $1.3 million significant shortfall to the general fund annually.
One of the questions that comes up is what's the impact to the shopper? So you can
look at it in a variety of different ways, but one way to look at it is when you
to your local grocery store and you purchase a basket of goods.
And so a typical grocery store purchase is going to vary widely, depending if you have
teenagers like myself, but it will vary widely.
And we kind of looked at some of the data points.
And so we estimate about 70 to 85% of the grocery bill if you go to a grocery store
is related to food items.
So that's that 1% grocery tax.
The next part of the basket is about 15 to 30%, which is general merchandise items, which
would be household supplies, personal care items, or other items.
So if we look at a family of four, that could be at a moderate cost plan about an impact
of weekly grocery spending, and of course, every shopper is a little different when
they go to the grocery store, but if we say you spend $323 in grocery spending,
that 80% is food and 20% non-food items.
And so we're looking at about a $2.58 impact per week,
but if you annualize that, it's roughly $134.
Again, I'm just for illustration,
just sharing again what it might look like for a family.
It could be more, it could be less.
An important consideration as well
is when we look at the local grocery tax impact
are the effects of food assistant programs which is SNAP or supplemental
nutritional assistance program which is a federal program that helps provide
income assistance for shoppers and so none of the shoppers will be affected
by the local grocery tax and they're exempt from that. We want to mention
again that there would be limited impact per household and just based
based on our analysis and what other municipalities looked at as well, is that there's equity
built in through the SNAP tax exemption for household assistance.
It's important to look at a variety of aspects to grocery store data, and one of the tools
that we have at our fingertips would be some information that other municipalities have
looked at.
we pulled this data from a source that extrapolates data based on zip code and trade areas and
what we were able to show based on our variety of grocery stores that we have in our community
is that it just depends on where the grocery store is as far as the visitors to the stores.
And so visiting shoppers may attend and shop at different grocery stores depending
on the location.
And so, just an overall picture, if you look at the estimated tax paid by zip code, and
it's just extrapolated data, so it's not actual data, and it's not sales tax data because
that's confidential data, but about 60% of visitors to Arlington Heights are not living
in the community actually spend their dollars here, and about 40% of Arlington Heights
zip codes spend their dollars in Arlington Heights.
but it depends on the location of the grocery store.
For example, downtown dual has a higher percentage
for actual residents coming in to shop in the grocery store
as compared to other types of grocery stores.
Again, this is just one type of data to take a look at
in terms of trade areas and it's just another aspect
of the local grocery tax to share with you.
We've been monitoring a variety of sources
And we want to point out our local comparables.
There are about 11 communities that we tend to say,
how are we looking at as far as a comparable community?
And so this is our list of 10.
And we're one of a group, so it's a total of 11.
But more than 350 Illinois municipalities across the entire state of Illinois
have retained the local grocery tax as a funding mechanism for their general fund to retain that.
We share that with you because that is also our pool of communities that we take a look
at and we're going to show you some data from other points as far as our peer communities.
So peer data moving on through and I'm just going to leave local grocery tax for just
a moment because I want to show a little bit about our peer data and tax rates.
And again, one of the things that we do when we're formulating new taxes or looking
at our current tax structure, we're looking at how we kind of sit side by side with our
community and how others formulate their tax structure.
Just looking across from the home rail sales tax, you can see that pretty much we're all
in on par at 1%, we just one community slightly higher at a quarter percent, Illinois Department
of Revenue, the increments are only a quarter percent, so 25 basis points, it's the
only increase that you can do at a time so it's not like you can do 10% or so
on. Again, retaining the grocery tax, you can see all the communities there. We're
going to talk about food and beverage tax rates and so I just list them for you
to look at as well to kind of see where we sit and fall in our communities. And
then the hotel
We're going to talk about that as well.
I mentioned the increase of a quarter percent to the village is approximately $1.8 million
annually to the village. And so we're not recommending a new tax or this option as a new tax to consider.
We do believe that it would place us a little bit above our community comparables and it
also and potentially increasing costs to consumers for higher priced items and as well as to
restaurant dining.
And what does home roll sales tax apply to?
We kind of abbreviate it there, HMR, it applies to purchases with the exception of
food and drug.
Things that are also common would be electronics, furniture, purchase a patio table, it can
be a variety of household cleaning supplies. It can be school supplies. It can be a variety
of things in your shopper's basket. It is going to just vary depending on what you shop
for and how your spending plan is. And so shoppers may be a little bit more price concerned
as things go up and as we're seeing that in the economy. And so the impact might
be greater. Shifting things, when you look at shifting, should local grocery tax compared
to an increase in homeworld tax? We'll talk a little bit about that. But that may potentially
add a little bit more burden to retailers and potentially to restaurants. And so we're
just kind of keeping those things in mind, particularly as profit margins have some
pressure out there.
If I can jump in too and just the point with this is, again, generally speaking, when you
go to the grocery store, now everything you buy there is quote unquote groceries and
subject to that grocery tax.
A lot of the things you buy are general merchandise items, toiletries and all that type of thing.
Anything essentially that you buy at the grocery store that other than drugs and food
would be subject to the home roll sales tax and so one of the reasons we looked
at this was it's another type of sales tax but it would essentially be also
raising that grocery bill or the household item bill just in a different
manner and again correct me if I'm wrong Melissa I don't believe these
items are exempt from a sales tax like SNAP. We would have to just double
confirm. But for the most part, we've identified that potentially it would not be, but I think
that's an important point that you raised.
Snap is generally for food items, and so they would get the sales tax exemption on that.
But on non-food items, our understanding is that they still pay sales tax on that.
But I just wanted to make that distinction.
And if you think about it as, let's say it's $300 worth of food items and grocery store items
in your basket. So you're going in and you're purchasing $300 worth. In the example of the
grocery tax, as you've mentioned, only a portion of that is subject to the 1%. So if you look
at your receipt, let's say you go to whatever grocery store you choose and you look down
at your receipt and it's $300, two and a quarter you'll see, and then the 10% you'll
see. And so it's either or. The two and a quarter includes the 1%. And so when you
look at the grocery tax you just have to kind of look at your receipt and see that
it's included in the two and a quarter. And the reason I mentioned is if you
kind of shift things around and you say okay now we're going to eliminate the
grocery tax and that now becomes one and a quarter and we're going to shift
maybe a quarter percent for home roll sales tax and now our rate becomes ten
point two five percent you shift it around when we ran this the short
calculation it shifts it slightly and you may see some sort of savings but it's
going to be very minimal to the shopper on the grocery bill where you are going
to see the impact or some of those higher price items when you go to maybe
other retail establishments and then also dining out and let's say you go to a
home improvement store and you start purchasing other ticketed items so the
The point is that you're shifting things, small increase to higher priced items.
So I want to mention that because I know that there's a lot of different ways that
you can look at examples but it's important to note kind of the shift that there really
is kind of a modest change there that's important to note.
We're not suggesting a home rule sales tax be implemented and be outside of our comparables
but I do want to mention that.
Feel free if you want to add a thought as we go through and you may have questions.
But what I'm going to continue to go on through here, through the presentation, is to shift
a little bit on the streaming tax side and because there is an ordinance for review, discussion,
and consideration, as we've mentioned, this has been a plan now for several years.
And with the full implementation in 2026, the effective date for a streaming tax could
be considered as of next year.
So we'd like to implement it, but it takes time to implement and initiate such a fee.
Cable and telecommunication fees have been declining as people have cut the cord.
And one of those things that are very important is that we still maintain the rights of
weight.
There's still an infrastructure cost.
While the conduit in all of the services still flow through the rights away, we still maintain
as municipality those rights away.
There are several communities that have implemented a streaming tax and we've looked at a variety
of things in addition to as we drafted with legal counsel the ordinance for review.
I would want to also just mention that, again, it does not cover the full cost of the fifth
ambulance.
I know when we were speaking last year during the budget sessions that while the streaming
tax is important, part of this, it doesn't even provide the full funding and we want
to make sure that we are providing as much funding as possible for the full implementation
of the fifth ambulance service.
In our budget ceiling discussion, if you recall, and I put it in the agenda item as well,
the approximate cost.
So if you have a handful of streaming tax or streaming services, let's say from one
of the, you know, Hulu to any of the other streaming services, it might range from about
$41 to $61 per year.
And I think we talked about at the end of June at the budget ceiling discussion,
This is more of a choice-driven, consumer choice-driven tax rather than any other type
of tax.
So, I'm going to walk through a variety of the other aspects of the memo that we provided
in the packet so that you have just a little bit of background on other types of revenue
streams that come into the general fund, which are very important.
One is our local hotel tax.
It's a rate of 5%.
It's administered by the village for the general fund services.
And just a note to that, we looked at what might it look like should you increase it by a percentage.
And one of those things that we also look at is our municipal comparables.
But if we did increase anything by a percentage for hotel tax or current revenues about 925 to 950,000 to the general fund,
but we estimate based on our 11 local hotels about 200,000, if you net out our contribution
to meet Chicago Northwest, it's roughly about 184,000.
We're not suggesting to consider an increase to the local hotel tax, but we did want to
just make sure that you are aware that those are options to take a look at.
We are suggesting to have this as part of a more thorough review and analysis as
in context of ongoing and planned development activities across the village.
Our local food and beverage tax, again, that's a local tax that we administer and collect.
And it's a 1.25 percent tax on prepared food and liquor on and off premises.
And there's also an additional amount for a fresco establishments.
And what we did was just kind of run an increase from 1.25% up to 2% to see what that might
generate for a revenue ad.
And that came out to about 1.5 million.
This is not one we're considering.
We feel like it's an impact on shoppers and restaurant patrons and the hospitality sector.
And we'd like to remain somewhat in line with our municipal comparables as well.
The reason we are running a lot of these scenarios is to see what some of the
bigger impacts. We do this as normal part of our budget process. On one of the
pages in last year's budget, we actually run a lot of these for
consideration. We want to make sure we're kind of going back through and
updating numbers. And so that's the local food in Beverent Shacks.
So how
do we again kind of fit in the scheme of our comparable communities and
municipalities, alcohol-related tax is really hearing the feedback from the village board
we looked at, kind of those consumer choice or choice-driven kinds of taxes.
And alcohol-related is typically taxed through your food and beverage tax structure from your
local municipality.
And so you can see the variation there across the municipalities.
package liquor tax, the village does not have one, there are a couple out there that do that tax,
that have that enacted in their village or city, and those sometimes are designated for certain aspects.
But we, again, we're not suggesting new on that as well.
Local tobacco tax, we did a survey and none have a local tax, but there are other considerations at the county and state we'd have to look into.
do. And then video gaming terminals. We did run some numbers on that. Most of this you
can download directly from, you know, the various websites. So we did provide some information
in the back part of the presentation that I'll go through in just a moment. I did want
to turn to a couple things that are not into effect and kind of walk through that
as well. And I know we're, from a perspective of looking at all these different revenue
new streams, I'm highlighting certain things on a per revenue basis, and I want to make
sure that it's understood that we're looking at things globally as well.
So I'm just kind of highlighting things on a global basis, and we can always walk through
questions at the end.
One of the aspects of kind of optimizing our operations through the village board process
in the budget process. We eliminated the vehicles and pet stickers affected by the 2024 budget.
The revenue was about $1.3 million to the general fund, but through some of the
ways that we frankly did better in sales taxes over the last several years, we were able to
absorb the loss of this important revenue stream. It is a very highly labor-intensive
way to collect funds. When I think about revenues, I think about fairness, efficiency, predictability,
and also reliability. And this one unfortunately wasn't one that was suggested to continue
because one, it was very inefficient. And, you know, for example, we were able to save
on savings for the village by eliminating a staff position that wasn't needed when
the program ended. There was also considerations for enforcement and we felt like it was not
a fair revenue source. So it's not recommended to reinstate the revenue but I did want to
review some of the bullet points to that as well.
One of the asks as well is to take a look at some of the things such as single use
bag taxes or fees. I think generally people think of plastic bags when you're shopping
is, I forget mine. I forget my reusable ones. I try to remind myself. But some municipalities
want to incent behavior. And so to do that, they enact fee or a tax. Sometimes it's 10%
per bag. And there are a variety of ways you can look at it. Of the municipal comparables
that we looked at, we pulled a few. I would say what we're seeing is that, again, the
the taxes were enacted so they could modify behavior,
but that was not a revenue-generating source.
And so just looking at some of the ones that we looked at,
some of the net revenue out there was about 100,000 annually,
but it was really more of a different way
to incent behavior.
And then video gaming,
I'm gonna turn it over to Randy for just a moment.
Yeah, and this is one that's obviously a current topic.
And so we ran some numbers from some of our peers,
But, you know, we know that that's something that's going to be discussed soon.
And we know that this is being looked at not solely as a revenue source,
but also as a way to help the business community.
But from looking at this, it does not, when you look at the amount of revenue
that we're looking to retain of the 1.3 million in terms of grocery tax
and gain so we can fund the Fifth Ambulance,
It doesn't appear that we can very easily kind of video gaming revenue our way out of those
particular issues because one thing to consider is that our market right now we're one of
only a few communities that don't have them and so by gaining them it doesn't necessarily
mean we're going to realize the same amount of revenue per unit as some of these folks.
It gives you a point of reference, but you're kind of saturating the market a little bit
by doing this.
But it is useful as a point of reference, but we know that that discussion is being
had independent of this, so we wanted to throw it up for review as well.
I'll add one footnote to that is that it's one of those revenue streams that consider
factor and also remember that sometimes there's an unpredictability factor. The pandemic is
a good example when gaming wasn't happening. Revenue was zero to general funds.
But obviously it's just one of those things that were saturated. I thought I'd pull some
data just to take a look at.
So I want to somewhat end here because I think this one is interesting.
There's a lot on the slide. We have, you know, in our budget book for 2026 we'll provide
the updated amounts, but this one is from the 2025 Comparable Municipalities. So with
What we try to do is kind of see where we sit in our total estimated annual homeowner
costs.
