REGULAR MEETING OF THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL OF THE VILLAGE OF TAMPICO
March 6, 2018
7:00 PM
Reagan Community Center
Mayor Kristine L. Hill called the Regular Meeting of the Tampico Village Council to order at 7:00 PM.
Commissioners Derrick Maupin, Al Wildman, Scott Meier and Todd Tornow were present. Police Chief Terry Strike and Assistant Clerk Jamie McIntire were also present. Village Clerk, Kathy Leathers, recorded the written and audio minutes. The meeting was also video recorded.
Mayor Hill led those present in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Minutes of the February 20, 2018 Regular Meeting were approved as presented.
Reports of Village Officials
Mayor Hill started by saying the Girl Scouts sent a very nice thank you for allowing them to come to our meeting. I thought that was very sweet of them.
Next Mayor Hill said I’ve been working the the Recreation Board. Wendi Ketchum and myself have put new forms out for Baseball/Softball Registration. They’re on our Facebook page, they’re on our website, they’re in our office and they’ll be at the schools. We will take the old ones and we’re going to go through the end of the month.
Clean Up Day over at the ball diamond is this Saturday from 8am to noon. Mayor Hill said if the weather is bad we will reschedule. Basically we want to start getting the fence lines cleaned up and get some of the brush and debris cleaned up. Just some of the basic stuff. We can’t do much of the painting or sealing the benches, but we can get a good start on things and maybe clean out the shed. Everyone that can come, we’d really appreciate it. Bring the kids. Hand them a garbage bag and let them run. We could really use the help.
Remarks from Guests
Todd Slock was present to speak on behalf of the Day Care Board. He began by thanking the Council for allowing him to speak with them and handed them a purposed budget relating to the possible summer youth program. Slock said the back story to the day care was the issue of having the director position filled. In November, Cindy Slock came and spoke with you about five possible plans that we were looking at as a day care board. One of those was to continue the way that we have been, which would have been 2 through 6 year old’s which was full time. The other would be to open a school age program during the summer months, which would be 5 to 12 year old’s. Then to open a school age with a planned enrollment for ages 2 to 6 but also to expand that to the 12 year old’s. Then also to maybe do something along the lines of something similar to a YMCA program or a Park District program to where we would have different themes and things like that. After consideration and after Cindy Slock spoke with you, we stepped back and looked at the 3 most important things for our community here. We concluded that the 5 to 12 year old summer program as a licensed day care is probably the most feasible, and it’s also probably the highest demand we would have in our community. It would also be the easiest to staff. With that being said, the problem with maintaining the license, it’s more affordable for the community because there is State programs they can get to help with the cost of the day care. That was the main reason to stay with the license. There are more hoops to jump through with the licensing with DCFS, Health Care Department, Fire Marshall need be. If we stay with ages 5 to 12 we really don’t need to make any adjustments to the room, or if we were to expand to both ages 2 to 6 and then from there to age 12. We wouldn’t have to expand to an additional room. We would be able to use the one we were already using. It meets the Fire Marshall code, DCFS and the Health Department. Slock said what I ask for tonight and what I’ve presented to the board there is our purposed budget for the school age, ages 5 to 12. This would basically be from May 24th through August 15th. There’s kind of a broad range there again depending on the amount of students. Which in some cases depend on payroll, operation would be through the May 24th through the August 15th is going to be the biggest chunk of that. Again, there is quite a bit of range there but some of that can depend on the enrollment that would be in the classroom and depending on the services that we would need to provide. The pre-operation would be to start, we would prefer as a board as soon as possible to start dealing with DCFS, start signing up parents if it’s approved, dealing with the Health Department, putting together a program and curriculum for the summer activities. That would be purposed at no more then 20 hours a week, just part-time up until opening. To get things rolling as a board we don’t really have the time during the day and the hours needed to be able to contact some of the DCFS, to schedule meetings, to do the licensing, to sign up employment and to sign parents up for the children. That would be the pre-operation part. Most of the food as you can see, we put in some miscellaneous cost in there, but most of the food is reimbursed through the state program. There’s minimal cost there when is comes to the food program with the day care. Supplies for the classroom and cleaning, on average would be $50 to $75 a week. Some of that is looking back at past expenses we’ve had. There is some flexibility there. We have some grant money that we would be able to use for some of the things that we collected at the end of last year. Some of that would be able to come from the grant money. Some other miscellaneous cost would be CPR training, food safety with the Health Department and then with the teachers. On the income side of things you can see where it can vary considerably. Whether there is 5 children, 2 children or up to 20 children. There’s where we’re looking for direction from you. We want to be able to have commitment if we start signing up children and it turns out that there’s 5 kids or 2 kids, that they have a place to go. It takes so much planning for the parents and the families to come up with day care, we don’t want this to be a weekly decision because it’s not proper planning. We think out of the 5 plans that this is the most feasible and also the easiest to staff. That’s what we’re looking at.
