South Central Reporter

City of Litchfield City Council met June 19.

Here are the minutes provided by the council:

Mayor Jake Fleming called the Regular Meeting to order at 6:32 p.m. The Pledge of Allegiance was recited. Present on roll call were Alderperson Marilyn Sisson, Alderperson Sara Zumwalt, Alderperson Dwayne Gerl, Alderperson Robbin Huffman, Alderperson Josh Hughes,

Alderperson Bob Garcia, Alderperson Bert Holloway, and Alderperson Ray Kellenberger. The mayor declared that a quorum was present.

Others Present: Breann Vazquez, City Administrator, Vickie Throne, City Clerk, Michael McGinley, City Attorney (Via Zoom), Don Mildrum CEO National Primers Inc. LLC (Via Zoom), City Attorney Kathryn Warren

Absent: None

Mayor's Report:

Mayor Fleming recognized that today is Juneteenth. He hopes all who were off were able to celebrate and enjoy the nice weather.

Mayor Fleming reported that he is excited to report that the Animal Control is up and running. If there are any citizens who have a non-emergency, they should call the police department at 217- 324-5991. If you have a true emergency such as a dog attack you should call 911 to deal with that situation.

Mayor Fleming reported that we recently expanded our residency for all city employees. He is happy to say that we have received lots of applications and his hopeful that we will be able to fill the voids we currently have. One example given is that we have over 30+ applications for the fire department.

Public Participation

None

Appointments:

None

Other Business:

Alderperson Kellenberger made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Gerl, to approve minutes from the regular meeting held on June 5, 2025.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Gerl, Holloway, Zumwalt, Hughes, Garcia, Huffman, Kellenberger, Sisson

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Alderperson Gerl made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Garcia, to approve the expenditure report and payroll report for the current period.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Garcia, Sisson, Gerl, Zumwalt, Huffman, Kellenberger, Holloway, Hughes

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Old Business:

None.

New Business:

Economic Development

Alderperson Kellenberger made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Sisson, to approve an ordinance approving a development agreement with National Primers, LLC, and the City of Litchfield under 65 ILCS 5/8-1-2.5.

Discussion: City Administrator Breann Vazquez reported that Don Mildrum CEO will be giving a brief overview and after council will be able to ask any questions regarding the development agreement. Ms. Vazquez repolied that also present is one of the managing partners and their attorney who may also answer questions. Don Mildrum reported that he is happy to meet evelyone, and he looks forward to coming to Litchfield and taking a tour as well as meeting everyone in person. This is an exciting time for National Primers, and this goes back almost five years. There has been a lot of planning and research. Many talks with industry experts, meeting with CEO's and Vice Presidents of ammunition companies so that National Primers could really understand the market and why there is such a shortage. Being a sp01isman himself he has seen a shortage of ammunition and primers going back over 20 years. A lot of the research was hying to figure out why this was occurring and why it had not resolved itself. What they found was that the market demand was so high based on geopolitical tension around the world and here in the United States there is a lot more firearms owners a lot of them being women and 80 to 90 percent are new shooters. This increase is approximately 1,000,000 a month. Currently the global demand his more than are being manufactured, which is really what it comes down to. National Primers is wanting to come to the table to possibly provide a solution by building a primers manufacturing facility. Primers are both easy to make and not as there is a lot of technical knowledge that goes into making the primer and it is difficult because it requires a lot of powder. There are many companies that can get the components and make ammunition, but it very difficult to make primers without highly specialized equipment. Primers has a strong technical team that knows how to do it. National Primers will be the 5th largest manufacturer in the world that will be able to produce on this scale and once they are fully operational, they will be the 2nd largest producer in the United States, and they will have capability to expand and potentially be the largest producer in the United States. Mr. Mildrum reported that the United States uses about 12 billion primers a year for ammunition manufacturers and re loading companies. Almost half of that is being implied from other countries and due to tariffs, some of those countries found it more profitable to sell those primers in other markets mostly Asia and Europe. Because of this we will start seeing more of a decrease of primers being available in the United States starting in the year 2026. As they moved this project forward, they started looking at locations in different states. One of the things that drove them to look at Litchfield is they believe we have a skilled workforce, and we are not far from other manufacturers that make primers, so there is talent they can tap into, especially for the more key roles as they need the experience from some of the leadership rolls. They also found that working with Breann and others in Litchfield to be more of a partner conversation than almost an adversarial kind of conversation. They found it very comfortable to work with the City of Litchfield and made them very comfortable with wanting to be here long term. This is a big commitment on National Primers' part and they don't want to be in a community where you are not feeling like you are at home. They felt at home from the first day they started talking to everyone in Litchfield. On the technical piece Mr. Mildrum reported that there are only three consulting firms in the world that know how to build a facility like this. If you talk to a lot of industry experts, they all point to one firm and that firm is in the United States and they are out of Scottsdale, Arizona and they have been in the industry for almost 50 years and they have over 200 years of experience between their team. A lot of these are chemists and lifelong engineers that have worked in places like Winchester and Remington. They know what they are doing, and they have studied how these facilities need to work, and they have records going back to the 1960's on any incident that has ever occurred in a primer facility. They look at these incidents and figure out why they happened and how they can design for these things to not happen to our facilities. They have built these companies for not only private facilities but for government all over the world. Mr. Mildrum is confident that they have the absolute best technical team. They have been working with this team for over four years. They have been working on this for a very long time and are super excited to get to this point. Mr. Mildrum reported that phase I will be a $57,000,000.00 investment and will create at least 85 jobs and after running the analysis they cannot run this plant with less than 72 employees. The plan is to break ground by the end of 2025 and be operational by summer of 2028. Phase 2 will be a $70,000,000.00 investment and will create an additional 75 jobs with operations beginning in 2032.

