Last month.
Those distributions hit the primary to the tune of a 38% increase.
When you add in the investments made from the same accounts, we're up 22.17% from the month previous.
And that almost is dollar for dollar in the amount or so of the property tax distribution.
So solid financial position, the first page showing that property and income taxes up 160% 1,000 plus over the previous month to date five and a half million from those limited sources of revenue.
And on the investment page was pretty quiet.
Still an extra almost $3,600 interest.
Only two are shown to mature next month.
I did make several investments today.
$2.8 Million that will settle tomorrow, their short-term.
They're going to mature early in October.
So those are the changes there.
Unless you have specific questions about the report, I think it speaks for itself, especially this month.
All good?
Okay.
Great.
Moving on to distribution, we made the second distribution yesterday.
It wasn't as large, that first one is always a big one, this one was 2.475 million across all of the taxing bodies.
Because of that distribution, 59.64% of the levies have been put back to those districts, so they have significant amounts of their budgeted funds already.
So if you look at the county received of the 2.475 million, this distribution across all 13 funds is almost 266,000.
And Mel Rayce on his own as it is, as you know, a separate taxing body, 61,708.
So that's distribution is September the 10th.
I anticipate that to be a little larger because the second due date is quickly approaching on the fourth.
Other item notes, the annual auction of surplus properties that our county holds as trustee that catalog is out and about in the wild.
We've had several people express an interest.
We try to direct them to the online auction site.
Deadline for those bids is August 21st.
I believe that is all I have, unless you have questions regarding the collection site.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
All righty, let's jump down to 7.2 County Court.
Thank you, Chair Wigg.
July was a busy month in our office.
On the recorder side, we recorded 697 documents.
Busy time, strong properties in the county.
As far as elections, 2026 election, early voting begins September 24th.
I've received a couple communications.
People have been seeing signs in elections in other states.
So, um, they're wondering when is voting up.
I just made them aware, uh, we don't have our list finalized yet.
There's still time for filings with the County Clerk as well as the State Court of Elections, but September 24th is the day.
We had a successful election judge training August 4th.
We had two time periods, uh, two o'clock and a six o'clock Class, and we had this hosted at Highland.
You'll see a little claim next month for some cookies and waters at the Election Director's job for coming to the training.
The 2 PM class offered this image around.
The room was completely full, like there was a couple empty seats, but about had a hundred and seventeen people attended that 2 PM class during screens up front we've really tried to increase the training materials as far as whether you're learning by words visual hearing so we had both the ADA the accessible machine where we could show the judges as well as the tabulator and then all of the materials we have as far as the binder.
So the PowerPoint for the presentation has been revamped, as well as if you were a first-time judge, you could come up afterwards to look at those materials that way they can feel confident on election day.
That's really good.
Highland was just a, it was a perfect place to have it, I think, previously.
Do you have a question?
I do.
Do you know where the judges equally represented for both political parties or was it just one side or the other?
There was representation from both parties.
That was one of my goals, that we can try to comply with the best we can with the state statute, whether it's for the general election you have to have five judges for precinct and then depending on the votes from the previous election, 3 Republicans, 2 Democrats, or 3 Democrats, 2 Republicans, so I know a lot of counties struggle getting the election judges and we always want people to continue to apply, so we have, I don't want to say the buttons, but people dropping out a couple days before, we're not scattering, so we're in good shape, but it would be nice to continue to have election judges apply.
Some of the rural precincts, election judges retire, so we need to continue to fill those Fox.
Even though we're on the 2026 election, 2027 election, it's beginning primary petitions are being circulated per city.
August 25th circulation begins for the other districts, municipal, park, college, library.
The only petition that are picked up at our offices for the school board because the school board, those candidates file with our office all of the other positions they file with their local clerk so we never even see those petitions, it's just a list of names that is certified to us for the 2027 election, we just see the petitions for the school board.
Any questions about the 2026 or 2027 election?
I sent an example out of the postcard that's going to be in the mailbox soon.
There are about a little under 26,000 postcards that will be going out to all registered voters that are eligible to receive this postcard.
If you have already opted to sign out of this postcard, or you already signed up for a vote by mail, you will not receive it.
This is required by state statute.
You'll see on that postcard they have the option to say they're interested in being an election judge.
They can request a vote by mail ballot for the November election only.
They can We can send them a permanent vote by mail or they can opt out.
So if you don't want to receive that postcard, give us a call and we can opt you out.
That will save you future dollars, tax dollars.
If you want to vote in person, go up to the post.
Do you want to vote?
Yes, ma'am.
Jason, how many vote by mail in Stewardson County?
It depends on the election.
It depends on the primaries.
If they chose a party, it would depend on the election.
I would say approximately 2,500-ish.
We have about 2,800,500 registered voters.
We sent out a little under.
We sent out 25,735 postcards.
So that difference is made up of people that have opted out, which isn't a lot for people that are already signed up.
Thank you.
When did you say your early voting begins?
September 24th.
Thank you.
Alright, thank you.
Thank you.
Let's move on to 7.3.
Plans are going to be really short, so as I've repeated in the last few meetings or whatever, we have seven townships, it's all hands on deck, but we have five completely and utterly done, the fieldwork's done, it's all entered, and I have everything valued, so we're working on number six, which is White Point, which encompasses Lena and that area, and that's the largest one besides Freeport, so the fieldwork are almost done and I'm working on valuing it.
So we are actually I don't want to say this too well but we are ahead of schedule.
Look at stuff these swiles.
Look at Stephanie's smile.
So unless I have a major, major hiccup, which hopefully not, we should be getting everything out and done so everybody else can do their part.
No, trust me, that's what my whole office has been doing.
So everybody it's The new girl has fit in amazingly and everything is going very, very, very smoothly.
Okay.
All right.
Let's go to County Administrator.
She was not able to attend tonight, so I have a report.
I think you all got it, but I'll kind of read off a few things for the YouTube here.
Stevenson Nursing Center.
Court continued to be contacted by vendors that are still owed.
