Peoria delays cannabis ordinance, directs staff to revisit zoning and social equity provisions

two ordinances animal clerk how are we doing on the telephone both okay great good evening everyone I'd like to call the me the special meeting of the city council to order like to welcome everyone in our city council audience as well as our listening audience at wcbu I also like to welcome the audience watching on cable channel 22.

this is a special policy session on the Cannabis regulation and the tax act we are going to meet from five o'clock until about 10 minutes until 6 so that we have time to shut down and bring things back up for our regular six o'clock meeting if we need to continue the discussion at another time we'll arrange to do that clerk the council mics are open can you please call the roll mayor Ali council member Allen president council member sir council member Graham here council member Jackson here council member Jensen present council member Kelly here council member Euler council member rickenbach here council member rodrigal and council member Val Pula present we have a quorum president Madam mayor thank you a notice was received by two members of the Peoria city council in accordance with rules established by ordinance number 16142 and the members will be deemed authorized to attend the meeting electronically in less emotion objecting to the members electronic attendance is made seconded and approved by two-thirds of the members of the city council physically present at the meeting if no such motion is made and seconded then the request by the members to attend electronically shall be deemed approved by the city council and the presiding officer and shell declare the requesting members present those members attending electronically our council member members Jensen and council member valpulla whatever I'm pleased join me and stand for a moment of Silent prayer or silent reflection followed by the Pledge of Allegiance liberty and justice for all right McClure 22-349 is a communication from the city manager and the deputy Corporation Council with a request for a policy session on the Cannabis regulation and Tax Act and we need a motion to open the policy session okay moved by council member Allen seconded by council member rock regal cash your ballots councilmember Jensen aye councilmember valpulla hi motion passes unanimously Mr manager oops um okay Council thank you madam mayor um two and a half years ago we sat around the Horseshoe and had very similar discussions on cannabis and now here we are to talk about where we are with medical cannabis where we are with recreational Cannabis some of the policy decisions that were made in 2019 and then from listening to your conversations the types of policy decisions that you would like to revisit perhaps this year so I'm going to start with just a brief overview of medical cannabis in 2014 it started out as the compassionate use of medical cannabis program act it was intended to be a pilot program and that became permanent in 2019.

it allows Illinois residents who have qualifying conditions to register with the state in order to obtain cannabis for medical use in 2014 there were 12 qualifying conditions when I did this presentation for you in 2019 there were 35 qualifying conditions and when I checked yesterday there are currently 53 qualifying conditions on state or on record with uh or 52 qualifying conditions with the state of Illinois that allow someone to become a medical cannabis patient that allows the patient to purchase two and a half ounces of cannabis every 14 days now you'll notice there that it says a physician certification is required it is not a prescription it is not a prescription I will that bears repeating because many employers the city of Peoria included have had employees that have attempted to submit cannabis as an eligible patient prescription and we have denied those costs because it is not a prescription it is a physician certification it looks much like a driver's license and the doctor you have to have a physician-patient relationship and the doctor will certify you have one of the 52 conditions and they submit that to the state of Illinois in the additional material that we provided I thought it was interesting the top five conditions that people seek medical cannabis for number one being chronic pain number two being PTSD number three being migraines number four osteoarthritis osteoarthritis and number five is cancer medical cannabis patients in Illinois are allowed to home grow five cannabis plants medical cannabis patients are the only ones that are allowed to home grow cannabis plants and it is substantially less expensive from a tax perspective to be a medical cannabis patient as it is subject to the one percent state tax but otherwise it is uh generally exempt from any local taxes it's treated as any other qualifying drug Statewide there are a little over two hundred and thirty five thousand approved applications interestingly enough I found that 1 000 of those are actually under the age of 18.

and when you look at the conditions for youth that qualify them to be patients the number one through three would be autism PTSD and seizures there are a little over 138 000 active patients Statewide they use 55 dispensaries and you can see that the 2022 retail sales by the medical dispensaries or staggered amounts of money 237 million dollars and the total retail sales since November of 2015 for just the medical cannabis dispensaries has been a little over 1.5 billion specifically looking at Peoria we have Trinity Compassionate Care that is a medical cannabis dispensary in 2019 it had 1 220 registered patients in 2021 it had a little over 2 800 patients about 133 percent increase over when we first started tracking those numbers again if you drill down into the numbers for Peoria County we have a little over 1500 active patients that's because in 2021 the state actually changed how medical cannabis patients can register or obtain product from a dispensary they used to have to decide on one dispensary and use only that dispensary when Illinois put the intellitrac system in place which allowed them to better track these patients they're allowed to use more than one so therefore when you look at the Peoria County data you can see the difference in the word from qualifying to active patients for regulation we do have zoning restrictions for medical cannabis dispensaries they're treated generally like pharmacies they're special uses in all commercial districts permitted in industrial districts prohibited in all other districts including form districts and we do require a business license similar to what we require for recreational cannabis moving on to the Cannabis regulation and tax act that went into effect January 1 of 2020 and it legalized recreational consumption possession and the sale of cannabis products in Illinois what that allows is for adults that are 21 or older they can possess cannabis for recreational use subject to some limits based on your residence or non-resident status they can have 30 grams of cannabis 5 grams of concentrate and 500 milligrams of a cannabis infused product with THC those limits are cumulative so it doesn't mean either or it means you can have all of those at one time one question that I think comes up a lot is after those products are purchased where can they be used they're allowed in private residences and if authorized by a municipality they can be consumed on site at cannabis-based businesses we have not yet addressed that as a council we'll come back to that later this evening for discussion the list of words prohibited is much longer public places Motor Vehicles school grounds near someone that's under 21 near an on-duty school bus driver police officer or firefighter as well as any business or landlord can prohibit on private property individuals are allowed to transport the legal product they buy so when they're in a motor vehicle they need to be unsealed in tamper-proof containers another interesting fact is since this is still illegal on the federal level they are not allowed on federal grounds we do not have any federal parks in Illinois however although the federal Park Service I believe does run the Lincoln historic site so product use is not allowed apparently at the Lincoln Historic Site in Springfield thank you in 2020 when we started late 2019 when we started talking about cannabis dispensaries this was the map that the state put out and it has 75 I believe potential dispensaries on there I think when we added them up it's actually only 74 because there'd been a mistake and they'd included the Illinois Tollway Authority as a potential District but then quickly realized the mistake with the Illinois State Police districts in the rollout so there's actually 74 I think that were issued but in 2020 we issued the state issued 58 initial licenses and then it got really messy because in 2021 there were initially supposed to be 110 licenses issued in 2022 there were going to be some additional licenses issued they all got wrapped up in litigation involving the various lotteries that were to occur then there were to be corrective lotteries then there was additional litigation on how the corrective lotteries were going to be held and those licenses were all really held in advance until the spring of 2022 when we got some direction on how they were going to be released the governor in March of 22 22 said that he would issue 55 conditional licenses and that would go across all 17 BLS regions and those licenses were going to be for social Equity applicants what we discovered is substantially more than that were issued um but they're still outstanding at this point even though they've been issued by the state none of them have yet operated so let's talk just for a second about recreational Cannabis Statewide and this is the state map it's not really a very good map it's also in that additional information it's a little bit misleading because this includes the medical cannabis dispensary in Peoria but not sure why this is the map the state provided you can see that in fiscal year 2020 for the state the First full year that cannabis was legalized they had a little over 400 million dollars in sales by 2021 that was 1.1 billion and in 2022 1.5 billion dollars is what the state reported in cannabis sales Illinois has a seed to sale system so that every plant that is grown has an RFID tag and when those products are sold they can ultimately trace it back to the exact plant in the cultivation Center that was that grew it right now there are approximately 185 licenses available there are a little over 100 of those our social Equity applicants that are looking to cite their businesses um if you drill into some of the additional material that we provided it's interesting that usable marijuana is the number one product typed but it is a close second to extract for inhalation and then infused Edibles are also very popular in Peoria we have two existing cannabis facilities the location at 3125 North University is our medical and recreational facility when the state first authorized recreational licenses those that already had a medical dispensary license were offered really the first opportunity to open at their medical site and then they were also offered the opportunity to have a secondary license which Trinity took advantage of I believe 23081 West Glen is in District 4 and 3125 North University should be I believe in District Two now the zoning board has also approved three additional special use permits the city council has also approved Three Special use additional special use permits you can see those were at 5001 North University 4 600 Brandywine and then 3929 West War which most was most recently addressed by the city council last week the zoning commission also had an application for 7628 North Route 21 and that will come before the Council on October 25th that application was submitted by cardinalventures LLC all those additional special uses that have been approved by the zoning board or the city are a combination of both are all cited in District Four so the policy decisions that were made in 2019 were to allow recreational Cannabis to implement some reasonable zoning restrictions at the time council did not feel like they had enough information and the market was a bit uncertain to make decisions about on-site consumption and that was specifically reserved they did impose a tax and we did decide to require a business license generally recreational Cannabis was allowed for all types of cannabis-based businesses including craft Growers cultivation centers dispensaries infusers and processors the city has only seen applications for dispensaries to date the city council also adopts some reasonable zoning restrictions it required minimum distance limitations of 500 feet to a child care facility school areas where youth would be recreating in churches much like medical cannabis facilities they are permitted in industrial they are special use in commercial and they are prohibited in form districts I note again that on-site consumption was reserved not long after the city council adopted their licensing ordinance in 2019 the state of Illinois revised smoke-free Illinois to amend the code that would allow some on-site consumption of a vapor product if it's authorized by the local government the business maintained a specially designated area that area was limited to those that were 21 or older and the door to that facility or to that special area had to have a lock on it there is some litigation pending right now that would allow a city to issue temporary event licenses for cannabis clubs and tours the city council did impose the three percent tax in September of 20 2019.

