[0:02] Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the village parlor board

[0:04] meeting for February 17, 2026. I ask >> Steve Berman

[0:11] » here. >> Dany

[0:12] » here. >> Ganzy

[0:13] » here. >> Hopkins

[0:14] » here. >> Leaport

[0:16] » here. >> Swansonsky

[0:17] » here. >> President Gunstein

[0:18] » here.

[0:22] Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

[0:28] republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and

[0:35] justice for all.

[0:41] » That will take us to our town hall portion of the meeting. If anybody would

[0:44] like to address the board, please do so by stepping up to the podium and state

[0:48] your name and address and try to keep your comments to three minutes or less.

[0:52] Anybody out there? >> Sure.

[0:54] » Town hall. >> Town hall.

[0:56] » Yes, sir. >> Yeah. Uh I was reading uh your agenda

[1:01] and it sounds like you got some really good

[1:05] companies to come and design a Lake Street,

[1:10] which is nice. I just have three items that I hope they consider.

[1:17] and one is bike lanes and a bike path all the way from Metra to Irving Park

[1:25] Road that'll take working with Streamwood

[1:29] at least worth considering. The other thing is that Lake Street is

[1:36] kind of notorious for killing people. A lot of traffic crashes, a lot of, you

[1:43] know, a lot of tragedy there. So there's really no stoplight that between Oak

[1:49] Street and Neapville Road. So the pedal of the metal cars. So one

[1:56] thought maybe to consider is instead of just having traffic lights, make it a

[2:03] roundabout. The thing about roundabouts is that they

[2:07] slow cars down and kind of pace people through the in

[2:13] intersection. So maybe it'll be a while before they start speeding. So just a

[2:18] thought. Uh and the other thing is I'm hoping that they put a nice shoulder on

[2:23] Lake Street because it's it'll be a nice way to get over to Tom's uh when they're

[2:30] open in the summertime. But no rumble strips, please. Or if they do have

[2:36] rumble strips, you know, space them out a little bit so you can get across and

[2:41] through them and that. But anyway, just three ideas for

[2:46] street. Thank you, >> Terry. Can I just get your address for

[2:49] the record? >> Your address?

[2:51] » Oh, I'm sorry. Terry Wit, 471 Southwestern Avenue.

[2:56] » Thank you, Terry. Thank you for coming. Terry, before we release you,

[3:01] have you I I'm just curious if you've worked with the Streamwood, the city,

[3:06] the village of Streamwood with their crossover with the bridge and how we're

[3:10] interconnecting with that. >> Well,

[3:12] » you said to Park and that's the first thing I thought of was everybody, but

[3:17] » but they did ask me to write a letter to I do DOT, so I wrote a letter and

[3:21] » Okay. >> You know, they got three or four

[3:25] grants that were pretty nice. And when Raja came uh to give out $250,000

[3:32] of grant money, they asked me to show them how to put a bicycle helmet on. So

[3:38] I put a bicycle helmet on. Raj. >> All right. Great.

[3:40] » That was kind of fun. And then although I wasn't able to go to the

[3:45] ribbon cutting cutting, they did give me a piece of the ribbon. Oh, and a

[3:52] » very cool >> bicycle hat.

[3:53] » Okay. Cool. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[3:57] There's anybody else who'd like to address the board?

[4:01] I don't believe we have anybody online. All right, that'll close the town hall

[4:05] portion of the meeting. We take us to our consent agenda. All items listed

[4:08] with asterric will be considered routine and acted in one motion. There will be

[4:12] no separate discussion for these items unless board members so request. In

[4:16] which event, the item will be removed from the general order of business and

[4:18] considered an appropriate point in the agenda. With that said, is there

[4:21] anything that anybody would like to add or remove from the agenda? From the

[4:25] consent agenda? No.

[4:30] That said, can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda?

[4:34] » So moved. >> Second.

[4:36] » Moved by Trusty Dany, second by Trusty Swansky. Clerk, please call the role.

[4:40] » Trusty Dany, >> yes.

[4:41] » Ganzy, >> yes.

[4:42] » Hopkins, >> yes.

[4:43] » Leaport, >> yes.

[4:45] » Sawansky, >> yes.