Mayor Hill said the after school Tiger Club program has 19 kids as of now. Slock said yes. We put together, as a board, a survey that went out to the school a week ago. We got some back. As of right now there were 7 families that showed interest at approximately 12 children. There’s no guarantee that everybody signs up but they sent a form back which is a step in the right direction. That’s probably our biggest demographic in town is the 5 to 12 year old’s that are going to need some sort of summer care when they’re not in school.
Mayor Hill asked if there is any flexibility if a family has a 4 year old. Slock said no because that’s when the DCFS licensing comes into play. As far as feasibility, if we try to run it as a YMCA program or if we try to open that up, there would be flexibility if we tried to open that other room up but it will take an additional cost. Mayor Hill said we can face that if we see a need. Slock said it’s always open to flexibility. With the 3 month program, the staffing will be a lot easier. We have one person, if it opens, that would be committed. She said before she left last time, and she is director qualified, that she would be willing to come back for the summer. Another one that was a teachers aide at that time had also said she would be interested in coming back. With this age group it’s also easier to qualify, say if a teacher wants to work part-time in the summer time. They can do it because they qualify for this age group. The younger group is so much harder with education qualifications so it’s harder to find someone to staff for that. That’s why we thought that this plan, if we are to move forward, would probably be the most feasible and be the highest demand in our community.
Mayor Hill said I’m personally for anything that helps service our children so they’re not in the streets or scrambling around. I think our Tiger program has been amazing in helping so many kids do so much better in school. If we can get something else that’s structured in the summer, even if it benefits a few it benefits many. You have to start somewhere. I’m in support of it. I’m always an advocate for helping our kids. Slock said I’d ask that if you guys need time to think about it, if at your next board meeting you could make a vote because again, depending on the enrollment which is hard to judge, some of that is going to depend on sitting down and in some cases what they qualify for. If they qualify for certain aides that’s great, and if they don’t that might deter some in some cases. Mayor Hill said you might need some start up dollars, and we understand that. You have some in the budget but we will get it back. We’ll have to talk to Mr. Shirk to see if we can give them our blessing or if they’ll need a motion. If we can come up with a dollar amount to not exceed so much, then we’ll probably need to do some kind of a motion to help start up this program and to get it going for the kids. Slock said the range kind of depends on the enrollment. Especially on the operation with the payroll stuff. If there is 15 kids it’s obviously going to be to the upper end of that because we’ll need more staff. Mayor Hill said we could at least get it approved what it’ll cost to get the director qualified and to get everything in place, because then you’ll start your enrollment and start balancing out some of that. Slock said and I think that’s part of the reason why we’d like some direction and approval on some of this as far as showing you the budget and making sure you’re ok with those amounts. Because again, we had the discussion that if we start to sign up children and it turns out that we have 8 signed up at the beginning of the summer and all of the sudden 3 have to pull out for whatever reason it may be, that we’re still committed to serving the 5 children we have there since we started the program. Mayor Hill said and you’ll fluctuate through the summer because needs are going to change. Slock said you’ll see on the income side that it’s only based on 11 weeks, assuming that some of those are going to take a weeks vacation. We’ll try to be understanding and flexible as far as what they are there throughout the week. You just can’t make it too flexible because you can’t judge what’s coming in. And staffing and scheduling becomes harder too.
Commissioner Maupin said I think it’s a good idea. Obviously everybody would like to see it have over 10 kids but you can’t predict that. We have to make it a solid process for when kids start signing up. We can’t say oh we only have 5 kids so never mind. So we either, as a board for their sake, have to say we’re ok at 5 kids if this is what it’s going to take or we’re ok if we lose money or we’re not going to do it at all. Mayor Hill said my thoughts on possibly losing a little money, on the police side of things, we’re going to help these kids and keep them off the streets and give them programs to be in, or we end up paying in other ways. Maupin said I’m not trying to act negatively towards possibly losing money, I don’t mean that. I just think everybody needs to think of it as a stand point that we can’t just say start doing your prep work, start signing kids up then look at the numbers and say sorry guys, this isn’t going to work and pull out of it. That’s what we cannot do. We have to decide that yes, we’re going to go forward completely or not do any of it. Mayor Hill said I say go forward. We’re already set up for 5 to 12 years old. I would like to see it go. The council agreed. Mayor Hill said they also have that grant money from Walmart and a little bit in their payroll too. They’re not starting at zero. We’re just helping back them. The council members agreed with moving forward. Mayor Hill said we’ll put it on the Agenda for the next meeting and have a vote. Slock said thank you to the council and Mayor Hill said thank you for all your hard work and keeping this program going for the kids.
