All right, let's get started with the meeting of the ministry of the legal affairs committee, Wednesday, March 11th, 2026 at 5 p.m.

I think we'll be good for it, please. Thank you.

Heavenly Father, we just thank you for another opportunity to come together and handle the county's business work, which is really to give us the wisdom and the guidance to do that to the best of our abilities.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you.

All right, 3.0, approval of the agenda.

Move approval.

Second.

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

All right.

So moved.

All right.

4.0 approval of meeting minutes from February 11th.

Move approval.

Second.

Okay.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Let's see if we can get into the same pattern here.

All right.

5.0 approval of claims.

I have a total of $71,737.68.

I'll move to the prison house.

Second.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, pardon you over.

I guess I didn't know.

All of you in favor say aye.

Thank you.

6.0 public comments.

Okay.

And let's start out with 7.1 common preserver.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yes.

So I want to just mention my portion of the claims.

It's a larger portion than normally and that total amount actually is larger than what this committee sees. Excuse me. Excuse me. My total $3,520. More than half of that was for the outsourced 1099s. I'm sorry. Excuse me.

The rest of it was to actually reimburse me for conference expenses, so maybe expenses and membership dues. Financial reports, I assume you all had a chance to review this. The link was set March 5th. If you notice the front page sales and income tax receipts remain steady. Thanks to the increased sales taxes from October, November, part of holiday sales.

those taxes were made high into March because March receipts are December spending so then they should probably drop off but after that sales and income tax receipts were up for the first two months of the year by over 224,000 compared to the same time period last year so that's encouraging given that some of the things are happening at the state level happy to have that now because I don't know if you that the governor is looking to raise a distributed fund by at least $60 million.

So we don't know how that will affect us yet, but it's not been passed, but that's part of his budget.

So anytime we can see an uptick elsewhere, that's going to happen.

Total county funds down only 1.58%, about $416,000 compared to January's month end.

Any questions about those pieces of information so far?

It was a pretty quiet month. January was a little larger hit, and that was primarily that transfer over to the nursing home for those checks, anticipation. Dollars. No investments matured in February. I think I mentioned that in my message to you. So no paid interest earnings to report, but investments, of course, continue to accrue interest, but no maturities, no were actually paid out.

As of the end of February, there were 18 investments in place across 10 different county funds maturity days between March and October. Last week, I did place some additional short-term investments that will mature in May, about $2.9 million in maturity value, and $2.7 million actually matured last week. Any questions about that report?

Okay. Moving to the collector side, because we're about to ramp that part up. My colleagues, the clerk and the assessor and I, we're meeting tomorrow to kind of plot out the public side planning calendar for the quickly approaching that season. At this point, I do still anticipate a mental late May tax bill mailing date. We are switching companies, so I'm hoping to pick up a couple of days, faster turnaround time to get those out and give them what the U.S.

Postal Service has been doing and telling us we're going to need jobs. Extra days. And I literally on Saturday, as an aside, had a tax bill returned that we mailed last May. Oh, my. It's never been delivered.

So that's why we need all the time and debt because things like that. I do anticipate that the due dates will probably still be end of June, early September, subject to change, of course, given the November for election and the things that the clerk has going on in August, I'm going to probably push our tax sale maybe to the second week in November. She has the joyful legal responsibility of having to be present at the sales. She's got a lot going on in early November, so we're going to push that out.

A couple of other things I wanted to mention to you.

We did receive notice from the Illinois Gaming Board last week that they are going to recoup something that they believe was overpaid to us last year, $3,996.08, that they believe you should not have.

they said that it was the results of a state accounting system programming error.

So basically, instead though of them asking me to remit it or refund it or reimburse it, they're simply going to just claw that amount back.

I think it will probably be our April payment.

Yeah, the March payment was already in place.

So it's not a huge amount.

Our total budget for video gaming tax, last year, this year, it was $140,000.

and we had 143 last year, so hopefully this won't really have much of an impact.

And I did attend my third NACO annual legislative conference at the end of February, but out quite a bit, so I haven't had a chance to put together a report that I wanted to share to you with you, so I will include that because we'll connect some of them.

Since you're reimbursing some of my costs, I think you should come and know what I did.

I was there.

Always a productive event.

and Russ, do you have any questions on the phone?

Just to clarify, the gaming commission, that was about the video gaming processing?

It's the tax part of it.