And so you can see from last year, we're kind of in the middle.
Depending on what you look at, if you look at just home roll sales tax, you can see
we're right in line with our municipal comparables.
If you kind of take a look at the property tax, it's a little bit different where we're
still kind of right in line, a little above actually.
And then you can also just take a look at fees and user fees as far as utilities.
I think what's important in the takeaway to this is what we were kind of saying in the beginning,
is that much of what we're looking at, the two viable options,
makes a lot of sense from the perspective of sitting within our community comparables.
But in addition to that, making sure that our total costs are as much as possible viable for our residents as well.
and so when we think about providing services in the general fund and we're
looking at adding or looking at new taxes and seeing what the fairness
structure is I think what's important is to remember that looking at the overall
picture for our general fund revenue stream and so the two considerations while
they're combined together they're a little bit separate the retaining of
the local tax is no impact as far as new taxes to residents or visitors to
to the village. Streaming tax has been paired up with our provision of the
Fifth Ambulance Service and we feel that they are the most viable revenue options.
Not that there are other revenue options to take a look at, but we're also
balancing at the same time considerations to making sure that the tax levy
proposal when you receive the budget in late October is as low as possible to
next to zero if we can, but we're looking at as low as possible from
feedback from the Village Board. So again, I wanted to kind of walk through what we presented
within the memo and leave that and pause there for questions.
If I can add just two points as well. One, there is a timing issue with the grocery tax
in particular and that is in order to retain the grocery tax as we've been collecting
at all these years. The board has to take action prior to the October 1st village board meeting.
And so we wanted to have this discussion and provide this analysis, you know, with some time
to spare on that issue. And so that's number one. If you didn't do that, then you would lose
six months of revenue. You wouldn't be able to enact the tax again. And at that point, it would
be a tax increase, really, you'd have to do that in the spring, and then you'd be able
to begin that in effective July 1, 2026.
So that's number one.
Number two, again, on the streaming tax, this discussion is being generated by the decision
by the board to implement the fifth ambulance in 2026.
The idea was to generate a revenue that would take pressure off of property taxes
to help fund this difference, something that was fair, looking at things historically.
The other thing is with any new tax of this kind, it does take some time to implement,
take some time to get the service providers kind of in line on this, and we are beginning
hiring now.
And so that's the reason we're looking at both of these at this point in time.
And so at this point, yes, we do have ordinances prepared.
If the board is so inclined to approve them tonight, it can happen.
then if the board obviously has questions or wants to go in a different direction, that's
obviously under your prerogative.
All right.
Well, thanks, Melissa and Randy for that very detailed outline for both of these items.
I also wanted to welcome Trustee Santa Maria.
She let the record show that she was here.
She was returning from a wonderful vacation and back at 8.15 here joining us tonight.
So these couple of items are things to talk about and I think at this point it's probably
a good idea to just open it up to the board for discussions and we can start on either
side.
We'll start over here.
Trustee Schwingback.
Thank you, Mayor.
So Randy, Melissa, on the, I guess the first one, the grocery tax.
Right now 1% comes to us.
what is the state, what's their percentage, one and a half?
So 1% to the municipality.
When I mention that, and I apologize for not kind of walking through the total tax,
but our total tax rate is 10% on general merchandise.
2.25% is what we call food and drug.
and so that one percent is part of the two and a quarter and so that two and a
quarter includes one and a quarter for the RTA. Okay. So are they, when you
mentioned here that the state of Illinois passed the legislation to
eliminate the one percent, we have the opportunity to keep it. Is that because
we're a home rule? So are any other, they wanted to eliminate it, they you know
So they looked at eliminating it across the board but they realized the negative impact
it was having on municipalities and so they changed it to, they were eliminating it as
a mandated revenue but every municipality, home rule or non-home rule under the law has
the ability to retain it.
At this point, it appears that all of our neighbors have retained it because again
I think everyone's in that kind of same boat where it's an existing revenue and
And, you know, expenses are tight, everyone's trying to keep proper taxes.
And that gets distributed to us at some later point in time by the state.
Monthly basis, I believe.
Yes.
Yeah.
And you had mentioned that it's been going on for many years.
How long has that been in effect?
I mean, over 10?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, more than that.
I would have to say even 30 or 40 years.
Yeah.
Randy, could you put up that slide or Melissa, where it talks about the other communities
neighboring that you had up a little bit ago?
Because all the other neighboring communities had already
opted to retain it.
And then on the other streaming tax, the question that I had was, I guess when I look at this,
I look at it as a tax, I put the fifth ambulance aside because when we're losing tax because
people are getting rid of, say, their cable TV and they're going to streaming.
So when I look at this, I don't really look at it that we're trying to generate money
for an ambulance or anything else.
I'm looking at it more kind of like the cell phone versus the landlines where as people
are getting rid of their landlines, we're losing all that tax that was on there.
So when you had mentioned in here that the streaming service still require the use of
public right away for cable lines, as people have,
just one more time,
as people have been getting rid of their cable
and going to streaming,
how much have we actually lost in revenue?
Do we have that slide?
If you could put that up.
About six million was our annual,
about 10 years ago,
and I'll pull up the slide,
I've got one in the back here.
As you can see back in 2006,
Right.
We're almost to $6 million, now we're about half of that between cable franchise and telecommunication
taxes.
Okay.
And that public right-of-way, what are we actually doing as a village?
What expenses are we incurring by keeping that public right-of-way clear for them?
We have to maintain it, essentially, that when these things are generally, the utilities
are generally put in the right-of-way and we're responsible for maintaining it.
And they, we have to keep it clear, there's Julie locates, there's all of those things.
We have to make sure that no one else is building things that's going to interfere with these
utilities.
Those are the types of things we do, maintaining the roads, sidewalks, streets, et cetera.
There's a permitting process to do work in the right-of-way that we have to manage,
so all of those things.
Some utilities are better than others at putting things in the right-of-way and
And then we have to go after them.
A lot of times residents will find cable lines and stuff just in their backyard.
And then we can go after those and say, no, you have to bury it, you have to do those
things.
And so it's a process that whether, you know, essentially people are getting their
services through that cable or through that telephone line now, just like they always
have been, it's just packaged in a different corporate structure.
right and so the work is the same the elements are the same it's just a
different you know fee-for-service so as we've seen our revenue drop we're still
doing the exact same thing to keep right public right away but our costs have
probably gone up of course they have sure just like everything else yeah so
I yeah I just wanted to try and understand what what we as a village
we're doing to keep that right away clear for them.
Yeah, so, okay.
Thank you.
Wendy?
Jim?
Go ahead.
Well, without repeating, but just to piggyback on Tom's comments, Tom, your questions I thought
were spot on.
And by the way, Melissa and Marion, you're the rest of the finance staff.
You guys did a great job with your memos and explaining all this.
But I, too, look at both of these taxes as taxes that are being retained
because they're just being packaged differently.
Certainly, it's obvious on the grocery tax that this is just retaining the tax
that the state said we're no longer going to be the ones that are so-called in charge of this.
If you want it, put yourself in charge of it, you know.
Okay. And so we already have that tax.
We're already trying to push down our property tax levy from over 3% to under 3% and closer
to an inflationary amount.
And this would put a lot of pressure on being able to do that and maybe even put pressure,
upward pressure on that if we don't retain these.
And again, the streaming tax, I look at as an entertainment tax that's being retained
And just for the reasons that you guys had mentioned that it's just shifting from one
technology to another newer technology, such as the example that Trustee Schringbeck used
on the phone systems.
So that's my two cents, Mayor.
Thanks.
Mayor, I did get a piece of information.
The Illinois Grocery Tax has been in effect since 1990, so about 36 years.
Very good.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Trustee Donington.
Thanks, Mayor.
Thank you so much, Melissa, and the whole finance team.
The memos that you sent and the presentation today was really helpful, good information,
and explained in a really clear way.
So I really appreciate that, thank you.
One thing from the memo I did want to ask about is it highlighted the foods that
are included in the grocery tax, but then it also mentioned drugs, and that was something
that I wasn't familiar with. So is it correct that the grocery tax, if we eliminated the
grocery tax, then we would not, there would be no tax on prescription medications over
the counter drugs like pain relievers, allergy, meds, and acids, medical appliances, hearing
aids, crutches, blood pressure monitors, is that correct?
Those are the items that are listed on the Department of Revenue's website. So those
Those are the ones that are included as far as food and drug and so in that category.
And so if we eliminated it, there would be no tax on those prescriptions?
I'm not sure.
I think the 1%, I don't believe that the grocery tax is different than the special
Also, 1% rate on prescription drugs remains in effect, I believe, we can double check that.
We'll confirm that.
Yeah, we'll confirm that.
Okay, so the 1% is on bread, milk, eggs, fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, cereal, pasta,
rice, yes, what it's on, okay.
I will be voting no on the grocery tax tonight.
I think it's a bad tax and tonight is our opportunity to eliminate a tax that hurts
vulnerable people in our community, like seniors on a fixed income or lower
income families who don't qualify for SNAP benefits. Low income households spend
a much higher share of their income on food than better off households. The
current grocery tax is a tax on food and maybe drugs that are basic
necessities and it's something that's unavoidable even if you operate on a tight
family budget. There was an article that just came out from the Hill and it said
that the price of ground beef which is a staple in American households is soaring
across the country right now and it's unlikely to drop anytime soon. The U.S.
Bureau of Statistics shows the average price was $5 million.
$5.36 in June of 2024. And just last month in July, it's currently $9.26 per pound according
to the USDA. So I think that we should be the village that doesn't tax food, that food that's
brought for your home. Who knows? Maybe people will choose to shop in Arlington Heights if
eliminate that grocery tax. If the board feels that we have to make up the
deficit, I would be more in support of the quarter increase in the home rules tax
instead, since that would generate 1.8 million dollars in revenue and so that
would cover both the grocery tax and the streaming tax that we're discussing.
I think that with the rising costs of food,
homeowners insurance, and electricity,
the elimination of the tax will help families and seniors
afford more nutritious food and afford basic needs.
So my vote is no for the grocery tax tonight.
Okay, thank you.
Anyone else down here?
Trustee Santamaria?
Sure, thank you Mayor.
Melissa, I know you had mentioned in your presentation that people receiving SNAP
benefits would not be or not subject to the tax. Is that correct? That based on
our research that is what I found. Okay, and but we don't know what would happen
with the decrease of SNAP federally correct and what that might look like.
Correct. I do not. Okay. Then I think I would because of that I really
feel that groceries are not a luxury and they are a necessity and I agree with
many of the sentiments that trustee Dunnington had said about food being in
a necessity and not knowing how SNAP benefits may decrease for people who
need it in our community. I don't think that this would be a fair tax to to
continue in early tonight's.
Thanks. Before we go on to the other side, can
you clarify something, Randy? When you were talking about SNAP and you were
You're talking about the difference between someone buying groceries versus buying other
household items and how that affects their purchasing power.
Can somebody refresh that, please?
Our understanding is that SNAP benefits are generally for the purchase of food.
And so food purchase with SNAP is exempt from any grocery tax that might be in effect.
But obviously low-income people have to buy other household items.
And those household items are still subject to whatever sales tax that locality has in
effect.
If that locality increases that sales tax, such as in the, you know, situation of our
homeral sales tax, they would pay for that, whereas they're not currently paying local,
you know, the grocery tax.
I think I understand what you're saying.
Does everybody understand that here?
I'm just making sure I'm with you.
Okay.
Trustee LaBette.
Thank you.
I agree with a trustee's swing back and Bertucci that these are,
this would be a continuation of existing taxes.
So I'll just say up front that I will vote in favor of both.
then, but I also have some questions. One is, I assume that stores that sell
groceries that weren't listed like a Dollar Tree or a gas station,
Cookie Mart or something like that, those also are 1%. And is it also
correct to think that it's not that there will be no tax if we eliminate
this because there'll still be one in a quarter percent RTA tax. Is that
correct? So it's not that there will be no tax on these items. It would only be
less if we did not agree to continue the 1%. I also want to mention that you know
I that as far as the streaming tax goes we've actually this has been a
subject that we've talked about for years during the budget time, and I think that the
staff who are here will remember that has been part of the discussion that at some point
with the loss of the cable franchise fee and the table communication tax revenue,
we are going to have to start talking about this because I remember being here in
this room and asking our former Director of Finance, Tom Keeney, how does this work?
Because I just couldn't quite comprehend how one, how do we get somebody like Disney
and Hulu and Netflix and all to assess this.
So it's been something that we have discussed long before.
We had a discussion about the fifth ambulance.
So it's just kind of finally, in my mind, coming to the time that we need to address this and make up this difference.
And a question about this particular chart, which is the green and which is the purple?
The telecommunication taxes are in green and the cable franchise are in the purple.
Okay.
Thank you for that question.
Kind of interesting. There's a slight increase in cable franchise fees this last year, but it's probably an anomaly of some kind.
Let me see. If I had any... I think that we were probably... Oh, I have a question about this package liquor tax that some communities have.
Does that mean if somebody was to buy a 12-pack of Bud, there's no tax on that?
Or is it, is this a different kind of tax?
It would still pay sales tax.
Okay.
This would be an additional tax on top of regular sales tax.
Okay, okay.
That wasn't clear to me from the chart.
Perhaps that's going to be something we're going to need to discuss at a future date.
Perhaps we're going to need to discuss the increase in the hotel tax.
And yes, I am completely sympathetic with the potential loss in SNAP benefits for some
people.
I'm completely sympathetic with the knowledge that these items that are taxed for food and
for drugs are necessities in life.
If they're not something that you can choose not to have like you could choose not to have
a Hulu subscription or any other streaming subscription, those are, you know, those are
choices individuals make.
So I understand that.
But I still am in favor of the taxes.
Thank you.