Unfinished Business
The council began to discuss the possible approval of Ordinance NO.O12-18-03-06 an Ordinance Amending the Tampico Municipal Code to Adopt a Building Code entitled “Property Maintenance Code”. Mayor Hill said we received the information back from Mr. Shirk, and the only thing we seen in it was they had City instead of Village. Everything else looked good and they did correct that. Does anyone have anything that they want to add, change or discuss on this Ordinance. Shirk has assured us that this is very typical in many towns to help take care of the abandoned houses, so we do have a leg to stand on and we can get them processed and cleaned up. I know I wouldn’t want one of those eye sores next to me. It gives us some recourse and it can be really hard to fight the attorneys and banks. We’re not trying to hurt anybody. Chief Strike says this opens the door and lets us get started. Mayor Hill said right, and if we don’t get rolling now our window is going to be closed for this season and trying to get some of this cleaned up. At least we can get started on it. A motion was made by Commissioner Wildman with a second from Commissioner Meier. “Yes” votes were Maupin, Wildman, Meier, Tornow and Mayor Hill. The motion carried.
The council began to review / discuss 2018 Project Plans and Budget Worksheets. Mayor Hill said I turned mine in to Clerk Leathers, the General fund and my opinions on that, the Public Affairs and I also did the Recreation Board. I’ll get a copy to Commissioner Tornow so you can see how I went through that and broke it down and changed it to be more realistic. Clerk Leathers said in anticipation of not knowing when we were going to start the Water Replacement Program I asked Matt Hansen for some budget figures. He’s looking at a loan grant from Rural Development at 2 million dollars. In the expenses will be 1 million 8 hundred eighty dollars. The $120,000 difference between the revenue and expenses, the design engineering work that we have already paid for. That we’ll be getting back as a reimbursement. I wanted to let you know about that. Commissioner Maupin said I went through and did a good chunk of the Water/Sewer and got that started. I did an outline but some of the stuff I didn’t know where those numbers were going to end up going. Mayor Hill said I typically do a cost of living for our employees too. Typically 3% I believe. Leathers said we’ll get those all together for you and try to have a rough draft done up for you. Mayor Hill said yes, so try to get your stuff to Leathers so we can get the big picture too. Commissioner Wildman said I’ll get with Superintendent Pierce. Leathers said Commissioner Meier and Chief Strike have theirs done.
New Business
There was no New Business to discuss at this time.
Communications
Clerk Leathers said there’s just your Municipal Minute. It’s very informative. We get several of them a week. If you have the time to go through it, it’s a good thing to know because there’s so many bills on the floor of the Capital right now that we never know how things are going to go. They’re still wanting to take the collection fee for disbursing the money to us. The Illinois Municipal League is fighting all those things that aren’t good for the rest of us. It’ll be interesting to see how it all comes out. Mayor Hill said it is an election year so it could go differently.
Bills were ordered paid on a motion by Commissioner Maupin with a second by Commissioner Tornow. “Yes” votes were Maupin, Wildman, Meier, Tornow and Mayor Hill. The motion carried.
Mayor Hill said I will be bringing to the board what we mow, what we should mow and what we maybe want to change. We’re going through some of these properties that we may have vacated. We’re doing inventory on what properties we have in the Village. I’ll be bringing that to you guys this spring so we can get a good mowing and maintenance plan going. Does anybody else have anything. Chief Strike said spring is when we start tagging cars and getting rid of them. If you see any eye sores just let us know. Mayor Hill said spring clean up time. You’re welcome to haul shrubs and trees out to the dump.
The meeting adjourned at 7:23 PM. The next Regular Meeting of the Tampico Village Council will be Tuesday, March 20, 2018 at 7:00 PM in the Reagan Community Center located at 202 W. Second Street.
Kathy A. Leathers
Clerk
Kristine L. Hill
Mayor
MINUTES APPROVED THIS 20th DAY OF March, 2018
**These minutes are not official until signed, dated and sealed by the Village Clerk**