Army Land Bank, no upcoming meetings scheduled.
Sickits, wrapping up audit.
Plan to present to finance in the County Board in September.
TFP, no July meeting.
Next meeting is 8-26.
Hicks, UCCI, Ingalls in the Conference, that was at the end of July, good information on data centers at educational seminar, always good to network with other counties, integrity financial, so I-29 tell the workshop for all employees could turn out, we'll host again by annual meeting, Mepper Health, new program through Arts Mepper, I think we talked about to be rolled out to employees late August and then Animal Control moved into the facility.
We'll be planning formal ribbon cutting and open house event, it's all been fun.
That's what she had.
And let's go on to 7.5, who's the manager?
There's always a lot going on.
Been dealing with a lot of health department I think we got moved and they're preparing for the 9th floor here to move back to the health department I believe at the end of November so some of where they moved some of the people used to be old examination rooms that weren't live internet wise they were and the old FHM stuff.
So we had to get that configured and put a switch in on the backside of the building and that's up and running.
I think I shared this already.
We pretty much have the wifi switched out across the board and the courthouse here.
We still have to do the health department yet and a few outliers, but for the most part, our wireless has been overhauled and has helped with the board meetings.
We haven't had anywhere near the issues that we once had.
So I'm going to knock on wood as well, because that was frustrating there for a while, but I think we got it stabilized.
Other than that, just a little bit of break-fix stuff, a lot of break-fix stuff, but we've had some calibration going on with the SQ1 server since we put that in.
It was kind of lagging a bit, so I had to get in there and reconfigure how much memory the SQL server was taking for the searches and stuff.
Had stabilized it far as seemed to the last few days.
And then today, we got a call from Arrow this morning that there was a fiber that was degraded that wasn't gonna crash at any moment that carried 911 and everything else.
So we had to do an emergency shutdown today around noon to replace the fiber housed at the PSB.
They were at the police station.
We did it in a coordinated event.
We were down with 15, 20 minutes.
911 Was kicked to Freeport PD and then everything was back.
So don't like to disrupt when people are here, but it was necessary because we could either pick when we're down or they could just go down and we could have a bigger issue.
So we decided to do it over the launch hour.
All the department heads were pretty workable with the timeframe.
So we got that done today and avoided potential disaster there.
So that's been pretty much it.
I am going to Tennessee at the end of next month.
So I'm just trying to get a lot of stuff off the plate So Three Rock can handle whatever comes in when I'm gone.
Brad is back from Three Rock.
He's still not like really lifting anything or whatever.
He's still on the neck brace and stuff, but we did get a body back.
They can take some of the remote tickets while we're out on the desk level.
So with that, does anybody have any questions?
Thank you.
There isn't any whole business, so we will jump down to, let's call it a 9.2 approval in a governmental agreement with Erie Kent Multitownship Assessment District before your period of assessments.
Sure.
This is one that Sandy decided that she, with her health issues and stuff like that, and with them switching their township supervisor, it sort of got lost in the shuffle or whatever.
So they finally just got the contract back to me so it's just like the last one that we did for Aaron or Jefferson and Warren so same same concept we did the 440 that the County Board approved and it's just giving us more money back in our chips.
You've got the resources to do it at all right?
It's always good it is and like I said I no disrespect to Cindy or whatever but having it all in-house since we've done it and stuff like that that's I really believe that that's why we're ahead of schedule just because you know instead of waiting on her to bring it back or whatever and obviously she didn't she did the work and then sometimes you know turned it in once a week or whatever Weber, and all the field people that go out daily and then come back.
So that's why we're out of schedule.
Trust me, I'm not safe.
Okay.
Move to approve.
Okay.
I'll second.
You have a second.
All right.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
So move.
Let's go down to the foreign stuff, the budgets.
Okay, so we have some budgets to look over.
The first one is administration budget.
I looked at all these last night, so we got to look at her contracts.
Patrick, and that's why that's empty, other than that, flat, I don't think anybody else can really comment on that, and then there's a 3.5% in there for the Administration Assistant Salary and the Rainier Finance Director salary, so I've got to, and I also have to do a review coming up shortly, so more fun stuff.
Comments are just going on in the next one.
We can approve it now.
We can't really approve it because we don't have that one in there, so we're just going to move on in here.
And the next one is IT budget.
You want to speak to that, Dave?
Yeah, and it reminds me of something.
This budget is pretty much status quo.
It's get the 3.5% COLA in there and whatever our increase was in the service contracts.
We know that Microsoft just went up, so I had to up that.
But for the most part, I tried to keep it about what it was.
So not much of a fluctuation other than the rise of cost to operate.
So, but that does bring me to the point.
One of the other things that I've been spending the last week, we can have two doing is moving like 18 terabytes worth of data that was on a NAS drive.
They maxed that NAS drive out.
They needed something bigger.
So we spent $5,000 on an 80 terabyte NAS, which essentially I thought would last them to two and a half years.
At the rate they're putting data on there.
I don't agree with how we're doing it.
But I can't necessarily say that it's being done and Ron.
I wouldn't necessarily say that it's being done wrong.
My fear with NASs are they're basically little toasters that are server file servers and they replicate, like there's four drives, but if that whole thing gets nuked or power blasted, there's no backup to that whatsoever.
And that leaves some concern to me.
And we have a few of those around the county.
I was asked what it would cost to go to the cloud and the ballpark figure for the first year was like $5,000 additional, you know, to whatever their operating budget was.
And going forward, I don't care if that comes out of my budget, you know, I don't know that I have access to do that.
I still have some IT upgrades that we'll use for other stuff but this is something we got to think about for the future because as we continue to add data, the cost is going to go up.
There's just no way around that.
Now, I think they were over estimating what they're going to put on.
I feel like they're putting on a lot now because it's the initial get rid of all paper, right?
We're trying to get there.
I think eventually it slows down and it tapers off, but they were ballparking that they would double every year.
