Lisle 202 Board of Education Finance Committee Meeting June 23, 2025

001Evening everyone. It is 6:30 p.m. on June 23rd, 2025. I would like to call to order the meeting of the finance committee for the LA Community Unit School District 202. Uh first up is uh public comment. We do have a person who would like to speak today. Mr. Hmel, if you'd please come forward. How you doing? Um Tom Hmel, 82459 Street. Um I won't repeat everything from last month or all the other village tiff meetings, but I just want to stress again that these tiffs, particularly the East Ogden Avenue tiff, except for the lock former property, do not meet the but for test. The requirement for TIFFs is but for and not inflating boundaries to get to a number that the village wants or needs. The amended agreement doesn't back out village capital projects which

002they said at the last joint review board that they will do and they will pay for those um capital projects. That alone should reduce the size of the tiff. We can't worry about what may or may not happen someday in the future to existing businesses. Whatifs are not criteria for creating a tiff. Also, tiffs can be expanded easily in the future if it's absolutely needed. The village hasn't discussed using sales tax revenue within the tiff, which is permitted by state law to help pay for expenses. The purpose of tiffs is to encourage new economic development which in turn should create additional sales tax revenue. That new revenue should be included in the tiff district. Previously the one property that I haven't really mentioned is the post office property which is tax exempt property. If that

003property were to ever be redeveloped in the future, my understanding the taxing bodies would receive zero dollars based on no EAV and all new property tax would be in the tiff. For full disclosure, what I just said regarding the post office does need to be verified. But 10 years ago when I asked about the fire station in the downtown tiff, which is also taxexempt property, I was told that was the case. All property tax would go into the tiff. Regardless, this property needs to be pulled out of the tiff, especially if taxing bodies were to receive 0 in property taxes from a new development. Also, regarding the offer of up to 2% increase in EAV by parcel is a bad deal. That's nothing. You will receive you will get that at least without a tiff

004anyway without a tiff. forgoing a the higher EAV with the new quick trip gas station alone makes this a bad deal. So tonight, I ask you to stand for what's right and stand up for your residents and oppose the size and scope of the proposed tiff districts. As I've stated in the past, the lock former property and the vacant property south of the Hyatt on Route 53 are perfectly fine to place in the tiff, but the rest should be rejected. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Hmel. We appreciate you coming forward. All right, then. So, that would bring us to the third item on the agenda, which are the minutes for the May 20th, 2025 finance committee meeting. Does anyone have any questions, changes, comments? No. Excellent. So, we are in agreement the minutes

005accurately reflect the the uh May finance committee meeting. Excellent. All right. So, on to item four, the working cash fund interest transfer resolution. information can be found under item 5 A6 of the regular board meeting packet. Mr. Wilson, if you would. Mr. Wilkinson, if you would, pardon me. Uh, no problem. Uh, yes. So, every year the the school district earns interest income on the balance that's held in our working cash fund. Uh, the school code allows the school district to transfer those monies um to another fund with no requirement that they be repaid. And so historically the board has approved transferring those dollars to uh in this case the educational fund where those dollars can be used for salaries and other instructional costs uh during the course of the year. In terms of our FY25

006budget, we anticipated interest income of 42,000. It looks like uh where we are so far in the fiscal year that'll end up being just over $49,000. And so, um, obviously once we finish the year, we'll calculate what those interest earnings are and transfer the full amount over to the educational fund. And so, those dollars will be included in the ending fund balances for the education fund. And the administration is recommending approval of that interest transfer from the working cash fund to the educational fund. I didn't receive any questions and uh it's included in the board packet for approval. Any questions now? He said turning on his microphone. All right, good. All right, that would bring us to item five, the debt services fund interest transfer resolution. Information for that can be found under item 5

007A7 of the regular board meeting packet. Once again, Mr. Wilkinson. So, Mr. Wilkinson uh would like to discuss the uh next transfer which is new this year and that's transferring from the debt services fund to the educational fund. Um, as we just talked about, historically the board has approved the working cash fund transfer, but we uh decided to recommend this year a transfer of the interest that's earned in the debt services fund as well. Um, this recommendation is so that instead of leaving those dollars in the debt services fund where we really can't use them, if we transfer those dollars over to the educational fund, then they can directly in support those instructional needs. Um although it wasn't included in the original FY25 budget, I contemplated it but uh didn't actually put it in there.

008Actually doing this transfer now doesn't really have an effect on the budget because it's another other source in use. So it doesn't increase our overall revenues um or our expenditures. But uh assuming the committee and the board is authorizes this and approves it, we will uh start to include that in our budgets going forward. So, it is contemplated in the FY26 budget that we'll be talking about later this evening. Um, again, it the approximate amount is 45,900, which is what we've earned kind of so far this fiscal year and projecting out what we'll be getting uh through the remainder of this month. But again, we'll transfer uh the full amount earned in the debt services fund once we know those dollars after June 30th. And so we are recommending approval um of this transfer as

009well and it's included in your board packet under the consent agenda this evening. Any questions on the debt services transfer? Thank you very much. So we are on to item six, the pre kindergarten transportation for um should that be fiscal year or is that oh no school year 2025 2026. The information for this can be found under item six of the finance committee packet. If you would. So, Mr. Wilson and uh Dr. Shriber would like to discuss this next agenda item which is uh pre kindergarten transportation for the 2526 school year. Uh we are recommending I guess kind of to to to get to the end result. We are recommending that we um discontinue that prek transportation for the midday routes only. Uh not the A.M. or the PM routes, but those uh routes that

010are run separately in the middle of the day. Uh currently, preK students are permitted to ride our regular K through5 bus routes in both the morning and the afternoon. I think for the most part, it's using established stops that are in the neighborhood. It's our regular stops that are at the corners and at various spots that we've um determined to be the best location for those spots. But because preK is a half-day program, it does uh at least so far to provide transportation to those students require us to run separate dedicated midday routes um to bring those students in for the afternoon session and to bring students home after the morning session. These midday routes are not required by the Illinois State Board of Education for preK. Um, obviously K through 12 transportation is required

011if they're over a mile and a half from the school and or have to cross a serious safety hazard, but preK transportation is not required by the state and therefore the school district does not get reimbursed for that transportation. Um, I should add that special ed pre-K transportation is required and we do provide that transportation for any students that have transportation specifically spelled out in their IEP. In order to run those um routes in the midday, the uh I I put a table in the right up there that that shows you what those costs were for this past year. I think it was in the neighborhood of um I don't have it in front of me here, but uh about $1,900 a student based on the number of students that we have taking advantage of

012that. And with our new um contract with Westway Coach for next school year, it's expected that that cost would be around $40,000 in total. Um the other thing we've we've noticed with this midday route is it does create some operational challenges for the elementary school. we have a a rolling enrollment for our prek students. So, they're constantly coming into the uh school throughout the course of the year. And so, every time one of those students uh is added to the bus route, it requires us to add a specific stop for them during the midday routes because they're all home stops. And then it also adjusts all of the other stops within that route, which requires communication to the parents. um if we have any kind of subd drivers, sometimes those stops don't get on the

013final route and and so there's just a lot of change there that has um I think caused some operational headaches for the elementary school as well. Um we also looked at and this is included in the writeup as well as kind of what some neighboring districts are doing. Most do not provide transportation for their general a prek students unless again it's required by an IEP or if they're in uh the state funded preschool for all program which uh we are not here at L 202. Um in the few cases where we did see transportation and this wasn't a survey of every district. It was just a handful of the neighboring districts that we reached out to directly. Um anytime that transportation was provided for those regular students there was typically a fee associated with that.

014One of the challenges for us to charge that fee is in order to make it work, we're looking at a fee of close to $2,000 for those families to use it. Um, and if we only charged $500, um, and then a lot of parents didn't even want to pay the 500, then we'd be on the hook for that full $40,000. So, there does um create some challenges there with going to a feebased model. There were a few questions for board members. One was, will parents need to arrange transportation home for the AM session and to school for the PM session? And if this is discontinued, that would be required. Um, they could obviously put their student on in the morning, but then they would have to come pick them up in the after the morning

015session and vice versa for the PM session. Uh, another question came about how we were going to communicate this. Um, I talked to Jill about it a little bit. there would be kind of parent square communications during student registration. Um it would be reinforced throughout the year as part of their preschool uh expectations and uh the enrollment process. And then uh another piece is we would probably work with our communications coordinator during the transition to make sure we get something out to all of those uh families that would be affected by this to start this the 2526 school year. Did I miss anything there? Okay. Um, and then there was a question about the preschool for all program. We do not participate in that program. I think we looked into it briefly and I think

016the state basically said it would not be something that we would there's some questionable funding at this point. So I spoke to them about 6 months ago and they had indicated that that wasn't an option for us at this point. And then as far as our students with IEPs, we would uh continue to provide them transportation through Sunrise as we currently do. And so there would be uh no change in that regard. Lastly, there was a question about the 18 midday bus rider students. Is it correct to assume that none of the 18 students qualified for reimbursement of our transportation costs? And yes, that's correct. Again, it's not something that the state requires school districts to provide. And so, they don't provide any kind of funding or reimbursement for transportation unless they're in special ed.