So they said, actually, the notice reads, you know, whenever there's a programming error, I question it, but it said, the overpayment was resolved in a county system program error related to the implementation of Public Act 1030592, which increased the state video gaming tax by 1% in July of 24. So I'm thinking it was the very last two because video game payments are two months behind. So I'm thinking something happened at the end of 24 that nobody caught in all 25. So luckily, it's not that much. We typically get between 10 and 13,000 a month. So it's not a big hit. But next time, if you see if you follow that Adrian's report, you'll see that.

Very good. Let's move on to 7.2, county clerk. Thank you, Chairman. Yep.

Fizzy in election time with the election taking place on Tuesday. We are seeing an uptick in early voting. We had 80 early voters today. That puts us at a total of 985 early voters and 783 vote by mail. And then cost us successfully. So just over 6% voter turnout so far.

Tomorrow, we will be preparing the appointment that will be going out to the polling locations for the moving company to deliver that. On Saturday, we will be open for early voting from 9 until noon, Monday, 830 to 430, and then election day, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Stewart Center is a full-on location on election day, so if you know someone that needs to register to vote or if they have complications because the registration is not updated, they can do that at Stewart Center at 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. on election night.

We will canvass the results on April 1st at 8.30 a.m. March 31st is the last day that we can receive the vote by mail ballots back to our office by statute. So the next morning we will certify the results in our canvass.

on the tax side. We had great news today. We received the final multiplier of one. We haven't had one for the last two years. And last year, we got the final multiplier on April 15th. So once the assessment rolls over the numbers to me next week, I can continue moving forward with tax extension. This will allow the taxing districts going to have a little bit more time.

to review their tax computation reports, and it will allow me to roll to the treasurer and much bigger.

So next month will be quite busy in my office, but I'm afraid to reach me.

It just might be a little bit of a delay compared to usual.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

7.3, Supervisor of Assessments.

Like Jasmine said, but nothing good news today.

I was two weeks early, so.

I'm just very happy because the sooner I can get it off my desk, the sooner the rest I can do so next Wednesday is when next Wednesday is when I'm going to roll the system so then we can start the process all over again.

And this year will be a little different. So C.D. Davis was doing some of the townships for gathering data and things like that.

A few weeks ago, she contacted me, and she is having some health issues, so she cannot continue to do it for the townships that she had for this year, so our office now has that in order to do them, so we will have seven of them this year, so about 15,000 notices will go out with those seven townships so I needed the extra time to get 2026 started so that is what I will be doing busy and stuff like that because like I said the last time we did this rotation Sandy had four of the seven townships so now we have we'll have all seven of them so we'll go do the data value send notices from a busy so yes of course but it might not, you will know the answer, but how often does the city reassess, I just ran into a property that was sold in foreclosure in 2012, they wish they could keep paying those taxes when I sell that property.

They're supposed to be done, they're supposed to be done every four years, so their last for quadrennial year was 23.

And this was way before that, but it's just interesting.

Almost $400,000 house.

I would love to pay taxes there.

Sometimes it takes us a little bit of time to catch up with some things.

It'll get caught up when it gets sold.

They are trying to, I don't know, speaking of that, there is a statute that is out there just so everybody is aware that somebody is trying to push to redo the assessing part of it.

So what the proposal is is if you would sell it, okay, then like in California, they go directly to their sale price, okay?

Okay, so that's what they'll do is go directly to your sale price. And then as long as you own it, if you're a senior, your assessment can only go up 1%. And if you're not a senior, that your assessment can go only 3% in one year. So it's a proposal that's out there.

and I just it's going to mess up the uniformity of things to try to balance but I just I learned of it a couple weeks ago and I just wanted to pass it along.

NEW SPEAKER 1 All right. Thank you. Let's move on to the company administrator.

NEW SPEAKER 1 I'm going to be brief because I don't have a lawyer who has a voice.

But my next group with our partnership meeting is March 25th Since the last time we met, Beth Williams and I sat down with the friends of the PAC and went over their agreement that was getting close to expiring and that was presented Monday night And approved And approved Okay, good, I thought it had, so that'll be heading on to the board for approval there It was a good meeting, I think are definitely trying to do some recruiting and get some new people in there and help, but it was nice to sit down with them and, you know, make sure they understood the liability concerns we had and the property taxes and stuff like that.

That's great. We have continued to see the foyer rate bus coming through, which, you know, we're involved in the compiling method and stuff, but I feel like that's going to be every three months. But I've been working with animal control, helped with the RFPs that will be put I'm looking forward to you tomorrow night and her contract to reach the move and the building and things.