[4:46] » Batterman, >> carries. All right. Next up is our

[4:50] treasures report. Mr. Treasurer, >> thank you, Mayor. Treasures report

[4:54] included in the board packet is for the month of December 2025.

[4:59] Sales tax collected in December was for the month of September and totaled

[5:03] $716,168,

[5:07] which was up $121,392

[5:12] or 20% from last year. Motor fuel tax allotments for December

[5:18] totaled $166,412

[5:22] which is up $12,59 or 8% from the prior year.

[5:29] And income taxes received in December were $415,168

[5:36] which is up $55,174 or 15% from the prior year. Overall

[5:42] income tax is up $268,821 for the year. That's it for the

[5:49] treasur's report unless there's any questions. Any questions for the

[5:52] treasur? >> All right, that'll take us to our

[5:55] president's report and tonight I have an appointment uh commission appointment

[6:00] for the community and economic affairs commission. This is a two-year term.

[6:04] With the advice and consent of the village board, I appoint Jeff Peters to

[6:08] serve two-year term on the comm community and economic affairs

[6:11] commission beginning February 17, 2026 and expiring February 17, 2028.

[6:19] I get a motion to concur the appointment of Jeff Peters to serve a two-year term

[6:23] on the community and economic affairs beginning February 17, 2026 and expiring

[6:29] February 17, 2028. >> So moved. Second

[6:33] » by trusty Dany. Second by Trusty Leaport. Clerk, please call the RO.

[6:37] » Trusty Ganzy. >> Yes.

[6:38] » Hopkins. >> Yes.

[6:39] » Leaport. >> Yes.

[6:40] » Swansky. >> Yes.

[6:42] » Better. >> Yes.

[6:43] » Dany. >> Yes.

[6:44] » That motion carries. Thank you, Jeff, for your willingness to serve the

[6:48] community. Look forward to uh seeing you on that committee. So,

[6:52] » thank you for Trusty Ganzy. We'll have plenty of work for you to do over there.

[6:57] So, thank you. All right. That'll take us to our stand questions and answers.

[7:03] Anybody have any questions? >> That

[7:07] » no question. >> I have a question.

[7:08] » Oh, go ahead. >> Sorry.

[7:09] » Go ahead. >> Uh, I noticed with the Runnel, it's a

[7:13] very light blue. I think it would look better like a

[7:16] little darker, like more natural like is there a way that we can get that

[7:20] darkened to be more of like a natural stream color?

[7:30] We can take a look and see. We didn't want to go real dark because just the I

[7:35] don't know if natural looking at how natural it's going to look, but um we

[7:39] can take a look at it, but I'm not sure if we can change without redoing the

[7:42] coating. So, >> okay.

[7:47] » Is like a pool blue. >> The the river.

[7:50] » Oh, >> the river. If we do change it, we

[7:53] probably want to change it before we have to fill it and operate it. Correct.

[7:56] Yeah, >> look at that.

[8:01] » Uh, can >> we uh can we get a like a visuals of

[8:05] like what other communities do with their rivers or rentals that they do?

[8:12] » I'm not sure how many other rentals are out there, but yeah, we can take a look

[8:16] and see what's out there. >> Yeah, it'll probably need to be

[8:19] repainted every year or two, right? So maybe we can

[8:25] » it'll need to be repainted. Hopefully it lasts longer than that because it's

[8:29] quite the epoxy coating.

[8:33] » Thank you. >> Then uh

[8:36] » questions. >> Yeah, I've got a u a commissioner I'd

[8:40] like to recognize as year service on EDC which is uh changing now but it's Bruce

[8:47] suffering. So thank you for your service. And believe it or not, Mr.

[8:52] Bannerman was sitting on the end. John Bannerman, according to my list, you

[8:55] would you would have had one year in the planning and and zoning committee. So

[9:01] » So you moved up in the ranks. >> I did. I'm going to put three years, I

[9:05] think. >> Yeah.

[9:06] » Three years ago. >> Well, this is data 25. So whatever. So

[9:12] » I served for two years. So yeah, >> I don't have anything years ago.