Mayor Fleming thanked Mr. Mildrum for the presentation and for calling in a few days ago to the EDC meeting. Mayor Fleming reported that it exciting to hear about the creations of jobs as well as the discussion of AI. Mr. Fleming clarified with Mr. Mildrum that Al will not take the place of workers. Mr. Mildrum confirmed and repolted that he spent enough time in the HR side of the job to know that companies that grow are the ones that really take care of the employees.

He said that if you ask someone where they want to work, they will tell you they want to work where they are valued, respected, paid well, have good benefits and they can see themselves staying there for a very long time. If you are thought of as a destination company, you must be able to come to the table and take care of those people. Their company is not looking for someone to just punch a clock and go home. Turnover is a secret killer to businesses because people do not realize how much money is lost when you start having to advertise, interview, train and you have all this money in them and then they quit and then you start over again. It is much better to have a trained workforce that you keep long term. To do that they are coming to the table with high paying jobs with the average pay starting at $57,000.00 for a line worker. That is the entry point with managers being significantly higher than that. In addition to that there will be a very rich benefit package with 401K being 6% matching along with paid time off. Their goal is to minimize turnover. There will always be turnover, but they want that to be as minimal as possible. As far as AI one component to their business is research and development not only for their own products but they know of other companies that are wanting to utilize them research and development. Mr. Mildrum came from the Al world, and he knows how to use Al to help speed the chemistry process up using AI technology. That is something that they are exploring. Mayor Fleming asked if the AI would be more of the back end but would still need the factory workers. Mr. Mildrum confirmed that would not take place of factory workers that it is more for the chemistry side of things. Mayor Fleming reported to council members that the EDC unanimously approved this. The EDC also asked if the tariffs went away would this impact operations and confirmed with Mr. Mildrum that it would not have an impact on operations. Mr. Mildrum reported that they have companies all over the United States that have encouraged them to do this because they are buying from oversees and are paying tariffs. Even if the tariffs go away, they still must pay for a large shipping container worth of primers for every order. If they buy from a company in the United States, they can order just what they need for the month which makes this a huge advantage for National Primers. They know that they can be competitive on price and can deliver faster. Their quality will be better, and they will be the most modern facility in the world, so it does not matter if there are tariffs because they have huge advantages in the marketplace. Ms. Vazquez reported that we also have letters supporting this project from Senator McClure and Representative Rosenthal,