017And so it's kind of a long-winded overview of what was included in the finance packet, but we were looking for um kind of feedback and consensus from the committee as to uh how we should proceed. Again, our recommendation is um for kind of the financial cost implications as well as the operational challenges to uh discontinue that those midday routes. And just to kind of frame it as to the why, um, we've been fortunate to be financially strong for a very long period of time. As we've pointed out at the financial projection, it looks like the year we're about to start is the year that revenue and expenditures equal. And so, as we pointed out during the projection, we've got to find about $600,000 of either additional revenue or expenditures to cut. And so this is

018one of many conversations we're hoping to have with you over the next 6 months to be able to give parents uh enough upfront understanding that um we may not be able to provide the services we did in the past. And so um this is $40,000 of the $600,000 we're looking for. So that's the main reason we're wanting to do it. And at some point if we're financially able to again we would want to add this. And just to clarify, all the special needs children will still have the routes that and we fund those through the other bus companies. Correct. Cor correct. And I did a couple math. Right now we have five students that have IEPs that are registered for this coming year. In previous years, we've had 10 students that have IEPs. Not all

019of them have qualified for special transportation, but we would obviously be looking at that during their IEP meetings. Okay. Thank you. Mhm. To be clear, too, when an IEP talks about transportation, it's usually something to the effect of they are unable to ride a regular bus. And so, sometimes we need to have that smaller bus because there's fewer students, fewer moving parts, and so it's rather rare that you would have an IEP that's specific to um not being able to ride the regular route unless they were in a wheelchair. Like, that would be an obvious Any more comments or questions? No. All right. Thank you very much. This is no joy to bring these types of recommendations. Please be clear. Um but it is one of hopefully um $600,000 of recommendations that hopefully will be

020manageable. And um because there's so few students that are in our prek stu uh prek program, um you know, we will have those conversations with those parents. And if it really seems like we're not going to be able to have a program because parents are not able to pick up or bring their students, we will definitely bring that back information back to you. Um, so this isn't going to just be an email. By the way, things have changed. We we know these families really well because there's so few of them and they're I don't want to say handpicked, but because it is an invite only program, we know the students. We know their what their needs are. And so, you know, we regularly be talking to these parents so there will be no surprises. But

021we didn't want to have those conversations until we were sure that you were supportive of this. Not something I don't think they need to vote on it. This is just more of an FYI so that you're hearing it from us, letting us know if you have issues and we will bring back if we hear a lot of information that parents just aren't able to bring their own students or pick them up. And I appreciate the the table that compared with the other districts because it kind of get gives an idea of what is more of a typical practice in our area. And we do this regularly. I mean, we've looked at the fees regularly. That's probably the next thing we're going to have to look at. We've been fortunate enough to not have to charge

022fees. That may not be something we are able to continue to do. We'll have to look at class size numbers. We'll look at extended services. That's not going to be an enjoyable process, but probably one necessary for us to find the 600,000. So, I think this is the first one we're bringing to you so far. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that update. Um, moving on. Oh, so there has been a change to the agenda. Um we will uh be moving the um fiscal year 2026 tentative budget conversation up to item seven. Uh that information can be actually found under item eight of the actual finance committee packet. Uh Mr. Wilkinson if you would. Uh could we have the presentation up on the screen? There we go. Thank you. Uh so tonight I will

023be uh walking through the tenative budget for fiscal year 2026. Just before we do that though the way we want to appreciate uh Mrs. Chuck Shriber for joining us tonight. Uh we believe at this point you can probably watch on your car ride home from your phone uh our discussion of the budget and the tiff. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Philipak. Um so in the interest of time I'm going to move through things. uh fairly quickly. Um we are just approving the tenative budget this evening. This isn't the final budget. Obviously, if there's any questions or anything else that comes up and we don't have time to discuss it this evening in the interest of making more time for the tiff conversation, uh that can certainly be discussed in both July and August before approval

024in September. Um you know, just really quickly, uh again, tonight we're just uh approving the tenative budget. The final budget will be in September and uh we will make the necessary posting requirements in the daily herald for the public hearing which will happen at that September meeting and the budget will be on display for at least 30 days uh for the public to view it. In terms of kind of at a very high level some of those highlights um our tax levy uh for uh the 2024 levy will be contributing about $1.4 4 million in new revenue uh for the school district, but that is offset at least partially by a drop in our interest income of almost $700,000. Uh salary and benefit costs at this point are projected to increase by about 758,000 and

025the benefits will increase by $430,000 respectively. And then most importantly, we do have a balanced budget across our operating funds. And overall, when you look at all funds, we're projecting um a decline of um about $800,000 uh for the junior high renovations. That's really for that HVAC project that was previously approved. And so it is a balanced budget across our operating funds, um which is obviously one of our key financial barometers that we talk about throughout the course of the year. I previously mentioned our uh property tax revenues. um overall they're increasing by about 300,000 across all of our revenues and so we are seeing um particularly in the area of our federal revenues those will be dropping as ESSER falls off we've we've done the last year of ESSER and then um as well

026as the fact that that previously mentioned interest and income earnings drop of about $700,000 another revenue source that's been kind of up and down over the course of the years is our corporate personal property replacement taxes at this point I'm estimating that those to be flat, but I would mention that, you know, in the past 2 years, we've seen those drop by 400,000 and 260,000 respectively over these last two years. So, we're hopeful that those drops have kind of uh steadied off here, and we'll see that income stream uh stay at $500,000 for next year. Also wanted to add that this does include the Chesterton and Sassid leases that are in our operations and maintenance fund. And so that contributes about $300,000 in revenue for the school district. And this will be new news to

027uh Mr. Wilkinson because he doesn't have it in this budget, but I got a call from Sassid yesterday. They need one more room. And so the room that I think we've met for negotiations for the facility master planning, um they need to use that room. So that'll bring in an additional 25,000. And so the reason I bring that up is that 600,000 we're just chipping away. you know, 40,000 for transportation, 25,000 more in asset revenue. Like, there's probably not a lot of big swings, but hopefully bringing you enough of these will get us to that balanced budget that we need for next school year, not next school year that we're about to start the year after. And I do apologize for going through this relatively quickly, but I want to make sure we have time

028uh for the TIFF conversation. I already touched on most of these points. The only thing I did want to mention is that again, we look at all these grants again kind of in August and September before that final budget is approved in September. So these numbers will change. They'll get more accurate. We go with our best estimates at this point. And so those will be reviewed again prior to the budget in September. on the expenditure side. Um, at this point based on kind of what we know in terms of staffing changes, retirements, things like that, even though we have those 5% increases through our collective bargaining agreements, um staff turnover in some of these retirements are making that a little bit lower. So, I think the increase right now when you look at the budget

029from last year to this year is maybe 2 to 3%. Again, um our final budget will incorporate all the new hires, all the new staffing, where they're placed, what we're actually uh looking at in terms of salaries, as well as on the benefit side, because I think in the budget, it's about a four or 5% increase on our benefits, but as you can see here, we did see, you know, nearly an 8% increase in our benefits through uh the EBC cooperative. purchase services is one we've talked more and more about um in in recent uh presentations and discussions. Overall, uh I'm actually budgeting it to go down about 100,000. We're trying to kind of figure out where that transportation fund is going to land every year. It's really hard to budget with all the uncertainties

030of who's going to need transportation. Uh but based on where we're at so far for the year-to- date actual in FY25, even though we're looking at increases in our regular transportation with Westway of 6% through our recent bid and the 4% for the special education and then I did factor in the savings from the prek uh midday transportation we just talked about. Um I am looking at at least now about $100,000 decrease in our transportation cost. So that's good. uh purchase services also includes all of our soft software renewals uh that we discussed at the March finance meeting. And then um I won't get into this tonight, but our SASID costs for our aids keeps going back and forth between tuition and services and tuition and services. Now Sassid is talking about including those aid