I don't think that's the case and they were worried about like in 20 years it being a hundred grand a year and they like, that's not feasible on like, well, what we're doing now is not feasible because lightning hits it, worst case scenario, you lose all of it.
Yeah.
And I'm not comfortable with that.
My professional opinion is to have it backed up online somewhere else that if the courthouse blows up or, you know, fire or whatever it can be, we can restore it.
I was basically told that wasn't an option.
So Who told you that?
Is that?
Who was that?
I'm not trying to.
Yes.
Who is it?
Which department are we talking about?
State's attorneys.
Okay.
And again, I'm not trying to throw them under the bus, but I'm not comfortable with the current arrangement we have.
And I don't think $5,000 increase is a lot considering the data is backed up, the sense of security that you have.
And then the other thing I have is like the chain of, I forgot what you call it, but I I don't know custody, chain of custody on what can go where.
That may be a coral question, but I do know there's evidence.
Com that the County uses, the Sheriff does and Freeport PD uses.
And I think that's been ruled out.
I don't understand why I, there are options out there better than what we're doing.
And I don't know if it's cost because they're a general fund budget.
I don't know.
And again, I'm not against paying that.
It's just, I don't have an excess either.
We have to game plan for that to grow continually going forward.
Right now I'm carrying all the servers in my budget through Ninja and I can add that drive.
I can add things in, but it's gonna increase what we pay.
And I'm fine with doing that because eventually right now, the other thing was, is that I got everybody to get on Chanel's server, the imaging server, because they all use PC gyms and then that could grow and they could split the cost.
That became a thing.
So now I think she's just paying it for now.
People have to understand that to store data online is not free.
And I'm not saying you guys, but I mean department heads as well.
Like if this is what they're doing, they've got to gain plan or I have to have it in my budget and I'm willing to carry that in IT budget.
It makes sense, but I'm just frustrated because if something were to happen, the first finger that's gonna get pointed is at the IT guy, and we're not gonna have the files when my preference would be that stuff is backed up and saved off site.
That's the safest way to go now, and it's immutable.
It can't be changed.
The protections are there, but as soon as something's gone, they're gonna be like, why didn't you say something?
Well, I did numerous times, but I can't make you do it.
You don't have to get too deep.
Was it a security concern or a cost concern?
It seemed like a cost concern to me.
It really seemed like a cost concern to me.
And I think, again, I think it was overestimated.
You're not going to double every year.
Obviously, if you're playing catch up, you're doing a lot right now, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the 18 terabytes of stuff that they went through in not even a year.
That's mind blowing in itself, but I think they're putting videos, recordings, all this stuff out there and that stuff eats up dead quick.
So I say all that to say, I have Ninja in my budget and I've got it to where we're at and where we're growing.
But there's quite a few one-offs in this county that need to be added into that.
And I started having discussions with department heads and the courthouse turned into who's paying for what type deal and that's not for me to determine.
Yes, Chairman.
So regardless of where the final dollars come from, whether it's the general fund for that department.
They may pull the funds out of the general fund.
Maybe that's what this board decides to do, but it definitely should not be.
If it's not a directive or a plan that you have that you want to implement, that doesn't come out of your budget.
At least on the paper side.
Oh, I agree.
I do think this is a plan I want to implement, but you're right, elected officials, there's not much I can do.
So, and again, I don't know if his was just the, it seemed to me like it was a cost thing, and $5,000 this year didn't seem unreasonable.
I did think that the projections were way too much, but I just want people to know I gave my professional opinion.
This is what I think should happen, and if they go sideways, I don't want people saying, hey, you didn't try to warn us.
Should that conversation be brought up in the court services budget?
Well, we'll see if it's in the court services budget.
If it's an initiative that the state's attorney's office or the sheriff's office or whichever elected official wants to pursue, they need to include that expense in their budget.
This isn't necessarily you coming out saying the courthouse needs to move to this and this is how I'm going to pay for it.
They're going to do whatever they want to do regardless.
And I want you guys to understand that it's not just a data they don't want to have multiples of these because they don't want to have to look in more than one place so when we got the bigger one we spent a week and a half moving everything and babysitting it and making sure that it's flowing and it's just not a great process whatsoever but it's done now and they're probably good for a couple of years I just think like an evidence.
Com or cloud source would be the most feasible way to go and probably the most cost effective in the end you figured time, possible potential loss of data and everything else but last night I could tell I hit a wall and I wasn't gonna argue anymore I was like huh?
Well that's why you prepare that memo so an official memo you send it out you CC your oversight chair okay we can send that out to the full committee the board I know we share servers.
Do we need, do the department heads need to have their own server so it comes out of their own budget or I think when we replaced it I think some of it came out of your budget.
Does it really need to be coming out of our budget?
Right now I have the expense of backing up all the servers and that's an expense that I've been calculating.
So it's in my budget.
So I don't think that that's a conversation for everybody else to have.
I don't think you go backwards unless you get.
I think she's saying as the servers grow and the cost grows is the general point of it.
I think at one time the conversation was for IT to cover IT expenses, which in my mind this is.
So my thought process was that the IT budget would have to grow as the county grows and whatever they're doing.
How we do that?
I don't have the answer to that.
Well, maybe I wasn't clear and what my preference would be is it still comes out of your budget, even if it is funded by the general fund, if we're just moving dollars out of the general fund into yours to cover it.
But I'd like to know what the true expense of operating your department is, including that server expense, doesn't mean you have to cut something else necessarily.
I mean, maybe that's a good point.
Yeah, I just thought when we did the server upgrade, we had covered it because you didn't have the money in your budget.
And I'm not saying automatically the general fund covers it, I'm just saying if you don't have the money in your account, then that is a discussion with the Oversight Committee to say I really can't cut anywhere else.
Say, I really can't cut anywhere else, but it should absolutely be my department if that's the expense that's being incurred by that department.
We used to have, that's becoming a different conversation because our servers are shared and they're not all elected officials because we share data, we share applications.
We can't divvy that pie up because two are elected and some are not.
That doesn't work.