[9:17] » Thank you, Ray. I like to observe uh yesterday's

[9:22] President's Day. Um I know we did some really great things with the historic U

[9:29] Facebook page going back to uh obviously we're recognizing all of the presidents,

[9:34] but uh it's a good opportunity to uh think about our local leadership. So

[9:41] uh they went back 50 years and uh remarked on one of the presidents there.

[9:46] I think his name was Belk at the time. But I just like to thank our president

[9:50] Gunstein for his uh leadership and the motivation and um the drive for getting

[9:56] us uh our village to progress that you have. So thank you.

[10:02] » Yeah. Um anybody else? I want to thank staff

[10:08] um and I want to thank our local stakeholders uh Raja Krish and all the

[10:15] parties that played a big part in our $1 million grant we received for the

[10:20] infrastructure and intersection enhancement at Route 25 and West Park

[10:26] Road. That is a huge achievement and I understand it took a long time to get

[10:29] that process approved. So great job for everybody involved. So, thank you guys.

[10:35] So, it's a big uh it's a big step for that intersection out there. So, all

[10:42] right, nobody has anything else. Uh we will go to standing committee reports.

[10:47] We'll just go right down to finance and committee. Chairman Leaport,

[10:52] » you caught me off guard. Hang on. >> I need a minute.

[10:57] » Thank you, Mr. President. Uh the item on our agenda this evening is

[11:06] Lauderbach and Almond LLP auditor extension. The village of Bartlett's

[11:10] three-year contract with our current auditors Lauderbach and Almond LLP

[11:14] expired with the completion of the April 30, 2025 audit. At the February 3rd

[11:20] board meeting, staff recommended extending the engagement with our

[11:24] current auditors for another three years. After some discussion, finance

[11:28] committee chair trustee Leaport suggested village staff request a

[11:31] one-year contract proposal for our current auditors, Lauderbach and Almond

[11:35] LLP, with the intention of doing a formal RFP the following year. Attached

[11:41] is a proposal from our auditing firm Lauderbach and Almond LLP to extend

[11:45] their contract one additional year uh fiscal year ended April 30, 2026 in the

[11:50] amount of $46,050.

[11:55] I motion to move that the village award a one-year contract extension to

[12:00] Lauderbach and Almond LLP at a total cost of $46,000 $50 for annual financial

[12:06] audit services. >> Second that

[12:09] » there's any questions or comments? Let's discuss those. Now

[12:13] » I have a quick question. I know when the auditor was here asked about like

[12:18] different kinds of audits. Is there like something the village like a different

[12:22] performance audit that we'd like to to have done since that it's their final

[12:26] year like something a little different that they could offer?

[12:32] » I don't know if um they do offer that. We can certainly ask them. Um you um

[12:40] is there like an overall do you mean like like what was what kind of scope

[12:46] are you looking at? Are you looking at a particular operation or

[12:51] every department? You know, we did something similar um with our IT a few

[12:56] years ago where we worked with Northern and the uh Northern Illinois University

[13:01] and the Center for Governmental Studies who came and did a review of all our

[13:06] technology uses. Um but that was several months. Um and they gave us

[13:12] recommendations for you know improving our efficiency with that. So I would

[13:17] just look for some um guard rails on what we would be asking them.

[13:22] » Yeah. So with my limited knowledge of all the different kinds of things that

[13:26] they could look at, I just wondering if there was something like with Yeah. all

[13:30] the operations or even I know we talked about like golf course like we're trying

[13:34] to improve there like maybe there's an opportunity to like dive deeper and kind

[13:38] of get some benchmarks from them in that regard. We have a recommendation coming

[13:43] to the board next board meeting um for the folks that are looking at the golf

[13:49] course, the food and beverage operation. Um we can um look at what maybe some

[13:56] other um communities have done for operational audits and you know the

[14:01] depth of those and the costs of those and the time frame.

[14:05] » Okay, thank you. >> Any other questions? Lauderback would

[14:10] not be doing this. You you were anticipating someone else doing this

[14:13] audit or ladderback doing it? >> No, I was saying like for this year if

[14:16] we kind of I know we have to do the one for compliance purposes, but could we if

[14:22] we added on something with it with for their final year because after this we

[14:26] will be changing >> to I guess to everyone to administrator

[14:32] Schumanker's point um if we already have a consulting group coming in to look at

[14:37] the golf course. Is that right? >> Right.