Thank you for seeing that.
Anyone else on this side?
Trustee Shirley?
You know, I'm going to mirror what Trustee LaVette said.
I support both of these as presented by staff, and I, too, looked at them kind of as replacements
for other revenue loss that we've had.
I guess they ask, Randy, if we don't pass one or the other of these, then isn't it
just going to put more pressure on the property tax burden this coming year, right?
So I'm already very unhappy with the fact that we're targeting something over three percent, you know
We had I don't know five or six years in a row. We were zero and then last year. I can't remember where we were but we were
It was north of two percent two point four six two point four, right? Who's counting right? Yes
But I just I don't find that to be an acceptable
You know alternative to these I know we've gotten negative feedback on the streaming tax
by quite a few people that have written in and sent emails and such and so I just
I just can't see going into that discussion on property taxes with this
additional burden on top of everything else so I know some people are gonna
say well property taxes you can write off this and that but property taxes the
one thing is increases in property taxes never go away they never go down no
matter who the taxing body is they're there forever as far as I'm concerned so
I do support these if someone makes the appropriate emotion or I would certainly
be happy to do so at the appropriate time I just think that I don't really think
we have any other good options and so I think these are the two that that I'm
willing to support so that's all I have. Thanks Trustee Shirley. Trustee
Manganera. Thank you Mayor. First of all I appreciate all of the work
That staff has done to answer a lot of questions provide us with a lot of information
When we talked about this at the the budget ceiling discussion, I think the board had a had a lot of
Anks about these recommendations. I still do
I'll be honest. I'm not planning to vote for any tax increase of any kind this year. I
think that there are a lot of
financial pressures on our residents from a lot of directions coupled with a
great deal of uncertainty about 2026. We heard a lot about the conservative
approach we take to budgeting and I agree that we take a financially
conservative approach. I'd like to see us take a more tax policy conservative
approach.
Some of the burdens include we raised our water tax rates 3.6
percent this year. The meter replacements, while that accuracy has had the effect of
further increasing people's water bills. Meanwhile, ComEd has increased their
rates 10 to 15 percent. NYCOR is looking at a 9 percent increase. All state,
excuse me, state farm is following suit so that by the end, by next year everyone,
everyone, whoever their carrier is, will be paying about 25% more for casualty insurance,
property insurance than they did three to four years ago.
We also are going to get reassessed on our property values in 2026, another upward pressure.
So I believe this is the year, and as George Manager Recklaus said back in June, I believe
when we looked at this, that reserves are a lever we can pull once.
And I think this is the year to consider doing that.
The grocery tax and a little aside on that, I don't agree that this is just a continuation.
The legislature eliminated that tax with intent because of, as Trustee Dunnington
mentioned the skyrocketing price of food to try to give people a break.
If my math is right, the medium cost that you mentioned comes to about $3.84 per meal
for that family of four.
That's very frugal food budgeting in my view.
And that 1% means they have 43 fewer meals per year.
I really, as I say, believe that there was intent in that change.
If we're not certain about the impact on prescription drugs,
again, think of someone who is taking a very high-cost cancer drug.
Think of someone who is taking a GLP-1 at hundreds of dollars,
if not a thousand dollars or more per month.
that has a real impact. So these are things that I'm just not prepared this
evening to put on our residents over and above all of the additional costs
they're bearing that are higher than they were last year. Thank you. Thank you
Trustee Mangano. Trustee Zick. Thank you Mayor. Yeah and thank you you know
everybody for for all the hard work that's gone into all this and Trustee
Mangano you had mentioned in June that we had a lot of there's a lot of
angst throughout the board. I'm still having a lot of angst right now as we're talking about
this. The 1%, you know, that was essentially a pass-through to the state, right? They were
taking this 1% in and they were just passing it, you know, taking it in and then passing
on to us. The one reason I can stomach that part of it is because it isn't actually
a tax increase that we're putting on people. If we walk out of here voting
forward today, nobody's paying anything more than they were when we
walked into here, because it's the same 1%. So that's the one part of it, that
I can at least get me to kind of think about doing that, though I do
agree with the comments of the other trustees on how it does affect certain
people. The other one, though, that I'm having problem with and some things
that came out through the discussion is with the streaming tax and it's just taxes, tax
increase overall. You know, if we were a financially strapped village, I would be probably having
a very much thought, different thought process in how we do things. You know, this past
year, after last year, we had such reserves and I know you talked about it a little
bit. We had such reserves that we had enough money that we were able to take some of
that money and we were able to spread it around to other funds to increase to the pension
funds, which was the right thing to do. So we are doing well financially as a village.
This whole thing of tying it to the Fifth Ambulance. The Fifth Ambulance was a good
decision by this board last year, and it was the right decision by the board. And
I don't want to be put out there that if we don't go for this, maybe it wasn't
a good decision for the village because it was a good decision for the village.
You know, during the presentation there was a comment that was made that if we don't do
this, if we don't pass both of these increases, two things are going to happen.
One were.
We're going to have to raise the property tax, or we're going to have to cut back services.
And those are possibilities, but they're not the only possibilities, as we talked about
with the reserve fund that we do have. We are doing a very good job, and I get it. It's
a rainy day thing, and in case property taxes don't come in from the state or the county
as quickly as possible, it helps us so we don't have to go out and borrow money
and do all that kind of stuff and for different downturns. I totally get that, but we do
have a policy, and correct me if I'm wrong, our policy for the reserves is that we want
to be between 25 and 40%. If I'm wrong, please, please let me know that. Well, we have that
for a reason. Maybe we do go that level this one time instead of increasing taxes
and doing things like the streaming tax. We do it this one time in place of doing
that, because if we don't ever want to come off that 40%, we should change that policy.
We should make it that we have to be at 40% all the time, not that there's this range
on there. So it's something for us to consider. I want to also get something on the hotel
tax too if I can, and I will finish up here in a second. You know, it was a big thing.
It was made on the grocery tax that how much of a percentage it comes from people outside
of Arlington Heights based on the different stores, and it's true. Not everybody in Arlington
Heights is the only one affected by that, people that are coming in also. You look at
the hotel tax, though, and you spread, take that math and you spread it out to 11 hotels
365 days a year, however many rooms that they have to. You break that down per room.
It definitely lessens it. But I'm guessing 95% of the people that are paying that
particular tax are not people that are in Arlington Heights.
I'm just throwing that number out there, I have no idea, but that's for people that
are coming into Arlington Heights, not living here in Arlington Heights.
So they're paying, they're paying nothing, not the citizens here of Arlington Heights.
So getting, so my end conclusion right now is I'm leaning towards voting for the
grocery tax and keeping that since it's not really increasing anything, but coming
back and voting no for the streaming tax.
In fact, I also want to look at when we get to budget time, and I've talked about this
before, I don't know how this really affects the budget.
I don't really know if we vote for this or we don't vote for this, what really happens
to the budget, because I haven't seen the complete budget numbers, you know, what it
does.
And I know we're working on those, and you're working very hard, and I know, and
I get that, and we'll get that at some point.
But it's hard for me to say, yeah, it is something like that when I really don't
know what's the end result going to be at the end.
Thank you.
Just a couple of the comments that were made.
For the hotel tax, one of the reasons that that's not looked at directly is travel, particularly
business travel, is something that's really dropped down considerably in recent years.
And it is one of those things that changes dramatically depending on the economy.
And so when you're looking at things, you're going to use the fund services we've talked
about, elastic and inelastic sources of revenue.
Generally you want to base your service provision revenues on things that aren't bouncing up
and down with the economy.
That's one of the reasons on that.
And the one thing I would caution is, you know, we don't ever, it's not a good practice.
It's not something staff would ever recommend.
And I wanted to make sure because, you know, we talked about drawing down reserves temporarily.
Staff would never recommend using the reserves to cover an operating cost, ever.
That is not a good practice.
You can use your reserves due to a one-time expense, where if you have a one-time expense
that you're not going to incur every year, that's a situation to draw it down.
You can also use your reserves to deal with a temporary reduction in revenues.
So if, you know, perhaps you may want to consider that when you have, you know,
a recession or something where you feel strongly that that number is going to come up.
But we are adding a pretty significant increase in the cost of service with the fifth ambulance.
I think everyone has agreed that it's something that's necessary if we want to maintain the
same level of service that we provided to our residents.
But I mean, make no mistake, that's something that's going to cost us money, and it's going
to cost us money every year for the foreseeable future.
And so the only way to do that is to add some kind of revenue source.
And that's something we've said from the beginning.
I'm just trying to be very clear with the board.
There is no, we don't have that type of give in our budget without reducing services or
looking at increases in property taxes. I mean, property taxes, love them or hate them, are
the thing that communities look at year to year when you have cost overages. And so,
are there other sources of revenue? There are. We laid out a lot of them. They have
different pros and cons. Could they be reasonably looked at as an alternative to the streams
that absolutely they could be, you know staff has this recommendation but that's
ultimately up to the board but I did want to make it clear that staff would
never recommend drawing down reserves to pay for an operational cost because what
you're doing is essentially you're meaning that that increase is gonna have
to be double in the in the in the following year and so I just wanted to
make that point. If I may also add to that as far as a credit reading
perspective so when you sit down with your rating agencies such as Moody's
they will ask if you're doing those types of activities.
Drawing down reserves is unfavorable.
In addition to that, they're not rainy day reserves.
They are for any type of situation
that would be an unforeseen circumstance.
And we do, as we've done over the years,
kept it at that 40%.
It's not a range for very good reason.
And we've been very, very prudent on those uses,
such as pension costs
and then also investments in capital.
I think the baseline, if I may add one more thing, the baseline for your general fund
is sales tax, income tax, and property taxes.
We are an organization of municipality that has just a little bit less than a third
of their property taxes funding, the general fund,
whereas libraries may be at 90-95% for property taxes.
Park districts might be at 40 to 55 to 60 percent.
School districts almost 100 percent.
So we have, what we're looking at is trying to make sure
that we've got that stable revenue source over time
to fund those ongoing operations.
And it's not just a one year.
So to the point of, could we use reserves?
No.
And could we make sure that we're looking
at the future we are and making sure
that you've got that revenue source year over year,
which is important for both of those.
Well said.
Mr. Passman.
Thank you.
One point of clarification.
It's come up in the discussion this evening.
On prescription drugs, there is a state sales tax of 1% on prescription drugs, excuse me,
that is separate and apart from the previous state grocery tax and from any municipally
imposed grocery tax, which is the one that's on your agenda for tonight.
In other words, that tax was unaffected by the state legislation, and if the Board adopts
the ordinance on your agenda, it will not apply to prescription drugs.
So I want to clarify that.
Very good.
Thanks.
Does that clarify the question at the Board level here, then?
I appreciate that.
Okay.
I got a question on that.
Yeah, there's a couple of questions here yet.
Anything else from staff before we come back to the Board?
Okay.
We're going to go back to the Board for a second round here really quick, and
I know Trustee Bertucci had a question and then Trustee Schwingbeck.
Actually, Randy and Melissa answered my question because that's the point that I was going
to make.
So I am in total support of what Randy and Melissa had to say about using reserves.
Just to, we'll let Trustee Schwingbeck, but when I'm ready I've got the recommendation
that I'm ready to make a motion.
Okay.
Trustee Schwingback.
So question on prescription medication, because Trustee Dunnington and I were talking about
this.
When I went back and looked at prescription medication, there's no tax on there.
It's a fee for the drug, but there's no line item on there for tax.
Is it buried somewhere else?
I think so.
It's not a municipal tax, for sure.
My understanding is that there is a statewide sales tax at a reduced rate for prescription.
The normal statewide sales tax is six and a quarter percent for regular goods, whatever
that may be.
There's a reduced sales tax of one percent for prescription drugs.
That's my understanding.
Because it's not showing up in a line item anywhere on the receipt.
And I was thinking about that, but it's my own personal anecdotal experience.
and starts to shrink back. I can't speak to that, but this proposed local grocery tax would
only affect food. Right. Right. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else here? All right. Well,
I'm going to make a comment or two in that it's really something that this board has
the kinds of diverse perspective all the way around. And I think our residents should
be pleased to the fact that it's not some kind of a slam dunk. Everybody thinks the same
on something. Here we are debating, you know, something that we all feel passionate about
and we're all speaking eloquently about it. And I think at the end of the day the vote
that happens will be one that was well thought out and well researched. So thank you to
staff for everything that you've done and thank you to the board for being good leaders.
My own perspective are really just very simple on the fact that I don't feel like we need
to take it away and be the island in the middle of these suburbs that has this extra benefit.
I think we're going to need it and I think it's important to keep for now at least.
We'll have time down the road if it ever comes up again and we want to remove it.
We can always do that. Am I correct?
So for the foreseeable future, my opinion is to leave it on the board, on the books as it is and keep the 1% tax.
On the other point of streaming taxes, I had this discussion with my young adult children and I said,
Well, you guys don't know because the question was why would you want to do that dad?
You know tax are streaming devices and so well because what you don't know is your mother and I paid an
ungodly amount of taxes on our
Cable bills and our cell phone bills and communication and so on and and now it's gone and these
Services don't want to change at the village level. We are really not I
Shouldn't say it like it. I am not an advocate for reducing any services
If I remember correctly, when we had our department heads come in here earlier, I kept thinking
myself, how are we going to get these departments more money to do their job that they're going
to need to do over the next 12 months, because there's so much to do and so much going on.
So reducing services to me is not an option.
I do not want to raise property taxes to cover something like this.
So I'm going to vote in favor of both of these, and I'm just really thankful for
the dialogue, and I'm thankful for the research and the work everybody put into this. So whoever
is preparing to make a motion, I think Trustee Shirley did, or Trustee Bertucci.
Oh, you know what, Scott, do you have the wording there?
I don't know if we really have the wording. Jim's got it here. Jim, why don't you go
over? I think I see it in the memo. Oh, there it is. Now you can put it up. Thank
you for that. Well, this is awesome.