I don't think it's relevant to the budget conversation tonight, but I think to separate amongst elected and non-elected, at least in this case, isn't advisable.
Correct, but the reason I brought it up is if any of that goes towards the cloud, it's a cost that's going to be incurred as soon as we do it.
That is probably not reflected in anybody's budget as of yet, unless it's a supplemental I'm unaware of.
I know Chanel's asking for a supplemental tonight for the imaging server to cover all the departments for that, but that may just get through for a year.
We just felt that another terribly.
And what's nice about theirs is Goodens is able to tell us, because there's a probation module, there's a state's attorney module, circuit clerk and public defender.
So they were able to get the percentages of who was using what, but in a ST coil one world, you can't.
I mean, there's just no way to do that.
So that's the only reason I brought it up.
We're covered as of now, but we have data that's not hitting the cloud that I'm just sort of not comfortable with.
And I don't know that it's urgent anywhere else.
So with that being the case, I will drop that memo and we can move forward.
I just want to, at some point somebody comes and asks for that.
Wanted to advocate for them because it will be a cost going forward that we need so that's it otherwise my budget is as well for the most part I still have the IT upgrades I have $60,000 in that in the 14 line item and that will go down if I use anybody at the end of the year but we are trying to save that for upgrades or special projects so or I guess as a contingency of something go and so on.
So this is maybe just a dumb question, but can we ever delete data?
The retention policies are state driven usually by statute.
Like in a felonies case for Carl, he has to hold it 20 years and that's like after probably the last appeal, like not necessarily the first court date.
So there are retention policies and I do know we sent, as a circuit clerk back when I was, when things ran out of when we could and then they'd give us approval and we could destroy it or remove it from imaging or whatever else.
So there is data that's been taken off.
The problem we're seeing the influx in is everybody's still trying to get rid of their paper.
You know, imaging started off slow, and they're putting in case files and they're trying to get caught up.
And right now that's the influx.
Eventually, I think that'll taper off and it'll just be our normal workflow.
But until you get back to it, you're going to have to do it again.
It would be interesting to find out if Indian Departments are requesting deletion of data after the retention period has ended.
Administration does it, that's my point.
I know it's work to do it, it's not just a flicking switch.
Is that a reminder that should be mentioned at the next department head meeting or something?
They're asking for more data, for more money for data.
Yeah, I mean, my concern is, is that it's not bad.
I mean, all this money that We're putting into purchasing this, could be gone in a night, could be gone in a minute, if lightning struck the courthouse.
We have to be more responsible.
And it's not like the next device is free either.
Once you get through this 80 terabytes, you get to buy something bigger.
So I mean, this was five grand for an 80 terabyte when you only get to use about 70 of it by the time you get everything loaded on it.
So I mean, that's a cost you got going forward too.
So it's the pros and cons and I think it just needs to be discussed a lot more and maybe I just come to a department head meeting and, but again, I can't make people do what they don't want to do or what they think is too much, so yeah, that conversation going, so okay.
Thank you.
Well, if you have everything in here that you need, I thought you just said there might be something you need to add in here at some point.
Well, that's, if we, if we move any of this data into the cloud, like if that gets decided, um, it's going to go up in somebody's budget mind, theirs, whoever's, um, and then, uh, the 60,000 is just still there.
Um, we've done pretty good.
I still have to switch up the core router at the courthouse, but every other facility has gotten a new firewall put in place and, uh, all of our servers are up to date and, you know, we've made a lot of progress, even though some days I still feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off.
But we're, we're really, we've seen it in the state's ratings of how we handle things and all these things.
So we've made a lot of progress, but unfortunately, IT is ever flowing.
So I do have a question, Nate.
So looking at your 2026 budget of 501,000, basically up to the end of July, you've used $167,000.
Are we going to have more of a surplus than we realized or you got some things coming later this year?
Well, I think all of those, well it'll add up quick I believe because, oh yeah, there's 120 of them, Microsoft and Splash.
So a lot of them haven't, our renewals are in the middle of the year.
Yeah, I'm not sitting on a surplus.
Yeah, they're like, Splashtop was like July-ish, or Microsoft is September-October-ish, so and you have to start the ball rolling on them a few months early to get your licenses prepared.
So unfortunately, a lot of mine is right at the end of the year by the time you notice it, so.
Okay.
Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, and it looks like you almost made me excited.
It looks like we're going to reduce this budget by $40,000 here next year.
We should hold this over, right?
Can I make a motion to hold it over?
And the motion for the reduction, the card's not the motion.
The reason for the reduction is that lease payment.
That goes down every year because we pay on it.
On it.
And I think as Adrian has noted here, it looks like the final payment will be in January of 27.
So that fine item will probably go away altogether.
Unless you want to give me a whole new $300,000 at least.
So is that a motion?
Can I make a motion that we hold this budget over until next month, because Nate just said that there's some things that may not be completely done yet, figured out yet, did I miss that?
I think she's talking about the cloud stuff, yeah, that could still happen before we do Scott said you wanted that to come out of the department.
My preference would be, if we're talking about the state's attorney, my preference would be that they would include that in their budget.
I'm not telling you you can't lay it over.
It's up to you guys.
But it's a pretty cut and dry budget, I guess.
That's why I'm curious.
Do you think something's going to change between now and September?
Not as far as my stuff, unless the decision's made that IT is going to pay for whatever needs to be put on there, which I'm fine with.
That's the discussion for you guys to have.
Yeah, that's up to you guys to decide if you want to come out of that budget and you can do that or not.
But I don't know that there's any requests.
I didn't see it in the court services.
Not going to go over them.
I think it's a very good budget, but I'm okay with holding it over as well.
It just seems like it's still up in the air.
I mean, yeah, it's a great, it's a solid budget, but there's still the conversations that need to be had.
I agree it's probably not going to change.
It just seems oftentimes we just sit on it, kind of let it gestate a little bit.
And next month, this is a 10 second conversation.
Great.
Do we need two later?
Probably not, but I think that's fine.