I think this is the exact example we gave in 2020 or in 2019 and it looks like I should have updated it just a little I think the counting cannabis tax is actually slightly higher than three percent but it does give you a rough idea that there's about a 40 tax on a hundred dollars worth of product the tax structure is based on the THC level so if the THC level is over 35 percent it will be taxed at the highest rate all of the revenue from Cannabis sales going to the Cannabis regulation fund to pay for expenses of the program and then the Illinois sales tax is broken out to 35 percent of it going into the General Revenue fund 25 of it going into the R3 program 20 goes to the Department of Human Services for abuse and prevention 10 goes to the budget stabilization eight percent goes to lgdf and then two percent goes to a public education campaign the city did require a business license and you can see the fee schedule there again to date we have only had applications for a dispensary and both of our dispensaries are in at least their third year of Licensing with the city so after hearing discussion over the last few weeks we attempted to formulate um some questions to help guide the discussion of where we think you may want to go in 2022 that being does the council want to prohibit or limit recreational Cannabis does the council want to add any zoning zoning limitations does the council want to address on-site consumption and does the council want to amend the ordinance to address any social Equity issues so with that I will open it up for any questions or discussion sure thank you councils very good information we can start with the questions or or go right into discussion um mayor Ali I have some questions okay uh proceed councilwoman Jensen oh thank you madam mayor and thank you uh Council for this updated report I appreciate it I think it was at my direction last week um so I appreciate the information I do have a couple questions before we get into the policy issues um it's my understanding from the material and from your presentation there's a 185 licenses available have those already been approved by the state councilwoman that is correct um 74 of those are uh dispensaries that are not social Equity applicants the remaining licenses that were issued in this year's Lottery would all be social Equity applicants those have all been can at least the social Equity applicants have been conditionally approved by the state and they have 180 day time frame to find an appropriate site and to be up and operating before they receive a full license okay and what's the number of that that are that have conditional approval 110 ish oh sorry okay got it I wasn't sure if that was a different number okay I got it and um I think it's worth noting when we last visited the we were operating under the understanding that there were only going to be up to three licenses available in our district um but now that's that potentially is unlimited correct there's no longer a limit there is still a limit um we reported back that seven social Equity applicants could cite in our BLS region so uh just to back up a little bit in 2019 when this was rolled out there were going to be three licenses that would have went to our BLS region two of those um did cite and now there are potentially seven social Equity applicants that could cite in our BLS region an additional seven licenses I should say so that's in addition to the um the three we already have and does that is that also in addition to the um the five that are waiting for approval from the council or I'm sorry the four no great question the special uses that have been approved by the city council some are on the list of social Equity applicants that receive state licenses some are not on the list of applicants that received social Equity licenses so we believe that for some of those licensed applicants or I should say special use applicants they may have sort of jumped the gun and had a application in the pool with the state but we're not one of the successful winners of a license so at least two of those are not on the list um one of them is on the list that the council's approved and then the one that will be coming to Council on October 25th also does have a license from the state so in the near future there are only there is only one approved special use that could apply for a city license and then depending on the action the council takes on October 25th if that were to be approved they could also apply for a city license so I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly so two of the four that are pending have state approved licenses is that right yes and just so we're all talking I'm gonna go back to the slide so a special use permit was issued for 501 North University they do not have an additional license where they could cite a facility in the city of Peoria right now 4 600 Brandywine they do not have a social Equity license 3929 West war memorial they do have a conditional social Equity applicant and the application that's coming to Council on October 25th does have a social Equity conditional license okay and then as a follow-up what is the process is it a quick and easy process potentially for the two that have been approved but don't have a state license approval yeah good question 5001 North University I guess I should clarify that one a little bit that is an existing facility that's located in East Peoria that is new Med East Peoria LLC they did ask for a special use permit from the city however after they obtain the special use permit we had no further communication with them they did not apply for a business license so I suppose it's possible at some point if they wanted to attempt to locate their facility here they could ask for the license they could go through the licensing procedure I don't know if that is their intent or not as I said we haven't heard from them for 4 600 Brandywine I can tell you I find it unlikely if they aren't in this round of social Equity applicants I don't see them at least from the state process being able to obtain a license easily or quickly um we still have to struggle with the 100 license with 100 plus licenses that are out there right now that have to get cited okay as a follow-up why is the city why is the zoning commission even the council why is that he's coming to us if they don't have a state license yet I mean why were they approved isn't that one of the requirements yeah it's it's a little bit of a chicken and an egg situation that they have to show that they have a potential Zone a proper zonium for a business that they can locate in so they do need to show that to the state as part of their application process that is not for a regular dispensary license that is not the case for social Equity applicants who one of the provisions that as a social Equity applicant are given is they have some additional time to locate to find a suitable location for their business okay I guess if that's not part of our um requirements as we revisit this I think that that should be a requirement we should not be considering or approving any um special use permits for a business that doesn't have a state license to operate so that's my two cents for on that issue but I'll move on um my other my other series of questions is about the I guess the the tax to three percent cannabis tax that we charge is that capped by the state three percent is the maximum tax that you could impose okay that's what I thought but I just wanted to make sure keep in mind that is short yeah if I may councilman thank you keep in mind that is your city cannabis tax you still have a city sales tax on top of that okay and do we know um or could we get that figure I know you've given us some figures for well like state revenue but I'd like to know what um the city Revenue has been from these dispensaries for the last three years what the city has I know I've asked that in the past but that would be helpful as we're considering all of this the the difficulty with that is that we can't disclose that publicly because we only have two operators or one operator in the the community right now and the Illinois Department of Revenue doesn't want that disclosed until there are multiple applicants or multiple facilities in your community to be able to disclose that tax information remember we can we can we can get you that we can get you the information but we we just can't disclose it publicly okay I would appreciate that information council member there's there's a lot of questions there's a lot of questions waiting so I'm going to move to the next question and we can Circle back around okay could I just ask one follow-up related to that could when you give us that figure um manager you're could you also give us a comparison to what what we get for the liquor fee or the the revenue from from liquor or is that to um no I think we can I think we can get that information for you okay thank you you're welcome council member Euler thank you madam chairwoman this may be completely impossible to answer but I'll ask it anyway in case you do have some information I notice obviously every year over year the amount of new patients is increasing is there any kind of an idea of what a threshold for a facility is or you know how how much can be sustained or is it over saturation just kind of curious if there is kind of any Baseline out there expectations that's a great question when we talked about this and learned about it in 2019 the state projections where it would take five years for the market to fully bear and and play out what true consumption volume and consumption data was going to be because it was very easy for those that were medical cannabis dispensaries to add on recreational licenses because they already had a supply chain they already had their Transporters they already had those processes in place other dispensaries had to struggle to sort of keep up with that if we're talking solely about just medical patients I think you will continue to see it to grow if you look at Nationwide it is something that more and more states have approved from a medical basis and you do see a substantial increase at the same time the state is running the medical cannabis program they're also piloting parts of it as an opioid reduction or avoidance program and we provided some of that information where you can see that there are some statistics that are proving that that that's bearing out from a medical perspective was your question just about medical patients I'm sorry either one just curious you know is there does the need grow as we create more facilities or approve more facilities or do we reach a point where we've allowed more than is really necessary and just wondering what if there's any idea what the need really is either way I'm not sure we know yet and as the states around Illinois continue to perhaps loosen their cannabis restrictions you may see some of that demand lesson because people won't be crossing the border into you know our border towns or even Peoria to obtain products that they can then obtain in their own state so I think when the states that it would take us five years to really understand consumption levels I think they were pretty accurate with that thanks that's helpful council member reaganbot thank you madam mayor going back to the I'm specially use permitting process this is perhaps a question for director Doolin or assistant director Allison it's my understanding the special use permit from at the time it's approved is valid you have two years to activate it if you will do we know off the top of our head that 5001 North University that's got to be closing down that two-year Mark doesn't it I mean we we don't need to answer that specifically but my point is that even though these permits have been issued that doesn't guarantee and perhaps to address councilwoman Jensen's concern we could cut that could we cut that in half to a year to say if a special use is not used utilized within a year that the permit goes away we could for this and I think that that would be reasonable anybody that is looking to have that before they can get their state license should be up and operational within 180 day time frame so that would seem like a very reasonable proposal if we want to cut that to a one-year period for cannabis-based special uses I know that they all three of the ones we listed are still active but we will report back on what those exact expiration dates are thank you very much I also think you you alluded to this in your previous comments that whether there's Federal action now with the president issuing some Pardons and there could be some momentum in Congress or some implications that would have National impact which would drastically change the landscape so we need to keep that in mind as well and just an antidote about the demand for it for the facilities at IML I was at a a session on retail enticement and you know what the number one um read commercial developers the number one thing they're locating right now is car washes yeah we see them all over and and we've we've had that discussion many times around this horseshoe but Car Wash that's a national Trend and we think we've got more car washes than we could possibly use the number two thing is chicken restaurants and um I think we bear that out as well but I just say that to say that as far as supplying the demand for it I want to be respectful of those who were Professionals in that area because I I can assure you I'm not so thank you I'm glad we have some follow-up later but that was sure council member seer thank you madam mayor just a few questions here and I'd like to make a motion also Mr manager the last couple years we've had line items for revenues from Cannabis as those line disappeared no we have a there we have a cannabis use tax that we get from the state it's it's a state dollar amount I was just looking at that where um we collected when it first started in 2020 we collected 67 000 on that um in 2021 we collected 156 000 in 2022 we're estimating that we're going to come in with iml's estimates at about 203 thousand dollars and then next year it'll be roughly about two hundred and eighty three thousand dollars for that cannabis use tax so just to make sure I understand is that the 1.75 percent or is that the full this is the use tax this is the this is a state use tax that gets collected Statewide and then distributed out from the Cannabis proceeds that that um Deputy Corporation Council kapusca was just talking about so the sales tax issue will get you those numbers which is a separate matter and we'll calculate it of sales tax are you going to get the numbers for the three percent and the 1.75 or the total 4.75 it'll be 2.75 you you have our our one percent States sales tax plus the 1.75 local home rule sales tax and the three percent cannabis tax 5.75 then is that correct okay thank you uh Madam mayor um I'd like to make a motion under the zoning slide here I've noticed the last few days there's only one permitted use that we have in Peoria as we grow these numbers I think it's important that uh as our attorney just said that these facilities are like drugstores I mean they seem to be popping out where high traffic areas are at I'd like to change the permitted use that's the only one we have in industrial park to a special use like the rest of the city so my I'd like to make that as motion please so move can you move to move to change the um the permitted to a special use for industrial industrial district and be my motion is there a second seconded by council member Graham I have a point of order art can you make motions in a policy session I think it may be most appropriate for us to take all this feedback for example changing the expiration date of the special use permit prohibiting them in the industrial zoning districts we will bring that back in an ordinance so I think tonight we're just looking for feedback so that we know how to bring those amendments back to you so it'll be just a direction for you for the staff then thank you very much thank you thank you madam mayor strong Allen thank you madam mayor um I have a few questions uh here uh Corporation Council kapuska when it comes to candidates seeking approval uh for a site application uh do they have agreed upon purchase agreement for the the site that they're looking to purchase or a lease agreement for the special use permits that we've the most recent to they have uh one or both of those yes okay um I definitely agree with councilman randenbach of us looking to change the duration of the special use permit because I think it puts us uh in a weird predicament where essentially we are having our our hands tied by someone who may not even ever materialize and then also too I want to be respectful for other potential business owners in this space that may be looking to set up shop here in Peoria and if we are looking to possibly come up with uh a certain amount that we allow if we are essentially waiting on someone to you know finally get their act together we may turn we may lose businesses and so I think we definitely need to consider that um I want to talk also about I know there was some discussion with councilmember Jensen a couple weeks ago regarding the social Equity applicants and their ability to be able to establish themselves less than 1500 feet of an already established dispensary can you talk a little bit about where that language came from uh as you inserted that in our local ordinance police thank you councilman excellent question and we did some additional research because like other communities that have been flooded with this the results of the additional licenses being issued we were struggling with the citing issue for social Equity applicants as well as many other communities so the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation just came out with an additional policy document that clarified social Equity applicants can operate within 1500 feet of a pre-existing dispensary that had early approval or that had early approval for the secondary site for Peoria that means both of our Trinity facilities that they could operate within 1500 feet of one of those additional sites what it went on to say because now we have a bunch of new licenses all trying to find locations at the same time social Equity applicants cannot operate within 1500 feet of each other but then some of us asked well how will they know because they're all trying to get licenses at the exact same time what locations are they identifying and who who's is it who's there first how are we supposed to determine that what they said was the department recognized that they could issue licenses to operate within 1500 feet of each other so they will still award to each location because they don't consider either one pre-existing so even though the statute says if there's an existing business an existing cannabis dispensary who's a social Equity applicant another social Equity applicant is not going to be allowed to locate within 1500 feet of them but if one were to open so if one were to open tomorrow and a month later that would be considered a pre-existing business somebody couldn't locate next to them but if two of them were proposing to operate side by side in the same facility maybe they know it maybe they don't know it the state would issue licenses to both of them because neither one of them are pre-existing okay all right that was a lot the same way to take in there um and so I guess my um comment to that is you know we are still in the Genesis of this I know it appears from a visual standpoint that we're getting bombarded with licenses but we see that these licenses aren't all they're not all coming to fruition and I think we need to just be very careful of what regulations we put in place right now until we watch this thing play out um I think we may see that and time will tell maybe it might be better to have these dispensaries in a concentrated area similar to car dealerships um that might be the best business model for that industry and it might be the best for our community as well too I think again time will tell so I just want us to be very careful of what guardrails we're looking to put around this industry that is still just so new uh to us um when they just kind of answering your questions from your slide I'm very indifferent about the on-site consumption and the reason why is is because we have a product here that is legal to consume legal for you to purchase but property owners have the ability uh who own homes and apartments to say no you cannot consume this product inside of this residence and so what you're having is you're having consumers having to find other places to do it and then that's when you start getting the complaints of public you know smoking in public or consuming in public so I'm not sold on the idea of on-site consumption but my mind is opened up to it just be for the simple fact of you're able to legally purchase this project this product excuse me but then you're still having to find back door alleys or whatever to figure out how to consume it and I think that that is something that we need to consider um and then as far as a point of clarification uh based off of the new redisher king we only have one uh site uh approved in District Four uh and that's the Applebee's site so uh the Brandywine location and uh Trinity uh on both on University and Glenn is located in District 2 which is second to none so I just wanted them put that out there for clarification because I know that we have the one that's coming for uh site approval uh in District Four and shops at Grand Prairie so just for the constituents that are listening we only have one that is approved uh in District Four um just kind of looking at my notes real fast but yeah that's all I have right now though um again just I guess kind of just wrapping this up you know we really need to consider treating this how we do all other Industries because although there's still a stigma when it comes to marijuana um things have evolved and so we need to be uh you know just be aware of that and when we talk about possibly regulation you know and I'm not picking on any particular business but I've had constituents ask me why are all these smoke shops popping up why are all these vape shops popping up when you talk to Educators they're not complaining about kids smoking weed anymore they're complaining about kids getting their hands on the Vapes you know things have evolved over time and so I think we just need to be very careful about what industries we decide to regulate based off of possible our morals or our values based off of what this was you know 20 30 years ago thank you madam mayor you're welcome there's a lot of interest in this discussion and we have a lot more people that want to council members that want to contribute to the discussion so I'm going to ask that we continue the discussion until 6 15 tonight so as not to interrupt or lose the momentum here remember grayup Second District well I wonder if our lawmakers in Springfield would consider appropriating Monies that would directly correlate with the number of dispensaries that are allowed in any given part of our state to help combat lung cancer or psychiatric issues that affect behavioral issues that affect our youngsters not to mention our adults nobody seems to want to talk about that and for years of course there was no discussion about the harmful impact oh we wrapped our arms around this and we think this is the second coming of peanut butter and it is not and I'm saying 20 years from now maybe less we'll look back on all of this and realize how wrong it was I hear where we have a disparate impact of cancer in many of our minority communities females for example in our minority communities who get cancer they're the result of their treatment is less likely to be successful it's been well reported it's an empirical fact and yet here we go we just can't approve enough of these that is why I had absolutely no heartburn tightening the circle around the number of these things that we're going to allow in our city and that's why councilman Sears recommendation for direction for future legislation since this is a policy session get a respondent cord with me and that is why at the last meeting I am predictable perfectly predictable I suggest that at some point we take a look at a moratorium on any more of these in our city of Peoria because that's what we can control this is Peoria City Council thank you council member Kelly uh just a moment we've got who is is that councilman valpulla okay I've got a couple people ahead of you and I'll Circle back to you councilman okay thank you you're welcome uh thank you madam mayor uh just a few points uh the if I understand uh Corporation Council what was said and this is regarding something that councilwoman Jensen brought up the state licensing requirements one of the requirements is that they've this potential licensee already has local approval is that correct for non-social Equity applicants you have to have your site identified and Zoning confirmed that they are proposing a location where the business can operate correct okay okay so we can't acquire that they have a state license before begin the process be hesitant to make that recommendation because it would or could impair all the new social Equity applicant licenses that were just issued from citing okay thank you secondly I think I think you said that the counties uh tax rate has just increased a little Mr manager I believe the County's cannabis tax rate is actually uh slightly higher they the counties were allowed to have um one tax rate uh I think there's this 3.75 instead of three correct that was something new or that's been around since the beginning I think counties were allowed to have a high a rate higher than municipalities from the beginning okay okay thank you um and uh councilman's here I'd be interested in um your rationale which I perhaps wasn't paying close attention to on why uh special use in an industrial area I don't have strong feelings either way but I don't uh I'd like you to expound on that a little bit um also you know I uh marijuana was around when I was young I am by a little but not much but I think that the goal was always to get High that is impaired and I I wonder about on-site consumption if we if we have a place for on-site consumption and people take advantage of that then they hop in their car this doesn't sound like a very good formula as far as I'm concerned um I may be out of it I'm a little older than I used to be but that that concerns me I don't I don't understand the rationale for that if if the idea is to get high so um that's all I have Madam mayor thank you Madame mayor if I may councilman Kelly let me correct myself the city manager has corrected me that the county adopted a three percent um cannabis retailers occupation tax the counties were actually allowed to have a tax that was up to 3.7.5 in unincorporated areas of the county and then three percent in the municipalities but they are at three according to the city manager thank you Council council member Rodrigo thank you madam mayor and a lot of good questions today and uh actually I've been able to sort of draw lines through a lot of my questions that I had up to this point but um two questions remain I think one is for the city manager um and it kind of goes back to you know one of the selling points of this I think down in Springfield was dollars that would be returned to um communities that needed that those dollars to come back that had been disadvantaged through the the food's project product being illegal um but I've never seen relationship so I just want to make for sure we're that there isn't one that I somehow missed if we limit the number we're not I guess punished in a way the dollars from the state still can come to the communities that might have grants or things that come forward is that correct I don't think that there's any restriction on those that that's the R3 program that the state has I don't think there's any restriction on that if your community has made a decision to restrict the number of of um establishments in your community or not so there's no percentage of you have to create this much percentage or have this many outlets to be able to have um and some of them are organizations that are in our area some are different different groups that might apply but all of those would be safe no matter what we do here to I think I'd want to confirm that but I don't believe I've seen I I haven't seen anything in the regs that would that would say that that's restricted but we could certainly look at that and report back we because I think that some of those programs that have come forward have been you know great programs we want to make for sure that access is there and and I just myself have never seen that and I can't imagine that that would be sort of part of the the situation where if you have so many or if you allowed then okay my next question is and I guess this is just on the um on the site usage if you decide to use on-site um and I I don't know how this works so you go you buy you're in a locked area and you have more than you need for the night or that event but yet you've got a in the in the laws account of Springfield it has to be in a sealed container original from the purchaser to be able to be legally transported from the dispensary to home how does that work or how does that how does that operate and um I guess that may be a future question to be answered if we ever do consider that and I'm not saying that we we should or shouldn't um but I guess do you have an answer for how that gets transported I can help explain the answer when they are using it at a dispensary or a cracked grower or something similar to a Tasting Room the product would then after usage leave very similar to Illinois's you know Merlot ago law that the facility is responsible for putting the tamper-proof seal on your wine if you take it from a restaurant they the facility would be responsible for Trans putting it in the right container for them to take it in the car I don't have a good answer for you on how that is supposed to work when they are at a cannabis consumption lounge and they obviously have to open the container or the package for usage and then if there is some left legally I think the answer would be they couldn't take that with them okay and then I I would just um Echo support for the direction that was given by council members here um you know I think actually to even streamline our regulations and I think it's it's simpler for everybody the the more simplified and easy to process and talk about and by being able to have have the industrial areas come through the same sort of setup because it seems like beforehand we're saying okay well it's okay if it goes there um and I think it probably is easier for our full community if we have the same sort of dialogue across across the thing because I've also heard from some of our industrial Neighbors who even though they haven't seen them pop up in there they may have questions or concerns that get addressed during the special use process but wouldn't in their in their situation so I would support his Direction on that by making it uniform thank you you're welcome thank you madam mayor you're very welcome council member valpulla uh thank you madam mayor hot stuff thank you Corporation Council for the presentation I'll wait I am participating virtually I I got a a couple of clarification questions the first one is regarding the licensing part so as I read you know the the people are the the patterns should buy should get a license from uh state of Illinois in liquor and cannabis board right can you repeat the last can you repeat that the in question so so apart from the license granted by the state of Illinois liquor and cannabis board do we have any regulatory Authority as for as for the city of Peoria to develop rules and regulations for licensing and oversight because right now we only are worried about the distances but let's say going forward if we have uh Growers and cultivation centers infusers so do we have are we planning to have any regulatory Authority on that Council thank you councilman it's an excellent question we do have a licensing ordinance that it puts some additional property distance restrictions so for example you can't be within 500 feet of a school or a daycare and logistically how that process works at least for how it worked for the first two dispensaries were once they had their state approvals they went through the special use permit and once they had both the state permit or the state license and the special use permit then they submitted their business license application to the city and we reviewed it to make sure that it complied with those additional minimum distance restrictions I will say last week we had an interesting scenario we were where we were mailed an application by a cannabis dispensary that nobody in the city had been working with or dealing with they did not have a special use permit for the application they had listed on the application and we very promptly returned it to to them with an explanation of our process you had another question councilman didn't you yeah I have the second question um second question it's more more of uh you know going back to those pointers that you provided so one of the questions you say yeah it says that does the council want to add uh does the council wanted to add a private or limit recreational Cannabis I just wanted to answer it I mean my thoughts I wanted to put my thoughts and then conclude there so uh one of the things scientifically you know apart from all the contraindications you know on-site consumption again it's it's uh it's a discussion point today so usage of more cannabis you know it it leads to in you know violent Behavior because it it's intoxication May negatively impact cognitive abilities and reduce self-control historically there were dispensaries that had you know these dispensaries had delitorious effects on the neighborhoods which could lead to increased crime on one side we have an agenda item that we are trying to you know supplement money towards the violence prevention program and also apart from the fact that we know having these uh having more of these facilities may lead to Crime I mean I was just reading a recent article in the general of Criminal Justice so it it says it says there these these cannabis or the creational Cannabis could lead to increased crime so so I I actually uh you know wanted to um you know you know piggyback on uh What uh councilman grave said I would I would actually like to know uh what the council thinks about having a temporary dance or a cap it doesn't matter how what the number is but and are we uh you know I just wanted to know if we are in favor of tapping uh the the recreational cannabis so that's that's that's where I am and then second thing is uh you know I was reading the the uh the literature that was provided so we say that it's the facilities are let me go back to my paper or something okay so in the policy decision regarding the zoning restriction so minimum distance limitation of 500 feet to a child care facility a religious places youth recreation and churches so he's 500 feet of gold standard Corporation Council I just wanted to learn about this as well because if you are saying reasonable journaling restrictions send the USA limitation of 500 feet so he's 500 feet a gold standard because I read in a couple of articles that the cities in Washington and Oregon have a thousand feet distance from schools religious places and youth recreational centers so I'm just you know wanting to learn whether it is a standard process thank you councilman I think I can provide some information on both of those you certainly have the authority to Institute a moratorium whether that's temporary or permanent now from a procedural and timing perspective I you do want to keep in mind that the majority of the social Equity applicants that were listed Seven of those being in our BLS region were issued at the end of July or early August of this year those applicants will have 180 days to identify their location and be up and running so if that moratorium or ban were to last longer than that time period that could in effect prohibit any of them from siding inside the city of Peoria simply from a timing perspective you will want to keep that in mind as to the 500 feet we landed on 500 feet because we made that consistent with what the rules and regulations were for our liquor code that could certainly be increased if you wanted to provide some additional limitation either between those sensitive areas or if you did want to adopt some type of restriction that would prohibit the facilities themselves from locating within so many feet of each other you could do that although I think I've explained sort of the difficulty we may have with the state issuing social Equity applicants as social Equity applicants sort of all in one tranche this this last group of licenses thank you so much you're welcome councilman uh just a final uh comment expressions from me I you know we are all we all have our opinions as a related as it relates to cannabis and this regulation and the tax act and we also listen to our our residents our constituents and we're getting feedback pro and con right as it relates to this but I'm just wondering if we might find a vehicle for getting broad level input from the residents of the city of Peoria as it relates to whether we should limit recreational Cannabis uh their fillings on on-site consumption additional zoning or distance limitations and social equity applicants and I'm reminded of the survey that we did for rail we contracted with a company called images that had an electronic survey that went out and asked 10 questions of residents of really the region and and broader and it got feedback on on you know that particular topic it was in that case it was passenger rail but I'm wondering if we might do something similar as it relates to some of these questions and work with um images to get us electronic survey out there so we're driven by data we're driven by input from our constituents as it relates to this issue of cannabis any thoughts councilman riggenbot I think getting input from our constituents is always a good idea my one red flag that came to me is how do we ensure that it's Peoria residence responding so I I don't know how you did that with passenger rail that was more of a broader Community thing so we asked zip codes or we could right yeah so you have to be an honor System I think that's a good question that would be something I would I want to make sure we quantify also sure councilman mayor uh just just a second I'll get to you councilmember Jackson thank you uh Madam mayor I appreciate your comment about uh the idea of a public hearing I and I have similar concerns that uh my colleague Mr rickenback brought up as to uh the authenticity of such uh com surveys or that we would get during a public hearing um I I get the fact that this is now part of our um what we we have in our communities around the country but I must say um I I cannot help from uh going back to thinking about uh long-term effects of things like drinking smoking um and personally I'm somewhat protective because I've seen some much of the residual effects of alcohol drinking uh drugs and I I have to speak from that perspective uh so I am very open to Gathering the information and looking at it but I I am somewhat very concerned about the long-term impacts this could have on our community and I feel just like as with liquor stores payday loan companies I don't want a bunch of those in my community because of the long-term residual effects that we have seen and the impact on poor communities minorities and others and I'm just very very concerned about that in the long run sure thank you thank you councilmember Jensen um thank you madam mayor and I I think your idea of getting some public input is good I question whether a survey it's the right way to do it perhaps we schedule public meetings I believe we had some years ago when this first when we first knew that this was going to be made legal so I would support that um the the other thing though I am definitely in favor of putting some limitations I don't want the city I've said this over and over again to be saturated um I'm not against these dispensaries or cannabis um businesses but I don't want us to have too many and I also don't think we should have too many in one District or one neighborhood I think um it's dangerous I don't I don't want to have it be you know a concentration of dispensaries in one part of the city like we have a concentration of Payday Loan places on Knoxville I don't think that's healthy and that's good for the city so um that's where I'm at now and that's the directions I would give I think we probably need to have further another policy session and some further discussion of course that has enough direction of what to come back with but I am concerned about having too many in the city and especially in one neighborhood or one District um so that's where I'm coming from right now thank you thank you councilwoman Jensen councilmember Allen you want to wrap us up with your county thank you madam mayor I know we're in overtime right now so I'm going to go ahead and give my comments because I know that there's going to be some future discussion on this thank you okay great right good discussion for those tuning just now tuning in we're wrapping up a policy discussion on cannabis regulation and Tax Act I'm going to ask for a motion to close the discussion move by council member grab seconded by council member Kelly please cash your ballots so member Jensen aye council member valpulla I I just unanimously Madam Clerk we are at citizens opportunity to address the city council and the topic relates to the policy session on cannabis regulation and Tax Act do we have any members of the audience that want to address that okay we do not have an executive session so we are at adjournment of the policy session moved by council member Sierra seconded by council member Allen uh please cast your ballots need some help here Paul thank you councilmember Jensen aye councilmember Val Pula hi okay motion passes unanimously we are going to break for 10 minutes and come back and start our regular council meeting thank you go ahead and stop foreign please turn yourself as well better foreign perfect are you sure foreign yeah oh hi Jeff how are you doing good we're going to start in about one minute this is a one minute warning thank you very much councilman Rookery will called me before I even had my materials oh no it was amazing I was just checking council member valpulla council member Jensen yeah oh okay council member Val Pula yes okay we're good they're both there thank you thank you thank you everyone for your patience with us we just wrapped up a policy session on cannabis regulation but we're ready to get started with our our regular city council meeting uh it is about 6 30 almost pm on Tuesday October the 11th 2022 I like to call the meeting of the Peoria city council to order I also like to welcome everyone in our city council audience as well as our listening audience at wcbu I'd also like to welcome the audience watching on cable channel 22.