I'll move that. The Village Board approved
the Ordinance Amending Chapter 7 of the Municipal Code of the Village of Arlington Heights regarding
municipal grocery retailers, occupation taxes, and municipal grocery service occupation taxes.
Second. Okay, motion made by Trustee Bertucci, seconded by Trustee Shirley. Now, what we're
going to do is we're going to go to the audience and ask for audience participation.
I have one card here and as Melissa Kayer our
nonprofit companies exempt from the sales tax
That's a good question. Does anybody on staff know the answer to that?
I think anyone engaging in the sale of
these materials at the at the retail level would be subject to them regardless of whatever their corporate structure is so I
I believe so it depends if they're the buyer of the tax they might
Right if the non-profit is the buyer of it. They may be exempt from sales tax
I don't know offhand, you know what they were a passman. We have we happen to have an extra matter expert
We have a subject matter expert on the board here
So trustee Santa Maria nonprofits are exempt from the sales tax as as the buyer as the buyer if you use your sales tax
exemption. But as a seller, and I apologize if I missed it, I thought
Melissa was referring to if they were selling items, you would still have to
pay a tax. Okay, sure. And the marijuana tax, I didn't see that listed. I don't
think anything is changing with that, am I correct? Which what that? With
dispensary tax? No, nothing's changing with that. Why was that not listed on
that chart with you know the alcohol tax isn't that that's regulated by the
state of Illinois that and you know we have there is a tax on there but it
wasn't listed it wasn't anything that was examined the part of this but it's
it's it's an established tax that we have we have a certain we have our own
debt we add above and beyond the state for our own benefit taxes on it right
and we're not discussing that tonight that's not changing correct and we
We don't believe.
Is there a reasonable increase when that would generate the type of money that we're talking
about?
We have two dispensaries.
Correct.
And one just recently opened and the type of money that we're talking about there would
not be enough to, unless you made a very dramatic increase that probably would generate
some conversations with the existing business owners, you wouldn't be able to make up this
kind of money.
But yeah, well it's fairly new and that that could be used for the the problem
you're trying to solve.
You could have a tax, let's see, so I would say yeah try
other things like a marijuana tax. You could put a tax on insurance, a government
worker head tax, a golf game tax, the sports field use tax, and how does the
streaming tax work? How does that exactly work? The provider will be collecting it
through their payments that any of us have to pay and then that money will get
sent to the municipalities from that provider. Because you are paying a tax
for your internet service, correct?
We already are.
Yeah, so now you're gonna ask on,
so now additionally what are,
how are you gonna pay more tax on streaming?
Streaming is different than internet.
Okay, how is it different?
I don't know that I can.
You would get a bill of mayor from,
you know, directly from your provider Hulu
or Netflix or whatever, and on that bill,
there would just be an additional tax,
which is separate from the internet.
separate from your internet service provider. Correct. In Village Attorney
Passman did want to note something as well. Thank you Manager Reckless. For
reference, the state caps local taxes on the sale of cannabis at 3%. The
village's cannabis tax is already at 3%. So we are statutorily prohibited from
raising that tax any further. Thank you. Perfect.
Well, so yeah, the
marijuana tax and some other tax could go towards funding the project, but all
right, so back to streaming tax. So you are going to ask for every streaming
company in this whole world to pay Arlington Heights a percent. That's
going to be an administrative nightmare. They already do that elsewhere.
We're just kind of catching up is all we're doing here.
Well, isn't that similar to a dog text that now you're putting a burden on it
someone else. Arlington Heights isn't keeping track of the dog licenses. The
streamers are keeping track of the licenses and actually you have to
keep track of all the streamers now which they come and go.
No, maybe you're misunderstanding, because we're going to have nothing to do as a municipality
with the streaming tax except open envelopes that come to us from those streaming providers.
Am I correct?
Yeah, we will notify all the streaming providers of the passage of the tax, and then at that
point they would be obligated to implement it under law.
And they already do that for other communities in states across the nation, it's just
matter of we have not been yet. Yeah, well just because other people are doing it doesn't mean we
should do it. And they do come and go, you know, in this day and age. Okay, I understand. So
non-profit streamers don't have to pay the tax.
I don't know about that exactly. And what is
the definition of a streamer exactly?
I don't think you should pass this because you don't
know what you're doing. I'm apparently not. Okay.
Okay. Is there anyone else from the
audience that wanted to address the board on this? Yes. Come on up.
Shaking my head over
the thought of you're saying that this average family of four spends $3.84 a meal. So someone
will go back to our family of four here at $3.84 a meal, three meals a day. They're
living pretty close to the bone. I'm thinking that's not a lot. That's pretty low. So that
1% that now that they have to pay, that means to keep things even, you're asking that family
afford to eat 43 less meals per year, right, to get by on less. I also feel like the streaming
tax, people are very stressed and they're hit with a lot of bills and they're trying
to hold it together. They just come home and especially if they're on $3.84 a meal, they're
not going up. They just want to watch a few things before they go to bed and have to get
up and face the next day, right? I think about us heading into probably some tough times.
I remember during the Depression, people went to the movies even though they didn't
have much. They didn't go to movies that depicted people in poverty like themselves.
films, they watched, you know, BuzzFeed Berkeley films and big, you know, things to forget what
they had going on in their life and just to give them a little relief. I feel this streaming
tax, this is going to be your soda pop tax. This will stick to you like that and it's
going to be that popular. I just really think it's a mistake. This is just something
that people go home, they want to relax and to make them pay more for that is not
a good thing. So here's my two bets. Thank you for your input. Yes, come on up.
I'm sorry,
I had most in this. Tell us your name. I'm sorry. Just tell us your name. Oh, Robert.
Okay. I must have missed, what's the reason we can't raise the percentage on the pot
Dispensaries. It's prohibited by state law. Maximum maximum tax 3%. Because I was
gonna advocate to somehow be able to raise more money through POT. So I just feel
like that would I guess unless we have more POT dispensaries here that would
Let's follow a lot of the problems.
Okay, so thanks.
Anyone else before we close this discussion
and go back to the motion?
Okay, any last comments from the board?
Trustee Donington.
Thank you.
Since it sounds like the grocery tax
will be approved tonight,
I want to suggest that we add a sunset to this motion
so that we review the this tax in two years and reevaluate it to see if it is
something that we need or not. So I'd like to move to add a sunset clause for
two years to this motion. Okay so there's a motion to amend the motion to
add a sunset clause for review in 24 months. I think parliamentary procedure is we have
to ask the, is there a second to that? Second.
Okay. And then we have to ask the maker of the motion if they accept that.
Well, no, this is done as a formal motion, Mayor Tonalia. So I think what you do is
you consider the amendment, whether or not it would be incorporated into the main
motion and when you're ready you can entertain a vote on that and then we'll
have the main motion either as originally stated or as amended depending on the outcome
of the vote on the amendment. Okay so there's a motion made to amend the the
actual motion to add a 24-month sunset for discussion in the second and that
second was made by Trustee Zick. Okay is there a discussion about that that we
want to have? If I may before you have a discussion I want to clarify
trustee Dunn is in your motion referred to a 24-month sunset would that
be 24 months by which the tax would be effective or you and keeping in mind we
assume that the state law doesn't change as the manager indicated earlier the way
the law is written is that there is a the deadlines are either imposing your
or eliminating this tax come October 1st and April 1st of each year for
implementation whichever direction three months later January 1st and
If this passes what it means, are you suggesting that this tax would automatically – right
now as – let me back up a step, but forgive me – right now the main motion, the ordinance
that's in your packet, which is the subject of that main motion, would implement the tax
beginning January 1st, 2026.
Is the amendment to have the tax go away automatically as of January 1, 2028?
Yes, unless we review it and decide to get it.
Right.
We'd have the code – so the amendment would have the code reflect that.
I want to clarify what the 24 months meant.
So the tax would be in place only for a 21-month period under this amendment, and it would automatically
go away.
It would automatically go away.
Yes.
You'd have to bring it back up to discuss it in two years.
We would need to code if this amendment passes, and then if the main motion passes, we would
need an amendment at some point between now and October 1, 2020, 7, to keep that
tax going.
So, what that's saying to me is that, well, let me ask a question first.
We at any time, tomorrow, two years from now, or six months from now, can, someone can make
a motion to revisit this, and we can decide that we don't want to do it anymore because
we've opened up six more dispensaries in town here, for whatever reason.
Correct.
The tax is covered now, and then it would be just a matter of timing as to when
we would stop collecting this in commensurate with the Illinois State
program of April 1st or January 1st or whatever. Nothing in the motion would
prohibit this or a future board from you know ending the ending the
grocery tax if it so chose. So the flexibility is endless basically on it
as it sits right now but with the additional amendment we're going to be
required to have this dialogue again in 24 months if there's an if the desire is
to keep it correct I have that right okay is there further discussion on the
amendment before you have to vote on the amendment okay we're gonna do a roll
call vote on the amendment and can you can staff can you repeat what the
amendment says exactly my suggestion but again I look to trust you Dunnington
to make sure we're consistent with her meaning,
it would be to, I would say, I would suggest
specifically the proposed section 7-2004, the village code, which under the draft in
your packet says that the tax is effective as of and after January 1, 2026, would add
in through and until December 31st, 2027.
So essentially, this tax would become effective for only that two-year period.
Okay.
Is that accurate?
Trustee Dunnington? Okay, okay. Okay, so that's the motion and it was seconded by
Trustee Zick and we'll do a roll call. Trustee Dunnington, yes. Trustee Zick?
Yes. Trustee Shirley? No. Trustee Labedz? No.
Trustee Bertucci? No.
Trustee
Trustee President Inalia?
No.
Okay, so the amendment did not pass.
So now we can revisit the actual initial motion,
the main motion, which is just the ordinance.
It's in the packet.
Do we need any further discussion on that from the board at this point?
If not, the motion was made by Trustee Bertucci.
Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.
Trustee Bertucci, seconded by Trustee Schuerl.
I lost track here.
All right?
Yes.
You got that?
Okay.
Maggie?
Trustee Bertucci?
Yes.
Trustee Schuerl?
Yes.
Trustee LaBeds?
Yes.
Trustee Manganero?
Nay.
Trustee Schwingback?
Yes.
Trustee Dunnington?
No.
Trustee Santa Maria?
No.
Trustee Zick?
Yes.
President Tonalia.
Yes.
Motion passed.
Okay.
So motion carries.
Yep.
The motion that was suggested by village staff carries.
Now we're going to talk about the second item, right?
And it is, I think we're pretty much done with the dialogue from staff, from the audience
and the board.
Are we ready for a motion on this one?
I would move that the village board approve the ordinance amending chapter 7 of the municipal
code of the village of Arlingtonites regarding attacks on streaming amusement.
Second.
Motion made by Trustee Schwingbeck, seconded by Trustee Lebedz.
Is there further discussion?
Okay.
We'll do a roll call.
Trustee Schwingbeck?
Yes.
Trustee Lebedz?
Yes.
Trustee Santa Maria?
Yes.
Trustee Bertucci?
Yes.
Trustee Shirley?
Yes.
Trustee Zick?
No.
Trustee Dunnington?
Yes.
Trustee Manganaro?
No.
President Inalia?
Yes.
Okay.
Motion carries again.
All right.
Well, again, I don't need to reiterate myself, but I will thank you all for a very healthy
debate on this.
This was a good example of how boards should work.
work.
I think the last item on the agenda, item E, is a presentation by staff for some
upgraded potential work in our downtown area. Yes. So hand it off to Manager Reckloss.
Okay, I'm going to introduce this briefly and then
And hand it off to our Emily Rodman and our consulting team.
So back in 2020, I think we all are familiar with the creation of Arlington
Alfrosco. And since that time, the board has indicated an interest in making some
of those improvements more permanent. And back in 2023, there was a concept that
was presented to the board that the board approved that generally created a,
and we're going to go into detail on this, a curbless street, use of permeable pavers,
created more of a plaza feel for the, for the, that, the, the El Fresco area that created
a sense of place all year round, not just during the El Fresco period, but also made
the El Fresco feel more, less of an afterthought than perhaps it seems now.
Now, thankfully, the staff has been very aggressive seeking out grant money for these concepts.
And at this point, we're coming to a point where we've received over $3 million in grants.
We still don't have the entire project funded, but we're getting there.
And we theoretically would begin potentially as soon as 2027 on construction.
And so before we get much further in this process, we wanted to check in with the board,
make sure that we're still on the right track in terms of the design concepts,
answer questions from the board and have our consultants available to talk about the project
and have a little bit of dialogue on this.
But with that, I'll turn things over to Ms. Rodman, who's going to introduce our team.
Thank you. I'm just going to start off by introducing Kurt Corrigan from V3
and as he proceeds through the presentation, he'll introduce his team as well. Thank you.
All right. Good evening, everybody. My name is Kurt Corrigan, as Emily said, with V3
companies and on behalf of the V3 team, we look forward to presenting the progress
and the updates to the Vail promenade area. So tonight, we have a few things on the
agenda, but we want to keep this really an open dialogue. So if there's questions
or commerce throughout, just jump in whenever and we'll be able to address those as we go.