031costs in the tuition costs. So we might see those actually shift over to the tuition side from purchase services. Overall, it's still going to be increasing, but it's just going to be in a different uh bucket on our budget. Terms of supplies and equipment, the biggest one here is um our electricity costs. Uh you may have gotten a notice at your home about the changes to the capacity charges and there's an auction process. And so that's what we've been told as well is that that piece of our bill is going to go up almost 10%. And so we will see an increase. Um unfortunately there's nothing we can do about it. It's just passed straight through to the district from the uh uh whoever sets that rate. Uh but that is going to impact the

032cost of our energy uh for this unc upcoming school year. How much would that 10% be approximately? It's a really good question. I don't have it off hand. Um but it's I I don't know. I'd have to I'll have to bring that back to you. I don't have that hand. Does it magnitude like tens of thousands and hundred? Just over a rough I won't hold you to this son of Wilkin. Yeah, I would probably say at least 20,000 or so. 20,000. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's it's each of our buildings. I think our electricity cost is again, I'm just going off the top of my head, anywhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 100,000. So 10% of that, it will Yeah, it will it will add up. It it's definitely a factor in our onm

033overall budget. But I'm sorry I don't have that number. No, no, that's what I just came to mind. So, it's in my system. I I know I know it's in there at the county for sure. Uh capital outlay. Obviously, we have our HVAC improvements over at the junior high. And then other objects, this is the one that I think makes me the most nervous um between kind of the final budget and where we end up in September. Uh Mary Beth and Jim Nelson worked really hard to to get a list of all of our students requiring special ed services, what those costs. I think we anticipated a 5% increase um and then trying to figure out uh all the aids that they need. But um you know at this point we've we've uh we're projecting

034it to increase but not uh significantly. But as we know that can change based on enrollments and things like that. and one student coming in can cost $60,000 and then if you add transportation on to that it's another 30,000 and so again we'll look at this very closely as we get to our final budget but I'm hoping that these numbers stay where they are but if we have changes that's where we could uh see some strain on our overall operating fund budget. I did get a question about TCD. We um were projecting about 10 more students compared to last year which adds about $60,000. That's a good thing. We have more students participating in the program, but there is a cost for that. And in terms of what we charge for TCD participation, that was

035the question I received. The general fee is $100 per course. And the only exception to that is cosmetology, which is $500 for year 1 and $450 for year two. But in general, we're charging students about $100 to participate in TCD. major sources of revenues. Uh the key thing I wanted to to touch on here is that you can see property taxes is 84%. It was actually about 81% last year. So as we're seeing some of the state and federal revenues decrease a little bit, our interest income decrease. It's just showing once again how the district increasingly has to rely more and more upon uh local property taxes to fund our day-to-day operations. Terms of expenditures, again, salaries and benefits continue to make up the majority of those costs, nearly 70%. uh purchase services represents about

03615% and it's important to note that nearly half of that is actually our transportation costs. Uh so that's the bulk of what our purchase services are. And then in terms of other objects, that's about 10% of our overall costs, but 70% of that is made up of our public and private tuition costs. As I mentioned uh earlier, we do have a balanced budget in our operating funds, which is good. We have uh just a modest surplus this year of about $53,000. Uh you will notice again, I know there's a lot of numbers on that slide. Really just focus on that that bottom uh row there. Uh the yellow number is is the overall surplus across the operating funds. You will notice there's a just under $600,000 deficit in our on&m fund. That's uh planned. I

037actually lowered the levy for our O andM fund. We were starting to see those fund balances get a little bit higher uh relative to what our annual expenditures are. And so I actually ended up shifting some of that levy not only to our ED fund but also over to the transportation fund. Um we've been trying to figure out what that balancing point is for our transportation fund. So we might end up with a little bit of a surplus this year in that transportation fund, but we'll continue to monitor that and then adjust the levy uh accordingly in future years. nonoperating funds. Uh really that that yellow number there, the decrease is purely because of the projects over at the junior high. So that would be expected. Um we are doing a little bit of a

038spend down in our IMRF and social security fund. That one's also been getting a little bit um higher than we want it to be. And so we kind of have a plan deficit in that in that fund as well. uh across all funds. Um again, when you when you factor in the other sources and uses, fund balances are going to go down about uh just over $600,000. Uh but we will be uh well within our operating funds. We will still remain strong at approximately 5 months of expenditures in fund balances at the end of the school year. Uh that's one of the obviously the components that we look at uh each year throughout the course of the year. I did get a question about how many cents of each revenue dollar are we spending in

039FY25 and FY26. I I don't necessarily have uh very specific items on that in particular because we haven't finished fiscal year 25 yet. We're still during fiscal year 25. Um, so I use I kind of went back to my projected amounts for the end of fiscal year 25 that I looked at when I was working on the financial projection and it's roughly about 96 cents of every dollar is what we spent last year. Based on this budget with just that moderate surplus, we would be spending about 99 cents of every dollar. Almost actually about 99.9 with with only $50,000 in surplus. So, um, again, when we finish out fiscal year 25, we'll have a better idea of where we stand, but at this point, I was projecting about a million dollar surplus in fiscal year

04025. And those would just be the operating funds, correct? Uh, that's actually across all funds. Okay. I didn't know if the question was looking for operating or all funds. I don't mean to disagree, but I thought we had a huge deficit in the capital projects, but you're saying even after that deficit in capital projects, we're still going to have a balanced budget. for this year, right? For fiscal year 26. Yeah. No, we'll have a balanced budget within the operating funds. Okay. And so I think the numbers that you just said 99 cents of 100 is just talking about the operating funds because if it was all funds, it whatever that negative was on the previous slide, that would show that we're spending more than what we're bringing in revenue. Yep. And so just to close

041uh again a balanced budget across the operating funds. We will maintain compliance with our fund balance policy. I did want to highlight uh our education fund realistically is breaking even at this for this year uh for fiscal year 26. And so uh we are not recommending a transfer from our ed fund to the capital projects fund for those capital improvements. I know historically we have done that to the tune of $750,000, but this year based on where our budget is, we would not recommend that. I would add though that this current year we're finishing up, we actually transferred about $3 million. So we transferred a lot of that $750,000 in advance. So I'm comfortable not making those transfers for a few years as we focus a little bit closer on what our overall budget is

042looking like. The other thing I wanted to notice is we're still getting um revenue from the Tatewood sale. So, we get about $123,000 every year into our capital projects fund from those from basically the sale of Taywoods. Uh that's just being um uh paid to us in installments. And so we are still putting some money into the capital projects fund for future capital projects. And then uh this budget still is anticipated to preserve our financial recognition rate rating with the Illinois State Board of Education. And we do recommend approval uh at this evening's meeting of the tenative budget. Any other questions? So I feel like in summary of the summary, this is a critical year. Like once you cross expenditures more than revenue, it is so hard to get it back in place. And for

043over a decade, we've had revenue over expenditures for about $2 million. And so the biggest question that we talked about at the present, Dave talked about it that the projection and then also in the budget is what's changed. And what's changed is special ed costs used to be in the area of 1.5 million I think about a year ago and now where it's closer to 2.5. We can't control that. Those are the students who have the greatest need. And when you look at a normal classroom, you might have eight teacher, 22 students. It's usually one teacher for one student. And it's not uncommon to have one teacher per student plus an aid plus special transportation. It's very, very expensive. And so, we're not looking to blame anyone, but that number's nearly doubled in the last

044year or two. And a big number. Transportation has been going up by double digits. Our insurance costs are going up by near double digits. We're seeing a decrease in the interest rates we're able to get, but yet we're still capped at inflation, which is going back to being close to that 2%. So, I wouldn't say we've done anything wrong. I don't think there's anything we could have predicted, but the combination of the increase in special ed, what we're seeing in transportation, and the decrease in what we're getting in interest all together is bringing us to that balanced budget. And I would like to personally recognize Dave for all the hard work he's been doing in this. He's putting in 60 plus hours a week going line by line knowing that what he doesn't want to

045do is to say the sky is falling and then a year from now we're like 2 million in the black again. And so he is taking each and every line, individual people, and making sure that what he brings you, even though it's in June, is as accurate as possible because he wants you to have confidence in these numbers and not feel like we're painting worst case scenario because we've got some hard decisions to make and he personally doesn't want it to stick to him that we made some hard decisions we didn't have to. And so thank you for a lot of nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of stress. This is the first draft, but this is why we do the projections and that we have someone like Dave to go to this level

046of detail so that we're not caught off guard a year from now and going, "What happened?" Thank you, Mr. Wilson. You will always appreciate I drop a kin and that's all. And he becomes son of Wilin. But you son of Wilin. Yes. who are I believe as an organization we're fortunate to have Dave because he treats this money as his own and he wants to make sure that he can look anyone in the eye and say this was justified and so he's put time and effort into this this is not a worst case scenario and on a monthly basis he's going to update it and it's not to say variables won't change but I think you can feel confident at this point he's doing his best to have a balanced budget and we're going to