a notice was received by a member of the city council in accordance with rules established an ordinance number 16142 this is actually two members and the members will be deemed authorized to attend the meeting electronically unless emotion objecting to the members electronic attendance is made seconded and approved by two-thirds of the members of the city council physically present at the meeting if no such motion is made and seconded then the request by the members to attend electronically shall be deemed approved by the city council and the presiding officer and shall declare the requesting members present those members requesting electronic attendance or council members Beth Jensen and council members council member Karen valpulla Madam clerk the councilmates are open please call the roll council member Graham council member Jackson here council member Jensen here council member Kelly here council member Euler council member reagenbach council member rock regal and council member Val Bula we have a quorum present matamir okay thank you madam clerk I'd also like to welcome our new Corporation Council Mr Patrick Hayes to Peoria and to the Horseshoe welcome Mr Hayes [Applause] [Music] we are pleased to have you here do you want to make any comments thank you madam mayor you're very welcome as some of you know I was born and raised in Peoria Illinois had to work on nearly an entire career to gain enough credibility for the city manager to place this trust and confidence in me to be the Corporation Council I'm very pleased with the staff that's already on hand they're excellent as you all well know and so I'm grateful to them for welcoming me the way that they have and for the generous and warm welcome I've received from all of you at the council today thank you for the opportunity mayor thank you Mr manager for the opportunity I'll do my best to do well for the citizens of the city of Peoria and all of you thank you very much good to have you I'd also like to take this time to thank Miss Chrissy kaposta she's been our Corporation Council on an interim basis for probably almost three years and you know she's been at almost every council meeting and provided legal leadership for the city of Peoria so thank you for your leadership for the past three years and she's not going anywhere so she's still with us thank you please join me everyone and stand for a moment of Silent prayer or silent reflection followed by the Pledge of Allegiance as United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all Madam clerk you want to get us started we are at the proclamations we have one proclamation to recognize citizens Leadership Academy graduates those who are here would you come up front please foreign these faces look familiar whereas the city of Peoria is committed to partnering with other local units of government to best serve our community and whereas the city of Peoria has again partnered with Peoria County to offer a combined Peoria City County Citizens Leadership Academy and whereas citizens Leadership Academy is a Community Education course that raises awareness of the responsibilities of local government and the services we offer whereas citizens Leadership Academy allows participants an opportunity to experience local government in a unique Hands-On environment through a series of two-hour sessions and whereas many elected and appointed officials have given of their time to present the sessions to interested and involved citizens whereas participants had an in-depth look at local government facilities including the Police Department emergency communications center Public Works City Hall Courthouse jail coroner's office animal shelter Election Commission and the health department now therefore I redial lead mayor of the city of Peoria Illinois do hereby recognize and congrat congratulate the Peoria City County Citizens Leadership Academy in Peoria Illinois thank you is is Gretchen going to speak or who's going to speak on behalf hi how's it going uh my name is Nick rublitz I'm the communications coordinator for Peoria County I actually work in Gretchen's office I'm uh directly underneath her there uh thank you mayor Ali and thank you to the entire Council we really appreciate you having us here tonight as well as we'd like to thank all of the city functions that participated in this program said he works the police department you name them yourself so thank you very much for participating in this CLA is actually a little over 10 years old at this point and the reason I know that is because I found files in my desk from 2009 so we know that much but it's a great program it's been going on for a while to give governmental departments the opportunity to educate the public on their function with each other their function in our everyday lives as citizens of Peoria and Peoria County and overall just a great way for the public to meet those officials and be able to see what happens every day both inside and outside we look forward to hosting it many more times throughout the next couple of years if I may I'd like to actually introduce some of the people came here tonight is that cool oh yeah yeah uh I'd like to introduce some of the people here tonight uh from your left or right uh Scott corsaut uh that's uh Gretchen amick this is Sharon Landis here um Camille Coates this is what that's uh uh Kendall Russell that's Johnny Jordan and REE mulebauer behind me so uh they're very excited to be here there were a couple people who unfortunately couldn't make tonight but they're just as grateful and thankful to all of you as well and I can assure you of that so thank you again and uh thank you just thank you congratulations [Applause] Madam clerk we are at the minutes councilmember Euler thank you madam chair and woman I move to approve the minutes of the city council meeting held on September 27 2022 as printed they're seconded by council member Allen please cash your ballots council member Jensen hi council member valpulla hi motion passes unanimously we have one town item 22-334 is a request from the town officials to approve the September 2022 actual expenditures and to approve the October 2022 anticipated expenditures for the town of the city of Peoria councilmember Jackson uh Madam mayor I just wanted to make a motion uh that item number 22 3334 be approved okay is there a second I'm not going to buy council member Graham any questions or comments please cash your ballots councilmember Jensen aye council member valpulla hi motion passes unanimously Adam Clark we are at the consent agenda 22-335 is a communication from the mayor and Corporation Council with a request to approve the Declaration of local state of emergency 22-336 is a communication from the city manager and director of public works with a request to approve the purchase of the properties located at 4300 Southwest Adams Street and 4206 Southwest Adams Street Peoria Illinois in the amount of seventy six thousand dollars for the southern Gateway Corridor Improvement project 22-337 is a communication with a request to approve a contract with Rock Valley Health to conduct annual physicals for all commission fire firefighting Personnel for three years in the amount of 84 105 dollars per year 22-338 is a communication with a request to receive and file the month ended August 31 2022 unaudited financial report in 22-339 is an appointment by mayor Ali to the Transportation Commission with a request to concur of nada nafaka term expires June 30th of 2025 and that concludes the consent agenda thank you are there any items to remove from consent council member Sierra thank you madam mayor 22-335 please any other items can I get a motion to approve consent councilman rickenback seconded by councilmember Jackson please cash your ballots councilmember Jensen hi councilmember valpulla hi motion passes unanimously Madam Clerk 22-335 is a communication from the mayor and Corporation Council with a request to approve the Declaration of local state of emergency council member Sierra thank you madam mayor Mr manager just like to get an update I mean the president President Biden says that emergency was over can you give us an update please why we're still have to have this this approved thank you so on the council communication if you look at item number two probably the biggest reason for us right now that we continue with the state of emergency otherwise and you know I think that we're still following the CDC guidelines regardless of what President Biden said that that we're following the number of cases that we have but number two talks about the temporary procedures for public boards and commissions that they can operate remotely and in accordance with the open meeting act by doing that that's probably the most Salient reason right now as long as the governor is continuing to extend that type of emergency declaration that allows our boards and commissions to meet remotely and that allows that work to still be conducted thank you sir move to approve move to approve Madam mayor second night council member Rick Regal councilmember Jensen aye councilmember valpulla hi motion passes unanimously Madam clerk we are at presentations 22-340 is a communication from the city manager and Deputy Corporation Council with a request to receive and file a presentation on the safety act Mr manager um thank you madam mayor we we have uh Deputy Corporation Council capusco here to to talk with the second presentation of the evening um but I didn't know if if councilman Graham might want to say a few words he made the request to to have this or this presentation be made so I just wanted to see if councilman Graham might want to say a few words first councilman gray up uh thank you mayor again um I'm going to be predictable and repeat what I've said before but I think it's important when we come here we should dispense with the D for Democrat hat and R for Republican hat we should be doing what's best for our people we have law enforcement agencies and or State's Attorneys in all 102 counties that continue to have grave reservations about the implementation of the safety act as it is currently written now we have been told that there's going to be even further changes these are going to have to be made in my opinion uh on or before the first of January of 23 to have maximal impact otherwise we'll be rolling out a law that is imperfect and not ready for prime time nothing should be done or allowed to be done in this state that would further imperil our brave men and women in blue who are out there every single day trying to stop this god-awful gunfire and the god-awful situation we have with many of our young people killing each other and all these funerals we've been having nothing nothing should prevent or stand in our way of curbing the horrible crime that's occurring in this community and the acts of juvenile delinquency nothing and so that's why it's so important in my opinion that our body here be made aware of what is happening with this law because it's going to affect every man woman and child in this state it's going to affect every man woman and child in the city of Peoria and guess what we're seating we are seated in seats of power if you will Municipal Power and if this thing rolls out and makes peria even more incredibly challenge than it is now in terms of our law enforcement we are going to have a lot to answer for so I'm going to ask for these periodic updates manager do you see any problem as we have developments uh with this I'm not saying slavishly has to be every one or two weeks or whatever but please keep us posted because this is so important for all of us we certainly can do that and have no problem in those developments exist I think even between the production of this presentation we've had several developments that occurred that Deputy Corporation Council kapiska can talk about but yes we can certainly keep the council abreasting thank you very much thank you thank you councilman it's an evolving legislation Council thank you madam mayor it's gone in 2021 the state of Illinois adopted the safety act which is short for the safety accountability fairness and Equity today Act it was a really broad bill that included Criminal Justice Reform on multiple subjects including cash bail police training and certification reporting requirements use of force detainee rights and officer misconduct among other things it set up three implementation dates starting in 2021 and ending in 2023.