2 Later, probably not, but I think it's a good safe check.
Okay, so we have a motion on the floor to move it over.
Any other comments before we go?
All right, all those in favor say aye.
What if I vote no?
You can vote no if you want.
Yeah, I don't want to mess things up, but I have to, I guess we're out of discussion time, so I'll just vote no.
Okay, so 3 to 1, we're going to lay it over.
I think my budgets are fairly straightforward.
If we look at the first one that I have for you, department 906, this is again, as a general fund department, this is expenditure only.
You don't have the revenues yet for all of the general fund expenditures.
So overall increase in the total We have a total amount of last year's 3.66% The salary lines are solely determined by budget policy and prior resolution so that should be fairly straightforward.
Stationary supplies, I left the same.
I reduced computer supplies.
The increases come in and they're slight given the magnitude of my budget for auto mileage because the IRS rate seems to go up every year.
And then for us we make daily bank runs which is really convenient when your bank is located in the same building for the most part.
That bank is closing October 5th so we're going to have to physically run money daily during collection season so and we use our personal vehicles to do that so I expect that to be a little bit of an increase so that's why.
It's not much it's under $50 but I want to explain it.
The advertising publishing up a little bit.
Um, we have been very lucky that Village Voices has been able to meet our publication needs.
I think we will have them for 27.
I think that's the last year.
It is.
According to Dan.
So, um, I don't, his costs do continue to increase.
Um, if for something were to happen between now and the end of next publication season, statute requires us to publish in the nearest county with a daily weekly publication for us.
That would be incredibly expensive.
So trying to add to that amount is, you know, we have to do that because the state isn't listening to us when we lie to them, say that newspaper publication is a dinosaur that we need to let go of.
It's incredibly expensive.
You can speak to that.
So that line for a lot of us, maybe not next year, but that's going Office Equipment Repairs are reduced, Office Equipment Over 500 reduced, so the total is just a 3.664% increase.
I think that's fairly standard, unless everybody has any questions.
A lot of curiosity, I'm not sure it affects the budget directly, but what do you see as a solution to that publication issue?
Online publishing.
We put our lists on our website already, and this is where it's particularly bad.
We are forced.
I am forced.
I think you have to do assessment notices too.
I have to send a certified delinquent notice to every person who doesn't pay their taxes by a particular date.
And publish.
So two different costs.
The certified budget, certified delinquent notice between the publication, the postage, the certified notice, it's almost $10 per.
And 60% of them come back unclaimed.
So that's not working.
We're not notifying the people, you know, it's usually the same people, but electronic publication, and then let me just send them first class, because they don't have to go to the post office to pick them up.
But but we're lobbying, we're trying to have the legislature understand that their goal is not being met by these meetings.
So until that happens, we can continue to have to eat these crazy costs like that.
So talk to your legislature about that.
So the online publication, everybody's got one of these.
You can see it.
All right, 906 budget.
Can I move on to the Treasurer Animation one, or do you want me to act on these separately?
We probably should talk about them or act on them separately here, since we've rather listed that way, I guess.
And then we'll talk about the next one.
I guess this one we could probably approve.
I don't think it's going to change.
So I'll make a motion to approve, except the County Treasurer's Office budget for fiscal year 2017.
I'll second that one.
Any other conversations?
Okay, all those in favor say aye.
Okay, now we'll move to council.
Okay, so the next page is treasure automation and because this is not a general fund department, a standard fund, you see both revenue and expense.
This one I have had to change once so far and for reasons I can get into later with our final new business item is impacted by some recent legislation on the fee income side.
Outside.
So you'll see relative to previous years, I've bumped up cash carry forward and decreased automation fees because I am anticipating within the calendar year a potential reduction in fees.
So I'm using, I have the money that I'm not spending.
There's approximately $97,000 in that account.
I don't ever use that.
So I'm just pushing more cash carry forward to to cover the expense that I anticipate.
But I have tried to cut expenses.
You can see my 13.5% cut revenue by 12.9% to try to kind of hedge my bets a little bit.
Again, it's a small fund, totally small fund, not taxpayer dollars, fee-driven fund.
So these are all the same line items I have every year.
I've just tried to massage the numbers in a way that just me pushing cash carried forward ahead will fill the gap.
I don't know if I've answered any questions on that.
So cash carried forward, I know people ask about it a lot, it's basically just unspent money in my bank account.
Unencumbered money, it's not earmarked for anything.
It's perfect.
I like to see a reduction, so.
Yeah, it's great.
I will confess, it would not have been had it not been for the impact of this legislation.
Right.
So, great.
So I can make a motion to accept the treasure automation budget for fiscal year 27.
Second.
Any other conversation?
Otherwise, we will vote.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Order.
Thank you.
Yep.
Let's take a look at the 902.25 quarter first.
Thank you.
Take a look at the manual 2.25 quarter first.
We'll see the two increases at the top of the salary, which is set by the County Board.
And the only other increase is for IT equipment and contracts.
A side increase there, overall 3.59% increase for that budget.
Budget.
You've got a reduction in your advertising and publishing, right?
I'm looking at the county open recorder, one right now.
Yeah, I'm looking at item 904-62000.
I'm looking at 902 county open Just the first, just the first.
Oh, that part.
I'll have it down here.
Okay.
Different budget.
Okay.
Got you.
This one.
Make a motion to approve.
Go second.
Do we take these?
Separately.
Yes, they don't do it.
It's all expenses.
They don't do it up here.
They don't do it down here.
They're different things.
I would jump in.
The revenue has come from the other side.
We're not going to do that.
All the revenues that come from the accounting revenue quarter line you'll see them in the federal revenue and also for GIS that is completely funded by the documents that we record.
Okay.
You guys had a chance to review it?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
All right, we have a motion on the floor to approve budget 902 for. 2027.
I want all of you here to say aye.
Aye.
All right, now 904.904, election expenses.
Fortunately, the state statute, there's things that we have to do and they don't fund them.
You'll see by the postcards, we have to do part of that, vote by mail, increase expenses there, but the budget didn't increase too much, actually decreased, but we'll get into that.