So with me tonight is Sarah. She's our in-house landscape architect and she will discuss some of
the hardscape and streetscape features of the Ville Promenade. Elora Xu, she is with us here
tonight. She does a lot of the I.DOT coordination in some of the phase one and she's very
intimate with some of the grant and funding opportunities out there and securing of various
funds. And then also Mark Millers with Confluence, he'll discuss some of the
performance area and any discussion concerning staging or entertainment
parts of the park itself. So first up the priorities, so I think everybody's
familiar with the original concept plan up here that's shown and really from
the original concept the goals have been to create a large census place of
the area with the park and the road and the fountain and some of the entertainment area
there itself. We want to create and enhance the pedestrian feel of the area. Mostly in
the roadway section itself, obviously the park is more pedestrian friendly, but we
want to kind of create that same feel within the road platform itself. We want to create
a shared use functionality of the road, which brings in sort of the curbless street
component of the discussion. We want to maintain flexible programming options
through the corridor itself and also explore some of drainage enhancements,
permeable pavers, maybe using some of the planter and seat walls as some green
infrastructure type effects throughout the corridor. I know we've talked a
little bit about Vale promenade itself in the stretch between Campbell and
let's say your parking garage but there are also three other intersections
that we've included in the in the project itself and they are Wing and Veil, Campbell and Dutton
and Campbell and Highland. I'll get to these a little bit further on but basically these
will all have some pedestrian enhancements. Bumpouts included gateways and some of the
different various signages as you enter the Alfresco area in the downtown area and as you guys
know right now the DTA sign is already out there as part of the park so that's
already been sort of implemented in this overall plan.
Next up, so Vale itself,
Vale Promenade runs from Campbell Street South to like I said about the
parking garage and so a few of the highlights here and some of the
differences from what you see out there today of what we're proposing is
bumping out the intersection curb lines, approximately about seven feet from
and what's out there today, still allowing about 26 feet
of pavement for cars to go by, two-way traffic.
This will allow for a shorter crosswalk
across the intersection, including
the enhanced crosswalks, whether it's
pavers or colored asphalt or sand concrete.
Those will just enhance the pedestrian feel
and really alert the drivers when the road isn't shut down.
This is a pedestrian space.
In this intersection, there are right turn lanes that are out there today, but as we did a lot of the traffic
counts and some of the traffic movements, eliminating the right turn lanes to create these bump-outs will
enhance the pedestrian safety and just the crossing in the field of the area itself.
One thing you'll notice is there's a boulevard-type section along Vale.
that section there. We want to increase during the alfresca time, but when the road
is open to traffic with the shared use and the shared street and the curbless
effect and the patio feel of the corridor, we want to create an area where
people can feel safe, be part of the road, but yet share the road and vehicles
will have to get used to a little bit of sharing the road on the
non-closure time. Now I would just add that we did implement this, or in my previous life
I did implement this in Batavia, the shared street aspect, and yes it does take a little
time to get used to because cars and people are everywhere in the road, but I think if
you went to the city of Batavia and asked them for what their thoughts of it were,
they would be very, very happy with it. I'm down there doing the pedestrian ramp
now and I mean every day there's people riding and biking and strollers and all kinds of people
just because they feel safe on the street even though cars are allowed they have that sense
that sense that it's more of a patio and just it's just an overall pedestrian feel.
The drainage patterns we did discuss with staff about raising the intersection
to create a little bit more of a traffic calming effect to the area but there are some
sensitive areas from a drainage standpoint. So after we discuss it a little bit with staff,
we decided to eliminate the raised intersection component of it, just because of the sensitivity
of the drainage in the area. So back to the Kerbalist Street. So this would be a section
looking north up Vale Avenue. So if you're standing kind of towards the garage and looking
up towards Campbell Street, you'll notice that from the building off to the left,
the park is on the right. The area itself drains from north to south which is
good because there's plenty of slope out there for drainage and also from the
building to the middle the plan is to invert the road. So right now you have a
crown of the road, typical road section. What we plan on doing is inverting the
road, eliminating the curves, letting the drainage come out away from the
buildings, away from the park to the center of the road and creating the
bowl of our area that you saw in the middle as a permeable paver area so then
the water will drain down naturally into the pavers into an underdrained system
and into the storm sewer system. So we also are leaving an 18 foot
unrestricted area. We've met with our staff met with the fire department and
they you know need 18 to 20 feet of an unrestricted area to be able to
drive an emergency vehicle through there. So we've we've maneuvered
some of the different aspects and planter areas to allow that to happen. And then when
the road is open to traffic, I would like to, you know, add with 18 feet, you can still
have a eight to nine foot, I'll call it a parking area or a pull off area and cars
are still going to be able to get around a vehicle that's waiting for a delivery
or picking up or running into a store. They'll be able to still get around there
in either direction. So we've tried to listen to the, you know, the fire, the emergency vehicles,
staff, drainage, public works, and so with the Curbless Street, I can tell you trying to
incorporate this as a shared use in creating that patio feel alongside the park is going to be a
big upgrade. And so what we've done, we've created a few renderings here and you'll see
more throughout the presentation, but this would be a look, an overhead look of the area
once it's completed. And then we have another view, and like I said, there's some other
views of this is looking south at the intersection, looking down Vale, what we anticipate the
final improvements to look like. So I mentioned the three other intersections.
Can you just put that, excuse me a minute. You had said that we could kind of make
comments. Can you go back to the aerial view?
Where would the stage be during
sounds of summer and during the band? The stage will be in this picture of the
upper right corner of the south end. It still would be in the same. Yeah, we've
reorientated things and Sarah and Mark will get into that a little bit later,
or the stage component in the programming of the park,
but it would still generally be on the south end of the park
just orientated in a little bit different of a direction.
Cause right now it's really faces north-south.
And one of the things we heard right out of the gate
when we started the project is,
is there a way to maybe look position a stage
a little bit more, I guess, northwest
to allow people at the restaurant or seating
or just at the intersection to look more into the stage
versus more of a north-south look
that's out there today. So we kind of reorientated that south area a little bit to allow for a
more northwest look of the stage. And you reduced lawn area. Well Sarah will get in that as well,
but let me let you. No, no, the lawn area generally is about the same size. It's just
to rearrange. So we do have an exhibit that shows the outline of the old lawn area versus
this landline area. So it's a good question because it has come up before and we will
address that here coming up. I just briefly want to talk about the three
other intersections included in the project. They all really are just
incorporating bump-outs, enhanced crosswalks. We again are looking at
evaluating, raising these intersections to create a little bit more of a traffic
calming element to them. But again drainage is pretty sensitive around some
of these building corners and some of the areas. So it's looking like
eliminating the raised crosswalks will be taken out of the project but again
enhancing the pavement type, the color of the intersection will just you know alert
the drivers that you're entering an area that's more pedestrian friendly and not
car friendly.
So with that I'm going to turn it over to Sarah and she can get
into the hardscape and streetscape features and some of the programming of
the park area itself. Good evening. So this illustrative cross section
here is sort of a reiteration of the geometrics that Kurt went over earlier, but it gives you a
sense of feeling of the place that we want to enhance with your corridor here. So starting over on
the right side, we are providing a buffer between the existing commercial buildings and to provide
for plant bed and landscaping along that to soften the edge up. And then we'll have a perimeter
or walk that connects folks from the streetscape experience through Harmony
Park with a five foot minimum sidewalk. Then a large open event lawn we're
really looking to enhance what the functionality that you have out there
today and just better organize it for even more enhanced flexibility for
programming throughout the year. Then as we continue to move to the left hand
inside we've identified pedestrian circulation
that seven feet there along with a plant bed
that would have seat walls to provide some of that protection
from the pedestrian zone and between the vehicular zones.
It also provides seating opportunities
for programming that is envisioned to happen
at Harmony Park.
And then moving into the vehicular area
we've provided for two-way drive lanes, a 10-foot median that would include a
seating element within that boulevard section. This is really to create a
comfortable space that the trees there create shade for when there is
programming and the street corridor is shut down to vehicular traffic as well
as flexible seating there so that folks can orient themselves in
whichever direction they wish to sit in.
And then continuing to move over to the left-hand side,
we're planning for enhanced streetscape area there
with the dining space next to commercial buildings.
We're planning for overhead stringer lights there as well
to create a more intimate and lively space there
for alfresco nights.
This is a site rendering,
really refining that concept
that we have worked with your staff in refining over the past few months. I will just draw your
attention to a few things here. The green outline, I don't know if this, I don't think the pointer
is working, but there's a dashed green line there.
That identifies the existing turf area. So, you'll see that in comparison to the proposed
turf area. Essentially, they're very similar in terms of their spatial sizes. Again, it's
better organizing and creating,
providing some connectivity so that folks can get from the
streetscape all around Harmony Park as well. We have reoriented where the
temporary stage would be set up, so where today it's in a north-south
direction. We are shifting that over slightly so that it's in the southeast
corner. That provides this performance line out to the streetscape as well. So
So envision people sitting in that boulevard area on those benches underneath the trees
and the stage is more now oriented to maximize that space that people will be in.
That plaza then also really pulls in folks that are parking just to the east here and
coming along that alley whereas today it feels a little bit more closed off.
We're really opening up that connection there, enhancing that through some stringer
lights as well. As we continue to move then kind of page left or as we go to
the north, we've identified some boulders in that landscape area. That's
a fun kind of feature for kids to clamber on. It also provides some informal
seating and then we're incorporating the location of the DTA sign there and
another plaza with a proposed overhead structure for seating, shaded seating
there. Again, we envision folks, you know, taking pictures at the DTA sign. We've identified
a potential mural opportunity on the building behind that DTA sign. You know, as we see this
as one of those Instagrammable moments for Harmony Park. We've provided site harnesses
like bike racks and trash scepticals thinking about the public use space as well as then
Then identifying some bollards at the page right near the median there.
Thinking about being able to close off the street for vehicles when you're programming
the space but then also still allowing for functionality and trash pickup into that
maintenance entrance just south of the theater space there.
And then also thinking about functionality from a drop-off zone.
We've identified that.
the blue dash line is another piece that I wanted to highlight and that is
your existing extents of Alfresco Knights and so in this concept you can
still maintain those same areas for programming and this just better enhances
that with some of the overhead lighting that would be along the
streetscape space there. It also builds off of the intersection with the
overhead lighting that's currently there but we've identified some
and intersection improvements as Kurt mentioned
with the introduction of the crosswalks,
as well as some branding that you can incorporate
within the streetscape enhancements there.
We are really keeping within the existing fountain
that was something that we built off of.
So that infrastructure piece stays, remains in place.
And then all of this geometry really builds off of that.
This again is that rendering there.
Speaking of paving, we've identified some recommendations here in terms of permeable
paver options for you.
Where the concept had identified these co-centric greens to build off of a circular geometry
coming from the fountain, we are recommending more of this blended pavement treatment
That allows for maintenance and operations as you continue to use this space.
If you need to replace a paver, it's not as specific in terms of the color because you've got this blend.
So it just eases it from a maintenance perspective.
But then we're still keeping with a very clear delineated crosswalk that you would need to identify those spaces.
Again, the branding opportunity that you have here.
it all kind of fits really well within your existing pavement that's coming
off of the fountain. This also creates that sort of large field that communicates
pedestrian space versus delineating the difference between pedestrian and
vehicular. So this all kind of blends together and lets pedestrians know that
they're welcome to use these spaces, particularly when the road is closed
software programming. And again, this rendering kind of highlights that particular intersection
and the pavement treatment and how that enhances it.
We are thinking about incorporation of
the circular geometry to blend in with the fountain there through the use of site furnishing.
So you have a very traditional aesthetic out in your space today, which we would want
to keep with. And so we can build that circular geometry into tree grates, whether
that be iron tree grates or even with a paver option with trash receptacles, planters in a
circular form, and then benches and biker acts. So the benches, this could be a mounted bench
with a back and armrest that could be placed on those planters again along the streetscape
side looking into Harmony Park to provide some seating for when there is programming happening
or just your everyday use of a streetscape.
We also are showing some flexible seating
for Harmony Park, the use of the Adirondoc chair,
excuse me, really adds a kind of colorful
and playful touch to it,
provides some of that flexibility
that folks will need for sort of pop-up events,
but these are commercial grade site furnishings.
They would be heavier than what you typically see
in like a traditional, or residential use, excuse me,
so they're not like the light plastic ones
that people can easily walk away with
they're heavier, more sturdy,
or built for commercial environments.
And then this is the vision, you know,
I think this is kind of what we're all looking forward
to seeing a very full Harmony Park
programmed with events, dining, alfresco,
just a really lively pedestrian friendly space,
a place where community wants to be.
Thinking about overhead, or excuse me,
you think about lighting and the incorporation of the overhead lighting, we shifted from
the concept where it had been identified for lighting throughout the vehicular corridor.
We're now focusing the, having the focus beyond these pedestrian spaces, so Harmony Park as
well as then the sidewalk cafe areas. That creates this really like nice intimate mood
lighting almost for these different events that would happen. The poles then that
that would support these stringer lights to connect with could also then include a traffic
and pedestrian light so that you are maintaining the current light levels that you have out
on the streetscape today.
And this is a nighttime view to show that desired experience, particularly with a concert
at night.
Lastly, landscaping. We are thinking about maintenance, so we've identified trees, particularly
streetscape trees that are well-suited for streetscape conditions. You know, these have
to be very tough disease-resistant trees that are picked for their shape to support
streetscape environments, as well as then native plantings that would be included in
the planting beds, just adjacent to Harmony Park
to provide some seasonal interest
as well as just softening that area.
The planter beds I will say are identified as seat walls
on both sides of the plant beds,
but the ends, the north and south ends are open,
also thinking about maintenance for staff
to be able to get in and pick up trash or weed
versus having to reach over an elevated planter and then the planters the
circular planters that are along the streetscape are very much similar to
what you have what's with the seasonal planters to provide interest and be
in line with their branding and then this is a daytime shot to looking at
the park toward the south and I think that's a good segue into Mark and how
we're thinking about the stage.
Yeah, sorry.
So to talk about what we're calling the performance area,
as previously mentioned, we relocated the setup
to be that more Northwest-facing.
So you don't get the sunsetting into the people
who are watching the performance's eyes.
It's not facing them.