of July 1st 2021 Anonymous complaints against police officers were no longer allowed so officers were not required to be informed of the name of the complainant who who made a complaint against them in addition it eliminated the requirement that there was a sworn affidavit that included or that accompanied that complaint it gave officers a duty to render Medical Aid so officers have a duty to render Medical Aid whether or not that Aid was required as a result of use of force there's a duty to intervene for unauthorized use of force no knock warrants only if body worn cameras are in use although there are some additional steps if a child or a vulnerable person would be in that location body worn cameras are now required for all police departments that is a requirement that based on your population will be in place for everyone even the smallest municipalities will have to comply with that in 2025 it also included some annual reporting some restrictions on when officers could view body worn cameras when they're writing reports there are some additional reporting requirements to the Illinois State Police and the Illinois criminal justice information Authority we have reports that have to go to the state police on a monthly basis if it involves mental health and use of force we have reports that have to go to the Illinois criminal justice Authority within 30 days if someone passes away as a result of our Police Department's use of force we have to retain police misconduct records permanently and then training we are now required to offer mental health screenings for our officers and they are required to have a substantial amount of Crisis Intervention training when dealing with members or of the public who have some mental illness in 2022 the law that went into effect involved police certification every three years through the Illinois law enforcement training and standing Standards Board as well as some reporting requirements if they engage in conduct that is eligible for D certification and if you look in section 6.1 of the Illinois police training act there's an entire list of offenses that would be considered the certifiable conduct three of those just as an example would be aggravated assault theft and criminal sexual abuse seen in the news lately are really the requirements that are going to go into effect January 1 of 2023.

one involves law enforcement misconduct that again Anonymous complaints which are now allowed can be filed with the proper board on any official misconduct an officer has committed and the board can investigate and initiate a decertification process monetary bail will be abolished January 1 2023 and I do want to point out the difference between the state system and the federal system on a federal level bail is generally not going to be required it's very rare it is much more common for State offenses and it's polished for certain offenses and conditions it gives certain conditions upon which pre-trial release may be granted or denied the judge now has the authority to determine release without an appearance and criminal defendants can be released on personal recognizance if defendants attend all their required Court proceedings they do not reoffend or commit criminal offenses additional conditions may be imposed if it will assure the defendant's appearance in court so a person arrested and with this presentation we provided some excellent flow charts from the Illinois courts that will help really walk you through the decision-making process so for persons arrested they can now be issued citations and a little of arrest um if they can show proper identification for traffic and Class B and C criminal misdemeanor offenses who pose no obvious threat to the community or have obvious medical or mental health issues they will have to appear within 21 days a person cannot be arrested for obstructing a peace officer unless there is an underlying offense there are lots of legal questions that are raised by those for example there are also traffic offenses that are a Class A misdemeanor so if you had something like reckless driving is it to be considered attractive fence or is it to be considered a Class A misdemeanor another provision of the ACT involves pre-trial release there's also an excellent flow chart on this that can help really outline what the process should be all persons charged with an offense shall be eligible for treat pre-trial release before conviction and it can only be denied when a person is charged with a detainable felony section 6.1 of the ACT is very clear about denial of fail and non-probational non-probationable felonies um and those would be things that are listed in the act that are non-probational felonies they do not present a real and present danger and they do not present see a safety or threat to others oh is there a lot of questions that have yet to be answered by the bill I think um those that are proponents of the bill and those that are opponents of the bill have agreed there's language that needs to be worked out we know that in veto session that there's already one bill that has been proposed Senate Bill 4228 was filed in September we also know that other agencies everyone from the State's Attorneys to the chiefs of Police Association to multiple legal agencies are all working on some language proposals that I we suspect we will see some additional amendments to either Senate Bill 4228 or some stand-alone bills what we know Senate Bill 4228 at least as of today says is it would amend the ACT to allow arrest for all felonies in class A misdemeanors and for the listening audience a felony would be something like murder armed robbery aggravated kidnapping or aggravated arson and a Class A misdemeanor is generally something along the lines of a DUI battery driving on a suspended license or fact arrest would be allowed when the officer reasonably believes an individual poses threat to the community when the officer reasonably believes arrest is necessary to discontinue criminal Behavior this bill would also remove the requirement that a person released on the citation is to be scheduled in court within 21 days we also know that the bill currently clarifies that the abolition of bail applies to offenses that are committed on or after January 1st 2023 that the pre-trial release presumption would not apply if the life sentence could potentially if the life sentence could potentially be imposed and pre-trial release conditions could include could include the protection of community and protection of witnesses and jurors other Provisions in the bill the courts do not have to explain why less restrictive conditions are ineffective when detaining defendants it eases the requirements for issuing warrants after a failure to appear and it allows the courts to consider whether defendants obstructed criminal justice processes finally it would add a section denying pre-trial release if charged with a crime where the court believes there's a risk that the defendant will not appear that the defendant will pose a danger to any other person or that the defendant will threaten a prospective witness or jurors again this is the proposed or this is Senate Bill 4228 which proposes to make changes to the existing safety act currently there are lawsuits pending by the State's Attorneys and will Grundy Kankakee Vermillion McHenry Brown and Joe Davies and McHenry counties I may have missed a couple in there today as well the lawsuits claim that no cat that the no cash bail provision violates the single subject law of the Illinois constitution and it also claims that the ACT violates the separation of powers Clause of the Illinois constitution so even if the legislature were to take no action on Senate Bill 4228 all of these lawsuits request a stay or an injunction until further language could be worked out so those are the facts as we know them to date with that I can answer perhaps a few questions about Bill but a lot of this is still yet to be determined and we did invite um leader Gordon Booth as well as State's Attorney Jody hoose and they are going to make themselves available following the veto session in December and come to council during that time council member Allen uh thank you madam mayor thank you Deputy Corporation Council kapuska for your presentation today I do want to thank Councilman Greg for bringing this forward I think it's important that we cut through the fog because there's a lot of fog right now surrounding this bill especially uh given the current political climate uh within our state so I think it's very important that the constituents listening uh realize that this is a very fluid situation a very involving situation be careful what you read online be careful what you read on the book of faces make sure that you are using credible sources just to make sure that you know the facts and we're not creating unwarranted hysteria so I look forward to Future conversations and bringing in uh various subject matter experts to make sure that the constituents they have the information that they need but I would also and not to put them on the hot seat but he's a cool guy so I know he doesn't sweat much but can we give the privilege of the four to Chief edger for real just to maybe provide his opinion or maybe just you know how you how are you currently feeling right now based off of that act as it's currently presented good evening you hear me yeah as as it sits currently there are things in the safety act that we all agree with obviously right Bodywork cameras Etc we need them but um as you said this is a very fluid uh situation with what's going on now in the safety act there's a lot of unanswered questions there are a lot of meetings that we've been in that we've been involved in as the Peoria Police Department uh with the state's attorney other sheriffs other states attorneys from around the state there's The Advocate size for the safety act to sit there along with the state's attorney to sheriffs and the Chiefs and there is still a lot of dialogue I think what we'll see is going to see some trailer bills in the near future this will be pushed off is what I believe is going to happen um so we are playing it day by day and we know that it's in January 1st that this is supposed to go in effect I don't think it will just based on conversations that I've been involved in and things that we've seen but obviously the big thing is the the pre-trial release and the bail reform is one of the bigger highlights that there's many discussions on both sides of the aisle on it so until we can until the legislators and everybody can get this together this is just day by day and we'll keep we'll keep doing our job the way we've been doing it and if something changes or they they enact something we will follow it thank you Chief if you would stay put just in case there's another question or two coming your way councilmember Graham uh chief on the portion of the presentation that said effective January 1 of oh gosh it should have said 23 right 20 23.

um I think it's wrong on our handout Mr manager uh when we talk about police certification every three years uh manager you're right I think the Chrissy or Deputy Corporation Council is backing up to that and I think that went into effect one one of 22 correct the certification piece I believe it was actually July 1st of 2022.

okay chief um on this police certification now we're one of the few relatively few police departments in the entire country that's professionally accredited through Kalia right [Music] um are there certification requirements by virtue of the fact that we're one of the professionally accredited police agencies one of the few I think part of only three percent of all the apartments Nationwide are there any certification procedures that we go through that initiate the need for us to fall under this requirement for already doing it yeah we would already be following it right to Kalia because it's part of the requirement to be certified and that that means continuing education for our officers and keeping them on The Cutting Edge as well I think operationally you and I have also discussed um some of the problems as to what happens if you make an arrest somebody one in the morning and a judge has to make a decision operationally you and I have opined about what that means if there's going to be like a doctor on call or a judge on call 24 there are many operational issues that have to be settled as well and have you received any Direction on that we've not received any guidance on any of that at this point again there's a lot of discussions on these topics we're just waiting for the guidance just like every other agency in the state okay well I don't want to belaborate Mayor I thank you very much and I'm mayor first of all I just want to make a quick comment about our budget where usually in the five years I've been here every time we have difficulties with the budget first need to be Cuts always certification and training so uh no no I don't know how is this going to work in a future budget but just something for you to keep in mind because you're in charge of your budget obviously hopefully the certification training won't be cut if possible uh number two accountability is a big word for me and this bill so far was written in a time of unrest where a lot of people were upset it seems to me like they were giving less and less accountability to our criminal uh so I'm very concerned about that for this bill I mean a lot of the cuts are really less accountability and I say that because here in a city of peor we get reports all of us get reports daily non-crimes that are being committed my question to you is this how is this bill going to change the criminal action of these minors especially minors but I'm being told the most crimes the computer are committed by kids from age 13 to 26 85 percent 13 to 26.