047keep working with the finance committee over the next six months to make sure that we can cut the budget as much as possible without impacting our core programs. I just want to say we do this every year. You you guys do a great job every year giving us the heads up first time and saying, "Hey, we're getting really close here." But that's why we do this every year. So, and that's why you guys have to listen to the same presentation every year. So, thank you for your patience. It's it's it's it's really a good presentation. It's it's depth enough if we all have the same sort of foresight that you've been working very diligently at. So, thank you. And so, I I apologize that we had to go through it so quick, but I I

048do want to make time for the TIFF conversation, uh, which I think is the next agenda item. I just want to add, Dave, that you don't receive compliments every year, so it's very welld deserved. So, thank you. Well, thank you. I think we have to talk about the TIFF. So, we we do. I've been looking at One last thing real quick before the tiff. Just a question. Last year, um, Dr. Philippia, you did a really great presentation about the volume and the students coming in. Um I think it was July. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I felt like that um gave me a goodformational background for decision- making. Is that something we're planning to do again? Because it sounds like we may be looking at some tough decisions. I just

049think that would be helpful for us. When you say July, the number of students coming in, what do you mean by that? You did a presentation last year. You you had graphs, how many how many class sizes, where we were at, if there was like a peak at the elementary, it was coming down. We're going to do that on an annual basis for a variety of reasons. A for you to know, but B for people to understand when we spend what we spend per student, they can get a perspective as there's some classes that are they're pretty low class sizes, but um that's by design because those are the courses. And so I I want to say that's in September when we actually have everybody, you know, registered starting the school year, but I would

050hope to be able to I plan to continue to do that annually. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I think that'd be helpful. You know, if we have to make some some things. Thank you. Okay. Are there any further comments or questions on the budget? Excellent. Good. So, moving on to item eight, which is now the proposed East Ogden TIFF and Lincoln Avenue/Rout 53 TIFF by the Village of Lyall. That information can be found under item seven of the committee meeting packet. Uh Dr. Philip and Mr. Wilkinson, if you would please take it away. This is complicated and we could probably spend two hours talking about it. And so what I'm will try and do is kind of give the the big picture with a recommendation from my perspective. And again, this is just my perspective. I

051think all of us in Lyall want to find success in the Lyall community. I think when we drive down roads that are Ogden eastbound towards 355, we think there's such potential here. It's like right off of 355. Like this is prime real estate here. like why is this not developing? And we've seen somewhat limited growth in that area probably for a few decades now. And so to try and figure out how we can see that area grow, there's a lot of different things a village and community can do. And so let's talk about the Lock Former South specific site specifically. like that is a big piece of property but somewhat limited as to what you can do with it because I do believe that there was some environmental issues and although they've been remediated there's

052some real limited use. I think you can't go below 5T with that soil in terms of what's in place. And so um you wouldn't be able to build a residential thing there. There's just a variety of things that it just wouldn't work. But there are some things like a data center and data centers are the proverbial clouds that we talk so much about. If you go in Aurora, Neighborville, I live in Aurora. When you're at 88 and I'll call it Eola, they have one that's been there for a decade, two more that are in the final stages. And so that's the type of thing that actually could be built on lock former. And so I know there's some initial conversations with the village, the lack former representatives and someone who's potentially looking to build that

053in that area. The problem is though, you can use a tiff, but it's not necessarily the first thing you would often do. What you would often do is meet with, I'll use specific names, lock former and this potential data group and say, "Lock former, how much you looking to sell your land for?" And that person, I'm making this up, might say, $100 million. And so then you might have the data company that says,"Well, gosh, that's a lot more than I could expect to go right to Aurora and Neapville. They're only asking for 80." And so that's really a negotiation between Lock Former and that data center to be able to say, "Why are you saying 100? Why do I only think 80?" And you would hope at some point they would be able to figure

054out an agreement, an agreed upon number. If you can't do something like that, sometimes a village will come involved and say, "Well, tell me a little bit more. What are some of the problems here?" I can't speak to why Lock Former wouldn't decrease their price, but maybe the data plays we can't get the numbers to work. What we're going to have to do is get a second source of electricity. What we're going to need to do is get a lot of additional water to keep it cool. What we're going to need is a variety of things um that may not be able to be as done as easily on that site for whatever reason. May not even have to do with the type of soil. So, it's not uncommon for then a village to say,

055"Well, tell you what, we're going to get a lot of utility tax from you. What if for the next let's say 23 years we take whatever those utility taxes are and reinvest it in that land so that you know you can make the numbers work if it's a $20 million difference. The village might say something to the effect of we have funds for that. Like we are responsible for the tap on the water the the sewer. Like that's just part of what we do. So you can take those out of your numbers if you already included it. But if you still can't get the numbers to work, what the village could say is, "We'll tell you what. You as a data center are going to be paying property taxes. We'll let you whatever you pay

056in the school district's property taxes will reinvest in your piece of property to get it to work." And the developer might say, "Well, geez, can you even do that? Wouldn't you have to talk to the school?" And so that's what we're doing now is the village is saying, "We can't get the numbers to work without the property taxes from the school." And that's the but for and that's typically where you would see the numbers to be able to say look this is what they want to pay as the developer this is what they want to get as the seller you can see there's a $20 million spread even when we give the utility taxes that we're generating over the next 23 years it's not enough even if we use our own funds as a village

057to go towards a project it's not enough but for the school district's property taxes the numbers work and that's why we're bringing it to the joint review board to show you that we can make this work but for your taxes. I think it's an incredible idea to develop that area. I just have not seen the documents for the but for when I ask questions about how much lock former is asking I can't get an answer. How much is the spread in between this developer and lock former I can't get an answer. How much would the utility taxes you're generating? Can you put all of that towards this project? Are you still close? I can't get an answer. And so I don't know if the answers don't exist, whether they can't be shared, but I personally

058feel that the but for even specifically to lock former has not been something we've seen to be able to say, "Yeah, we feel like if you don't use the school district's property taxes, it's not going to happen." Because I think of other great projects in Lyall. We had Mark on Maine. They didn't have to have property taxes to subsidize that project. Um, Morton Arboritum Village, great great development. Didn't need property taxes to subsidize that development. Um, DuPage Medical Center didn't need property taxes from the school district to subsidize that project. In fact, I think Route 53 has the PY homes. They did not need property taxes, although not in our district, Neapville's property taxes to subsidize that project. That may not be true for lock former site if that's what we're talking about. But again,

059we haven't seen those numbers to be able to say, "Yeah, but for the property taxes that would normally go to the school, it doesn't work. The math doesn't work." And so, I would propose that we pause on giving a yes until we're able to see the numbers to show the difference. And why the difference? Could just be Lockformer has an unrealistic expectation. And I've seen it in my community all the time where people want a certain amount for their house, but they don't realize their house backs up to or there's issues and at some point they need to come to the realization, I'm not going to get what I think it's worth. And so I think those discussions have to happen first. Then I think the village gets involved. Then I think the village uses

060their utility taxes to be able to see if they can get the project to work. Maybe they put some sales tax in there from Bill Kay right next door. Like there is a lot of avenues. And the last thing that I think would come into place is if but for using the school district's property taxes, it won't work. And I do think had the school district not opposed the Mark on Maine project saying the but four didn't work that time either, we would be in a much different situation having not gotten property taxes for Mark on Maine. Arboritum Village and I'm not sure if Douly pays, but um assuming they do like those big developments like we're talking about here, we're talking about $32 million. Like that could make or break the services that we

061provide as a school district. And so um I could have somebody right here probably give you the counterargument as to, well, you drove by for the last teen years, you're not seeing any development. If it wasn't for some sort of public subsidies, um we wouldn't see the growth. That might be true, too. But I don't I don't see the information yet in dollars and cents to be able to say but four is accurate. And to be clear, there was a report from Freriedman that said, well, Lock former site is blighted. Just because something's blighted doesn't mean the it solves the but for argument. What it says is if you can prove the butt for argument, a tiff is legal because it's blighted. But just because it's blighted doesn't mean you've proved the butt for. That's

062about as short as I can make this conversation. And please don't misinterpret. I personally, and I'm sure all you feel the same way, want to see growth in East Ogden. I'm just not sure we're at the point yet that the school district needs to have their property taxes be the but for that makes that happen. I've listened to Keith on the on the committee and I've he's explained this several times to me, which is probably this discussion repeatedly. But each time I come back and say what would they do with the money? Why do they why do they need that? It comes back to the but for question and it it's the one thing that we can't answer. So, it it just seems to me in very simplistic terms that it's kind of backwards. And

