Video from Village Board of Trustees meeting – 4-10-14 (subtitle: rush Rush RUSH!)

Here is the agenda from the meeting so you can follow along.  Brian Bailey was not at the meeting, and the consent agenda item was removed from the agenda.

As you can see, there were a few agenda items to be tackled related to the Road Bond.  On that topic, there is also an new page on the Village website related to the Streets Program including the map and streets cost estimate that was presented at the board meeting.  You can access it here – Village Streets Program Information.

The agenda items started with a presentation from Speer Financial on the best way to proceed with the bond purchase.  It was decided that the 15-year bond is the best option.

Dave Vandervelde from Christopher Burke Engineering then presented the Streets Program as it will be going forward. Some streets have changed in regards to what work they will receive, and fine tuning is being done on the overall cost.   He expects that there will be sufficient funds to crack seal the balance of the streets in the village not otherwise having work done.  Trustee Wittenberg asked about the status of 65th Street (the street the village didn’t know was ours – which is in VERY bad shape) and President Andrews apparently hasn’t gotten any further about that conversation with the Township.  It has been deducted from the streets plan though – so by my calculation that’s at least $90,000 saved right off the bat.  As far as a time frame, the hope is to award the project by the end of May (June 1st would be the earliest date for “shovels in the ground”) and completion in or around October – taking an estimated 60-80 working days total for the work.  It was also decided to look into replacing the water main on Cascade (across from Blackhawk Park) and on Pontiac – while the roads are being torn up.  In a move that I disagree with, it was decided to have Ed Santen get a couple of bids for the water main work but NOT go through a formal bid process as would be best practice and in line with our village policy for work of this cost.  That is at least better than having him go to only one vendor and offer them the work (which was also discussed).

The next item on the agenda was the Resolution to Approve the Christopher Burke Agreement for the 2014 Road Improvement Project.  This agreement allows for payment to the Engineering firm of 7-1/2% of the design and construction costs for the roadway program – $175,000.  The kicker in this part of the meeting was that the Trustees did not have a chance to review the agreement as it had only been available for an hour or so before the meeting and it was 80 pages long.  (Yeah, this is the way to run a good government.)  The Village Attorney was asked what other options the board might have other than to just approve the agreement – the attorney had nothing to offer.  (Really?  Nothing?? Yup.) Rather than take a week and review the agreement, check other options, do some due diligence about what is appropriate or customary for these types of agreements and charges, etc. and maybe hold a Special Meeting  next week after completing some research on the topic,  the Board just passed the Resolution.  Unanimously.  I can’t even tell you how disappointing that was to see.  And please know that we also pay the Engineer a monthly retainer that comes to about $30,000/year.  Someone needs to FOIA payment records to the Engineering firm to see what and why we pay for with that….

The Electric Aggregation Agreement Resolution was also passed with some discussion, but no real research proceeded the conversation about what was pricing was being contracted currently with other municipalities.  Amy Wittenberg was looking at a website during the meeting to try to see what rates other municipalities were currently contracting  for – and in fact seemed to find information that the rate we are being offered was higher than others she was seeing online at that moment, but in the end the trustees just went with their gut and the idea that they needed to approve the resolution RIGHT THEN.

The Purchasing Agreement agenda item (#6) was tabled to the next meeting.

Finally, the new Village Administrator John Brooks presented the possible use of collection agencies to collect overdue fines from village residents owed to IHP.   He made a good presentation and will be continuing to look into this as an opportunity to collect outstanding monies for the village (every little bit helps).