This morning at the department head meeting, we discussed the wellness screenings that are scheduled for April 2nd, May 9th.

We start pushing out the reminders again and more frequently to get as many people involved and sign up as possible.

and then we're also doing the step program. The county board will also get them information about that.

We decided this morning, thanks to a brainstorming session and a little help, that Step Up Stevenson County is what it's going to be called.

So there'll be a little virtual map of your steps around the county.

So, we talked about audit things that government should be working on, making sure they're getting their capitalized listings updated, checking for emails and the portal and keeping up to date with that, getting their year-end totals to our office.

We had a really good conversation, I felt, about the Cross Blue Shield app and reaching out to Carrie McBride for more support guidance on that to hopefully get more information or interaction for users on the app to fully utilize the benefits which will hopefully then in turn help with the renewals and things as well. The new shredding service has received all of our information and can be setting up their start dates shortly. They summed off after the department meeting today and they said they would be in touch. So we also talked The department had meeting about RxMapper and reaching out to get new totals to see how many people had been screened and we had a conversation about if there was a smaller video than what was said to everyone because it was pretty much being translated.

Maybe they could show at their intern department meeting to try to open up the employees.

Interest, a little more, but that's all I'm capable of, thank you.

All right, so 0.5, IT manager, it's like, I can't find it off, it's almost, it's 15.

Got a lot going on, finished up the jail today with the phone installation.

I do believe we're at like 98% done in the county there might be a few areas that I need to check in on that I hope I didn't overlook. We got some phones down in the election room that I am not touching. They didn't operate and they need phones during this time so I just left them be until early voting is done and then I'll go finish those up.

So the phones are rolled out, they're in every office across the county, so we're completely over to the new, not only do we get new phones, we got a new phone system, so everything's switched over, I'll have more control of that internally, so that'll help call our ID changes and routing, and I think I've redone a few call trees already, so that's just helpful for us, and we don't have to wait on the other company to get things done when we get them done.

So tomorrow is the county recycling event for all the Stevenson County locations.

We have four drop sites.

We have the highway departments, the courthouse, the steward center and the health department.

I feel like I bring in this type of weather every time I schedule it because it was nice and I'm not looking forward to being outside tomorrow or getting all this stuff collected.

But that'll be tomorrow. So I'll be starting out at the highway department meeting them. We start off south of town and then head north because they're out of Milwaukee or somewhere in that area. So I try to make it easier for them that they're not backtracking.

I'm currently working with Revise, who is our website vendor, to do checks on our website to make sure that we are ADA compliant for the 2027 federal deadline.

So we're working towards that.

This includes reviewing current content, accessibility features, and planning for updates to ensure the website remains accessible for all users.

So we've been running some audits.

I've got to go through some reports and see where we're at.

I do know that they have like an ADA bot that we can add to the website that kind of helps when they ask questions or different things that kind of help ease that. So I have to look into that as well with my free time. So we'll figure out. The nice thing is, is we do have some time. I am not leaving it to the last minute, but we do have a little bit of time there.

so. Lastly, we have SD Coil 1. We have a new server up and ready to go for the offices here at the Steward Center. We are waiting.

at the Steward Center. We are waiting. Actually, I don't know when is a good time now because I think we go right from the primary right into taxes. So I really don't want taxes. So the problem that I'm going to have with that is that there's four terabytes of data that has to be moved and we can do a weekend. I just don't know that I can guarantee that it will be done by Monday's opening of business.

So we may have to schedule that and know that there may be some downtime on a Monday.

I was trying to pick a three-day weekend that would give us a little extra of a buffer because there's a lot of information to move and to get on that new server and to verify and make sure everything's up in a 4K.

So we're trying to figure out when we can get that scheduled or what we can do.

and Texas, Irwin.

We need to have, yeah, I don't know how I can move it up for extension, but DevNet is incredibly painfully slow, and we cannot have that.

I think we both experienced a report that you should be seeing most times with a couple of minutes.

I don't have any deadlines, so I'll reach it.

I understand. It's been a pain for a while. It's just trying to fit it in. And now with the amount of data that's on it, we just have to make sure I didn't want business to be affected. So we may have to sit down and talk when we come up with a plan. I'm going to meet with Mike in the next week or so, you know, because we have to see what all the vendors need to do as far as the moving goes. So that is on the horizon. And we do have the new one up and ready. We just got to obviously we have to take all the data from a certain point, move it over, and then make sure everything works. It's just that data transition. That's going to be the most difficult. And it doesn't matter. Starting it after hours, you know, on a Friday, we still may not be done by Monday. So there's really no good schedule at this point. So we may just have to, I don't know what we do. We'll discuss that and go from there.