The first one that increased was the salaries by a County Board.
Going down, there was a decrease in advertising and publishing.
This number has been pretty high since I've been here.
We haven't utilized it all, so decreased there, 20%.
For the building in the rooms, there's a 12.5% increase based on the estimate we were given for Brent.
Going down, there was a decrease in the voter registration grant based on the from that we received from the state board of elections and then the online accessibility grant is just eliminated for this year because typically they will give us the amount in August and the grant cycle starts from July to June.
They're changing it from a 12-month process to an 18-month process because it's a federal grant and that information will not come out until 2027.
So it will go from 2027 halfway through 2028.
So that will be in next year's budget.
Okay.
Any questions for that budget?
No, that's good.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
All right.
Four is approved for 2027.
One more budget due to for the mechanical document storage, George.
Slight increase in revenues from the idle record fees, slight increase for the subscriptions, just the cost of the subscriptions have gone up, so you'll see an increase for the revenue in the expenses we have that occur with those subscriptions, and then an increase in the interest income there.
So overall, 15% increase for the revenue line there, as far as the expenses, an increase with those expenses as well for the subscriptions we have to pay for and the annual agreement.
If you look at the bottom, revenue is $69,000, expenses $60,000.
Typically, the revenues are higher than expenses eventually since every year.
I mean, revenues are going up, but expenses are going down.
We may utilize more of those expenses to start indexing more of our land records.
I do have one question on the contingency line.
They haven't used anything so far this year, but yet you're increasing it.
That bill comes at the end of the year.
There you go, that's the answer.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Yeah that's where um that's for our um Fentler that we use Matex at and we use for um on the County Clerk side and the Recorder side and we're bringing in all of our revenues while there.
Mr. Chairman, yes and you have that under contingencies?
That unless you would like to record it that's the way it has uh That's software?
Is that what it is?
Sometimes we utilize the contingencies for upgrades.
It's not just our software.
Did I misunderstand that you said there's a bill that comes in the fourth quarter?
Yes, that is from Fiddler.
And that's paid through the contingency line?
It is I don't know if it needs to be its own line, but I just view contingencies as being something for an emergency and unplanned expense, I guess.
I'm not saying it can't be that I personally would like to see if that's a if that is of an expense that comes every year that we know about I would like to see that somewhere in the budget Well, it's more than one expense, correct?
It's more than one expense.
In that case, it would probably be better off to go up than in the county part of the quarter budget.
Remember, if I'm sorry.
Yep, no you're fine.
So, Jasmine mentioned earlier, I'm not sure anybody caught it, so this is a mechanical document fund, this is an elected official directed account.
Just like my Treasure Automation Fund is so I'm not trying to be difficult or speak for her but she can call whatever she wants in this fund because these are not taxpayer dollars these are not property tax dollars these are fee generated income dollars that is not being paid by the general fund and if you were to ship that to the general fund then the semantics is costing you I make the motion that we approve the mechanical document storage.
Any other conversation?
All those in favor say aye.
All right, now we have the Superwriters.
Comments on this one Angie?
I was just waiting for everybody.
So the increases are, for me, they're just sort of necessary because my contract, the COLA, Stephanie did a very good job discussing the whole postage thing.
And then the other two increases were the software, the DevNet contract that was signed for four years, whatever.
Andrew, I have a question.
On 909-465-50, excess sick days.
There's nothing budgeted.
No, because we don't get paid sick days anymore.
You should just be removed.
We used to be able at the end of the year, they used to pay.
So the line should be just deleted completely.
Okay, can you can you do that?
You can include it in the motion, if you choose.
Okay, and the other one is GIS.
Okay, so I can make a motion that we accept the Supervisor of Assessments budget with the condition that 909-46550 be removed.
And second now.
That's good.
We need more conversation.
All right.
All those in favor say aye.
The GIS is pretty much the same thing, the 3.5% COLA for the technician and then in that budget is the rental agreement.
So I talked to the person that's in charge of that.
So then they projected that and then we have a computer contract with, I think it's for the website that I think comes out of my budget.
So that's for the website.
And that was the amount that they gave us.
Do you think that 10% increase on the recording fees is legit on the top line, the income?
Oh, didn't put in the revenue.
We got $220.
I don't know who put the revenue in.
Could it be Adrian?
It could have been, because I didn't mess with any of the revenue part of it, because I wanted to know what to put in there.
I'm guessing Adrian probably did it based on every month at the beginning of the month I deposit money into that account based on the recordings.
The more recordings we do, the more revenue that's going into that one.
There seems to be a lot of blanks on this one a lot of weeks yeah oh the excessive sick days well that one but the transfer from general fund the cash credit forward miscellaneous oh on the revenue side on the revenue side yeah There's three more in the HSA, software purchase contingencies.
The sick days obviously can be done because we don't do the sick days anymore.
Should leave the revenue lines in.
Yeah, I don't mess with the revenue lines.
But we don't know how much the HSA contribution will be for the software purchasing?
You won't know the HSA until you get the health care renewal information and that's up to to the committee or the board, I should say, if they want to help the increase of the payment that we currently provide to the employees through the HSA.
Okay.
So all of these, do we need to wait until we get them up?
The software purchase and stuff like that, that was all, that should have been transferred when we did all the, you know, it was, yeah, that should have just been deleted.
And I don't know if I've ever had anything in the line of contingencies and you won't know the HSA contributions until we get the renewal which will hopefully be in October and it needs to go to finance before then and finance can amend any of these budgets and the accounting board after that in November okay I just hate to approve something that has a lot of questions so those three yeah the other three if you want to make a motion to remove them that's fine.
Well I think the software purchase.
Yes we can get rid of that.
We can get rid of the access sick days.
We can get rid of the software purchase.
We don't want to be adding and deleting every year because next year they may need one.
Access sick days, yes.
I thought that that came on the needs budget now.
Any software updates?
That's probably why they left it in there.
In case you add something.
Okay.