[14:39] » So, we're paying that group. Do we want to be paying

[14:43] » I was even just saying for just the golf course. I was just trying to say like

[14:46] overall if there's like an operational efficiency just to get some more

[14:50] information that would help the village >> efficiency or financial like is that

[14:57] » well like financial I think efficiency. And

[15:00] » if I'm hearing you correctly, it's kind of like they're passing the baton off

[15:04] and you're trying you just want to make sure that the the final audit that they

[15:08] do is thorough. >> I I'm at

[15:12] » Yeah. So, I know when she was here, she said there was like more in-depth. I

[15:15] think we were like one time we were throwing out the term um

[15:20] uh what were we throwing out here? >> Forensic. Did you talked about

[15:25] » forensic? Forensic. I think those audits are usually done if there's like a

[15:29] reason to >> a problem. Right.

[15:31] » Fraud. Yeah. >> Right. But I was thinking more like if

[15:34] there was something like looking over like every contract we have and how the

[15:37] money is being spent and just kind of giving us like some more in-depth like

[15:42] you know here's where we're heavy on spend for for this versus benchmarking

[15:47] against other communities. >> Just from my experience I've heard of

[15:51] performance audits being done at the state level. I haven't really heard it.

[15:55] » Okay. >> Done much at the local municipality

[15:58] level. >> Okay.

[16:00] » But that's just from my knowledge. I don't know. I'd have to re

[16:03] » Could we ask them what other kind audits would they would do for our village that

[16:08] they would recommend to be helpful? >> Yeah.

[16:13] » Matt, I was really happy to see they didn't increase the price. was is there

[16:18] going to be an increase possibly for second and third year based on what they

[16:25] uh quoted us last board meeting or >> uh there's a chance so we would go to a

[16:30] full RFP next year and >> yeah there's a chance

[16:34] » this the offer we reviewed last time is probably off the table now right

[16:39] » correct >> the alternative

[16:41] » for a three-year contract >> offers can we ask can we make a point to

[16:47] to have that rebid process started earlier this year so

[16:53] that we're not kind of feeling pushed like we are this year to

[16:57] » Yeah, that's the plan. >> One year, you know, contract.

[16:59] » I'll start as soon as our audit's over. So, that'd be November.

[17:02] » Right. Thank you. >> Thanks, ma'am.

[17:05] » All right. If there's no further questions, that's all I've got.

[17:08] » Motion second. >> Motion.

[17:11] » Yeah, I second it. >> Motion by Trusty Leort, second by Trusty

[17:14] Dating. Clerk, please call the role. >> Trusty Hopkins,

[17:17] » no. >> Leaport,

[17:18] » yes. >> Sawansky,

[17:20] » yes. >> Badman,

[17:21] » yes. >> Dany,

[17:22] » yes. >> Ganzy,

[17:23] » yes. >> Motion carries.

[17:25] » All right. Takes us to uh Well, that completes our standing committee

[17:29] reports. Takes us to new business. Anybody have any new business or

[17:32] questions or trustees?

[17:37] » I just have a suggestion. And I don't know whether it's technically new

[17:41] business or not, but when the clock cameras come up for

[17:47] rebid or negotiation or renewal, I really would like to spend some time on

[17:53] looking at that contract and talk about it. I know there's a lot of issues

[17:59] swirling around Flock and their cameras and what they do with the data and

[18:04] everything like that. So, um I would like to take a look at that.

[18:17] » That's it. >> Okay.

[18:18] » All right. Can I get a motion to adjurnn?

[18:20] » So moved. >> Moved by Trusty Dy.

[18:21] » Second. >> Seconded by Trusty Swansky. Clerk,

[18:25] please call the role. >> Trusty Betterman.

[18:27] » Yes. >> Dany,

[18:28] » yes. >> Gany,

[18:29] » yes. >> Hopkins,

[18:30] » yes. >> Court,

[18:31] » yes. >> Swansky,

[18:32] » yes.

Village Board Meeting - February 17, 2026

Transcript