It's worth the sacrifice of being down, even if it's during a little day, before tax season happens, Bob, in my opinion.

So, yeah, I just have people, once people have those bills in their hands, our phones will not stop, and they have to be able to pull it off, and right now, as they're screaming at us, the sooner the better, yes.

So, we will work together to figure out when that is going to be, and then, obviously, that'll be a full weekend of making sure we get that to her.

We'll bring you through.

I mean, you know, a lot of this stuff is probably be done remotely and just watch it. But the problem is, is that we just have to make sure that it stays going and that everything goes like it should. And then we have to verify, you know, and that'll require probably you guys, because I won't know what I'm looking at, Gianna. So we'll get that figured out and get that scheduled up and go from there.

One thing you all love about IT is everything's an emergency.

Recycling event, county offices and county equipment only, correct, and not open to the public?

Correct.

Just a lot of people showing up for the video.

Yeah.

No, that's, yeah.

Yeah.

So, good question.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right.

Let's go to the 8.1.

probably not ready for that one yet. I actually checked in. This is not a delay on our end. IPMG and Mark Bell, there's some agency we're supposed to go through that's coordinated with them. It's still not figured out. So he asked if we get expedited and go around the process and we still haven't heard back from that. So we don't have to table it until we get some clarification. That's the AI news policy that was online. So is it online somewhere? Okay. I don't know. There was a copy. Yeah, there was a copy that we had. I would send it back out. It's just been tabled for a few months. So nothing's been altered on it since then. We're just been waiting for a review to see what changes we need to make, if any. So yeah, Mark will apologize profusely, but he's like, I'm going to try to get this in because it has to go through somebody else.

So, at this point, hopefully, I mean, my last correspondence was probably Monday-ish, so hopefully we'll hear something by the end of the week, maybe, and if not, I'll ping them again and see what we need to do.

Like we said last month, I think it's better to do this slowly and correctly.

I agree. Absolutely.

Have you gotten any guidance from some other counties? I know we talked, and everyone's kind of just stepping up.

Yeah, I think we're probably a little bit further ahead than what some have been, but yeah, we'll definitely do that. Usually you share secrets between what works and what doesn't.

So, it's on the February agenda, I didn't have any updated to attach it, the link, and this was helping me out when I was in here, but it was on February, it's on February, thank you.

Okay, let's move to new business 9.1, approval of ordinance, amending chapter 29 of the Stevenson County code.

If y'all had a chance to take a look at that, I'm going to see, that's a good deal.

So, I'm going to make a motion to approve it, and then we can talk about it, maybe, give me a second.

I can second it for discussion.

Okay. All right. So this would be limited, let's see, I've got to get to page two. This would close out at the end of first meeting, first regular meeting of the county board in December 2026. This would revert back to old policy.

as chairman was talking to me about it and kind of discussing it since Tim was leaving off the board and he's the current finance chair trying to understand who the best person or who would be the best qualified to be the finance chair and being how Scott had been finance chair for four years previously.

lead, and probably currently had the most experience in that position, just made sense to change this policy and allow him to do that, otherwise we had to move a bunch of committee people and chairs around, and we probably got pretty nasty, I think, by the time we moved people around to get so many indirect things.

Was that completely realigned the entire committee organization, I guess, to lack of a their term to make this work.

And again, this is not something I'm looking to have put in place permanently.

The reorganization meeting for the county will be in December of this year.

There is possibility of new board members coming on.

There'll be a new vote or another vote for chairman and vice chairman of the board.

At that point, whoever the chairman is, and realign communities however they see fit.

This is the path of least resistance, in my opinion, to get us through the 2027 budget process.

Do we have a Vice-Chair? Vice-Chair of the Board of Finance or the Board of Both?

We have currently the Vice-Chair of Finance.

is still vice chair of the board.

His resignation is not effective until the end of March, at which point we will, what's the term, declare a vacancy for his seat.

And at that point, we'll have a new election for vice chair in April.

So we'll open it up to nominations.

Any board members have the opportunity to make nominations and vote for vice chair of the board?

and see what else is in here.

So it doesn't change the current structure of the finance committee, the finance chair would still only have one vote on that committee.

So it's less pain here, I think, so that's why we're proposing this.

