Town Board Spends More Than 30 Thousand On Mexican Independence Day Celebrations and Discusses Town Property Around Local Walmart
The Town of Cicero trustees during their bi-weekly board meeting on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022. The usual board was not fully present, Clerk Maria Punzo Arias and Trustee Viruso were both absent. April Alonso for Cicero Independiente.
By Efraín Soriano
The Town of Cicero Board and President Larry Dominick met on August 23, 2022 to discuss several proposed ordinances.
The ordinances and resolutions approved featured the hiring of artists for the Mexican Independence Day Festival, an application for $1.5 Million of grant funding for alley repavement and various promotions for the Cicero Fire Department.
You can find a video recording of the full board meeting down below. All documents used for this recap can be found here.
Here is a summary of all approved agenda items:
Events
The 53rd Annual Houby Day Parade was approved in a resolution and will take place on Sunday, October 9 at noon. The parade will start on 50th Ave and head west on Cermak Rd until 59th Ct.
Ordinances
The Town of Cicero approved the modification of an agreement with Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust regarding town owned property in the northeast corner of 3320 South Cicero Avenue. The agreement grants the town non-exclusive, permanent access to the entry roadway on 33rd Place and temporary access to Wal-Mart property for the purpose of construction and redevelopment of the town property.
Click here to see the location of this property on Google Maps, reference the image below to see the proposed development.
Map reference of town-owned property in the northeast corner of 3320 South Cicero Avenue. Image from FOIA document.
Town Spending
For the Mexican Independence Day Festival, the board entered into a $34,700 agreement with Klandestino Entertainment Inc. to hire artists that performed at the festival on September 17 and 18, 2022 from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. The artists listed on the agreement are as follows:
Grupo Bryndis
Los Felinos
El TPO
Miguel Angel Fernandez y La Ley del Norte
Viento y Sol
Son Mexicanas con Mariachi
The board then moved on to authorize the filing of an application to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) for grant funding to support their $1.5 Million alley repavement project. According to the grant application, the project is set to begin in March 2023 and is expected to be completed by September 30, 2023.
The following item approved was for an agreement with ICF Cleaning Service, Inc. to distribute nearly 15,000 copies of the Town of Cicero’s newsletter to homes and residential apartments chosen by the town.
On June 28, the board approved the addition of a referendum question to allow for write-in ballots to be counted for the towns primary elections. You can read more about that here.
At this meeting on August 23, the board then approved a revision to that resolution that will require the Cook County clerk to send pamphlets of information regarding this referendum question to all registered voters in the Town of Cicero. You can expect to receive this pamphlet in the mail by October 29, 2022.
Promotions
Lieutenant Jamy Guido was promoted to Assistant Fire Chief Of Fire Prevention.
Engineer Joe Vertin was promoted to Lieutenant of Fire Prevention.
Firefighter Matt Thill was promoted to Engineer.
The Board of Fire And Police Commissioners were also authorized to hire the next three eligible probationary fire candidates from the Fire Eligibility list. However, these candidates have not been selected or named yet.
Citizen Comments
First up to the podium was Cicero resident Susan Masek, who received a warm welcome from Town President Larry Dominick. Masek began by outlining her distaste for the amount of noise and fireworks that have been going off in the town all summer long.
“My neighbors call me at 2 a.m. because some idiot is firing a cannon,” said Dominick as he reassured Masek that they are doing everything possible to respond to noise complaints.
“Can these noisy bands and people playing loud music get arrested?” asked Masek.
Dominick redirected Masek to Police Superintendent Jerry Chlada Jr. who spent a few minutes after the board meeting listening and taking notes of the complaints.
Masek’s last comment was regarding dogs that have no tag or chips and recounted experiences she had getting attacked by pitbulls while walking around town.
Watch the full video recording of the meeting here:
Efrain Soriano is a local freelance photographer and a contributing reporter for Cicero Independiente.
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