063this is what I said. It seems like we should have a plan or or they should have a plan first and then this is what we would use the tiff for and then it would but for the tiff we couldn't do that. And I I guess I interpreted it correctly because he said that is that is it. But it it just I'll use this term. it it just seems to be kind of uh but for backwards if you want to use that that phrase but it I you know we just don't know what the tiff is going to be used for. So and I don't think we necessarily agree the village perceives I'm speaking for them they should be able to speak for themselves that um it appears that it's a blighted area. It appears

064that according to the analysis it qualifies to be a tiff. We'll figure out those details later, but at least the research that I've seen says that as the part of the joint review board, it's our responsibility to determine the but for before we vote yes. And I think it makes a difference to us especially in our current discussions on where we would be trying to save money and and with you know what we're supposed to do is to as um being a faithful protector of the of the school district's assets. Um I guess the other factor that we learned tonight is 84% of our uh we're depend on 84% property taxes which is up. I mean, I think we've all used the term 80% before. So, those are some of the things that I've thought

065about as looking at. I also thought about what we've gone through as a district in trying to do our schools. You know, ALES was a perfect example after all the process with that and using bonds to do those enhancements. Uh we'd love to do do the junior high in one year, but we have to stretch that out because that's what we can afford yet. We've been setting aside that 750,000 uh for different, you know, just planning ahead to try to to make that work for us within within what we have. So those are some of the thoughts that I repeated back to Keith. Am I on the right page? Am I am I understanding it correctly? So, and I've I've heard that there's a gas station that is probably going to be part of that

066tiff. They're very long, you know, well into that process, which tells us the butt for is not necessary. It's my understanding. I thought it was shared at one of the joint review boards. There's been eight contracts on the lock former site, but we don't know why they're not actually coming to fruition. So that's the type of thing that I think it would be helpful for the joint review board to hear that says Lockformer is dead set on this number because of this reason. The developer can go to five other places for less of a price. The difference between the two is not going to be negotiated between these two parties. We need to get involved and find out if there's a way that we can close that gap to see this actually come to fruition.

067I think it's important the joint review board be part of those conversations, understand the gap before we say the but for has to be the school district's property taxes. And Dr. Philippia, could you I read through this red and blue um responses that you had in there. Thanks for including those. But I know we talked at the last meeting about the ability to parcel it out. Um because within this is a huge chunk of area. Within that chunk, not all these areas are created equal. You're right. I mean, according to the picture that we have listed in here, you're right. There is a gas station. There's other businesses that are generating some revenue. It's going to be a new gas station. They've already they're building a second gas station. Oh, but there's an existing gas

068station. There is. I believe it's right across the street. Yeah, called it the quick trip, but I do believe there's uh well into the process a second gas station being developed there because it's an ideal lot. I mean, everyone wants to be in DuPage County in my opinion and to be at Ogden and 355 is huge for a gas station. Nobody wants to get off, you know, and you got to drive like 1.5 miles like you're on, you're right off. Two highways right there, right? Being right by a car dealer, maybe next door you got another car dealer. I mean, it's prime location. Get a B. stone. I don't think the land's big. There's nothing big enough for a buck. Lformer lot's pretty big. We could get a bies on there. Yeah. For for right

069now, what are we deciding? We're just saying if there could be a tip here, but each individual there'll be an RDA for each individual development. Correct. that we could have further negotiations just like we had discussed with the the family square to say if if they have certain number of students go above here then then we would get some funding to to counter obviously there's no students here but is there room there RDA by RDA to get an agreement that then says okay and this 2% which I didn't recall seeing any of the documents about this 2% that's the during I thought it was secondary to the conversation But get ready for another 5minute TIFF summary. Um, when you put in a TIFF, the properties get frozen. Whatever is within that boundary, whatever the equalized

070assessed value is for the purposes of the school district, it's frozen and it won't go up at all. And so what happens is seven of you here, let's just say Paul is now in the tiff. Next year comes, we will increase our property taxes most likely by whatever inflation is. And so it will be distributed to what used to be seven. Now U6 are responsible for whatever Paula would have had to pay in an increase in her property value. And so when we calculated what that means for U6 in my example, it comes to about $6 million over the next 23 years. And so you six would be responsible for the 6 million that Paula would have paid as a result of her EAV going up every year. And so personally that was a major

071concern. It felt like um there's a shift to the tax burden. Not only would you be paying inflation as an increase, but now you're also paying what Paula isn't paying. Um the village was wonderful in saying, "Well, we can do something there. the current properties in there. Let's just assume every year they go up by 2% whatever that mathematical amount is will send to the taxing bodies and if you choose you could abate that to the other six in my example. That made me feel a big sigh of relief because I felt like our tax rate would go up as a result of this. The money would be going to the tiff and so I thought that was wonderful. The village was willing to actually say 2% will go back. um we could actually abate

072it back to the community so they weren't negatively impacted. But where the community is negatively impacted is the theory of would this development happen anyway if not for the property taxes because the village is asking for about $32 million. And so that $32 million over the next 23 years would make a huge difference in all of our budgets. similar to Mark on Maine that initially was attempted to be created as a tiff and as we saw it wasn't necessary. Is it is it the full 325 million? Yes. Or is it just the 20 million for the construction of public works and improvement costs? It's the full $32 million. So, if we can work with the village as a community to get that area developed without infusing property taxes, um the financial benefit to the taxing

073bodies, most of which would be the school district because we've got the largest tax rate, is $32 million. That would be a gamecher in our budget the same way it's been a game changer that a few of these other projects here locally didn't require a tiff. But but those go further down the road in the conversation. The only thing that we need to decide is if we feel that can East Ogden be developed without utilizing school district property taxes. And if we feel like we knew the number and how close the desired purchase price versus the selling price was and that the district, sorry, the village already offered to utilize because there'll be a great deal of utility taxes that come out of that data center. If that's the case, if they've already looked at

074using some of their own property taxes, if nothing else will work other than giving school district property taxes, that's the but for test. And at some point, it could actually be determined to be true. I just don't think we're there yet because we haven't been given that information to say, "Yeah, but for the school district's property taxes, this would not work out mathematically." Not to put additional weight on yourself, but this is already a done deal. There's seven members that work on the or representative on the joint review board. I do believe at this point four have decided to vote yes. So even if you decide to vote no, it'll still pass the joint review board meeting which is scheduled for I believe 3 o'clock this Wednesday. But I will either vote yes based on

075your feedback tonight. I will vote no based on your feedback or I will um what's there in the middle? You would uh abstain. Abstain. You may take the stance. I don't know if it would happen without school district property taxes or I clearly think that's not that you know you just don't know. You don't have enough information and so you could always abstain. Just saying you don't have enough information at this point to answer yes or no. And when you vote, you're it's the whole it's the whole big piece. It's as currently proposed. Oh, that's I mean, that's that's a lot of space. Yeah, you're right. That's a lot of space. I drive by it regularly. I think there's a lot of opportunity. Selfishly, I'd love to be involved in some of those conversations because

076I think there's such potential. I'm just not convinced the school district property taxes are necessary at this point to close the deal. But maybe there's information I haven't seen, but would welcome the opportunity to see it because it's my understanding that we need to determine as a school district whether or not the butt for test is passed prior to developing the TIFF, not after the TIFF. And it just failed the one test out of all. Correct. The but four under the analyze financial projections. Okay. According to the internet, um you're supposed to see what they call proformas to show like this is you've seen it when uh at the downtown tiff the apartment complex there. They were able to show look these are the numbers. This is what we expect. You can see there's a

077shortage if you want us to put in a parking deck. You can see there's a shortage if you want us to do this. And so they were able to quantify the differential. Um, I would have expected to see that type of information at this point, particularly when I think the main focus is the platformer site. Did they share why there's spaces in this tiff that have developed business on there that are included? Because some have wellestablished businesses. So in order ideally when you draw a TIFF if you have a few different areas you would like it to be all in one TIFF and sometimes there's actually developed areas in there. So the ones the bigger ones that come to mind is there's the I think it's called K um is it K automotive Bill K

078automotive? Sorry Bill. Um there's also a nice uh commercial building there but I think the only leie is Douly at this point. As mentioned earlier, the post office is in there. Um there's a nice strip mall, a gas station, but there's different tests that once you get to the point and you're saying the butt for to be able to say it's legal to take the school district's property taxes. And one is called the conservation. And so the conservation is really a low bar to meet. They literally just look at inflation for the last 5 years. And if those properties have not increased by at least flight inflation those last three years, there's that test and there's another one that says that it looks like the parking lot has some cracks in it. Um, so it