I'm okay with that.
Okay, that's fine.
I just want a clean document.
We'll clean it up by getting rid of the big things.
Okay.
I don't know what that bottom number is.
It's not.
It's all just xed out.
So we don't really have an actual.
As soon as that $220 dropped down there, it should.
That's what I'm thinking.
So we got a $7,000 negative, and we had that number used to go down here, that went down there, $220 down to them, revenue line down there I believe.
$220,000.
From the top.
So it jumped down there.
And then we got a $7,618 deficit.
I'm going to make a motion to approve this budget, remove the excess sick day line item under expenses, and ask that the $220,000 number be brought down to the revenue line at the bottom here.
And that's my motion.
There wasn't any HSA contribution from this budget or from this department from this account I should say for 26.
I can't put it in like yeah from last year.
Probably didn't participate in an HSA.
Nobody did.
GIS.
Oh there's only one person.
That's right.
Oh okay.
You two know who's in GIS, right?
Is it Mike?
Yeah.
What's our topic?
Listen.
Okay.
Then that's, that's fine.
So I have a motion on the floor.
Second it, or let it die?
Second.
And a second by Mr. Moderow.
Okay.
Any other conversation?
I have a question.
Yes, sir.
So you're passing on the finance and unbalanced budget?
You're expecting finance to solve that $7,618 deficit?
That kind of appears what we're doing.
Okay, just clarifying.
Well, because we don't have anything transferred from the general fund.
We don't have any cash carried forward.
So, that's what I mean, I don't feel this is, we're missing a lot of information here.
I mean, this is the budget that's being presented by GIS, so it's up to the oversight to decide if the budget is realistic or not.
For instance, have the oversight committees do the heavy lifting, not finance, which I think I've said before.
So, you are all Oversight.
Finance will have Mr. Jogerst and Mr. Fricke.
Two of the five.
You can add revenue from the General Fund.
I think that's what we should do.
Or you could wait and inquire from within.
Adrian, you can talk to Mike.
Fricke.
She's already put her number in there, so I think I want to amend my motion to put in $7,618 in the transfer from the general fund line, and that's balanced.
It's only $7,000, so I amended my motion.
I need a second on that if somebody wants to do that.
Sure.
Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Bader.
Probably ought to be $7,600.
$7,618.
$7,618 Is what they did just to make it even.
Okay.
So, I don't know if we need to vote on my amendment to transfer the $7,618 to her from the general fund.
All those in favor say aye on that one aye aye okay all right now we're back to the full the first motion to approve as stated getting rid of the excess sick days with the transfer of the general funds and it will be balanced All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
So moved.
Great.
And we get the board of review.
The only thing I changed was the COLA for the increase of the salaries.
Make a motion to accept the Department Board of Review fiscal year 27 budget.
I second it.
Otherwise, I will.
I'm going to second it.
All right.
All those in favor of approving budget 910, Board of Review for 2027, say aye.
I'm sending something around for you that I believe you have.
I don't know if you had a chance to take a look.
This is the UCCI distillation of Public Act 104-0553, which dramatically changes the way the property types are treated.
Changes the way the property tax sales happen throughout the state of Illinois.
So I'm going to just give you, I think, most of the basics.
This is a discussion that's going to need to be continued later, because there is probably some potentially very significant budgetary impact.
And feel free to stop me at any time.
The reason I want you to, I'm begging you, actually, to read this, is there on each section, there is a part that is not county takeaway.
So there's a, if you don't want to read all 13 right now, go to those county takeaways, just so there you get the highlights of the highlights, basically, because this is an 84 page statue.
I don't think any of you want to read.
And there is actually a YouTube video of Will County, their County Board had a committee of the whole meeting directed by their state's attorney, our county trustee agent and a few other parties to talk about the way things were, why the laws changed and what's coming at us.
So I will send you the link so that you can watch it.
It is two hours, but it's pretty important.
I think it is a good representation of the way things really go instead of trying to read through statute.
So what this is about, Illinois is the last of 14 states to finally address a Supreme Court decision that the way property tax sales are done is wrong.
Illinois was the last, it's more than two years overdue.
The remedy has some side effects.
So the side effects basically have created a significant unfunded mandate.
It will affect the county probably for a couple of years.
It's hard to quantify exactly what that's going to look like.
The way it's going to affect the county is in terms of the final tax distribution.
But the good news on that side is that's only about half to seven tenths of one percent of the levy.
So it's not a lot of money, and it is money that will ultimately come back at a later time.
The second way this impacts the county more than any other taxing district is in your general fund budget, there's a line called county treasurer fees.
Those fees are just the late penalties.
When people pay their taxes, that's all that is.
The county keeps all the late penalties.
When we sell the taxes at the end of the year to private tax buyers or the county's trustee, the private tax buyers pay that.
So I get to put that money in the general fund.
You'll notice if you look at the budget in terms of revenue and expenditure report, the vast majority of those funds come after I hold the tax sale.
So the tax sale process is changing.
So if things go the way they should, and we will discuss this further, those monies will not be coming in after the tax sale.
But as property tax sales are redeemed in subsequent months, that money will come back.
It's just not in once.
So the time is changing the amount received isn't the reason that's a problem for the county is that we have a calendar fiscal year right so our tax collections have never aligned to our budget year so this is more again another way that this is problematic that we don't have the same budget year like that the state does because the legislation works on a state fiscal We'll get it.
It'll be next year's budget.
It'll hit us, not in the budget.
It'll hit us in that year.
So the finance director and I have been talking quite a bit.
I just began some initial conversations with the state attorney today to talk about what some different ways to mitigate some of the things that we're going to be doing in the next couple of years.
So we'll get it.
It'll be next year's budget.
It'll hit us not in the budget.
It'll hit us in that year.
Some of them, some a little bit of the pain.
So the money's coming.
It's just not gonna come when we normally expect it to because this process has changed dramatically.
Now to the very specific part of a collector surplus equity fund.
This is a new required fund as part of this statute.
I'm the trustee of the fund.