And also, you don't have to worry
about the more North orientation,
where it's more performing up into the park. It's now angling to be more performing to
the whole street and whole of the Vale promenade. We're calling this performance area and we
have been discussions about having a more permanent stage, but we are recommending
not to be doing that to allow for greater flexibility of use than a permanent right
size stage. This allows you to be able to still have that winter market with
the trees sitting in this space. It allows you to have more informal pop-ups that are
coming on in these spaces and it's not just about the weekend, weeknight performances during
the summer, it's allowing more flexibility to utilize this space and to invigorate Harmony
Park during other times other than just the major performances. And then the other
thing that we had talked about is that connection to the South Alleyway, whereas
today it kind of is a very tight space with landscaping kind of overgrown when
you're coming from the rest of the community we're trying to really open
that up but then this location during performances can be where performer
staging happens so their crew hands can you know get into this area it gets
it all behind the stage and then they get everything set up and it's very easy
for the people who are working on they're working to set up the stage
and then we think that this continuing to do the temporary stages the a good
price that you already have so we're recommending to continue doing the rental
here in the year out as opposed to a more permanent stage.
Yeah so just real
quick on the on the stage itself as part of the initial I guess the initial
contract with us in the village. The stage itself isn't part of the scope and we're
recognizing that and we're trying to incorporate what, whether it's a permanent
stage or continue on with your temporary stage, having that space available. But a
more permanent stage would certainly be a different type of scope and function
that if the village, you know, wants to go down that road then we'll have
those discussions on how that gets implemented and the team associated with
that, but that wasn't really part of the avail promenade and some of the curbless street aspects
of the project, it kind of morphed into, okay, let's make sure we have a space that's going
to be usable for the other temporary stages or a permanent stage down the road.
So I just wanted to kind of clarify that for the board.
And then I'm here to, you know, talk about the IDOT process and the funding.
So where are we, you know, currently at and where do we go next?
Currently, our team is going through the IDOT process right now.
This IDOT process involves three separate phases.
Phase one is preliminary engineering and environmental studies, and that's the phase that we're
in right now.
Phase two is the preparation of construction documents and detailed engineering.
And then phase three is the construction of the project.
We are, we require to go through this process in order to enable the village to leverage
either federal or state funding.
And so, you know, that brings me to the two bullet points on the first two bullet points.
You know, our team we have applied for and received $3 million in ITEP funding.
And that is state funded.
So, ITEP is the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program, and it consists of both federal and
state funding, and so this particular project did receive state funding allocated for it.
Secondly, we also applied for this Local Projects Funding Grant, which is a 2024 grant that
is also state funded.
We requested a million dollars to supplement the 4.4 million that we are projecting
this project to be. And then again, I think it's my understanding that the village did receive
grant funding from Representative Grassy for $450,000. So, you know, in all, you know, we're
projecting to anticipate that 4.4. We're still waiting to hear back on this local project
funding for that $1 million. But again, we have a dedicated grant coordinator looking for
additional funding sources to supplement the project budget.
Where we go from here as far as phase one, we did submit a preliminary project development
report to IDAT a couple weeks ago.
We also are going to coordinate with the Federal Highway Administration which is a requirement
as part of the phase one and conduct a public meeting.
Again, all of these items check the boxes of the federal and state requirements for federal
or state funded projects.
And then the goal of the phase one is to receive design approval.
And once we receive design approval, then we'll move on to phase two engineering and
then onto construction.
So those are the next steps.
That's where we're at.
And I think that is the end.
Okay, thank you for a very detailed report. Staff, is there anything that you guys want to
add to that at the moment?
I would just reiterate that the focus of this project was multifaceted. I know that's detailed
in the memo and the consultant team went through that as well. I mean, I think overall the
goal of the project is to help the downtown, to bring additional people to downtown to
to support our businesses.
It's to provide an enhanced amenity for our residents,
both those who live downtown,
as well as those who visit the downtown.
Certainly these improvements are being done with an eye
towards green infrastructure and sustainability.
A park itself is a green space,
but trying to incorporate the permeable pavers
and some additional green elements
was an important concept related to this project
and also has been a goal of the Village Board
as it relates to some of the
Villages Sustainability Efforts. And then also wanted to add that overall the
project is enhancing accessibility for residents. So the curbless street and the
enhanced crossings do make it safer for pedestrians that are transgressing
through downtown. It does make it easier for those with disabilities or
mobility impairments to be able to get to the park, get through the park when
you have a curbless street and when you have improved crosswalks that are
more accessible. So I wanted to highlight a few of those benefits more specifically in
addition to what's already been reviewed. Okay. Thanks, Emily.
I have a question. Can
you put the slide back about the overall site plan view on?
The one just passed it.
That one? That one I think is a pretty good visual.
So are we projecting this at 4.4
million? Correct. Can you guess how much of that, what percentage of that is gonna
be for the park proper? And how much is for the roadway changes and the other
stuff? I guess what I'm getting at, if you did nothing to the park, to Harmony
Park. And all you did was do the changes to the street and the boulevard and the
other side of the street in front of Armand's and so on in the intersection.
I'm just curious if we did nothing to that park what would what would be the
budget change, net change would you guess?
Let me just, I do have the estimate at the end of this.
So, Mayor, just a point of clarification.
Because you'd be doing, and you'd correct me if I'm wrong,
if we're talking about the curbless street,
there would need to be some lowering of the park,
regardless, even if you didn't change the orientation.
Am I correct on that, or?
No, the park will essentially be at the same grade.
So, it would just be the sidewalk.
Yeah, the sidewalk and the road will invert itself.
So it's 4.4 total project costs that's including engineering so I'm just
trying to see what right the park itself now that that becomes a little bit of an
issue because depending on what surface we redo the park at changes what the
cost of the park is so if we're just putting sod back the park itself to
redo the sod is only about $10,000 to $15,000 to redo the sod, but if we're
going down a different material type that exponentially goes up. So the park
costs really in the grand scheme of all the hardscape features in the road is
really insignificant when you just talk about natural turf and grass because
there's still a lot of pavers here outside of the park area if we were to
do some of the areas in the northeast corner up there where the pergol is and the DTA sign
to add the brick pavers up there and some of the stage area and redo that area as well.
I mean, it's still all pavers and hardscape feature or streetscape feature, so you're
still going to have to go on there and do some reconstruction of that in that orientation.
So, I bring it up for a bunch of different reasons, but one that I can't deny is that it's
not that old of a park.
That park, I see Derek in the audience there, and I know that he was instrumental on the
design of this back in the day.
Do we know when this was built, what year it was built?
Derek probably does.
Your guess would be best, Derek.
2003.
So about 22 years old, that was when the fountain was built and the rest of it was put together.
And it's still in a really good shape. It's a great part.
I'm just wondering can we find a way to do this without having to mess with the park itself and just do the street.
And then the second question I'd have is have we talked enough with the businesses that are on that street,
The corner is Arman's, Haynani's, the piano bar.
I guess that's really it.
Are they okay with the change and losing the parking stalls out in front?
I'll let Emily address that because I believe she just presented this to the Dapa Group.
I did share with the Dapa Group two weeks ago, and I see Ernie's here.
Thank you for coming, that we would be discussing this this evening.
We have not shared this plan specifically with the businesses. We wanted the village board to see it first
So certainly we intend to share it with the businesses, but we wanted to get the feedback from the board in case there were
Changes you were looking for in the plan before we shared it more widely with the business community and residents in general
Okay, fair enough
I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I'm going to hold back and hand off to the board here. So
We started this one last, let's go this direction this time, trustee debates.
Thank you. I just have a few questions and one note that I made that I don't know what I meant so I won't even address that.
About the ITEP grant, is that guaranteed? Is there a risk of it getting clawed back if it's federally funded or is it really a done deal?
Always a good question in the state of Illinois.
Yeah, it's, we got awarded the ITEP funding in the spring.
So it's secured, it's state funded, so it's not the federal share of the funding.
And ITEP has been around consistently for a number of years.
I've worked on a variety of projects that have received ITEP funding and we've seen
it through the project.
There is a four-year Sunset Clause and so going through the I.DOT process
ensuring that we go through and go through phase one get a design approval
phase two and phase three within those four years you know that's when you
know it could be forfeited but as long as we're going through the process we
will receive the the money for it. And the four years start started in the
spring. Okay, thank you. The stage location, I actually thought about that and took another
walk through the park when we were downtown eating last night. And as the people who always
sit in the street, at first I didn't understand this, but now that I see it and you have
a better explanation. I actually like the little shift that it gives a bigger picture
to everybody because I'm just, you know, when it's just straight north, for those of us
in the street and I'm usually along the fence, it's just not as good a view. So I think
this gives more people an opportunity to have a better view of whatever is going on
generally music on stage so I actually like the idea behind this. Do you know
how many parking spaces would be eliminated? Yeah right now there's 13
existing parking spaces so to clarify a little bit on the shared use of the
street now with the Curbless Street and having the 18-foot unobstructed area
I mean a parallel parking stall itself minimum is eight feet wide plus then we would still
have a 10 foot drive aisle by it.
So in the world of shared use street or a shared street you really don't want to designate
the parking areas because that takes away from your whole idea of a shared use street.
So you kind of want to create these pods or these areas where people know they can
park or park or pull-off and they can they can stay there depending on how the
village wants to you know sign that or regulate that so in the case of like
Batavia right here in front of Metropolis we have an area that's
designated between a couple planters that will have two cars and we're
just anticipating that to be a drop-off area outside of the drive
lane so I guess in the shared use I really don't like to designate
parking areas because it takes away you're trying to make pedestrians and not
vehicles so it's kind of allowing the space and how it gets used it gets used
that way but it's not necessarily directed for parking if that makes sense.
Yeah it does and and I'm not actually opposed to that because during
Alfresco those spaces aren't there anyway so for half the year they're not
off area for, you know, disability purposes or, you know, the bride getting out of her
limo so that she can go up to the ballroom for, you know, the wedding and the reception,
that sort of thing.
So, and then again, that's only during the non-alfrescope time of the year.
Yeah.
It's pretty unique here because you do close the street down from May to September, right?
Yeah.
So now you're really talking October through April well a lot of those months are what they are and they're winter, right?
so
You're not really going to have a whole shared use kind of
Time except for maybe October November, you know and maybe early in the spring
Rest of it, you know having vehicles down there. It's going to be winter time anyway, you know
So like the city of Batavia when they did the curbless Street in the shared use
there was a there's a couple of beauty salons on the corridor and they were
very adamant that some of their customers have to be in front of the
building for a variety of reasons so those were actually signed as spots for
that beauty salon but the rest of the area was just it's just pockets you
know and you can kind of see where you can kind of pull off park go get
what you need to get get back in and leave and so that's kind of the the
idea here okay and then the one last question that I have I have to do with
the paver bricks in the vehicle drive aisles how can we make sure that what
how what makes them strong enough for the vehicles and and like when it's not
blocked off for you know for alfresco if there's a delivery vehicle going down
if there's a fire truck going down and that sort of thing because I'm always
concerned about just the sidewalk paver bricks which we've had to redo because
you know they wear out and there's the substrate and they're not as strong or
whatever so so that how do you approach that? So the pavement design itself there
will be a concrete base under the pavers having been in the public works
environment before my previous life, the maintenance part of that. So I've been
used to designing paver streets with a concrete base, even the sidewalk. And
depending on where we're at in the sidewalk, so let's say around the
radiuses of the corners, I'll make that area a thicker concrete because most
likely public works truck or the fire truck or some sort of truck is going
to drive over the edge of that curbless area. So I always deepen up
of the concrete in those areas, the sidewalk areas
where you have today can remain a little bit less
of a concrete base, but still have the paver bricks.
There are paver bricks rated for vehicle traffic.
So between that and the concrete
and any other sub-base, the stone underneath there,
that's what would be the pavement section itself.
And again, we would rate it
towards the heaviest field, Gola 80,000 pound vehicle.
But again, you don't have a tremendous
And there's a lot of traffic down here.
You have some heavier trucks.
So with the concrete base and the thicker paver itself, Malcolm Wood, the last few towns
that we've done that in, it's been fine.
Okay, great.
It's good to know.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Trustee Shirley.
Yeah, I just, I had a couple of questions about drainage.
Like, I'm not a big fan of inverted crowns, so, but I get you have to do it in this
application.
So, are there grates along the perimeter of the center island such that water that flows
up against there or does it all go through permeable pavers?
So, on the conservative side to your point, there will be a series of permeable pavers
and there will be a series of trench grates or traditional type manual covers that you
would see depending on where we are out in the road, right?
Nobody wants it to flood.
And the reason I continue to say inverted towards the center of the street,
we could still put a crown out there, which would take a little bit away from the
boulevard section, but I'm always hesitant to have water draining without
a curb towards the building. So, if you had the normal crown and take
out the curb that's out there now and have that curbless, I would still
would have.
They have some sort of drainage structures in that curb line that's out there today. So
I want everything to go to the middle away from the buildings as much as possible and then
drain it from that aspect. But along their way, like along the planters, usually there's
trench drains in there because sometimes there's hard spots for the water to get around out
to the center. So taking a little bit more of a conservative approach on that.
Okay. Yeah, because I think if you get, I don't know what permeable pavers can pass
as far as intensity of a rainfall. I doubt that they can pass an inch an hour.
Maybe they can. I don't really know that much about it, but I just think you need
to build in some safety for when you get a really good gully washer that
you know that there's somewhere for the water to go. And then is there also
drainage to this? You mentioned the whole thing drains to the south, which
I know, but I mean is there like trench drains at the end of the block
towards the parking garage as well or is it just along that center median?
No, there would be a there would be a couple different spots around the park area on the
south end. I know our drainage person has a few inlets out there at the south end of the park.
We pick up that before it went into the existing drainage more towards the parking deck. So it
could be a combination of both trench drains and traditional curb drains as we leave the
promenade area. And then how does snow and ice work with
permeable pavers? As far as can you use conventional road salt that's on the rest
of the asphalt and concrete streets in town or do you have to apply something
special? Because you've got to obviously keep the porosity of the
pavers and the joints between them and I just don't know if if they go through
there with a normal salt spreader do they can they not do that or do they have
to do something different for a higher level of service how to how do you
address snow and ice control yeah the permeable pavers itself there is
maintenance that has to happen with that because if it if the areas start
to plug up themselves, the permeableness of the pavers aren't going to work.