Alderperson Holloway reported that he himself is a CEO of his own corporation and leadership is the most important factor. What is the organizational structure around Mr. Mildrum and his team that they are bringing to this industry? Mr. Mildrum has over 30 years of business consulting as well as 25 years in startup operations and growing business. In addition, Mr. Mildrum reported that the have some of the top experts in the industry with over 40 years of experience in primer manufacturing. Alderperson Hughes asked if they already have contracts for selling primers in place or are they hoping to get contracts in place? Mr. Mildrum repolted that there are about 400 preloading companies that don't make a bullet, case, primers, or gunpowder but they buy all those components, and they make ammunition. They have talked to many of them who have said once you have them available send us samples and we will be on board. They do have letters of interest from larger manufacturers that are DOD manufacturers of ammunition that do make cases and things like that, and they would buy the volume that Primers has. Just counting the volume that Primers would have, they would take everything they can produce in the first two years of production. Mr. Mildrum reported that he would have more letters, but they have been trying to keep this private until this point as they did not want everyone in the industry knowing they were considering this. Alderperson Holloway asked if there are any environmental concerns ground or air that may have an impact on our city? Mr. Mildrum reported that we are taking a thin piece of copper and punching into a tiny little metal cup, so there are not any environmental concerns from reshaping copper. The energetics that are manufactured are just a slurry mud like compound and there are some traces of elements of heavy metals, so these rooms are specially designed and built that they are washed down, and all the water goes into a wastewater treatment facility and all the water that comes out of there is actually cleaner than the water that come in from the city. It takes about three months to even gather enough in the filter system to have it removed and they pay a company to come and remove it and dispose of it, so there is no airborne or vapor issues. Alderperson Hughes asked how they plan to deal with potential fires or other issues that may happen in a facility like this. Mr. Mildrum reported that a class one explosive which is what the definition is the lowest level that you can get, and these primers just make a spark. In the manufacturing process there is what is called hot side and a cold side of the building. The hot side is where they are mixing these chemicals together and as a safety precaution it is all robotic and it is in a very small room that are blast proof with blow out ceilings and walls with outside belms around these structures so if there ever was something that happened or went wrong the blast would go outside and be contained and there is no one ever in those rooms. It is very safe, and they will have a sprinkler system in place as well. Alderperson Holloway confirmed that Mr. Mildrum does not feel that there would be any extraordinary burden on our EMS and fire department and that we would not need to hire any extra staff or purchase any special equipment to have on standby for any situation at the plant and Mr. Mildrum confirmed that is correct. Mayor Fleming reported that Decatur has a factory that produces a unique smell in the community and asked if this could be the case with the primer facility. Mr. Mildrum confirmed there would be no unique smell produced in the air for our community. Attorney Kathryn Warren reported that it was discovered that there were a couple of typos in the agreement that was distributed to council that they had to correct, and she is recommending that we have a motion and second to amend the agreement to correct these errors. First correction is on page 5 of 15 #7 of Phase I of the development agreement states, "should the developer to perform" be omitted and replaced with "should developer fail to perform" and the second correction is on page 7 #6 under subsection A there is a decimal point error that is showing as a common and should be a decimal point and read $70,000,000,00 should actually be $70,000,000.00.

Alderperson Garcia made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Zumwalt, to correct the scriveners' errors in the National Primers, LLC agreement.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Hughes, Holloway, Zumwalt, Huffman, Sisson, Gerl, Garcia, Kellenberger

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Alderperson Huffman made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Sisson, to approve the amended ordinance approving a development agreement with National Primers, LLC, and the City of Litchfield under 65 ILCS 5/8-1-2.5.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Sisson, Gerl, Zumwalt, Huffman, Hughes, Garcia, Holloway, Kellenberger

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Alderperson Kellenberger made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Gerl to approve an ordinance approving a commercial real estate sales contract with Steven Schmidt, Scott Schmidt, Naomi Schmidt, H. Kelly Schmidt, Linda Jackson, and Jo Ellen Wernsing for the purchase of 62+ acres of land.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Zumwalt, Kellenberger, Sisson, Gerl, Hughes, Huffman, Garcia, Holloway

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Alderperson Kellenberger made a motion seconded by Alderperson Gerl to approve an ordinance approving a commercial real estate sale contract with Ross Lay and Michael Hittmeier for the purchase of 62+ acres of land.

Breann Vazquez noted that, while this land is not included in the 200 acres needed for the National Primers project, the City feels that it is in its best interest to exercise the option for future development.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Hughes, Holloway, Zumwalt, Huffman, Sison, Gerl, Garcia, Kellenberger

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Alderperson Kellenberger made a motion seconded by Alderperson Gerl to approve an ordinance approving a commercial real estate sales contract with National Primers, LLC for the sale of 200 + acres of land,

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Zumwalt, Sisson, Gerl, Huffman, Hughes, Garcia, Kellenberger, Holloway

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Alderperson Kellenberger made a motion seconded by Alderperson Zumwalt to approve an ordinance approving and authorizing the Mayor to execute an emergency roof grant agreement with the Veterans of Foreign Wars for 215 W. Ryder, and other actions related thereto.