I establish it.
It does not require County Board resolution.
It's $20.
That $20 is levied at tax sale time, but because I believe the path we are going to be taking is turning everything over to the trustee agent rather than utilizing private taxpayers, that fee is not going to be collected upfront.
We'll start to collect that fee a little bit as current taxpayers purchase subsequent taxes for taxes they have already purchased.
However, the county is required to set aside funds in case someone comes to the county, to the court, and petitions for a claim against surplus equity.
And this is where it gets kind of hard.
And we're in a lot of moving pieces.
I'm sorry, this is confusing.
That's why I want you to read this and watch the video.
Part of the damage done by this act is that there is a two year look back.
So any action that happened from 7-10 of 24, we're on the hook.
Illinois is the only state that, as part of their remedy, is requiring the counties to pick up the debt.
So here's what happens with the tax.
If someone doesn't pay their taxes, doesn't pay them, and the property has some value, the taxpayer will petition for a tax deed to get the property.
So they are gaining the property, in essence, just for the cost of the taxes and the fees.
That's it.
They'll turn around and sell that property for a lot more.
The difference between what they paid and what they sell it for is surplus equity as defined by the Supreme Court and this Act.
That owner who lost their property is legally entitled to that money.
That the private tax buyer got, the law is making the county pay it.
So hopefully there may be some legal remedy in detail session.
I don't believe that there is.
There are some state attorneys who have indicated they are considering suing the state.
We can't count on that.
We have to plan for this.
We have to set aside money in the budget next year.
That will be a discussion next month.
There haven't been a lot of these, and I talk kind of quick about that.
I have 13 since January 24, current, that have been sold and then resold.
Only six of them have equity that I can quantify.
Of the six, we're at $295,000 in potential claims.
That's not to say the claims will be made.
There is a statutory limit, they can come, they have actually two years from the date of this law, so they have two more years that they can file this claim.
We have the county, the surplus equity fund, not going to have hardly anything in it.
The county is required to find other funds to pay that claim should any be awarded within 12 months.
So I'm a plan for the worst, hope for the best kind of person.
We also have 234 current open tax sale certificates for which, if people did not, again, worst case scenario, people don't redeem those taxes, could go through this process of a potential surplus equity situation.
I think most of them will redeem, so I'm not really worried about that, but we have to be concerned that already six or almost $300,000.
So we'll be talking about that later.
So the The Surplus Equity Payout.
The surplus equity payout and then the surplus equity claims are kind of two different things.
But this is a fee that I can attach to tax sales.
You don't have to do anything about it.
I want you to know about it.
I want to be transparent.
The problem since the state puts the county on the hook for this potentially in a very painful way.
The reason I'm concerned is there is now all of a sudden and the cottage industry of companies who have foiled me and Jasmine for our tax sale records.
They're looking for surplus equity that's potentially lost because they're going to call these people up and say, I'm so sorry that you lost your property.
Let me help you get a surplus equity award for 15%.
So that's already in process.
So that's happening.
So we're going to have to, the board is going to have to decide to put money aside to address that should it happen.
If no claims are made, or if claims are made that are less than what that fund that we've set up is, after an obvious amount of time has passed, at least two years, because of the amount of time that can come forward, that money can go back to wherever contingency General Fund Harbor, wherever it may come from.
It can go back.
It's one giant contingency called surplus equity.
But this will continue in the future though.
Well, the thing is, so that the legislation allowed for tax sales to continue as they are, sell them to private buyers, and what doesn't get sold goes to the trustee.
I don't, that is not advisable.
Says that the taxpayers are going to be losing money in this, so they're going to bid the highest rate of interest, 9%, right?
And then in order to gain property now, this is more than I meant to tell you, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to get there eventually.
They have to then ask the court for a judicial auction.
They don't just get the deed.
So it's going to go to public auction, and it may not be the taxpayer who is successful.
So again, that auction is setting the value.
And by setting that value, you're determining potential equity between what is owed and what is sold for.
It may be less, you know, there's no, this is such a new thing, we don't really know.
The other option, which most of the treasurers and myself agree, and there are a couple of little pieces we have to jump through for the board to do is we send everything to the county's trustee.
That process is untouched by the statute and they do a great job already of handling property tax sales force.
We don't pay them for it.
It's a commission based on what they're doing to win out anything.
They will run the auction that we do now like the surplus property auction after a few years.
Whatever the auction price is, that's the value.
It's almost always less than what's owed.
No equity due to anybody.
That's the reason.
But by sending everything to the trustee instead of private buyers, that's where at the end of the year, that half percent, seven percent, seven tenths of one percent, final distribution, those dollars don't come back because when things are purchased by the county's trustee, no money changes things.
The advantage also to this plan is that rate of interest, and this is where I come down, but this is why we need to do this.
For the taxpayer who is unable to make their tax payment, the rate of interest drops to 0.75% a month.
You go with private buyers 9% up to 9% it will be 9% up front every six months so in a year you're 18% you're not helping anybody it's a little bit of pain initially until we see how this shapes out and potentially two years of we don't know yet but there will be some financial implications just because of the way we change during the time zone So read this.
I'll send you the link to the video.
It will make sense, I think, now, hearing what I've told you, but the problem that was fixed created several other problems.
And I don't know if they will be fixed, but there's just one or two little things that require board action.
They're basically housekeeping, and I will bring those to you next month.
It has some financial rather serious financial implications and I wanted you to be aware of how bad it could possibly be.
I do use an automated sale so yeah so this is a problem but yeah I will send that link to you please I know it's too hard please do If you have any questions, once you read this, let me know.
We can have this conversation off individually or however you want to do it, and I will bring you more information next time.
Thank you for listening.
Alright, thanks for the update.
Alrighty.
Sorry.
No, you're fine.
10.0 Comments.
Excuse me?
No.
You're doing a little.
I'll make that motion to adjourn.
And I'll second that.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
So moved.
Alright, well thanks everyone.
Good to meet you.
Thanks everyone, good to meet you.