So there's still a maintenance procedure every couple of years.
Now from a snow and ice standpoint, what I've seen in the past is that the pavers, the permeable
areas will flaw quicker than the normal pavement areas because they have access down below,
right?
So it's the heat's coming up and it's kind of self de-icing itself.
Now, I don't know what your public works people use as far as de-icing procedures go.
That's something we can talk about, but I know with the paver street, you're going to
end up having the brushes and poly blades and probably a little bit more hand shoveling
than what is used to out there today.
But that's certainly a component of having an all-paver street, that there are some
changes in your maintenance.
So you do have to use rubber blades on the vows if you use condensers?
The towns that I've talked to that have paver streets,
yes, they go to a polymer blade or they go to a sweeper
or they hand, do a lot of hand-shell, please.
And then as far as street sweeping,
can you use a vacuum sweeper or do you have to use
mechanical or, because don't you run the risk
of like pulling all that stuff out of the joints?
Out of the pair of pavers, yeah.
Yeah, from between the pavers.
Right.
I'm just curious, like, I just don't know, Randy,
if we're gonna have to buy something special
or if we have something as far as streets sweeping the area.
So I guess these are all maintenance issues
that can be addressed, but I'm just curious
if the installation comes along
with maintenance recommendations.
Mayor, may I jump in?
Trustee Shirley, I mean, a couple of comments.
I mean, I think you're dead on on the drainage issues and for those of you that were on the
board, there used to be some pretty significant flooding issues along Campbell and particularly
and then somewhat along Bale and there were adjustments made in I think 2018, 2019, those
before COVID to address that and public works was very aware of that when talking
to these folks about not upsetting that.
As for the pavers, the one thing some folks may not remember or be aware of is if you
look at an aerial or if you just come out on your way out tonight, when we did the police
station parking project, that entire parking lot kind of behind our parking garage as
well as the drive that goes between Village Hall and the new police building, those
are permeable pavers and we've kind of used that as we kind of designed it as
and we've kind of used it as kind of a test bed for permeable paver concepts
elsewhere in town and so we are maintaining it now my understanding is
that we are using a street sweeper to clean that and that's worked reasonably
well so I think we have the the equipment present right now to do that
now it's a little bit different scale but if you look if you look online
It's not an insignificant piece of property that we're maintaining that have the permeable papers right now
And then I guess I would just say that it seems to me like the turf areas being reduced some I know you kind of showed
That it's kind of equivalent, but it seems like we're taking some grass away
And I kind of feel like the grass is a big attraction
Even though I know it's kind of a meat. That's nightmare. So that's just a comment and then for as far as the stage
I do think we've talked on and off about a permanent type of band shell.
And so I'd like to see if we can't maybe incorporate that into future discussions about the site.
And I like the orientation, but it seems to me like renting and setting up and all
that stuff and then nighttime security if we leave it up so that it doesn't get
vandalized and such that maybe something that was more permanent might be beneficial.
So that's all I have, thanks.
So just from the cost of the stage to address that, a stage that would sort of fit this
area, we're estimating anywhere from three and a half to four million dollars for a permanent
structure.
And so the annual amount that you're paying for the temporary stage set up now at $60,000
a year.
I mean we can do some quick math, but you got about 20 to 25 years until you pay off that permanent stage
So build that stage for 2 million
I'm just giving you some perspective on stage
And if I could on that point and Mayor Tenai and I were talking about this because you know he has
familiarity with the stage and band world
You know we can there's nothing incorrect if I'm wrong in this design
that would preclude the addition of a stage later
if the village were so inclined.
And if it's the will of the board,
staff can provide some further, you know,
drill down analysis on options on that.
But the idea is, you know,
because we got this grant money,
it's not within the scope of this project,
but there's nothing standing in the way of it.
Thank you, it looks great though.
Very good, thanks.
Okay, continuing this direction,
Trustee Manganero.
staff has already answered all the questions I had this afternoon I really
like the concept and just a quick look at that it does look like the lawn area is
almost identical it looks like where where there's a cut out here there's an
addition there is that yep yeah it's very very close yeah thank you trusty
sick thank you mayor and also thank you you know you brought up a couple
things you know at the beginning I think you're talking about you know I was
thinking about the same thing do we actually need to get rid of that grass
area that it's right there or is it something that can work into into what
we're doing right there do we need that cost to be able to do it so it's
something I'd like us to consider and then also talking to the businesses
that are there also how because I think one of the big reasons why we're
doing this is to bring sure bring more people into downtown Arlington Heights
but also to help the businesses there
and how is it going to affect them?
So I'm glad you asked those questions.
For one thing, Justice LeBuzz, you had mentioned turning it
and you get to see, you can see people,
but you can see the band's performance is better,
which is a great point.
I wasn't thinking about that, and that is a great point.
But one thing I kept thinking, and this may just be
me being stupid, I don't have the experience
of the mayor in this, but I'm not a sound engineer,
but I kept thinking about this going, okay, now you've got all those speakers that are also
turned and are going that way and now they're blasting right at the businesses that are right there
and you've got glass there and glass reverberates sound. Is that a potential issue? Will it actually
be louder because it's turned that way? So I don't know if we know the answer if it's
something that we can potentially look into at some point. The last thing I just got thinking
When we're talking about the landscaping, do we do anything such as talk with the Arlington
Heights Garden Club, get them involved, or environmental commission, get them involved
also in kind of getting their ideas and kind of giving us some guidance?
Do we ever interact that way?
We haven't, but that doesn't mean we can't, and that's something that if the board
wants us to explore some partnerships with that, we certainly could.
I mean, I think our public works department looks at this stuff from, you know, working
with Derek, who's very experienced with landscape architecture, both from an aesthetic and a
maintenance standpoint, but there's no reason you couldn't have other input points on that.
Okay.
Thank you.
That's it.
Just to step in.
Quick note.
One more?
Sure.
One more.
Sorry.
I was just going to respond to what Zick had said.
And when you're setting up stage, the speakers get set up, they point them at whatever they
want to point them at, so there's no real issue that I have, or I don't foresee any
concerns with, like, it becoming an issue, like, you know, you test it, is it an issue
over here, move the speaker a little bit.
So it's all field adjustable, so just to do that.
Go ahead.
So thank you for the comment about the sound.
My suggestion would be not worrying so much
about whether sounds reverberating glass,
but turning it down a little bit.
It can be pretty blasting, no matter what.
So I've sat through many concerts there.
OK, we'll go this way now.
Trustee Bertucci.
Thank you.
Couple of questions.
Whatever slides you need to go to, I am not understanding what's happening with the current
seating of the restaurants.
So the current seating, have you, have you, anybody from the team been there on a Friday
or Saturday night or sounds of summer?
No, I haven't.
I haven't specifically.
I've been out there during a dining area time.
Yeah, I mean, our planning staff has.
But I'm talking about this design team not specifically at the sound of summers, but during the early evenings
I've been out there, okay, okay, so but during sounds us that but not during sounds of summer, okay
So the the seedings utilize and and and I'm concerned that are we
Taking away seeding and either the along the west side
So the seating stays exactly the way it is so the restaurant will not lose any tables
No, so part of the
Discussion with staff is the blue line that you see up there right now. That is the current
Limits of the fencing. It's out there during alfresca now
Yeah, and so we've maintained that obviously with the with the street use the way it is you could extend that
However, we didn't want to get into a discussion with the other businesses on the other legs
of the street, saying, how come that 200 feet of veil got more seating area than we did?
So we kept the seating areas and the fencing as it is today generally in the same spot
regardless of what street it was.
Okay.
Okay, so Arman's, the piano bar, and Hey Nani,
none of them will lose any tables or seating.
Correct.
Is Staffall, are there any greens with that?
Correct, yes, that was one of them.
Okay, now let's talk about Carlos and Carlos.
Does Carlos and Carlos lose any seating along
their west wall?
The reorientating, correct me if I'm wrong,
Emily, but the reorientation this would change the seating for Carlos and Carlos
because that's on some of our property now, but you could theoretically, when you
see that area that said the flexible seating area, that could be if the
village were so inclined, you know, programmed in a different way if we
wanted to allow it. I don't know if you want any further comments? Yeah, you
could potentially let them expand into the plaza area around the fountain as
I mean, I think there are some options we could consider if we wanted to do that.
Okay, whoever it was that was talking about, or Emily, I think it was you,
I would specifically be interested in hearing what Carlos and Carlos has to say,
with Armin's, with the piano bar, and Hainani,
and going to them directly and not going through,
in case they don't go to the meetings,
which is a great organization, Ernie,
but I'd like to make sure that we don't get
any interpretation through any other organizations.
So that's my one question, is to make sure
that these restaurants don't lose what we're doing this for.
The other thing is, do the dollars have to go in this stretch of downtown for the grants?
This is the project that was applied for. Generally, yes. I don't know if there's any exception, but I would say generally yes.
Certainly the ITEP funding, any future funding we receive through these other grants.
I mean potentially Representative Grosse's money maybe could go towards something else.
I'm not sure what she expressed she was going, she was, you know, requesting the funding for.
But conversations with her, the intention was to make up gaps from that were with the ITEP.
It was specifically designed to cover essentially the same scope as ITEP and eliminating that gap
so that the village had opportunities to fund the whole thing.
Because for the amount of, you know, the beautification, I mean, it's great, but we're pouring a lot
of dollars to this particular area.
In the meantime, we need to very much develop what I call the dark zone, and that is
from Dunton to Evergreen. In other words, you leave beer on the wall and kitchen and the
scratchboard kitchen and you walk towards Pacero and that area needs truly a lot of
help, right? To really connect Evergreen and the Pacero and that shop in that area with
this area and so I would argue that we need we could bring this down and spread
some of those dollars to close that gap in that area somehow some way that would
be my other thought so sorry did you want to jump in jump you go ahead okay
while it doesn't sound like we have any flexibility with the dollars that we've
been awarded thus far for this project.
One of the objectives with this project
was to potentially be able to expand some of these treatments
into the downtown as the desire exists to do so,
as funding becomes available to do so.
So not necessarily that we're looking
to make every street in the downtown a curbless street,
but some of the treatment, some of the pavement treatment,
some of the site furnishings, some of the lighting,
we could potentially expand into the other areas
of downtown so there may be opportunities to connect some of these areas such as you're
describing with these types of treatments down the road.
Okay, and I still would like to get a little bit more detail about the financials as far
as what we specifically can and cannot do with the two grants and the grants that
we're getting, and then I would be hesitant to put other than if those dollars can
only go here to put many more village dollars there without looking at other ways of improving
other areas.
Otherwise, we've got this great area, but what are we doing, like I say, to close that
gap on Campbell?
And then not to mention is, I mean, if you listen to some of the businesses on the
and south end, you know, and okay here we go, here they go again spending more money
in downtown early tonight's and you know when when they can invest and spend
more money and some of our you know in my area if you're a north or a south
restaurant or business owner so that would be my other concern. Does this,
my
leave room or does it kill the idea of an ice rink?
I can jump in on that.
I would say that it's ice rink agnostic, that if the board were inclined to implement the
ice rink, it could be accommodated in this space.
It's, again, roughly the same amount of space.
the one thing I would say is that the exact orientation layout set up the
ice rink might be a little different and so if the ice rink were installed
before this work were done you know it may be something we would want to
consider to design it in a way to keep it in mind they could be used both ways
I mean but but I mean again you're correct me for among Emily I mean I
I think that it could be done, theoretically,
with some additional funding.
It's certainly possible.
Anything's possible with engineering and money.
One thing I would point out as staff
has been talking just internally and formally about this
is part of the goal with the stage area
was to also preserve that area for the Christmas tree
and have some flexibility in the space
for maybe a holiday market or something like that.
An ice rink would potentially limit that,
but that doesn't mean it's not doable.
one of the things that staff was thinking about just I think this morning was
potentially other areas in downtown where an ice drink could be located to
preserve Harmony Park for some of these other things that I just mentioned and
I have not talked with public works about this I don't I don't think I've
even mentioned this to Randy yet but one of the suggestions was looking at the
parking lot along the train line across from Bird's Nest so it's not
unusual for municipalities to erect these ice rinks in parking lots
because they're already graded and so it's also not unusual to do them next to
train lanes because you have the visibility from the train. Obviously
there's some parking and other things that we would have to look at but there
may be other opportunities to keep the ice rink in the downtown. I'm not saying
that Harmony Park couldn't make it happen but I think there are other
areas we could also look at if that proved to be challenging. Okay, my only
other thought is it reminds me of a nice open room that you know that sure
needed some furniture and some direct but then somebody came in and over
furnitureed it you know so to speak so and maybe it's just because it's an
aerial view showing the tops of the trees but it seems like it made a nice
open area, and I think European piazza kind of feel to a crowded, over-landscaped, over-bullvard area.
So, again, that's just my opinion, but that would be my other thought.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thanks.
Josie Donington.
Thank you.
Overall, I think the project looks really beautiful.
Thank you for everyone that worked on all of the grants for the funding for this.
Just a quick question, a few quick questions.
For the bollards, it's the removable, correct?
How does that work?
Is it, do they like go down into the cement or how does that work?
There are some that go down and there are ones that completely come out of the ground.
So that's going to be a discussion with public works on the preference on, I mean
if we go down then you're gonna have ice and snow and grit and all kinds of stuff
that are gonna get down into this tube of the ballard so I would hesitate to go
that direction from a maintenance standpoint because it's already cold
enough these guys are gonna try to pull up ballards and you know we know what's
gonna happen there versus them being taken out a cap put on it and then they
come back in the springtime and and close it up and bring them back so
that that's kind of an ongoing discussion of just the exact type of
baller that's going to be used but we prefer to just take them out and bring
them back. And then when you when we see the crosswalks they look different is
that because the pavers are different or are they painted or how are they marked?