079it really is a low test, but that's not the big test. The big test is the butt four. If you can pass the butt four, chances are you're going to find a way that it falls into one of these categories. But just because it falls in one of these categories doesn't mean it solves the butt four. That's where you need to see the financial statements and realize that gap between the two can't be closed and the school just I'm sorry the village can't use utilities sales taxes right if other things they can do it doesn't have to be just the tiff but at some point it may come down to that's all that's left that's why we're asking the school district to give out potential property taxes and but for this project wouldn't happen it's

080hard it's hard work I just don't think we're there yet we haven't seen the information to say yes or no, which might be a reason you abstain. I think if if you have any time to look through I mean you can AI does a great overview of of the TIFF and what TIFF funds can be used for. There's about 12 things that the funds that are reserved uh by the village can or that are given to the village can be used for. There's also an analysis in DuPage County about what our surrounding communities, how many of them have a tiff. You know, Neighborville big it is has one active tiff at this point, but it gives kind of an overview. So, a little more information on tiff that I wanted to know, but it was

081a it was really a good overview to kind of give a basis for where we are and where we're headed. So, if they can't get the numbers to work, at least if I was involved in the project, I would say as a community, we're going to pony up our property taxes. We're going to knock down the building that's currently on lock former. We're going to regrade it. We're going to put in some drainage to make sure there isn't runoff into the creek behind there and that there's not pooling of water. Like there's things that are necessary on that property that I do think are tiff eligible legitimately, but I'm not convinced the differential between what's being asked by lock former and what's wanting to be spent between the two has been communicated to us. If

082I know we're focusing on lock former, but there's a lot of other plots in there, right? They're negligible in my opinion. I mean heavy. Yes. And so the lock form is the big one. The big one, right? Um, and I think part of the reason why that's kind of a weird map is that would be contig has to be contiguous, too, if I remember reading something in here. So, how quickly can we get with the village to close these gaps if we're lacking information? And we do have Mayor Mullen behind you. Oh my. Okay. Welcome to the party. I I think we're to echo what we all know is we you know the Ogden Avenue has not been developed as we've all hoped if we compared to our neighbors our downtown um I think is

083the board we all agree we probably want to be good partners with the rest of the village a tiff is not yeah the entire picture you do the development here other parts of LA will get better our property values go up etc etc you know it's a kind of a domino effect and we have to start somewhere are um certainly with a lock property there seems to be a an opportunity there. Um it would be just along a long line of losses if we don't get that one right. I think that's so I'd be in the interest of trying to work through any questions or gaps we have if we can come to an agreement with the village on how this goes. This is part of the question I asked that each one of those

084property probably has an RDA on its own if there's room for us to negotiate in each individual RDA so that we don't have such a gap between that the frozen EAV of the properties and the rest of us cuz that is the shift you know tax burn shift to the rest of us. However, if they do go in there, non commercial uh assessment of commercial value properties elsewhere outside the tip should also go up because you hopefully this is a dominal effect of more people investing in Ogden and the rest of Lyall. Growth there is undoubtedly a great thing. It's just a but for can it happen without using the school district's property taxes and It's a large domino. It's a very It's the very first one in there. So, yeah. Um, in a perfect

085world, we would pause all of this. We would get more information to be able to prove to the taxing bodies, but for the property taxes, we can't get this to work. And I can only speak for my personal opinion. I want it to work so bad. I just don't have the information to say it doesn't work yet. Has there been any uh expectation from the village that we will get this information or when uh we need to vote on this on Wednesday and it will pass because it's 43 based on what we know if you've if the school district votes no and it will move forward. Do we know of any businesses that are potentially interested with a tiff? As I mentioned the I thought it was shared at one of the joint review board

086meetings. There's been a number of contracts between Lock Former and interested parties, but we don't know the details of the who and why they walked away from the project. And so that I think would be really helpful to know if no matter how much money was invested in that area, it wouldn't have worked or whether it was close if we just fill in the blank. But I don't think the village has been part of those in conversations to this point short of the most recent one. But I do think an individual spoke at the last hearing, some guy named Joe who was very interested in developing his property. And I think that the quick trip is very interested in developing their property. And I think, you know, for the for the one individual that Joe

087has had it up for sale for some time and had offers along the way, but it just didn't work out. We we have someone in the audience that I think was raising uh her hand and since she is the mayor of Lyle, I think if you wanted to speak um I think we'd all like to hear what you have to say. No objections. Thank you. Um I did want to um I didn't realize this is going to be done in committee rather than the board meeting at 7:30. So I was at the library board talking to them about this a few minutes ago. So, I ran over here. Um, there's a lot. So, I just want to start with um this started before I became mayor while I was trustee and I was a proponent

088then and I'm a proponent now. There has been past interest in Lockformer as um he said, but the three projects that came forward and had some discussion with the village um all fell through because the banks wouldn't finance them and because of the risk that they perceived because of the hazardous nature of lock former. It's been remediated to the maximum extent possible. Um, I have told the story a couple times that when um, the analogy I use is when I went through cancer treatment, at the end of treatment, they don't tell you you're cancer-free. They say there's no evidence of disease because there's probably something still in there. There's probably a little bit of cancer floating around that they just continue to treat through um, medication. Same thing. This site is remediated to the maximum

089extent practical. It is still not allowed to be dug further than five feet deep below the grade elevation which severely limits the type of uh development you can have there and the hazardous nature of what lies below those 5T. Um a little bit of plume still may be there. There's hazardous soils and corrosive soils as a result of the dumping that was done on that site. So it scares banks. All of those banks, pretty much the reason all of them fell through is they could not get their financing lined up because the bank saw it as too high risk of an investment. That's why TIFF is on the table. The extent of the tiff district is the whole corridor. And as um I was going to say you guys trustees or commissioners or um trustee

090board member elderly um um as member Helderly mentioned they do have to be contiguous. So if we want to capture areas that are blighted we have to capture the entire route through there. Now, the very first JRB meeting that we had, it was brought up that it seemed unfair for the village to be doing a tiff along this corridor and trying to pay for things that seem like it should be a capital improvement project under the village. And I think that was a very fair point that was made. So, as a result, I'm saying that, and I'll put it into intergovernmental agreements, whatever you want to use to document it, that we won't do streetscaping, we won't improve Ogden corridor explicitly using TIFF money. I want that tiff money to go as much into incentivizing

091development as possible. The only thing that I know that we would want to do is do some stormwater improvements um in a property adjacent where we have it in our master plan to make the um log former area and some of the surrounding areas less floodprone and try and bring down the flooding in those areas so they are more developable and more interesting to potential developers. Um I do want to talk about the but for so because this is a district and it is um a corridor we don't get financial information at this stage. This is a topdown financial assessment not bottoms up. So this isn't let's pull together all of the potential investors and see what money they need and then put that forward. The way the 20 the $32.5 million total bucket which

092is 20 million of that is set aside to go towards the incentive or public improvements that amount is determined by looking at the whole district what the frozen rate would be and then what the estimate is of each year after year what the value increase would be if that that area was fully developed. So it starts to go up. Only this money in that um under the curve is what is going into that 32.5 million of the tiff. So this is not money that tax money that would be coming to you at all in the future. This isn't $32.5 million being pulled out of the tax roles. This is increment that would not exist if not for the tiff. And in this case, because we can't put together proformers of every individual development, because a

093tiff district is a little bit more of a if you build it, they will come situation. Because of that, we can only say this is the maximum extent of the tiff. Here's the 20 million is the maximum that we will be using to incentivize or do improvements in this area. And if we didn't make that incentive available, we would continue to have what we have today. And what we have today is a couple of businesses that are doing all right Speedway which gets knocked over once a month. Not a safe area, not a lighted area, not a welltraveled area other than people shooting through. People don't pause. They don't stop. They don't do other things. Yes, there's a gas station looking to go there a quick trip, but they purchased a property already. Most of

094that money would be incentive that would be go towards proper to towards that. They're not going to be leveraging the increment funding and they may not be developing it for a couple of years. You mentioned BIES. We had a BIES. It fell through at Yaki. No, we really did. The mobile the mobile the mobile at Yakley and Ogden was supposed to convert to a BIES with um and we approved it with an O'Reilly's next door and they pulled out. The Ogden corridor in Lyall is something that people drive through right now. they don't stop and utilize any of the businesses in that area. So the point of this tiff is to bring in developers and try and make it more feasible to develop at the lock former site. The other benefit we get with the

095corridor tiff is as that site redevelops in particular it's going to bring everybody up and as it brings everybody up everybody's tax or eaves will go up alongside them and that's all additional increment that can feed into the tiff. If we only did a project specific tiff like just the lapformer property, it would never alone generate enough increment to incentivize a developer to come in. Essentially what we're going to be doing with incentive money is incentivizing developer to build because there's going to be a shortfall of what the bank is interested in giving them because it's such a high-risk area. At the end of the day, that's the main thing. Um so the but for question is not about financials and details of of the gap. The but for question is a policy level question

