A Guided Tour of Tonight's Agenda

Every month on the first and third Mondays of the month at 7:00pm in the Village Hall the board of trustees meets. The agenda for the meetings are always posted at the village hall in public view, in addition we post them on the website as well. So lets take a tour of tonight's agenda. The meeting is divided into 12 parts, some take a few seconds some can take longer.

Once I call the meeting to order, I ask our Village Clerk Jeanne Kristan to call the roll Item 1.0 is basically taking attendance! Its important to note that we need 4 board members to conduct business, the mayor counts for the 4 by the way. If 4 or more are present we have a quorum and conduct business. I then generally ask Senior Trustee Don Newby to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Item 2.0 is concerned with two things approval of the last meetings minutes, the minutes are a general record of the actual meeting in paper form, in addition we record all the meetings for the exact wording of discussions which can also be referred to see what the board actually discussed. The second part of 2.0 is the approval of the agenda, sometimes an item is not complete and we remove it, or we are adding something at the last minute for information only. However no action items are added since they were not posted in advance of the meeting.

Item 3.0 is entitled Notes Commendations and Public Comment-- this is where the meat of the meeting starts. I usually have any people we are honoring recognized here. I put them here as a courtesy on the agenda since they may not want to sit through an unpredictable time-wise agenda. Public comment can be loud and boisterous or it can be non-existent. I always err of the side of hearing everyone out. When there is a contentious issue I will have a sign-in sheet and work through the names in order otherwise its as simple as raising you hand and stating you name and address and telling us what you think.

• Tonight we have no Notes and Commendation, but we usually have public comment.
  

Item 4.0 is the area where the village clerk places thing that are "clerkly" liquor licenses, business licensees, raffle permits, and parade permits are some of the few listed here.

• Tonight we have nothing on the agenda

Item 5.0 is the Finance section, we pay bills, and evaluate the treasurer report and the transfers of cash in our various accounts. Even though $1.3 million in bills seems like a lot its a pretty typical amount.

• We are approving $1.3 million dollars worth of bills ranging from the village payroll to prisoner meals!
  

Item 6.0 is the Police report, this can range from reports on enforcement activities to the purchase of new equipment and all point in between.

• Tonight item 6.1 is a request to purchase six handguns so we can standardize the weapons we use on the force. All officers hired after January 2000 carry the same weapon, this purchase is to make sure that all the more senior officers carry the same weapon. The rationale is to make ammo purchases and weapon familiarity for the department more effective.

Item 7.0 is Public Works where all things "public work's" are enacted. Sometimes decisions like buying a one ton versus a five ton truck can make a big impact on things like how fast we can salt roads, so these decisions need consideration.

• Our Director of Public Works was at a training session last week so nothing is on the agenda this week.

Item 8.0 is called Community Development which is really the engineering portion of the meeting with approval of engineering bills, creation of stop signs, and passage of ordinances relating to engineering issues.

• This agenda has six items, not more then likely terribly controversial, although I am curious to hear the 2005 Water Master Report in item 8.6.

Item 9.0 is entitled Mayors comments which actually includes Trustees comments as well.

• Some of the highlights are my appointment of Michael Blum to fill the vacancy on the planning commission, my appointment of Trustee Jerry Shaw to JAWA's board with me as the alternate.

Item 10.0 is the committee of the Whole meeting where we have the six committees report to the rest of the board on their recommendations. We also discuss items informally so we can all get feedback.

• The discussion on the use of the old police department building is one of the items here that should be interesting. Trustee Bob Del Prato has some excellent thoughts on making use of the building.

Item 11.0 is the Executive Session where we can only discuss, employment, compensation of one or more classes of employees, potential litigation or the sale or purchase of property, and the approval, but not release of, the minutes of Executive Sessions.

• There is a specific way we do this, all people in the room identify themselves because the session is recorded, and we can only discuss the things listed above and nothing more. We have gone months without having an executive session and then sometimes we do one every meeting, it just depends.

Item 12.0 is Adjournment, we have done a few meetings that end after 3 hours, the longest I have ever done was 3 hours and 45 minutes the shortest was 21 minutes!

A few notes, I always read the motion out loud for the trustee's and the audience, in case they did not pick up an agenda when they walked into the board room. I also sometimes allow the public to comment on an agenda item while we are discussing it although that depends on the mood and how controversial it is, by and large public comment is when I accept public comment, and the agenda is time for the trustees to make there comment and discuss the issues.