OAKWOOD — A long-rumored new business coming to Oakwood saw its first official confirmation in the form of a resolution approved by village trustees Monday night.

Trustees voted to allow Mayor Robert Jennings to sign an agreement with Pilot Flying J Corp. for the village to run a water main along the north side of 1760 N Road on property that is the Oakwood Truck Plaza. The water main project will be paid for out of funds from the Oakwood tax increment district 1.

Jennings said that Pilot Flying J Corp. has acquired the Oakwood Truck Plaza and plans to level it and build a new Pilot Flying J facility at that location.

Jennings said the village has long planned to extend a water main down along 1760 N Road to form a loop for the northwest portion of the village and in discussions with Pilot Flying J, they have offered the village the chance to install the water main now at a great cost savings to the village. Jennings said he understands that construction will not begin until later in the summer.

According to the Pilot Flying J website, the company was formed in 1958 and operates 550 travel centers throughout the United States and Canada. A typical Pilot Flying J travel center contains a convenience store, restaurant, shower facilities as well a fuel station.

Typically, a Pilot Flying J travel center would have parking for between 75 to 200 trucks and employ from 45 to 70 persons.

In other board action, trustees:

Approved an agreement with Good Energy LP of Edwardsville to act as the village’s energy broker in the event the April vote on municipal aggregation is successful.

According to Dale Kelley, a representative of Good Energy LP, if the village votes in favor of aggregation, it would be placed in a pool of other communities to solicit bids from energy suppliers. Kelley said he expects there will be about 100,000 households making up what will be Good Energy’s third pool of households.

Kelley said what it amounts to is an auction where energy supplier’s bid on the opportunity to supply electricity for the communities in the pool. Good Energy has already conducted two auctions and the first resulted in a 3.99 cents per kilowatt hour rate for residents and the second auction saw a result of 4.08 cents per kilowatt hour. Kelley said these were both lower than the 4.26 cents per kilowatt hour that Integrys is offering county residents.

Kelley went on to say that Integrys was the high bidder in both auctions. If the referendum is successful and a resident does not want to participate, he or she will have two chances to opt-out of the program.

Learned the village received nearly $13,000 as its part in a class action lawsuit against Syngenta of Switzerland, makers of Atrazine, which is used as a corn herbicide. The total settlement was for $105 million that was divided among 2,000 water districts that participated in the lawsuit. Syngenta admitted no wrongdoing in settling the lawsuit, but cited protracted costs as a reason for settling the lawsuit.

Will look into whether some type of intergovernmental agreement is necessary with the Oakwood school district in making the Oakwood Police Department the primary responding agency in the event of some type of security problem at any of the three Oakwood school district campuses. Currently, the village police department is routinely called but two of the school district’s campuses are located outside of village limits.

Will seek request for proposals for repairs to the south half of the village-owned building at 103 S. Scott St. The building was purchased for the purpose of using it for the police department and records storage but a leaking roof forced the police department to relocated to the emergency services building.

Agreed to allow the Oakwood High School baseball team use the village park ball field for its baseball season.

WHAT’S NEXT

Oakwood Village Board members will meet at 6:30 p.m. March 11 in the village hall.