what if this law changed especially for the kids that are 13 to 17.

quite frankly it doesn't change how we're procedurally going to do our job we are going to continue uh to follow the law we're going to continue to make the arrest that we need to make I think most of what you're seeing is what's going to fall on the State's Attorney's office and those attorneys and I would rather let them answer how that's going to affect them and how they will issue bonds or no bonds to somebody that's committed a crime we will continue to do what we do as a policing agency and we will continue to make the arrest that we need to make issue the citations we will continue to do I think the ball now goes into the court of what's the court going to do thank you Chief thank you madam mayor and I think it's our early December meeting where we'll actually have the state's attorney present here and ready to answer some questions hopefully by then we'll have some new trailer bills and some new legislation hopefully there's some clarity by then I think we will thank you Chief thanks there's no more questions or comments can I get a motion to receive a file moved by council member Allen seconded by council member Rick Regal any other discussion please cast your ballots councilmember Jensen aye councilmember valpulla hi motion passes unanimously before we go to the next item I will be remiss if I did not acknowledge our Cub Scouts who are in the audience with us Cub Scouts from Charter Oak would you please stand up and be recognized thank you guys for your service and if you would just say your your names for us you can you can just kind of shout it out thank you for what you're doing and what you're going to do in the future for your community thanks guys Madam Clark we are at our second presentation 22-341 is a communication from the city manager and Public Works director with a request to receive and file a presentation on snow removal operations do you believe we're talking about snow okay Mr manager uh thank you we have with us our Deputy Public Works director Sai maroon who's going to walk through the presentation it is that time of year again where we need to have the the snow presentation so I'll turn it over to deputy director Murray thank you city manager um uh thanks uh for um once again on behalf of Public Works we're just always happy to be here to do this presentation we do it annually and I want to thank Madam mayor and the council manager and and staff and all the citizens that are actually listening to us tonight so we appreciate that so I am going to cover the uh the 2022-2023 season uh snow removal plan this evening and um this is our winter season Staffing we're going right into the Staffing levels because what I wanted to do right up front with this presentation is thank the council thank the manager and all those that that have took part in allowing us to go back from 47 total um employees and that's temporary and full time to 56 and what that's done now so we we've increased the number to 56 this year this season and it's allowing us now to go to the current year of 21 which we'll be going into this year this season 21 snow routes up from 17 snow routes the last two seasons want to thank you for that that that's that's a big adjustment for us on the positive side what that does is it allows us the designated Hill routes back to four instead of two our Tana plow routes have remained at eight and then um with the numbers of routes at 21 and the the additional staff it's allowing us to run the 24-hour Around the Clock operation the two 12-hour shifts once we have two inches or more predicted then we will go into that mode of the 12-hour shifts um so with that additional staff it's it's actually what it's doing for us is it's reducing the number of average miles per route so we as you see we have 161 primary routes the main arterials the high traffic volume routes that we go on to we go into that and immediately um recovering all arterial routes until the snow stops once the snow stops and the streets are in good enough condition that we could pull off of them at that point we go into the residential streets with two or more inches of snow so um and then with the residential streets of course there's 332 miles of residential streets there's 161 miles of main arterials now that is Center Line miles okay just want to make that clear Center Line miles is just going One Direction so you can multiply that by the number of lanes that we deal with there's there's some two lanes there's some three lanes there's some four lanes actually there's five Lanes if you count the center turn lane on a lot of the streets right so what it's done for us then is it's reduced the snow routes down to about seven and a half to eight miles on average per route with 21 routes this year that's down from about nine and a half to ten miles of of average routes when we were at 17.

so the increase may not sound like a lot but you multiply that by two three or four and now the number increases quite a bit we you could legitimately say that at times we're plowing 1200 snow miles or uh Center or not center lane 1200 miles of Street streets based off of the the going One Direction and coming back the other and multiplying that so anyway um kind of talked about that for a little bit we have 80 miles of Alleyways okay within the city of Peoria we make it a point that once we reach about five to six inches and they are not totally passable for fire I'm sorry for um garbage trucks and for people to get into their garages that that's maybe their only way into their into their garage we will go into the alleys and plow them um One Direction the plow straight so everybody gets a little bit of the snow going off of each side on the windrows we're not dumping it all on one side or the other so we're we're trying to make things so that it's passable and that it's fair and equal to everyone um one of the final things I want to mention about this slide is the city does not have a bear pavement policy and what I mean by that bear pavement policy is for the residential districts or the residential streets okay the bear pavement we typically will see that in the snowstorm on the main arterials because we we stay on those until we can move into the residential streets the residential streets by the time we get to them a lot of times because of the traffic and people driving on it it starts to snowpack or it creates the ice pack depending on the temperatures and so we don't have a guarantee of bear pavement on residential streets okay as much as we would like to do that it's just not it just doesn't work for us uh with with the Staffing levels with the amount of equipment that would if we were to do that that would that would just increase things you know two-fold maybe three-fold so um it's just one thing we like to make clear is that we don't have the bear pavement policy and and so the expectation should be that we will get in there and we will plow the streets from Curb to curb when we go into residentials but it will not be to the pavement the plow cannot pull ice and cannot pull snow once it's packed and we're not using we're not using materials on the residential streets unless we get into an ice situation where we see that we will we will then make the adjustment to using some salt and some liquid brine and chloride to try to break that payment break that Bond of the pavement um so the timing the timing has also changed on the amount of time that that we will complete the city-wide snow route primary Street wise okay so once there's between two and six inches of snow um we have we will have the city cleared within 24 hours once it stops snowing not from the beginning of the storm but once it stops snowing then so um going to 21 routes of we've been able to reduce that back from 36 hours to 24 hours now the six inches or more it's gone it's come down from 48 hours to 36 hours so our customer service levels are going to increase now back to where we really feel comfortable with and knowing that we can do this for for the citizens and The Travelers um even those even those that are visitors that are coming into town we make it a concerted effort to get that done and so that people can so the school buses the emergency vehicles I mean we're focusing on getting things done for not just us but for all the people that use the streets um the final thing on this slide is the ABC sub route that we like to explain it's a rotational approach to plowing residential streets so what this does is if you take the Shaded green part that's one route that's Route One in the city of Peoria on the snow plan what we would do for the ABC routes so that it keeps everything as I say equal and fair is that nobody is ever first and nobody has ever lasted on the snow route system every time it snows so we start the first snow route so what we've done here is we've taken that particular snow route that you just saw that complete shaded green area and we've divided it into three rounds and we do that on all 21 routes we start with a B and C the very first storm that's exactly what we're doing we're going a b c the second storm out we start with b and go C A and then the third storm out we'll go c a b meaning that we've done that complete rotation and each district even though it's it's hard for the for the citizen to understand that or to see that happening that is what keeps it equal and fair as I like to say throughout every storm so that not not one area is concentrated for uh the first time and every time out we do the rotational system so uh parking enforcement is not within the police department um and and it pertains to the the parking is um two or more inches of snow as the sign says on the right those are all on primary snow routes on the marked snow routes two or more inches of snow no parking goes into effect automatically and it stays into effect for 48 hours and then there are some citations if the cars are not moved and those citations can be issued every 24 hours signs are posted on what we call the emergency snow routes and that's every uh primary street that we have identified in our snow plan the bottom snow route says no parking two inches or more two or more inches of snow from 11 P.M to 6 a.m that's for the central business district what we what we do different here in the central business district is we allow parking during the day no parking at night from 11 to 6.

that gives us the opportunity to clean the streets clear the parking lanes and with that happening then there's there's a people are able to park whether they work there or they're going to be doing business downtown so we do allow parking during the day when again when there's two or more inches of snow which goes against the grain from the uh the primary rotted streets but that is again for us to be customer friendly and allow people to be able to get into businesses and and locations in the central business district uh the commercial sidewalk city ordinance um it's section 26-220 251.