096and it's a policy question of do you believe that in the next 20 years this area could redevelop it to meet the vill's goals and needs without anything else happening. It's been sitting there since I moved back here. We got is when we moved back here in 2012 and it was shortly after that the EPA said you could go ahead and rebuild block former. Nothing's happened. The um Joe that you mentioned across the vacant parcel across from the post office, nothing's happened and he's had interest, but they never want to move forward. There's the Speedway, like I said, which I can't imagine they're making a lot of money when you get robbed so frequently. Um, and I've seen at least three places turn over where the Windows place is. Um, that is where the um,

097Quick Trip will be going after they get past all of this. So, it's not a financial nitty-gritty gap question. It's a policy question. Do you can you imagine that this will develop into what we would like to see it in in a reasonable time frame? I really don't think we can. And I think the history of this area has shown that the village has made some poor decisions in the past by not doing streetscaping, not putting in lights, not doing the things that we were supposed to do. And we'll do that ourselves. We'll use our own capital improvement money. We'll take care of that. But this isn't taking money that would be yours otherwise without an improvement in this area particularly in such a large space of lack former which everyone's been scared off of

098purely because of the environmental background which is not going to change without that redevelopment. this area will never see the kind of EAV that is projected in the tiff. You'll never see millions of dollars in EAV generated each year until we go through this process. Now, I will say too that there's a lot of motion with um the tiffs. We have two active um down um down west in the in the village and the one downtown. The one downtown didn't pan out. If I had my brothers, they would have. We were out well on the way and it should have happened, but it didn't. Um, the other tiffs are Navastar and UTI. UTI is closing early. We are finishing it up this year. It has hit its cap and we're going to be returning all

099that money to the districts of surplus this year. And then from here on out, that EAV growth that we've seen because of UTI is all yours. You're going to see the return on investment at UTI earlier than you thought you would. We're asking for the same leap of faith on lock former to get that same return on investment that we saw at UTI. Um, and I'd love to answer any questions if you have Navastar. What's the status of Navastar? Navastar is going to probably play out the entire 23-year period. um they don't hit annually the um employment marks that were um outlined in the redevelopment agreement. Um so year to year they get a portion of the incentive and the portion of it goes back to surplus because they haven't qualified for the full incentive

100each year. as people have come or if anyone has come regarding the lock former property have they talked tiff have they talked what it could we do if we got I mean it seems like that's what we're saying is backward you know if we knew that there was somebody that needed to and was going to use that if the tiff was provided and so I would say the reason we haven't probably done it there's probably two reasons a sight specific one alone wouldn't give them the incentive they need to build doing a district like this, you needed enough people to stand up and say you want to do it at the village. And I don't think that was something that there was the interest in doing for a long time. Um we started this process

101um a few months ago. It absolutely should have been much better communicated before we got to the point of standing up a joint review pro uh board and that was on the village. Um I just lost your question and rambling. whether or not there was expressed interest in using a tiff on the lock former property in the in the previous iterations that I know of um and I know of three specific ones um I don't think a tiff came up there might have been one that came up because I know they were talking to the um assessor's office at the time so they might have been trying to feel that out and see what their um possibility was for a project specific tiff um because I was at the township at the time um I

102will tell you there is currently active interest on the lock former property there is somebody who wants it and they want a tiff to make it feasible. Um a lot of the details of that specific interest interested party are not something that's public information but they've made it way further than anyone else has and they're asking for a tiff to help support that process. And that seems like a logical process to develop that person of interest and talk about a tiff for that and then build on that and then expand rather than doing the whole thing. But the increment at the lock former property alone won't be enough incentive. You need the other parcels that will come up with it to make up the full incentive amount that will be likely needed. We're trying to

103make it as as feasible as possible knowing banks aren't going to put a lot of money into it. They're going to hesitate. And if they have this kind of commitment, it not only provides the funding for them, but it provides the resolve for the bank that the village is equally interested in this project and believes that it's sustainable. Being that you've got the whole corridor there, will you have greater will the village and planning zoning have more influence over how that will look and feel being one continuous property there? In other words, you get off of 355, it'll look much better continuous properties through there as we've seen in in our neighbors, right? Um the other Yes. because of ability that we'll be writing anybody who wants to at least take take um a um

104provide like get some incentive funding in order to do it. Um they would be going through the redevelopment agreement process which is where we get all the financial information that um uh superintendent mentioned around here's the you know the amount of money that we're putting in. Here's what we're getting from the bank. Here's here's a shortfall that during the redevelopment agreement process is when we'll get those details. But we don't we don't know whether those other they would want to use it in all cases. There is some vacant land but not all of them. Yeah. There if if Lformer comes in and needs all of it, we would write a redevelopment agreement with them and that entire increment goes to that developer. More than likely they won't need all of it. Um but it then

105it makes it available for those other properties that are either vacant or blighted. Um and there may be successful businesses. There may be businesses, you know, hanging on by a thread that are there. But it does make it available that people who want to come in and buy multiple lots, many parcels, package it together and put forth a development proposal, they would be eligible to ask for incentive money and put together an RDA and and that would be again contingent on whether the businesses wanted to sell, right? Totally. That would be that would be the first conversation they would have, right? But we have a few residential properties in here that in our comprehensive plan are actually um preferred to be commercial industrial in the future. So if there was a developer that wanted to

106kind of take a big swath of those and redevelop it, you know, that's something that could happen along the way as well. So it looks like there's 40 properties if I look at all the pins and the last. So let's say five come in and they satisfy the 32.5 million. The remaining 35 EV would never be frozen. Is that correct? just the first for the for the duration of the tiff that the EAV is frozen and that increment the increment above that frozen amount gets returned to and to the village who distributes it through the incentives um through the redevelopment agreement incentives um but sorry I was scrolling through the PowerPoint presentation for one of the JRBs um uh Mary Joe while you're doing that I just want to Mr. Negler. Yes. Um would you

107like to extend the finance committee? I think we should give it Yes. I was wondering about that. Um are we comfortable with extending the meeting to uh at least eight at this point? Uh minutes. Pardon? Really? Well, that's 7 minutes. Yes, I know. Can I propose 8:15 and then re-evaluate? If everyone's comfortable with 8:15, I am I'll second proposal. I'm okay with that. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm sorry. Who was who prop who was the uh uh so uh Kate and I proposed 850 miss Foster Miss Almond. Thank you. All in favor of that. I I I Okay. Thank you. Just wanted to take care of that technicality. Go ahead. What was the the previous question? If if there out of the 40 properties if five came in and met the 32 and a half does

108that mean the other 30 the EAVS of the remaining 35 would not be frozen? No. The the entire district is frozen for that duration. Right. But if we get that air those areas um redevelopment agreements up to the $20 million improvements put together early, more than likely we'll be in the situation that UTI was in where they cap out early and we close the tiff early. Um it really is a matter of how ear how soon a developer comes in and gets in. So their benefit to be one of the first because you you know the pile the pot is bigger for you to ask for and then the um the generated increment is much more. So if you try to improve this is where we were with uh family square um we were at

109the seven years into that tiff before we got a redevelopment agreement in place for um family square. And that was seven year seven years that there was no additional increment generated. It just sat there. So they were down to seven 16 years that they were going to be able to hurry up and get some increment. So they didn't have available to them all of the incentive that they could have had if they started early and had that whole amount. So more than likely if this happens soon and early we close it early and return any surplus and you guys get the the return on investment sooner. And that's what this is. Economic development for the village is an investment right now. We need to invest some money to get people in the door. Yes, there's

110lots of development going around but a lot of things are stagnant. We have not been successful in redeveloping areas that have been sitting vacant for a very long time in the village and that is our focus right now. We believe it is one of the most important things that we can do as a village to keep the village sustainable. We don't have the economic resilience right now to surv survive a huge downturn in the same way we would if our commercial EAV was as supportive as our neighbors. And we didn't have to rely so heavily on the residential side of property taxes. We need that development to be diverse. We need to not rely solely on the residents for property taxes. Mayor Joe, what what incentives has the village provided to potential buyers in the

111past or developers? One of the things that we can do is a share in sales tax. We've done that with Westside Tractor. We have an agreement with them. That was one of their incentives for coming into Lyall. Um the use at Lock Farmer probably won't be retail. Um so there's no sales tax to be generated that you could even use that benefit. Um there are a few other tools, but all of them are more like the share and sales tax where those are much smaller dollar value incentives that we can offer. That's something to bring a business into an existing facility, something like that. Um a huge property that needs full redevelopment, the tip really is the only thing that provides enough bang for the buck to get them to seal the deal. Has use

