July 2, 2025 Meeting Minutes

Village of Bishop Hill web page: bishophillil.gov

County of Henry

State of Illinois

July 2nd , 2025

The regular meeting of the Village of Bishop Hill Board was held at the Municipal Bldg. The meeting was called to order by Mayor Mike Funke at 6:00 p.m.

ROLL CALL; Mike Funke, Lisa Nordstrom, Ben Strand , Mike Keup, Jim Nolan, Amanda Laub, Sharon Wexell & Terri Wigant were all present. Patrick Light was absent.

MINUTES; Laub motioned to accept the minutes, seconded by Nolan. Voice vote, motion carried.

TREASURER’S REPORT; There were no changes to the report, Laub motioned to accept the Treasurer’s Report, seconded by Nolan. Voice vote, motion carried.

PAY BILLS; There were no additions or changes to the bill list. Strand motioned to pay the bills, seconded by Laub. Voice vote, motion carried.

OLD BUSINESS;

Wexell reported the Village insurance, IML/Travelers, did finally pay for the electrical problems

incurred on well #2 after several power outages in October of 2024. Our claim was $17,240 for Peerless + $464 for parts, $600 for Midwest Meters, $315.28 for Swanson Electric/diagnostic, $1,068.25 for Rock River Electric, troubleshooting, and VFD repair. The total claim was $19,687.53, Travelers subtracted $1,535.25 for parts not covered and the $500 deductible, for a total payout of $17,652.28 to the Village. A big thank you to Wexell and Whittington for their persistence to see this through.

Funke said we don’t have to have an EPA permit or an engineer to connect water services to the new water main. Last month the Board asked Meyer to get an estimate to connect services on Olson Street, since they had already connected one service during a water leak situation. Meyer had an estimate of $20,845.00 to connect the Henry Co. Museum, 110 S. Olson St., the Colony School, 309 W. Main, all the residences on N. Olson St. including the only residence on Kronberg St. The residence on 510 Front St. was not on the estimate because their water line is not the correct size. Strand asked if they could do a by-pass somewhere and still connect them. Meyer said he would look into doing that. Keup motioned to approve one-half of the job and

see how it works out. Laub seconded the motion. Voice vote, motion carried. Meyer suggested leaving the road partially rocked where it was dug up for the connections; let it settle until next year, then oil and chip.

Wigant reported that Blue Jay Tree Service did get the trees down and cleaned up on Kronberg St. and Bjorklund St. and they trimmed the tree in the park that broke the baseball lights. Funke said now we will have to get someone to fix the light.

Laub said she did get the Bishop Hill Facebook page up and running. Now she will make an event about the raffle for the colony flagpole with a picture of the bench being raffled. Laub also volunteered to start a GoFundMe page to help raise money to restore the colony flagpole.

After hearing about a college in Iowa running a Ground Penetrating Radar in the Viola cemetery several years ago. Wigant made some inquires to other colleges to see if they would do the same thing at the Bishop Hill cemetery. Ryan Campbell from Southern Ill University returned Wigant’s phone call, he thought it sounded like a very interesting job. Campbell is the Associate Director & Curator of the Center for Archaeological Investigations at SIU. Campbell said he usually didn’t travel this far, but he would be willing to come and run the GPR unit if the Village paid for his mileage and overnight stay. He would call Wigant mid-August to set a time to come. The Board thought that sounded like a great deal. Laub motioned to pay for Campbell’s mileage

and overnight stay, seconded by Strand. Voice vote, motion carried.

NEW BUSINESS;

Keup asked about getting the fir trees trimmed on the West side of the cemetery. The Board agreed they did need a good trim; a person can’t even walk under them to get to the burial sites. The Board discussed a work day just to trim trees, or hiring someone to do the job. They decided to try to do a work day and maybe rent a chipper as it is hard to get rid of all the branches. Wigant will see how much it would cost to rent a chipper. Keup will call Shane Kaiser and see if he could help with his tree cutting equipment. Funke said he talked to Ron Modesto, he was our tree service guy for many years. Ron wanted to thank the Board for hiring him for our tree work. Because of his health he can no longer do the work. Funke said Modesto always did a great job and at a fair price.

Wexell said Illinois Municipal League insurance company wants the Village to adopt a Return-to-Work policy, even though it really doesn’t pertain to us. Wexell had one printed out for the Board to review. Nordstrom motioned to accept the Return-to-Work policy, seconded by Laub. Voice vote, motion carried.

Wigant and Wexell were in contact with the IDOT people about their broken drain on the North/East corner of the park. Rain is not going into the drain, it is running down Bjorklund St. and eroding and leaving very deep ruts. IDOT emailed and said they are going to run a suc-vac down the drain and wanted to know where they could fill their tank with water and how much it would cost. Wigant called Whittington and asked him about a meter to put on a fire hydrant. He said they are very expensive; we could just charge them a $50 hook-up fee and then $10 per 1000 gallons. Tanks are usually 500 or 1000 gallons so we would know what to charge. Wigant said we need to make an amendment to the water ordinance for pumping water from the

hydrant.

Jeff Goard, from Goard Pottery Shop asked if he could close Bjorklund St. October 11, 2025 for his annual Clay & Fiber show. Nordstrom motioned to allow Goard to close Bjorklund St. Oct 11, seconded by Laub. Voice vote, motion carried.

Wigant told the Board that Whittington had given her information for Hutchison Engineering, Inc. from the Quad Cities. Whittington said they are a reliable engineering company and he would recommend them when the Board gets ready to run water main extensions and services. He said someone from the company would come to our meeting and discuss how they would do a water main extension project and possibly have ideas on how to get the finances for the project.

Wexell said she would have a resolution ready for the August meeting to move money from the

General Fund to the Cemetery Fund to cover the mowing expense. Wexell also said she would call the office at Henry County to see if they could do a direct deposit of our tax levy money, between $7,000 and $8,000 a year, into our cemetery fund instead of the General Fund, then she wouldn’t have to make a resolution every year.

There was no further business Nordstrom motioned to adjourn, seconded by Nolan. Voice vote motion carried.