this uh ordinance pertains to clearing of sidewalks and it includes all commercial properties and by that I mean we include businesses schools churches and hospitals those are the four areas that are targeted for clearing sidewalks we're not doing it on the residential streets at this time we don't have an ordinance but the path needs to be cleared four foot wide wide enough for a stroller or for a wheelchair um it's cleared within uh up to six inches is 24 hours or less six or more inches the commercial property owners or or their staff have up to 36 hours to clear the sidewalks um one thing that should be noted is that we are asking that they do not put the snow in the street block fire hydrants or mailboxes those are all things that will affect somebody in a negative way so we want to make sure that that snow is being put into place where they can you know where where people can still function on the sidewalks um and again the non-compliance to that there's the penalties there fifteen hundred dollars depending on the length of your sidewall so information and resources there's a number of uh locations to get information there's a number of locations to to utilize to um to be updated on the Storm um it's a there's a lot of media Outlets as you can see on there there's there's um just about everything that that you can imagine that we do utilize during snowstorms um if someone just wants a pre-recorded message just to know what our plan is and what we're doing and what's next the 494-8830 number is a pre-recorded message that we offer for citizens to call in on they don't have to wait for a live voice they don't they don't have to wait they just go right to the message and that will allow them to understand basically what information that we put out um again lots of avenues for that Peoria cares you report is on there at 494-2273 that's another opportunity for people to to reach out and request um that may take some time uh depending on if it's a weekend or after hours for us to get that request but that is another Avenue um for for uh gathering information so contacting Public Works um can be done directly and then we have our main line which is 494 8800 you'd get a live voice during the working hours if it's after hours and it's on a weekend um or in a significant snowfall we activate our snow call center and that number is six four nine four eighty eight fifty the once we activate the snow call center we have a staff there that's dedicated and designated to just answer those phone calls that are coming in okay they're set there as long as the storm is going on until we can break free from that we keep that phone activated around the clock and if it happens to be a large snowstorm and if the phones are overwhelmed with with callers if the the admin staff is over overwhelmed with answering the calls there's a backup system for voicemail if you leave the voicemail even if it's a name and a phone number we're going to get back with you as soon as we retrieve that message so we definitely are are out there for you know for the information we're definitely there to create that customer service level and with that any questions thank you assistant director maroon great great report thank you I'm not looking forward to snow but you have a good plan uh Rodrigo thank you very much and I'm with you on the snow this might be the winter you know who knows first of all great job and uh you know being able to rebuild the team there and to be able to increase the routes wonderful job I think that is going to resonate throughout the city some great accolades there um and thank you for explaining the alley piece because we get a lot of questions on that um just a couple of questions uh might be for you for the city manager there is a neighboring community that has a consent decree based on a disability case I believe um on sidewalks and making sure that they're clean so that all of our all of our citizens can access and be able to get around we've got a lot more students they're walking to schools and sidewalks continue to be a big big piece how do you intend to be able to get out to our commercial property owners so that they're aware of this I know this is kind of new conversation we've had for a couple of years but how will you reach out to them to make for sure so our deputy director you want to take this one and just talk a little bit about what the the Outreach the Department's going to be doing on that front yeah so the Outreach that we utilize is we we have postcards that we will send to we've got a you know the list of um of mailings that we can do that will get out to the property owners prior to the winner to give them that heads up that you know this is the time of the year so um we will utilize those postcards and and uh to get that information out just to tip them off well um second question is will there be any situation where you'll pre-treat residential streets so yes we never rule that out 100 saying that we will never do that I because if we're looking at the forecast and we're seeing Ice come in we will then and the temperatures of course um you know the ground temperatures are the key uh obviously that um there's a lot of variables that go into that but if we see that it's going to be an icy situation we do we do want to get out ahead of it get some product down on the streets so that we can hopefully prevent the bonding of the ice or the snow to the pavement and is that one of the situations where if it's going to rain before an event where rain turns into snow sometimes pre-treating yesterday yeah so sometimes good question um so pre-treating with rain is I want to you know for a lack of a better term is useless because we can put down the product and if it rains after the after we put down the product all it's doing is washing it off so it goes right to the right to the curb line so we're not getting a benefit and that's the other thing we have to look for is there rain in the forecast is it before or is it after okay well tell your snow Fighters that we're definitely all behind him and I saw some of the great uh blades that have been painted looking forward to seeing those around the city and just one more thing is I'm going to be an advocate again um as we're updating our websites and our our contacts like that and I know our Public Works director is familiar with this and he knows exactly where I'm going on this there are a lot of communities that make sure that we are being real time on our snow removal where in a lot of communities will have it even on a TV station and they can see where there's been a pass or or how that those um lot those routes are being done so the people know that somebody's on their way and they can keep track and are we 50 75 8 as we're looking at our upgrades to websites and our communication I would again be an advocate for that because I think that that can take some of the calls that we all get and we get quite a few of them about hey did they forget me and and we know it's just a matter of time they're going to be there a little bit but you know you're always good about taking those phone calls and getting back to us to letting us know but I think that the more communication we can have during these snow events and these ice events would be helpful and that's one piece I've also seen them used on on road construction as well but just I'll be an advocate for that thank you I think we will definitely look at that as future future considerations we we um we've seen that system and and we understand how it works uh we do we haven't got there yet but it definitely does make a difference thank you very much for all you do I'm sorry thank you councilman's here thank you madam mayor um great presentation Mr maroon my colleague here took one of my uh questions I was going to ask about the GPS I get a lot of requests about that so people are very impatient they want to know where our trucks are at uh what's it what is the cost to add GPS and all our our Fleet well that that really depends on the system it depends on the vendor it depends on how much you're trying to get out of that that unit it can it can be as little as knowing where the trucks are and where they've been a tracking system um that was that we can identify where where we've already been um it can also let you know that um the plow is up or the plow is down the auger is on the spinner is on or it's off so whether we're putting product down or not putting product down so I I there's a lot of variables that go into how much do you want to get how much do we need and how much do we want to spend of course so um we we've had AVL system in the in the equipment previous technology went beyond where we were at at that time it wasn't feasible for us to buy another system and so again that's another one of the future considerations that we always will take into consideration uh Mr manager would this request qualify for the RPO money possibly I'd have to to look at it and and check the regs last question uh I'm going to call into thousand feet rule you didn't cover that is that does that rule still exists uh when we have two to six or more and six inches where like my neighborhood I call you before will prowl the main road but not all the smaller road if you're like a thousand feet away from the road that's been plowed that rule still exists I didn't hear you cover that um no it's yes I mean if it's between two and six inches we're going to get to the residentials but but the idea is a clearer the primaries obviously first and get them in passable condition before we go into the residential streets and then of course then it depends on are you on the a route the B route or the C route is whether how soon you'll see a truck in in a specific neighborhood well London called the sacks are the last one to be plowed correct well Ashton main road again um it may seem like it but in the ABC system there and the routes out north yes they are I'm not going to say they're the last but there are a lot of routes I think we have 463 cul-de-sacs in the city of Peoria which most of them are out to the north um but again a b or c um you know a may have a lot less cul-de-sacs than b or c which I will tell you that on your route 21 out there that is the case there's a lot of them in that b route so it doesn't necessarily like I say make anybody first or last every time it may seem like it and that's where we run into the issues of complaints but um and I always throw this out there every year and I will throw it out again we are always willing to answer those questions and let someone know where the trucks are and where they've been last question will you use subcontractors this year uh we will not rule them out depending on the size of the Snows but being that we went to 21 routes we're anticipating that we don't need to go to the subcontractor route thank you very much great job thank you madam mayor of sidewalks for businesses and churches hospitals and schools but it doesn't include not-for-profit organizations yet those are locations where people go for needed services and so do you recall the rationale for excluding those not-for-profit organizations um honestly um I think we just overlooked that when we were putting the ordinance together several years ago I don't think it ever it came into question but that's a great question and some we probably going forward we need to look into yeah I'd like to revisit that manager because I think that we have a lot a lot of not-for-profits that are used and if the sidewalks aren't cleared we've got people needing services that are well I one of the things I just want to make sure that we look at is is that considered a commercial entity under the ordinance and I think that it would be but I want to make sure that we we review that so I think they would be covered as a as a business as a commercial business uh yes all right um it includes businesses schools churches and hospitals so I guess if we're going to fall into a category it would be businesses so maybe it's already covered is what you're suggesting so we can get a clarification we'll clarify okay wonderful thank you thank you any other questions comments thank you very much director great great report thank you very much can I get a motion to receive and file move by councilmember record sorry I haven't done that in a long time uh moved by council member regenbach seconded by council member Graham any other discussion please cash your ballots remember Jensen hi council member valpulla hi um passes unanimously Madam clerk you're at first readings 22-342 is a communication from the city manager and Corporation Council with a request for a first reading of an ordinance amending chapter 18 licenses article 17 mobile food vehicles of the code of the city of Peoria to eliminate the downtown business district operating locations for mobile food vehicles Mr manager thank you this is a first reading of this ordinance I think that councilwoman Jensen brought this ask that we bring this forward in may we eliminated the fees for 2022 for food carts and food trucks downtown we didn't see anybody that took us up on on taking in any of those those spots this would remove the restrictions on where food trucks can operate through the end of this year so really just for a a tuna two-month plus period of time and then we can see we do have some interest from one food truck operator that might want to come in during that period of time so this would just free up that opportunity to operate they would still have the distance requirements from restaurants that they would have to abide by that's in the ordinance but this would this would free that up so that's the rationale for this first reading and it would just last really for a two-month period of time council member Jensen did you have any comments um yes Madam mayor thank you um thank you manager Urich and uh Deputy Corporation Council acoustic I probably said that right room so used to Peterson but um thank you for bringing this forward and I think this is a good start and I support it um but I would like also really my request was to sort of two-fold or a little bit more I would like us to revisit the limitations going forward past this year um you know I'm not certain I don't I that we're going to have many push carts if any back and I don't know if it'll ever be back to what it was when we first put these limitations in place and again I think that in order to attract more people downtown and get more people downtown um and the people that are downtown to stay downtown during lunch would be to have more uh food trucks restaurants open and hopefully push carts so I would like to see us consider doing that as well as approving this ordinance for the rest of this unit thank you council member Rodrigo thank you madam Mary this is a simple question on on the revenue side of this and being in the restaurant business I know I used to get this about where the transactions actually made whether it's made at the door and this was in the delivery business whether it was made where the the computer was but for any of the our food carts that are operating within for that operation where the transaction is physically made within the city of Peoria City sales tax does apply is that correct that is correct and that also counts for HRA taxes as well that is correct okay thank you very much council member Allen thank you madam mayor I would like to Echo uh the sentiments of council member Jensen I think looking at this more long term is a direction I would like to see us go will you talk about trying to just recreate the vibrancy of downtown I think food trucks is a big component of that moving forward I think we could talk about what that looks like if we want to do more of a lottery system and maybe we only allow so many food trucks downtown for a certain period of time but you know we just had a presentation on snow routes so we know that it's about to get cold here soon and so I don't know how many food trucks are going to really be able to take advantage of the next couple months before we head into 2023 so I think this is a great start in the right direction but as we think about creating the vibrancy and really bringing our downtown back to what it was we need to consider what is our long-term strategy when it comes to food cart or food trucks downtown thank you welcome council member Euler thank you madam chairwoman I agree with the comments have been made so far I think that there's a lot of things to take into consideration for our downtown and opportunities and how to come up with solutions that are good for everybody so I would move that we table this until we can have some Community stakeholder meetings for the downtown area and come up with solutions that are good for everybody I think it's just a receiving file isn't it this is the first reading of the ordinance first reading yeah so it'll be a receiving file the first reading if they could respond to complement Euler if there isn't anybody else waiting proceed um thank you madam mayor um I guess I don't I don't um oppose your idea to have further discussion and include all the you know restaurant owners and stakeholders um push cart license holders and Global food truck owners and have a meeting but I I think that that could happen after this current ordinance has passed since this is only you know to end the moratorium for you know the rest of the year like we did with the other licenses due to covid um so I don't know if you would consider rather than tablely moving forward with this ordinance and then uh fear heading a public discussion and study of what we should do for 2023.

thank you councilwoman proceed councilman Oiler you want to no I think that's part of the discussion is that we need to have a discussion with some of those that would be affected with making this decision and I received a flurry of phone calls and there were a number of business owners that didn't realize until the last two days that this was coming and they're incredibly upset that we didn't take the opportunity to even talk to them when they've had their businesses open and fought through covet and fought through Personnel challenges and I think that we need to get their engagement because they're trying to keep our Downtown Alive Now with what they're already doing and and that's why I think that we need to take quite a bit more time with this before we try to pass something so your motion is the table correct and do you have to table and till it just goes on the table till we decide to bring it back okay is there a second that by council member grab continued discussion I have a question of parliamentary I've got some additional people in line first councilwoman Jensen okay councilmember grayup um I just think there's a wisdom in proceeding in a very deliberate collaborative way and I think tabling was a responsible thing to do because while we can say we want food trucks downtown and we do we also want to be sure that the people who have the brick and mortar operations have a seat at the table to discuss a balanced approach to this uh councilman reck Regal certainly remembers and I know [Music] councilwoman Jensen remembers the terrible um War we had downtown with the push card operators versus the brick and mortar people I think this war raged for at least a year or two under mayor grees I'm very reluctant to see that kind of thing happen I received a flurry of calls as well and we do have restaurants that are trying to establish a foothold downtown and so I think we need to use a measured approach I know that in the past there's a lot of details that can be crafted we said that people who already had a restaurant could have a push card as well now it seems like it's these food trucks less push carts as times have changed and now food trucks so I think the tabling is in order to allow the brick and mortar people to have some conversation on this and it's not to shut out food trucks but to just have the confusion mean on this a reasonable approach that causes no one to feel that they're being handicapped in their ability to grow their business and that's that's the main reason I support the tabling uh and and we should begin some Earnest discussions with the restaurant operators as well okay Council Hayes we got a point of order sure with no motion the table is made it's taken up and resolved and whether it's successful then the matters table but if not you can continue the debate okay so the discussion should be related to the the motion what you're saying this man and typically the only issue on a motion to table is whether it's to a specific time or generally in that otherwise subject to debate okay all right thank you for that clarification I have a motion I do have a question related to the motion to table you have a question related to the motion to table yes okay proceed um what's the requirement to get emotion off the table is it just a simple majority right you moved it take the matter from the table at the next me if it's indefinitely tabled then at the at the next meeting or any subsequent meeting that motions in order okay thank you the reason why I asked that council is that doesn't have a good track runner record with getting an issue or an agenda item off the table once it's put on the table and all the nine years I've been on the council I don't think we've ever gotten an issue back off the table so I'm wondering if councilman Euler and councilman grabb would be open to giving it at least a deadline so that we can ensure that we will continue to discuss this issue and find some resolution to it is there any adjustment to that the emotion so there is some more discussion but it's not related to the tabling so um on me I think Kelly just a clarification yes if I'm not mistaken to take something off the table we have to have a majority vote but I don't believe it can be considered at that meeting it it then is on the agenda for the next meeting is that okay just just to be clear on that thank you madam Council you you confirm that and it can be brought out by the subsequent meeting but not at the meeting at which that if that motion prevails okay thank you we have a mo is your quest is your comment related to this too we'd not fall under the right procedures for that so no I I will vote on the tabling okay accordingly thank you we have a motion to Table in a second please cast your ballots councilman council member Jensen no council member valpulla yeah motion passes with two Nays Allen and Jensen okay Madam Clerk we are at regular business 22-343 is a communication from the city manager with a request to approve a sole source engagement with Patrick Engineering in an amount not to exceed 250 000 for Grant applications to the federal rail Administration sure uh thank you madam mayor this is the proposal that we're bringing forward to hire Patrick engineering they were the firm that did the rail feasibility study um we there's a subsequent agenda item that we have that takes up the funding for this uh this would be a contract where they would team with Hanson Professional Services who has worked on the project locally as well as SB Friedman who will be doing some of the economic economic impact work and um and with images Inc we'll be doing some of the communications work on this this is for the application there are two Grant applications open for passenger rail one that has a December one deadline and the other that we anticipate will be released in December the end the goal is to try and get the city of Peoria and the route up to Chicago into the future corridors pipeline where there will be additional funds that will come forward from the the Federal federal government covering anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of the cost and if that's the case if we're able to get into that pipeline that's where we'll turn to our friends at the Illinois Department of Transportation and urge their covering that support of of that next analysis piece which is what they did for the cities of Moline and Rockford and others that have had new services that are proceeding with new service requests here throughout the state of Illinois okay thank you any questions comments motion council member Rick Regal I'll make the motion okay second by council member Allen discussion council member Kelly thank you madam mayor Mr manager what is your estimate as to all the costs that the city is going to incur uh at first regardless of Grants okay in other words we're this is a quarter of a million dollars how much uh uh is this going to cost the city whether we get grant money or not this item all the items in in Prospect well it again I think if we look at the Moline route the Quad Cities route and we look at the Rockford route when they started the process of developing the service development plans it shifted away from the local communities and went to the state of Illinois to cover those costs that would we would want to be treated in the same manner and and look to to go that same route so that really the the only amount of of local funds that are being generated are the hundred thousand that the city has already committed to the 50 000 the county has committed to uh and then the 50 000 from the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission and then 60 000 from the communities up north and that's that's really it well the 250 000 is not the state this is us and we're going for a grant okay do we have more of those coming along where we where we're paying and we hope to get a grant to fund that obligation that's that's the essence this money is being used to apply for two grants that would cover anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of the next cost of doing the more detailed analysis that analysis is probably going to be you know five million dollars is what we'd probably be looking at to do that next level of work but again that's where we would turn and turn to the state and say we would encourage you to treat us just like you treated Moline just like you treated Rockford and pick up the tab for the rest of the study and that's something that we would like to do thank you thank you madam mayor any other comments questions please cast your ballots council member Jensen aye council member valpulla council member valpulla do we still have council member Val Poole are you there um he's not on okay motion passes unanimously Madam Clerk 22-344 is a communication from the city manager and the community development director with a request to approve funding for the violence prevention program in the amount of seven hundred thousand dollars manager uh thank you madam mayor I'd like to ask a community development director Doolin to come forward and just talk through the process that we've utilized for the violence prevention grants and the recommendations that have come from the committee director Doula uh thank you mayor thank you Council thank you Mr manager uh if Council remembers uh this has been an ongoing process the last month and a half Council authorizes us to put a request for proposals out to a non-profit and Community Partners to provide us a program Direct programming in our community for violence reduction efforts those uh that RFP was issued for seven hundred thousand dollars uh 12 applicants submitted proposals to the cdbg public advisory commission who graded those proposals those scores were attached to the Council of communication and their recommendation to fund the top scorers is included in that that packet of information included in that is five organizations that are local organizations and have a track record of providing services in our community the Dream Center Peoria City County Health Department hoi Big Brother Big Sisters Goodwill and Peoria friendship house would all provide programs directly trying to provide positive impact on our residents in Peoria all of the applicants are represented tonight in the council chambers so if you have any questions specifically on the programs they'll be doing you we likely can get them up here to answer them I want to thank all of the the applicants who who submitted a proposal to us with a a reminder to everyone that about three weeks ago the city of Peoria was made aware that the state of Illinois was releasing the dco a three million dollar violence funding to the city about 500 000 of that will be going back through this process to fund additional programming and organizations for 2023 for violence reduction efforts in our community so with that I'll open up to any questions anyone might have just for starters there's more money to be allocated director would right there's more there's additional funding how much is that additional funding uh as of right now five hundred thousand dollars from the GCO Grant is 500.