112of bonds ever been considered? It's not very common. on the municipal side. Um, and when the idea has been suggested, it made a lot of people in Village Hall go um so it's just not something on the municipal side that's used nearly as frequently. Um, and there was a lot of appetite to pursue it um when we had the discussion about it. And my my last question and then I'll go I'll make sure everybody but there are several eligible uses of tiff besides the development of that property. Has the village board projected what they may use some of that? I mean is that a consideration in in the desire to do this? The village does have the ability to use some of the funding for our projects that would be eligible. And right now the

113only thing that I know of that's on the table. It doesn't say that this would be the only thing um is the storm water improvements in that area to reduce flooding. Um there are utility improvements we can do things like that um that we could do, but like I said, the streetscaping, the lighting, things like that we won't do. That's a commitment I've made that we'll handle that ourselves. We're not going to put that into the tiff. But those other things that you just described before the streetscaping could be something that the village would do without a tiff. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If we had the funds available. Yeah. And I know it looks like we do, but we have a lot of things that we haven't funded. So, we're all in the same boat. It

114goes on the list, you know. Okay. Kate, I think you had a question. Yeah. I was um thinking of something that Dan just mentioned. Um do you have examples of other towns that have done something similar in the area and had success as a result of using a TIFF? Sure. Um I was just talking to the mayor of Roselle over lunch. Um there he was he's the president of Dupage Mayors and Managers and they're just closing out one for their downtown. Um that was really successful. Um down uh Downer's Grove has had several um that I know at least two of which kind of drove a lot of the development in and restructuring that they had downtown and in the municipal area of for downers Grove. And then I sat on a joint review board

115for Woodridge when I was a township supervisor. Um they had one active that helped kind of like their little municipal center area that they had one for for that area too. Um all of those have been successful. They've all closed out hitting their cap. Um you know I think for us Navastar is kind of the frustrating one that it didn't really pan out the way we had hoped. Um, and Family Square, we were very close to having really nice things, but that didn't quite happen. Um, but every town does this. Um, Roselle, uh, Mayor Pakolski told me that they have four active tips right now, and they're all going really well and helping with with redevelopment. any of the size. Like I said, this is really large, which you know, as you explain it more,

116that's pulling it together, but it just the size gives me pause. And knowing that there are some cash um you know, tax revenue businesses currently on there does give me some pause as well. Sure. And that is absolutely why I I offer to do the 2% um increase on the frozen value because there there is growth in those those pockets that have developed businesses. Bill Kay has growth. Speedway probably has growth. Um, but overall the district as a whole for the last three years hasn't kept up with CPI. So the areas that are growing, we want to make sure that we aren't like making it more difficult for you guys to do your jobs um by bringing that money back in. Um, doesn't have to be abated. I know that was that was um an

117opinion of some that it should go back as an abatement, but it's also something if you put it through we would put it through an IGA that you could count on as revenue and then that could be built into your budget and living process. Thank you. Any further questions? All right then. Well, thank you very much, uh, Madame Mayor. We appreciate you coming on board and uh giving us a personal presentation. Thank you guys for giving me the chance. Thank you. Thank you, Keith. Well, if we could have Dr. Philippia back. [Music] It did look like got a bit comfortable there, but No, I I can sit out there the whole meeting if you want. So, um I guess to wrap it up, do you need uh uh guidance now as to say yes, no,

118or abstain? Yes. Okay. though. Is there anything you'd like to add to that conversation or I'm just a different breed. I mean, as I've mentioned and you know, I'm a CPA, my MBA. I used to do mergers and acquisitions. I was on both sides of the sale uh and the purchase. And so, I just I'm run on a different frequency. And so, when it is very trust us, do you feel this way? I mean, I've been bred not to feel. I'm been bred to see the numbers and see the numbers don't work unless we so you may feel differently. Uh I think we're all passionate about Lyle. We want to see it grow. None of us have um the ability to know either way whether it would or wouldn't happen without property taxes. But I

119have not physically seen the numbers to show me that. But for the school district's property taxes, we wouldn't see that area develop. So, it's your decision. I will vote however you decide. So, as a matter of procedure, we normally don't vote in the finance committee, right? Um, how do we handle these? They've come up before. Well, we would just do a straw poll of what our feelings are on on whether we would support this. Yeah. To provide direction. So, should I do that by board member? Um, sure. You can go around and and see. So, Miss Nova sold you. I was hoping you wouldn't start with me. Pass. Um. Oh, am I am I my vote or am I giving my thoughts? No, you just want to know do you what would you How do

120you want Keith? How do you want Keith to vote? Yes, no, or abstain. You can't start with board member. That is so not fair. You should go by. I do feel as though perhaps I should have gone by seniority. But I can let me just give my thoughts. I think that Mayor Mullen, I appreciate you coming. There's a lot of really good information, but I I feel like it requires some thought that we don't have time for right now. And so I feel like if I were forced to vote, I would probably abstain because I just don't feel like I have the time to reflect on the information we received tonight. Miss Foster, I I'll agree with you on it's it's just a lot to really take in, but we do have to make a

121quick decision. And um I I would also like to see a little bit more on the data side, like driving a decision. I mean, it sounds like the I like the thought process behind it. I like the enthusiasm and the intention behind it. I would love to see that area redeveloped. I've lived around here for um more years than I I'm going to share, but like it's I I I am leaning towards no at this point for the whole piece. Mr. Helderly, I lean towards yes. I think I started with the abstain, but um I think I lean towards a yes. Largely the incentive of the 2% is important. the fact that we'll have some say on each individual RDA. The fact that it seems to be the lock form property is the lynch pin.

122Can can I pause? We won't have say on the individual RDA. The village will have we have a decision say no say. This is your only say in the process. All right. Seems Lockformer is the lynch pin and it's hard to do any of this without that one aspect. So, and so I would agree with this one. I know we have a second tiff to come up with with you haven't had the presentation on that yet. So, we'll bring that to our next board meeting. Yes. Um, so for this one, largely for the law firm property, I am a yes. Miss Lman, um, based on the use of the district's funds at this time, since what we're facing, I would I would be a no at this point. I we all want to see progress

123in the village. I just am concerned about the amount of money that we would that it would impact us. Miss Ellis, um I kind of agree with some of the other members of the board and that it's hard to make a decision without knowing if they really have to use our property taxes. I also don't like the fact that we're having to cut so much out of our budget this year because we will have a shortfall next year. Um, and to give away money that I know it's not money yet, but like to say, "Yeah, we're okay with giving this away when we're going to have to cut services or you know, um, I don't feel comfortable doing that." Um, so I think I'm nay. Um, so from my point of view, uh, while I'm

124concerned about, uh, the, uh, I guess mirroring, um, SIMS, uh, with our projected budget crunch, uh, I'm very concerned about work we're going to have to cut. Um, and there are a lot of unknowns in this process. So, um, I'm going to have to say that I'm probably a no. Mr. Marco Adena Dominico. Um I can echo what a lot of my colleagues here have said um because of the size of the project and that we don't have information about what other um uh tools we might use before using the tools of the district's um finances and the current state of our budget. Um I would be a no at this point too. So Dr. flip back. Uh I gather from our informal poll that uh the board feels that a no is appropriate at

125this time. And I think the critical word is at this time. I mean I am personally although not a voting member um wanting to see the development. I would just like to see more information to be able to feel the pressure of the but for the property taxes of the school district. This project would not go through and I can't help but feel like we would all have all seven of you support that. You just need to see the numbers to be able to show that's true. Totally agree. Thank you. Yeah. And so we'll be moving uh the discussion from the uh about uh Route 53 I gather then to the next board meeting. We will share the information um of how the vote played out for the East Ogden. And then that same day

126we're going to get a presentation on the route 53 and we'll share that at the July meeting with you. Excellent. Thank you very much. And again, we want to thank the mayor for taking the time to come and present and we appreciate your thoughts on it and your insight for sure and we'd be glad to have uh any future engagement. Uh you can call ahead and we' put you on the uh agenda so that we can budget time for it. Thank you. All right. So um after uh that uh long discussion uh we are to agenda topics for uh future finance committee meetings. any presented? No, I gather the uh other tiff will be built in. So, we won't add that there. All right. So, with no other agenda items, I will obtain a motion

127to adjurnn. Absolutely. Second, Miss Alman, Miss Foster. Uh therefore, the finance committee is adjourned at 8:09. Thank you very much for all sitting through this extended edition of the finance committee meeting of school district 202. Good day.