Alderman Hughes noted his thanks for the VFW and their engagement in the community and encouraged the general public to donate toward this project.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Gerl, Sisson, Zumwalt, Huffman, Hughes, Holloway, Garcia

Abstain: Kellenberger

Nay: None

Absent: None

Motion carried.

Police

Alderperson Bert Holloway made a motion to approve the purchase of a 2019 Ford Explorer from the City of Carrolton, Illinois for an amount not to exceed $10,500.00. City Administrator Breann Vazquez reported that this motion is being pulled administratively from the agenda and asked Mayor Fleming or Alderperson Holloway to elaborate. Alderperson Holloway reported that there was discussion whether the city should buy this used vehicle. He believes that once you purchase a used vehicle over the long term it ends up coming back to bite you. The question is why they are getting rid of this vehicle. He would hate for the city to spend money on a purchase that later they may have to spend more money to keep it going. After further discussion regarding our budget, he believes putting it out for bid is the better way to go. Alderperson Hughes stated that it would be great if a local business was able to give us a bid as it is always a benefit to do business locally. Alderperson Holloway reported that the used vehicle has over 100,000 miles on it. The other thing to consider is 100,000 miles on a car that is driven daily by us is different than 100,000 miles on a police vehicle that is accelerated and driven at high rates of speed.

Alderperson Holloway made a motion seconded by Alderperson Zumwalt to approve a resolution waiving the competitive bidding and authorizing the sole source purchase of a TruNarc Delta narcotics detection/identification machine with a two-year warranty from ThermoFisher Scientific for an amount not to exceed $37,400.00.

Discussion: Mayor Fleming reported that this machine will protect officers from scary substances. Chief Ryker reported right now they must remove narcotics from the bag and place them in a vial to test them. This new machine will eliminate the need to remove the narcotics from the bag and will be much safer for all involved. They will still have to send the substance to the lab to confirm the findings, but it will take away the need for officers to handle fentanyl, heroin and those types of things that can be absorbed through the skin. Alderperson Huffman asked if this will be kept in an officer's car. Chief Ryker reported that will be kept at the police department as it is very expensive, and the police officer will bring the bag to the department to be tested.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Gerl, Holloway, Zumwalt, Hughes, Garci, Huffman, Kellenberger, Sisson

Nay: None.

Absent: None.

Motion carried.

Water

Alderson Garcia made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Kellenberger, to approve a repair by Schindler Elevator for the water plant elevator that was damaged by lightning for an amount not to exceed $11,759.00.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Gerl, Sisson, Huffman, Hughes, Holloway, Garcia, Kellenberger

Abstain: Zumwalt

Nay: None.

Absent: None.

Motion carried.

Alderperson Garcia made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Gerl, to authorize Durkin Equipment to upgrade the water plant communication network for an amount not to exceed $18,698.00.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Hughes, Holloway, Huffman, Sisson, Gerl, Garcia, Kellenberger

Abstain: Zumwalt

Nay: None.

Absent: None.

Motion carried.

Alderperson Garcia made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Zumwalt, to approve a proposal for engineering services from Milano & Grunloh Engineers, LLC to assist with a project plan for the Unsewered Communities Grant Program for an amount not to exceed $30,000.00.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Zumwalt, Sisson, Gerl, Huffman, Hughes, Garcia, Kellenberger, Holloway

Nay: None.

Absent: None.

Motion carried

Alderperson Garcia made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Sisson, to approve an emergency lift station pump repair on Ohren Drive by Vandevanter Engineering for an amount not to exceed $14,755.85.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Gerl, Holloway, Zumwalt, Hughes, Garcia, Huffman, Kellenberger, Sisson

Nay: None.

Absent: None

Motion carried

Executive Session

None.

New Business:

None.

Having no further business Alderperson Kellenberger made a motion, seconded by Alderperson Gerl to adjourn the meeting at 7:13 p.m.

The Mayor directed a roll call vote.

Aye: Zumwalt, Sisson, Gerl, Huffman, Hughes, Garcia, Kellenberger, Holloway

Nay: None.

Absent: None.

Motion carried.

https://www.cityoflitchfieldil.com/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_06192025-409