January 31, 2026 Local Stories in and Around St. Joseph, Illinois

Live at St. Joseph Village Board, Aug. 22, 2023

Ken Cooley resigned from planning and zoning and the mayor is appointing Steve Peters for that term. That term runs through 2025. Steve is the son of Mike Peters, a long term resident and his grandpa was the long-time mayor.

Jeff Van Buskirk resigned from the board a while ago. They are now appointing Tammy Vallee. She is a long-time resident, very active in the community.

TIF discussion. This is just a discussion regarding how a TIF administrator works, what they do and how they would help the village. They are going to entertain proposals from the company so they can manage the proposed TIF. *Reminder, it is proposed. They haven’t decided where it is going or where it is going.

Moving on to solar. I feel like this is the 56th time they have discussed it. Just a reminder- they are discussing whether to lease or buy the solar panels that could go on village property like the sewer plant. No one is putting a solar farm in the village. It’s no different than solar panels going on your house, ect. This would be funded through the sewer fund.

Tami isn’t sure about it because of the additional costs and the fact that they already have a lot of infrastructure in the village and sometimes are pushed to the limit to maintain it.
Max wants to buy the panels not lease them so he is going to vote no if they want to lease them.
Terri is concerned with finances, she doesn’t want to strap the village for cash.
Max is arguing they are throwing money away by leasing. Now they are discussing who will mow around the panels.

Joe is trying to get them back to the discussion regarding owning or leasing.

Jim YES

Painter NO

Tammy Abstained

Art YES

Terri Yes

3-1-1 on the vote so they will lease them.

Discussing housekeeping on liquor licenses.
They are entering into an agreement to have Arndt Municipal Support recruit retail businesses for them.


They have been spending a lot of money lately. EEKs
Luke “Public works has been working diligently to get through all their tasks.” Luke said that public works is having to keep 1-3 employees at the sewer plant all the time. “We are just way backlogged. Every body has been working nonstop. And I make sure. We are just having a hard time catching up with everything, all the demands, all the requests but we will get there.”

My take: Shout out to our public works. They do amazing work, they work nonstop and we should all be thankful that we have such dedicated, local employees.

Tami saying the festival was good, the committee did a great job.

They are going into closed session

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