so would these I mean there's some additional organizations that got pretty high scores matter of fact some of them were almost equal and in terms of the rating just a few centimeters of a point of points away would those applicants have to reapply for funding or I mean how would that work I imagine a very similar application uh that they can tweak um to to submit but it'll be very similar to last one so it won't require a significant amount of work um while we haven't gotten a significant amount of guidance from dco about uh what would and wouldn't be required which we're then hoping not much is required there will be some requirements and likely some sort of RFP would have to be issued to make sure it's a fair and competitive process so we would have to issue one it'll be very very similar though to the one we already issued so applicants will have the option just to kind of tweak the one they already submitted to us okay all right I just want to thank those who were on the commission that had to rank these applications they had to be a really tough job and I see that a lot of the scores were really close so that thanked them for all that work and you know that takes a lot of reading and comparing and and just a lot of effort so thank you for all those that contributed to that process councilmember Allen uh thank you madam mayor yes I definitely want to thank the committee for reviewing these and uh congratulations to those who uh are on the horizon to receive these funds if approved tonight uh one of the things that I just wanted to State um you know once this uh is approved tonight it's something that we may want to consider just in the Horizon is you know a lot of the feedback that I got when we started this process for rfps was some of the maybe newer non-profits or some of the the newer people who have established organizations who may not have the infrastructure that some of these staple non-profits have you know they may not be able to um they don't know what metrics they need to provide to be eligible for Grants and things of that nature so I think that this is a good learning opportunity for those who have applied maybe if they weren't awarded funding this time maybe we can give them some feedback but maybe just even in the springtime we consider some type of Workshop or something along those lines so then that way you know the smaller non-profit or the newer non-profit knows you know what are the key performance indicators I need to be tracking so that way when these next rounds of funding come I can be eligible you know because we want to make sure that we are looking at everyone and giving everyone a fair chance but we also know that there are criteria that you do you do need to meet in order to get external funding so that's just something I wanted to say but thank you to you and your team and the committee for reviewing these and congratulations to our recipients thank you madam mayor well council member rickenbot thank you madam mayor I too just want to Echo those remarks that this has just been a a great process and I think many of us as we unveiled this back in the Summer where I'm curious how it all play out so thank you to the Grants Department for providing us as council members with all of the information thank you to all 12 of the organizations that that took the time and effort to do this and personally I'm very pleased to see this first 700 000 gonna be on the agenda tonight and to move forward and looking forward to see what dceo has to tell us for the next tranche so thank you man America you're welcome any other discussion can I get a motion uh moved by council member Jackson seconded by council member Kelly council member seer thank you madam mayor just want to ask one quick question tell us about accountability again how will we know what kind of return we're getting on this investment please thank you thank you madam mayor yes uh I I apologize for not mentioning this during uh my original uh discussion but because of the nature of this funding and and there's a different a few different levers to make sure that there's accountability from a grandstanding point um you know we're pretty well equipped to make sure that they're following the agreements and doing the programs in place all the applications did they had to indicate which program uh metrics they'd be measuring and we can make sure that kind of on a quarterly basis throughout the next year we'll be reporting those back to Council of what they are doing and aren't doing uh and making sure they all find all the grant requirements back and forth um I think you know I think this is a councilman grabe and I were at a neighborhood meeting last night we were talking about American Rescue plan money in councilman grabe brought up to the neighborhood association about you know accountability for all the money we're spending with American Rescue plan money and making sure that the programs that we are doing are having measurable improvements so when the money does go away we can have specific success to show what programs are and aren't working in the city of Peoria so part of that will come with quantitative measures to ensure these programs are being successful and so that is one of the things that we'll make sure to be reporting back to council kind of on a routine basis going forward with this good thank you council member Euler Nelson's councilman sear the latest two minutes I'll take it three um maybe you know not the right program suggestions I don't know but I think it's important to be cognizant of the fact that our school district applied for a couple things here and we didn't approve those and we talk a lot in the Horseshoe and outside of here amongst each other about challenges with the school district and the impact that that has on our community and and hopefully with more money coming maybe we can figure out how to work with them to help figure out how to move them in a more positive direction like I said I don't know anything necessarily about their programs or what their ideas were but I I think you know if we're going to spend money addressing these types of things that's probably a good place to start and so if we could get in front of trying to help them figure out how we can be more helpful to them that would be good thank you thank you thank you councilman in the other discussion please cast your ballots councilmember Jensen aye council member valpulla motion passes unanimously thank you director Doolin Madam Clerk 22-345 is a communication from the city manager and the community development director with a request to approve a grant award in the amount of six hundred thousand dollars in home funds to Phoenix Community Development Services for the construction of Madison 3.

manager director Doolin right and turn it right back to director Doolin again okay thank you mayor thank you Council um tonight you're being asked to approve um essentially with some Gap financing for a project that Phoenix Community Development Services uh is proposing to construct in downtown Peoria I'm Christine call is with us so I'd like to her to come up and talk about the the project can do it much better than I can but the city of Peoria is an entitlement community so we get a certain allocation from cdbg home and ESG funds every year specifically home funds have to be used to expand affordable housing in our community so this money has to go towards programs and organizations like Phoenix Community Development Services to support that mission um and and the work that that Chris Dean and her team have done in our community with the multitude of projects allows us to be very supportive of this so with that if if the mayor would allow I would uh like to hand the floor over to Christine to talk specifically absolutely so glad to have you here thank you um so this project Madison apartments three um is obviously the third in the series that they're along the 200 block of Madison and this development is affordable housing that's a permanent Supportive Housing for homeless youth between the ages of 18 to 24.

that is the largest age demographic um around our growing homeless population in the community and yet it's the population that right now many of them sit on the wait list because they don't tend to be as vulnerable and need you know so they don't come to the top of the wait list oftentimes and so the idea here is to kind of carve them out do some adolescent specific activities um and stuff with them that has to do with fostering them on to a higher level of Independence this project fits with an agreement that is already in place between HUD uh the Peoria Housing Authority and the homeless Continuum of Care which the city of Peoria and our agency are members and that was an initiative called fostering youth to Independence and so this fits with an agreement that's already in place there's just been no dedicated housing capacity for this group any questions for missed call council member Grant welcome [Music] I do have a question in reference to the Target population for the additional 16 units um 18 to 24 correct are they homeless or are they homeless and having substance abuse issues do we have caseworkers that will be on hand to help them how is this going to work because I want this to really complement what we're trying to do in our community and certainly in the downtown where you already have a wonderful footprint correct um so first of all they would still have to meet the federal definition of homelessness under the HUD regulations um this uh the money we're requesting tonight matches a little over four million dollars in other Capital sources some of which are HUD so the definition will prevail however what we do know is that many of these 18 to 24 year old are youth who aged out of the child welfare system and then had nowhere else to go so they're presenting on the street so um a significant number of them are also lgbtq youth um we know that anecdotally through the work that we're already doing with that population and yes as with all of our um permanent Supportive Housing Programs on-site wrap around Supportive Services will be available service participation is voluntary but it will include everything from Mental Health Services to access to a whole plethora of other services is that that person needs to stay housed good excellent I guess I'll go ahead even though my Council peers may may want to comment but I'll put a motion on the floor to approve as outlined thank you is there a second seconded by council member Rick Regal discussion uh council member Kelly thank you madam mayor this call you probably know what my comments are going to be there there we have 16 units here how many of these uh uh folks will be in per unit one per unit they are a combination of studio and one bedroom apartments um that was designed that way because it's a very narrow footprint um so to comply with all the ordinance you know density requirements and square foot requirements of the capital funder that was what we came to so it's one person per per unit well I'm not in your business nor am I in the construction business but I find that 310 thousand dollars per unit I cannot understand that kind of expense you could buy 16 houses for that and have money left over I I hope you understand I'm not going after you but it seems like with these programs we've got all kinds of people along the way who get um paid very well I remember the architect for the 30 houses up on the East Bluff had four designs of rather nice arts and craft homes architect made three error made 750 000 dollars for four designs you could find in a home book and get plans for I I don't understand this I think frankly I think it's scandalous it's just one person one apartment studio apartment whatnot 310 dollars thank you this call thank you madam mayor welcome councilmember Rodrigo thank you madam mayor Ms Cole thank you for being here tonight thank you also for your work as part of the Continuum for care um and uh I know that you've got a lot of active Partners on there being able to make a huge significant difference within our community um thank you also for taking on this project because you talked about that Gap that it hits um and the thing that whenever I read this proposal coming through here I thought about was what a substantial foundational set of years those are those are that transition they're aging out in a lot of cases like you said and they're being missed um do no no fault of their own but being missed during those couple of years can change the trajectory of somebody's life forever um I also understand too that you are providing a lot of other services besides just a place to be housed um there's support there's counseling there's maybe help as they go to tackle those things that um a young person may have a family or other people that they would normally turn to but you're filling that Gap as well um thank you for this project thank you for what you've done other projects but this one I think is uh is really nice on how you have focused in on an area I know the Continuum of Care you know over the past couple of years has seen some numbers come down and and we're in a very different economic State and so we're seeing a couple numbers come up which means this is even more important now than it's ever been I appreciate all of your work thank you councilmember regenbach did you want to weigh in I thank you madam mayor I was going to Echo many of the things that councilman ruckriegel just said so um hats off to Phoenix thank you so much thank you thank you thank you and I ditto councilman uh Rodrigo I I agree with all his sentiments I appreciate all the great work that you're doing and you're changing lives in our community so thank you very much we have a motion and a second on the floor please cast your ballots councilman council member Jensen hi council member valpulla motion passes with one nay Kelly Madam Clerk 22-346 is a communication from the city manager with a request to approve an intergovernmental agreement with Peoria County the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission and the north central Illinois Council of governments to apply for passenger rail funding manager Mr manager thank you madam mayor this is the intergovernmental agreement between the city the county Tri-County Regional Planning Commission and the north central Illinois Council of governments which includes Financial participation from the cities of LaSalle Peru Ottawa Utica and Morris for the the rail effort this would be 260 thousand dollars raised if we don't spend it we would send the dollars back proportionally so I'm happy to answer any questions about the agreement but this will be the mechanism by which we'll collect the funds to pay the engagement that you've just approved any questions can I get a motion moved by council member record seconded by council member Allen please cast your ballots remember Jensen I councilmember valpulla motion passes unanimously and clerk 22-331 is a communication from the city manager and chief diversity and inclusion officer with a request to concur with the Joint Commission on racial Justice and Equity to adopt an ordinance regarding the racial Equity impact assessment Mr manager uh thank you madam mayor we'd like to request a two-week to fall on this item to come back with some kind of examples of how the ordinance would work and just share that with Council so if we could uh respectfully request a two-week deferral that would be great can I get a motion to the first move by council member Jackson seconded by council member uh riggenbach questions discussion council member Kelly thank you madam mayor um the proposed ordinance has a couple rather clear Hearts to it how and the the question remains in my mind uh how are we going to take each and every item that we do around here and figure out how it's going to affect minority communities I think the answers are going to be subjective not objective I think it's going to be very very difficult there'll be two sides to many of the stories and whatnot and then I come back around to I think we're doing a pretty good job in this building um probably not perfect but a pretty good job we're going to add another layer and it's going to be a lot of work what's going to be the result I think my own guess almost nothing I don't know that anything will change except that we will be doing more work to prove to prove that we're not discriminating or that either we care or or something like that that's you know I if that's not demonstrated currently well you know maybe we're lacking but I'm going to oppose deferral because I don't know that if the manager comes back with some wonderful examples Etc it's the same issue it seems to me do we need this kind of thing on every single thing we do and go back in history and find out that in I guess every single thing you do I think the example says will help it says any it does not specify manamere it says any um and it came back any on the on the uh I know you and I disagree with this and I think I hope we do respectfully but I'm not going to be in favor of deferral because I think that we already kind of know what we're going to get and how it's just sort of mushy and I think we do a good job now so thank you madam mayor you're welcome and and I would just ask [Music] um for approval of deferral we have a commission comprised of 150 volunteers that's been working over a year this is a recommendation an assessment tool racial Equity assessment tool that they've proposed and similar tools have been used in communities around the nation so I think we owe that to them to give some consideration to have more discussion explore the examples given and get a better understanding of how this actually works in practice because I think that's where the confusion comes out how how does this actually work in practice and I think by next meeting we'll have a better understanding of that so we have a motion to defer there's no other discussion please cast your ballots council member Jensen hi council member valpulla motion passes with three Nays Kelly ohler Euler and Rick Regal Council um Madam Clerk 22-347 is a communication from the city manager with a request to adopt an ordinance setting the compensation for at-large council members of the city of Peoria Illinois is legal I met Mr manager uh thank you madam mayor we we did prepare the ordinance that would just continue with the current salaries for the council and the auto allowance and that was I think based upon the guidance that we had when we had the the previous discussion for council's consideration put any of the at-large people on the spot I moved for approval okay uh seconded by council member Allen I'm sorry what was that councilmember Kelly thank you um can the at-large members vote on this or is that yes okay thank you madam mayor there's no other discussion please cash your ballots council member Jensen aye councilmember valpulla motion passes unanimously Madam Clerk 22-348 is a communication from the city manager and finance director comptroller with requests to receive and file the 2023 revised budget and on your desk you each should have received a bound copy of the proposed revised budget foreign I'd like to turn the floor over to finance director craddy to to talk through the the kind of the schedule this is really just we're handing you off the budget this evening uh pursuant to the budget calendar uh and then we'll get it get into the budget in Earnest but director thank you Mr manager um in front of you tonight is the revised 2023 budget the document that you have in front of you is broken down into the budget message as well as our revenues and expenditures for the year as well as our Capital Improvement plan that we're recommending um we will be bringing the discussion back on November the 18th for deliberation through city council as well as having a presentation on the budget itself with the anticipated approval of the budget on November the 15th depending on the discussion and deliberation as the manager said tonight we're just putting this on the table if you have any questions on that we're more than happy to answer foreign council member seer thank you madam mayor move to receive and file a council member Rodrigo oh that's what everybody wanted to do then okay if there's no other discussion please cash your ballots council member Jensen aye councilmember valpulla motion passes unanimously okay Madam Clerk we are at unfinished business is there any other is there any unfinished business okay we are at citizens opportunity to address the city council I want to point out that new business wasn't recorded on the agenda and because it wasn't recorded on the agenda uh legal are we able to to have new business Mr Hayes because this is an open meeting we can discuss any matter whether it's on the agenda or not we just cannot take final action on any matter okay all right thank you is there any new business council member Graham uh manager your acre your designee speak to the council tonight about these Oxford houses that are appearing and that are creating quite some consternation for many of our constituents thank you councilman I think what I'd like to do is turn the floor over to Corporation Council Hayes and let let Mr Hayes talk through this issue thank you thank you madam mayor the city received complaints earlier this year that some halfway houses were operating in residential areas staff took action and filed a citation and we received correspondence from an attorney representing Oxford House a series of Oxford houses five of which are now operating in the City of Rockford or the city of Peoria I'll probably make that mistake a couple times and I apologize but I had this role in Rockford for 11 years so I'll try to develop better habits in any regard as you know our zoning ordinance addresses group living and there are a number of measures in that ordinance that this attorney took issue with your staff took that very serious sleep started investigating our ordinances as it related to Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act um recovery from alcohol and substance abuse addiction is a disability recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act and protected under the federal fair housing act and so our ordinances have to come within line of case law and federal statute with regard to what restrictions we're able to place on group homes inhabited by people with the disability of recovery from addiction this is the substance of what the attorney was Raising with us now Oxford House represents or operates these types of facilities throughout the nation they are independent of any on-site Personnel the individuals that inhabit that as explained in the materials we've delivered to you today they run the houses as they put it much like a family unit under a democratic process so it is not an assisted living facility as we might commonly understand it but because there's that they say that because there's that group of individuals going through the same processes in life that's a supporting structure that helps them succeed this model is as I mentioned deployed in a number of areas it's deployed even in Central Illinois there are four of these operating in Bloomington normal since 2019.