Yeah so from an ADA standpoint you want to make sure that you have high
contrast in your in your delineation of the crosswalk so we're
proposing just a flat flush concrete curb essentially so it would be at the grade
and then a darker paver there in between that crosswalk so that you've got some
visual difference between the rest of the street and then where pedestrians
cross. Okay, I was disappointed that we couldn't do the raised crosswalk because
I think that really slows down traffic. Are there any of the intersections
sections that we could either raise or is it just out of the question because of the drainage?
The other three intersections that we discussed I think are still in probably somewhat of an
evaluation mode from the raised crosswalk.
This one it was pretty well discussed that given the past drainage issues down there
that we really don't want to get into that again.
So at that point it was like well let's we can eliminate it here but as you enter
or into the area if we were to do a raised crosswalk,
that would at least alert people that you're entering
into an area that's a little bit different
than the normal road.
So I think it's still under evaluation.
Trustee Dunnington, to further answer your question,
while the grain edge was the primary concern,
there is some concern by some in public works
about snow plowing and maintenance
of a raised intersection as well.
and you know the public workforce are practical people and try to look at these things from
maintenance standpoints and that's part of the conversation as well.
I
really like the curb bump out so that the crosswalk is shorter for pedestrians. I think
that looks great.
And the design in the middle of the crosswalk that's just the A is that
something that we can put something different there? Okay. Because I think it looks really
corporate. It looks like a business card or a letterhead and I think it would be nice
to have something fun in that area rather than our day. And I'm also wondering about
the trash receptacles. I know we're matching the ones that we currently have, but I would
love to see the sorter receptacles so that we could do better recycling and
garbage rather than just our standard ones that don't really give any
information. And then one of the slides we saw some gateway options and so I
just wanted to comment that I like the one with the arch on it. I don't know if I
jump in on the signage component. So we are looking at incorporating some
gateway signage at several of these intersections and V3 was able to put
together a variety of concepts for us to look at just to help us start thinking
about what that signage might look like. So we will continue to refine those
concepts and likely take those to the design commission for input. They
wouldn't necessarily provide input on the overall park design but signage
just typically fall under their purview.
So, we intend to take it before them
for consideration as well.
That sounds good.
Okay, so, I'd love to see a different design in the center,
better trash and recycle.
It would be great to do the raised sidewalks,
like coming into Arlington, El Frasco,
to like slow traffic down.
And I love the mural.
I think it looks great.
Thank you so much for your work.
Trustee Schwingack.
Thank you, Mayor.
Phenomenal presentation. I mean I love the plan. I'm making an assumption that V3
does all the construction as well. Are you the actual builder? Yeah. No we would
not bid on this particular but it's all incorporated in the price. So yes the
construction cost is in the three is in the 4.4 million dollars along with
the phase two engineering and the construction engineering that goes along
with that. And you would hire though would you are you the general contractor
would you be hiring him or who's hiring? No this will go out to bid for a
general contractor to build it itself. And we would work with the general
contractor. Okay so I you know I love the design I mean from a landscape point
of view it looks beautiful. The other three streets I think as trustee
Bertucci brought up, those are still going to be dropped with curbs.
So, you know, I certainly understand creating this European walkway.
I mean, it, it looks beautiful, but, but our other three streets in the
El Fresco zone are still going to be dropped down.
I, when, when I look at this whole area, um, I, I'm looking at Arlington
to El Fresco and I'm looking at people coming into this area to use our businesses and our
restaurants and I'm not 100% sure that doing this is going to be bringing in any more people
that are going to be eating at our restaurants and visiting our stores.
It looks beautiful, but my main goal would be, is it going to bring any more people coming
into our downtown during El Fresco and spending money?
Because during the non-El Fresco months, streets are going to be opened up and they're going
to be back to business as usual.
Well, I mean one question I had that I think Mayor Tonalia was trying to answer but I didn't
hear an answer from you guys, you don't touch the park at all, you just leave it as is.
No rearranging of the grass or brick pavers or nothing.
There's a lot of work there, it's got to add some cost, I can't see it just being
$15,000 or $20,000.
dollars so if we didn't touch from that you know east side curb even if we raise
up the street all the way to that wall where Carlos and Carlos says we didn't
touch that what would that reduce the price by
Approximately.
Based on my quick math here, while everybody's been discussing various things, we'd be somewhere
in the two and a half million range for the road, the intersection, everything from the
park to the opposite building, because there's still a substantial amount of work regardless
of the park area.
Right.
Yeah, and I guess my thoughts on this whole thing is we just spent the first half
for tonight's meeting talking about taxes and now, you know, if we had the funding to
do this where it wasn't going to cost the village any money, that would be one thing.
But to sit here and talk about a streaming tax and talk about that grocery tax and now
seeing this project with approximately a million dollar gap that we've got to come
up with. That's hard to swallow since we were just talking about, you know, not raising taxes
and trying to figure out ways of bringing in, you know, more money. And that's where
I really struggle. I'd like to see it where we're getting, you know, X amount of money
from one source and 450 from State Representative Grassy and trying to figure out how to
do that and make it beautiful for that amount of money.
Because I think as people are watching this meeting and it's being reported on, we worked
really hard at the beginning of this meeting to figure out what we're going to do with
those first two taxes and now we're talking about adding another million dollars or coming
up with a million dollars.
So that's really where I'm struggling.
And, you know, the race street looks beautiful, but we still have the other three intersections
that are going to be lowered and, you know, what would it look like if this were lowered
as well?
And we didn't raise it up.
So that's really, my thing is just that money that we would have to come up with
a village when we were just discussing taxes.
could I add just one point to that because I want to make sure this is clear
and I'm not quite sure that it has been clear this evening there is a village
match that is required for the ITEP grant so we do have money budgeted
already in the for capital projects for phase two engineering I believe which
is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars the ITEP grant covers that phase
two engineering so we can use that money we have budgeted towards the
village is required match but regardless of the where the scope of the
project ends up there are village dollars that are required by the grant
funding to be put into the project so I just want to make sure the board
understands that there the village will have to contribute a portion of money to
the project the question would be how much right and obviously if the board
were so inclined to reduce the scope of that the savings you know the
Village would feel savings. I mean, that's that's always an option for sure
But we wouldn't be able to get out of this without without some money, right?
So even though we would be getting three million if we drop the cost of this total project from
over four, you know down to say only
2.5 or 3 million we'd still have to fork out money even though the grants are here
That's that's our center saying there is a they want some local skin in the game for an ITEP grant so yeah
And I guess from my point of view I'd need to see what that skin is sure so so the ITEP money is
8020 80 state federal and 20% local and then the other
Funding source that we applied for the local
Program funding that came out through iDOT
Can be used as your match and so what we did
we took the gap that we had from the ITEP money and the local money, and we put that
into that additional grant that's out there, it hasn't been announced yet, who
receives that. So that money, hopefully, knock on wood comes in, because that's a
million dollars, that would make up the local gap to match that 20% ITEP. So
we've kind of maneuvered the funds as best we could within the rules that
we have. We've yet to be awarded that yet, not on what we might. Yeah and I just don't
see, I guess personally I don't see any reason to really change the layout of
Harmony Park. You know I think it's a beautiful area, people love coming there
and you know again I with these changes I don't know what that cost is so I'd
be, I'd really like to understand if we eliminated and didn't touch Harmony
Park, what would that do to the cost?
Thank you.
Thanks. Trustee Santamaria? The best part about being last is that
I typically don't have questions. But I wanted to say it's a beautiful
design. I do love it. My only last question
that hasn't been asked yet is what the plan for community feedback would be.
So there's a couple stages to that. I think
well as part of the I dot process we will have a community
open house meeting. Somewhere, I'd like to usually have them on site so that
everybody's engaged and go through sort of the same presentation. You know, there's
usually questions, FAQs, we'll put QR codes everywhere, it'll be online to
answer questions, get feedback from that standpoint. But I also heard tonight
as well that engaging a few of the local businesses directly adjacent to the
site will have to do outside of the normal IDOT procedure. So I think it's
combination of both. Okay, thank you.
Go ahead. That sound like rapping, but one
last one. So it's usually not me.
How many more sounds, we have one or two
sounds, two sounds of summers left, right? Two. Two. I would, in order, let me, how
best to say this. You need to come out and you need to stand there with the
3,000 people that'll be there. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know how you could
design something like that and not come to one of our most packed events for
that area. And it'll be even more during the Harmony Fest which is what's
That's the date in early October, the first weekend.
It's the last week of September.
The last week of September, okay.
So that's an even bigger event.
And so if we're wrapped up here and I'm gonna get a chance here, what I wanna say
is whatever you do, unless you put a second story on this park, you're not gonna increase
number of people in here.
Everything that we talked about here tonight, those images that you did with other people
standing in there, it's 20 times more people than that.
It's wall to wall, elbow to elbow, and there are times when it almost feels dangerous.
There's that many people in this space.
And while it may look beautiful, and I've said this about other petitioners who
been here in front of us on different things. I think that, like Trustee Schwingbeck said
and I said earlier, if we did nothing to Harmony Park, it would be fine to take that money
and turn it around and spend it on an intersection here or there or find a way to have it work
better for us somewhere just adjacent to this somehow. I just don't think that that
That park is necessary to tear it apart and do that right now.
I do think getting engagement like Trustee Santa Maria said with the stakeholders on-site
here is important.
I'm really worried about the parking guys that really I'm afraid of what people might
say.
but I guess at the end of the day, I think it's a wonderful idea. It would be great to
take advantage of these grants. It would be great to do something with it. I don't want
to be – I want to be more careful about where we spend the dollars. I want to be more
careful about it. And I'm going to say one last thing because everybody knows that
I have a lot to say about music.
Can we go back to the drawing where you have the stage
tilted in there?
You guys don't know me, but if you take that stage
and you aim it towards the promenade here,
everything
that Robin said is true.
The folks who are sitting in those chairs where the
ballards are and where the word says gateway, those
folks who have a better view of the stage, there's no
doubt about that.
but the result is everybody else who sits closer to Carlos and Carlos by the fountain
or who's standing anywhere near the fountain, when you turn it, you're going to turn your back on the other folks over there.
And you cannot adjust these big, massive speakers willy-nilly on site like that.
you set them up how you want them to be. No one is going out there and rotating
those and twisting those when it's going on. So you'd have to know that in
advance. We're going to aim these speakers here. We're going to aim those speakers
there and that's just how it gets set up for that night. You might learn
after a couple of performances you want to change it this way. As long as
you have the same sound system every time. But there are complications with
this and it's throwing all that sound. If you draw the line from the center of that stage
on the angle it's going to hit the front door of Armand's. That's where your main point
of your sound is that last big tree at the bottom just to the left or just to the
north of the metropolis entrance. And then unless you turn all the speakers to
go straight north, then you're going to lose the sound that goes to Campbell
Street. There's a few things about this that I'm not comfortable with and I feel
like we need a lot more dialogue on and some time and energy on and that's
where I'll stop for tonight. It's getting very late. You guys did a great job for
a lot of reasons. I think it's a really nice idea and I want to take
advantage of this. I want to do it the best way that we can. For all the reasons
Trustee Schwingbeck said about what we just did earlier today, you know, it all
kind of makes sense. All right, we have to be careful here. And that's really all
I have. So what are you looking for from us? What is staff looking for? I think
we were looking for feedback guidance based on where we're at and I think
we've gotten some good feedback and guidance that we can get back in, you
regroup and look at some options. I think you all had asked for some specific things
and we'll work on that. So, no, I think this is the kind of conversation we were looking for.
I think we're at a point here where we probably need to drop the pencils for a little bit,
do a little thinking, a little discussing, a little figuring. Not unlike another project
in town here right now that we just need to kind of figure it out a little bit more.
Before we go too far, and then we're sorry because we didn't think about some other stuff
Come out Thursday night
Come out next Thursday night whatever get a good feeling for what this space really is like right now
And then walk down a couple of the other directions of the streets and and see
the
You know the imbalance of how things are it's it's pretty nice right now in some areas not as
well-appointed.
But you can't set your chairs or blankets out before 2 p.m.
Try and do it. The blanket police will take it away.
We do have some bar copies. Yes, absolutely. Hang on one second.
Go ahead. I think you may have mentioned it earlier too but in the lieu of the
let's say you raised the street up in lieu of the brick pavers I know a lot
of times when I've driven through streets with brick pavers, they move around a lot
on you and break up pressed concrete that looks like brick pavers.
Certainly an option.
I don't know if that would reduce the price dramatically and the maintenance.
I know for a stamped concrete, it does not wear as well as pavers long term.
It gets discolored.
It can get cracked.
look on saline then you would lose the permeable aspect of it that was a big
reason we were getting grant money and so forth okay right and and I was
mentioning it to trustee Bertucci here quietly on your honor driveway out here
from this building where the brick paper example is the one thing that I
would want you guys to be able to answer as we get together how does it
behave when you spill blood light on it, and hot dog mustard, and ketchup, and then Scott
Shirley's ex-mates have to go out there and clean all this stuff.
When you have these big parties, you know, there's times when this is like a giant fraternity
party out there, and people bump into each other and things fall down and things spill.
How does that all work with these kinds of surfaces, right?
And then what's the cleanup? What's the what's the repair?
It's all I have anybody else
Thank you all for the presentation very much. Appreciate it. Thank you
And we do have some hard copies of the redner ease if you want to take those with as you're thinking about the project
You'll have some nice photos here of that. So I'll leave them with
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right
I don't think there's any other business tonight. Am I correct? Correct. Alright, so a motion to adjourn would be a
I move we adjourn. Second. Motion made by Trustee Lavez, second by Trustee Schwingbeck. All those
in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We're adjourned. Thank you, everyone.