Kane County Reporter

At their April 3 meeting, the Batavia City Council welcomed representatives from the Batavia Chamber of Commerce to talk about the past month and the winner of a recent design competition.

The flag design contest, hosted by the Chamber of Commerce, invited participants to create a Batavia community flag to promote community pride and raise funds for a Flag Day monument. The winner was 16-year-old Rachel Agro, a sophomore at Batavia High School.

"Whereas Rachael Agro's design represents Batavia and its historical connection to industry through the use of a windmill image which also takes the shape of a sun along with Batavia's geography through the addition of blue stripes to represent the Fox River," Batavia mayor Jeffery Schielke said during the meeting, reading from a proclamation. "And whereas the winning design will be preceded by Batavia Company flag source and available for purchase. Now therefore be it resolved that I, Jeffery D. Schielke, mayor of Batavia, do hereby congratulate Rachel Agro and call upon all citizens to consider flying the Batavia Community Day Flag."

Chamber president and CEO Margaret Perreault met with members of the chamber last year following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and came up with the idea of a flag design concept as a way to bring the community back together and celebrate their unity. The flag design contest goes along with the Flag Day monument being built in the city, and the winning flag will be displayed at that location. Marty Callahan, a chamber representative, noted that proceeds from sales will go to funding the construction project.

The committee received 107 flag design submissions, most of which came from local Batavia students. The committee said they spent a long time deciding between the flag designs, voting on the top ten and finally a winner as many of the designs were very creative and representative of the community.

Argo's flag design will be featured as the Community Day flag and is available for purchase in different sizes at Bataviaflag.com.

In other discussions during the meeting, Perreault shared a quick summary of the chamber’s past month and upcoming events, including continued "Coffee and Commerce" talks throughout the community; the annual golf event on Friday, June 16; and their "Inspire" celebration on Thursday, April 27, when they will celebrate their Citizen of the Year.