so staff engaged outside Council to assist with analysis of our ordinances here in Peoria as well as this Challenge from this attorney we presented some materials for you and some options for the council to consider staff's intention to gather the input from the Council of appropriate steps to take and then have this matter before the zoning Planning and Zoning at the next cycle we'd like to invite the council members to review the materials that we presented and come to us with your questions we've made a recommendation in there on being a little reserved in what I'm describing because I don't want to invite litigation I think we can resolve this hopefully without litigation but that is a potential outcome of this matter depending on the choices that the council takes and then the reaction that Oxford House might take here I do think there are some issues that the council is going to want to take action on it's just there's a couple of different options for us to explore with you the time between the initiation and this and now has been utilized by your staff to thoroughly investigate this and present you with the best possible options and so at this point we've given you quite a volume of material I think the material fully discloses to you the faxes your staff knows it at this time including where these houses are located throughout the community and what our experiences has been with them to date I will just mention that we the staff had initiated an enforcement action and has delayed any further action on those enforcement actions until we're able to get direction from the council and then take the appropriate next steps so at this point the matter hasn't escalated to litigation in any form and we're hopeful to get guidance from the council and take the appropriate action before that occurs if there's any other specific questions I'm happy to address them we certainly understand the importance to get this right and execute this for the best outcome for the city of Peoria and we'll hope to do that as a team going forward thank you Council additional questions councilman Correa first of all these folks are not following our rules secondly the period city council knows very well how to analyze sober treatment facilities councilman rigginbach and I have both been part of a process involving residents in our districts with consequent subsequent approvals given by this selected body for sober treatment houses they were all subject to inspection for Life Safety unlike a disapparent organization I have talked to staff about what kind of inspections have occurred how many people are being allowed to live in one bedroom we had a similar phenomenon and not number of years ago and we had a packed house at Holy Family uh gymnasium to object to the inclusion of these they just cropped up almost overnight with no one no public hearing process in that particular case we had people who had all kinds of issues including sexually dangerous people no review no inspection warehousing people and collecting a lot of money and so our residents now are finding out that we have these that have occurred apparently on all of our watches with no review with no life safety review and here we subject uh you know the people who want to do a short-term rental to endless discussions and review and having to jump through hoops like safety Hoops Etc same thing with the sober treatment of houses that that did everything right and somehow there's something special about Oxford there's nothing special about Oxford and you know what every time someone wants to threaten a lawsuit against the city of Peoria if we roll over and play dead we got a problem they have a real problem we need to know exactly what's going on in these houses who's there Etc if they're being warehoused if they're meeting life safety and they should be put to the same process as any other uh special use none of this none of us have any problem with people who need the kind of help that is being provided by Oxford House but they're not playing an accord with our rules somehow they're better than our own internally generated people who provide these Services now that's not right and you know we're going to give everybody a fair shot but these may not just appear next door to somebody's house without the same process that we've used for everything else and uh I'm just appalled that it happened that it was allowed to happen that the people were allowed to go into these houses and remain there by our staff that the council is just finding out about this this is mind-boggling to me and I find this to be a communication a lapse that is highly egregious and unacceptable and we got five of these Corporation Council already operating is that what I heard you say five by whose authority what manager did we have any life safety inspections did we in this instance no we did not that's a problem it's a big problem well I'll let my colleagues weigh in on this but I've never seen anything quite well I did because the when we had the problem with all the Neighbors showing up complaining we had a guy fly in on a Learjet out of Chicago and he just told everybody how wrong they were to be concerned about the way he was warehousing people over in the fourth district and how backward we were here in Peoria and that they needed to assist him in continuing to make huge sums of money with no respect to our neighborhoods none no respect to our neighborhoods or our citizens and needless to say that City Council ran him out of town he got back on his Lear Jet and took off an R staff put an end to it we put an end to sexually dangerous people in that particular case I'm not saying that's applying here but how would I know I have no idea we haven't even reviewed these put an end to what was happening over there with children only a few feet away we had mayor we had such a wonderfully thorough job done with the RAB John's proposals and they passed and and it was no problem but they were subject to our rules now we got these Hot Shots from out of town who are very litigious oh I'm sorry I should just bow down and say I'm afraid of you no that's not how it works we need to be concerned about what it's doing to our neighborhoods and the reception that this is having in our neighborhoods and we need to protect them thank you council member Euler thank you madam chairwoman there's one issue in here that I can't seem to get past to even analyze the others how is it that having more folks Under One Roof with the same disability is a reasonable accommodation for someone with a disability I I guess I could process it maybe if there was a caretaker type situation involved but I'm I'm not getting their idea that having more people with that same disability under the same roof as a reasonable accommodation that triggers this to happen so I I understand your suspicion about the success of their model I am not a defender of the Oxford House model I can tell you that in matters throughout the nation they've been a successful establishing these houses and operating them for long periods of time without major incidents I don't know how successful the individuals are in the process but as far as the operational aspects they're not highly disruptive in many of the communities that they operate in so um they they feel that the model has efficacy and they've been operating them successfully in a number of venues whether they'll operate here successfully or not I don't know well and I can understand that the success of the concept my concern is why do they need to exceed our ordinance for the number of people that can live on the premises why is that a reasonable accommodation you know if our ordinance is for just throwing a number out here and they can have four why is why do they need six or eight I don't understand why it needs to exceed our ordinance and that's an allowable accommodation we're approaching issues that's why we express these things to you in writing and um under uh return client privilege but I'll just indicate that there are some types of group homes that our municipality allows to operate with these number of peoples in them and so the issue becomes treating people with a disability differently than other individuals who are entitled to live in that manner creates the tension with the Americans Disability Act and the federal fair housing act and so whether that models successful or not isn't really the issue you're treating people who are protected under these acts differently because of that disability and that's where the matter becomes actionable so we're trying to avoid that I will just indicate that there will be standards opposed going forward if we can figure out the appropriate way in our ordinance to deal with this facility we've delayed our enforcement action to this point that doesn't mean there won't be treating these facilities similar to other facilities that we do regulate apply our ordinances to and our standards to so we're anticipating doing that going forward once we know the correct path and make the appropriate adjustments to our regulations and ordinances and things thank you welcome for rock regal thank you madam mayor um words matter words have definitions um it sounds like and you use the word establish that they have them you know you talk about how the Oxford House has them other other places to me it sounds like a business and I'm assuming I mean uh is this a business is there a transactional Exchange for service and money that creates the family unit either short-term I don't know what how long they stay how long they don't um and and I believe in being able to build provide models that actually Provide support my question is are we talking about a business here because some you know family usually has one house maybe they have a couple of houses you know maybe they have a little cabin but just in the conversation tonight we hear of Oxford House the family being all over the place I don't know that you can be a family in a business operate on one foot on each side of those definitions where am I wrong or is this not a business there is no revenue generated there is no expense this is all out of the goodness of somebody's heart so I won't Hazard a guess at your answering your question completely because I don't have a complete answer for you I'll share with you my understanding is that there is a landlord-tenant relationship between the owner of the of the of the structure or the parcel and the residents that live there they share the expenses of operation operating that household the residents do under an agreement between between and among those residents and that I don't have insight into the revenue model if any that flows to or from Oxford House so if somebody wants to operate a restaurant they want to do it in a neighborhood then they don't have regulation so they say you know what everybody here is part of my family they're paying me to come to dinner and we have family dinner between eight in the morning and seven at night and by the way family stops by at any time you want to and eat at the table but you leave some money I mean I I don't you get where I'm going then all of a sudden a restaurant can operate as a family inside of a neighborhood without regulation and and it seems like we've created we have in our ordinances some rules that people can operate in and I think we've as as council member Graham said we've had some very wonderful examples of this coming forward and playing by the ordinances and wow you know I think um I think back on one of those RAB John uh houses that was opened and and I think council member rickenbach was part of that and the neighborhoods who had some questions were were with welcome arms to to have them as part of the neighborhood so it's not like people don't want to have Solutions but there is a proper channel to go through so I I guess my My ultimate question which which you boil this down to because as unless we can figure out is this a business or not that's got to be the fundamental question first before anything else my response may not be as direct as you'd like but the issue here is that we do have a process that would apply under our ordinance the problem is it treats this at group home differently because the people who inhabit it are disabled our ordinance singles that out and there's the issue that we need to resolve before we can go forward with the other elements that would apply to make certain it meets with all the criteria that other group homes meet with we have to fix this issue one way or the other either in in and there's a series of options explained and a recommendation from us in from the legal department in the materials and I I just call your attention to that and then we'll continue this conversation in the meantime we'll be looking into those answer the answers to the question that I couldn't be as direct as I would have preferred with you this evening follow up with that if you can provide additional information to us you know just um because we're getting comments from from our constituents our neighbors our family um are these people from people inside our community from outside of our community um if I know somebody who who needs treatment and support where do I send them what what is what does the pamphlet look like what what does the program look like and and so these are I think are important things to know what Oxford House is as we start this conversation not later on um and I'd like to see that as part of the legal information that we have so that we know what we're actually talking about here is what what is the business model okay thank you council member reagenbach thank you madam mayor I had other new businesses um and oh before you get a new business before you go to the other new business can we I think there's some additional comments on this one isn't it did you have other new business you okay Madam mayor I'd like to talk on this too okay just a moment uh councilwoman Jensen uh thank you madam mayor um and uh Corporation Council Hayes you may not have context on this but traditionally would a group home be announced to the neighborhood it's entering some type of notice or anything like that is that a president's some of the group homes authorized under our ordinances presently are able to establish and operate without any public hearing it's an administrative process other group homes are subject to a special use process this different treatment on the basis of a disability is the Crux of the challenge that Oxford House has brought to our ordinance so yes there are group homes that are established through a purely administrative process without a series of public hearings like our zoning process under our present ordinance and so that happens as the ordinary course of business people seek the opportunity to prove out their performance uses they do so and they get Authority from the zoning official to operate going forward and answer your question yes that occurs now for some select group home living situations yeah thank you that's good context because I think the challenge that we're receiving from our constituents is you know they get a notice about a short-term rental coming or an Airbnb however you want to categorize it but something along this line the the unknown that's around it not not knowing you know not being able to have that conversation and and you know people fear the unknown and so I'm excited that you all are looking into this and I look forward to our further discussion and reviewing your recommendations thank you madam mayor you're welcome welcome council member Jensen thank you madam mayor Corporation Council Hayes I just uh real quick want to thank you for the thorough memorandum that you provided us today um I think the option that you're recommending just by amending the Family Care Facility definition is um a good option which I support and I think that that will solve all I think almost all the issues that have been discussed here tonight so um I I think that's a good solution and um and so again I thank you and the staff for your work on this and hopefully after the rest of the council has time to review it [Music] um a majority will support that thank you you're welcome councilmember Kelly were you wanting to comment on this topic yes please uh Mr Corporation Council I I think I understand your reason for wishing to meet with us and so we can have a Frank discussion there are I think some public points that can be brought forward in anticipation of that um we've had with this particular outfit we've had a number of police problems through the year up through the end of August including um including nuisance items loud music parties you know that sort of thing and also including two cases of overdose um in okay so that I do you think it is possible for us to include in our ordinance uh the ability to ER to to require in our ordinance supervisory personnel being in such group homes for people with disabilities um this would be a person who is not as perhaps a councilman Euler suggested or alluded to not a person of that disability a a staff person that can handle problems is that a do you think that might be able to be added to that ordinance or perhaps you'd rather not say at this point we will look into that and I wouldn't want to an outcome tonight to that question in this venue okay but I'd be happy to discuss that more directly with you thank you thank you madam mayor okay council member rickenback thank you madam mayor we had an item on the consent agenda regarding the welcome signs on the southern Gateway and the the Crux of the matter was purchasing some land but I hope everybody took time to look at the welcome sign that's proposed and how beautiful that is and Mr manager I'm just curious is that something we're producing in-house or is that something we're Contracting out and what what's the ballpark cost on that well this was part of a budgeted item that we put in about a southern Gateway entrance to the city and replacing the sign I believe that that design was done outside of the city and and prepared by consultants for us and ultimately we'll be building it to that spec I'm just curious if that's something that could be utilized at other gateways to the city um whether obviously we don't have a lot of money to buy land if short answer is yes I think we can I think we can look at other places to replicate the entrance point and and doing that director Powers just walked in maybe he can add a little bit more context for you sorry counselor I missed some of your commentary I was coming from 404.

it was architecturally designed for that quarter I believe you said it would be a welcome feature in other quarters to the city we do have that I would say as a long range plan or Southeast and West quarters are pretty common in most or most cities and I think they would be welcome um this particular design is out of the right-of-way there are a number of ways to make gateways they're very popular they're very attractive they invariably spur Economic Development because it says welcome so that was the whole idea that it's actually an illuminated sign so there's LED I'm sorry the letters frog issue this evening but there are there's lighting within each of the letters so it's going to be it's going to pop as I think the manager would say well it's beautiful and will be a welcome addition thank you we are at citizens opportunity to address the city council and we have not received any cards okay so then we would be on to Executive session I do not believe we have an executive session so then we're at an adjournment I moved by councilmember Allen seconded by council member grab please cast your ballots council member Jensen councilmember Jensen hi okay council member Val Pula we are adjourned thank you for your service