I understand trying to streamline that.

trying to streamline things. I understand this gets messy if we don't. You've got a lot of people to balance, a lot of issues to balance. However temporary, the consolidation of this kind of responsibility makes me nervous. I don't, just on gut, I don't like having that much responsibility with one person, however much of an emergency as it is.

and part of me always resists a move to make us do less work. As tempting as that is, that's part of our job. That's part of our job is representation.

And just because it would make less work for us, I don't know that that inherently makes up the right decision.

I understand the temptation, again, I get the temporary nature of it and all that, I just, this, this makes me twitchy, yeah, I'm not sure I understand the Westbrook phrase, but to the point of, to avoid the restructuring, oh, this is all I'm getting at, okay.

Well, if I can, I can hear it, but brief examine, planning and development, Mr. Curtis, Chair of that committee, so I put Steve in finance, and I didn't ask you because you pick corn and beans during the budget process most of the time.

Your vice chair is Nicole, who's also chair of nursing. You have Brian Brandt, who is chair of public works. And you have Dale Devens, who is chair of court services. Can't just plug in the vice chair into chair of P&D without then revamping nursing home. His vice chair right now is Nicole Baker.

and again, if I put Brian Brandt, which he can't, because he also picks Gorman in fall during the budget process, if I did that, then I have to have a new chair for Public Works and move somebody else onto that committee.

So it's been, same with this committee, it's not secure too.

I had a long conversation with Adrian because I want to make sure she was comfortable more than anyone else with the process. She gave her blessings. She had no issues. I've worked very extensively on it. And as far as, I guess, consolidating or changing the power of it, nothing comes out of finance that doesn't ultimately end up at the board level to be approved.

I also have final say on all agenda items as it is right now. Believe me, I understand the appearance of it, but that's why there's 15 other board members. And I am not looking for more to do.

Well, and that's why I do pick the word responsibility rather than power. Very, very intentional. And we can all have the utmost respect for you and your experience. I'm trying to take the personality out of it and just think of it as a structural thing. Again, even if it's temporary, that's where I struggle.

and that is why there's sunset to it.

Sure.

It's not affirmative.

And I'm not as eloquent as that, but I'm struggling with it, too, on the parameters that it looks, how it looks to the people we represent.

I mean, what are we saying to them?

are we saying, okay, I understand what Chairman Helms is saying too about putting people in positions that have other responsibilities. Well, there's 16 board members. I'm just struggling with that part of it. And the number of calls I got today, I didn't have any that were very positive on on the, so, on this? On this. What calls did you get? Six. I get calls on nothing else. That's impressive, but at least six people are looking at the agenda. But to me, that's a lot when you look at anything else we do. I'm impressed with six.

We'll set up a still answering calls on my drive here.

Well, going back to, I guess, my previous comments, I think, not that Scott needs more to do, but looking around the room and who's doing what, he's already done the job, I think he's the most qualified, so it makes sense to get, let's say, the best person in that position.

for temporary. That's the way I'm looking at this type of thing. Yeah, it does. If we approve this tonight, it still has to get approved by the board on Thursday. And again, the structure at the finance committee doesn't change. We still have the same number of votes. He's only one vote.

and like I said, we had a review by Carl, we had a review by the auditors and we didn't have any issues with it.

So I think we've got plenty of oversight with everything that's going on.

So I'm comfortable with it.

I think we have elected people as well as appointed people that are more than capable to oversee what we do.

Sure.

Yeah, that's the intent.

We don't want to be in like Dixon, Illinois, right?

We have an issue.

So that's why we have this oversight and things like that.

So then let's not have to change.

I don't have anything for them.

All right, all those in favor say aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, two opposed, okay, yes, yes, okay, let's come up with another plan, I guess, All right, okay, let's move on, 10.0, comments from committee members?

So, it's a little early, but I did bring this up, I have brought this up at various committees, but as we're getting towards nicer weather, as we're getting towards parade season, I'd like to to re-voice my opinion. I think the county should have a more diverse and celebratory presence at parades. The sheriff's department always gets out and that's great, but if we can get some of the highway department trucks down the road or whatever else we got, I think the more positive we can put on the county and our presence in the community, the better. So again, this seems like a logical place to start that push.

Yeah, I think everyone would want to get out there and throw some candy I think they are taking things from the bubble Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so again, everyone Okay, hold on, 11.0, adjourn it Make a motion, adjourn in a second, all those in favor say aye Okay, thanks everybody