Good life.

All right.

I'm going to call the meeting for the Court Services Committee Wednesday, September 9, 2026.

It's 630.

So meeting is called in order.

First of all, I'll order business prayer, and I'll take care of that.

I have a new father.

I thank you for allowing us to get together tonight to do the county business.

Thank you for the leadership, Lord.

Lord, and we ask that you would continue to bless our county and this committee and continue to give strength and wisdom to do our job to the best of our ability. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay, so approval of agenda. We don't do any of that? We have no form. Okay. So the claims? We'll go to finance. We'll go to finance. Okay.

There's no public comment?

Hey, Dale, you can talk about the claims.

You can ask if anybody has questions.

You can tell them the amounts.

Just can't take any action.

Oh, okay.

Thanks, Seth.

The claims.

Claims are $39,407.50.

I have my here.

You have any questions?

So should we wait until I sign it later?

Find your phone.

Yep.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Okay. Don't go out there. That reports from committee, from the presiding judge isn't here, public defender, Mr. Lutz.

Yep. I emailed a copy of it. I guess a few of you should have. Unless somebody else has got questions, I will likely answer any of those.

there's two of you, you know, otherwise it's just been fairly steady for us, which is an okay thing, and there's not much of an influence, so hoping that kind of stays this way and kind of get to the, you know, what I always thought is the trial season, summer starts to rack up and then things start to get resolved, although the summer was not quite like that and also was different. So other than that, we're doing pretty well.

Okay. So you're saying you're a little busier than normal?

The summer was a little bit just with the trials and some of the kinds of trials that we did.

And we don't normally get those kinds of things.

Are you fully staffed?

Yeah. Well, we had the, I had a full-time position, but that was just put into part-time and then back down.

and I have no need to seek for more. I need to get it full time at this point. I think we're doing just fine.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. McGee?

Good evening. So tonight, I don't have anything about saying. Just wrapped up completing the annual plan.

So waiting for approval on that. Our new supervisor has started. I think that it's just taking it all in right now.

but the obviously a profound difference between Cook County so we've just been distressing kind of the differences and how things are done and kind of tough so hopefully it's different in a good way I hope so you know it's she's like three weeks in so you know we'll see praying for the best I see on electronic devices, I see no adults, they're on about four juveniles, the judges put them on that or?

That's an order.

That's a court order?

Yeah, the state makes the recommendation oftentimes.

That just alleviates anybody going to the county jail or something like that, they just put an electric monitor in?

It's an alternative, yes, until a decision maybe is made whether or not.

are we still going through an agency in Texas? At one time, the electronic monitoring was out of Texas.

No, it's more localized.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

That's why.

Thank you.

Mr. Larson.

Well, you have my report in front of you. I'd be happy to answer any questions on that.

And this couple of weeks back, our second assistant state's attorney resigned. That leaves us with three attorneys. So I think we're at the point where we're going to have to be making some changes. Now, one of the things that we're doing is later for approval, and hopefully this can go to finance or the county board, but we've got a contract for a legal recruiter down there.

that's what approval of contract with Robert Half is and we can go more into the details when we hit that point of the agenda but hopefully we can get that moving this month so that those guys can get to work for us. Additionally next month I am going to come to this board with a personnel request to increase the salaries of the assistant state's attorneys we're down four attorneys right now. We've been down two attorneys for more than a year. I think to be competitive, we're going to have to seek additional money for that budget line item. I don't know that we need to go into it a whole lot right now, but just wanted to let everybody know that that's essentially coming. Do you have a number yet that you're going to request?

We're going to look at it.

You're still working on it?

Yeah.

Okay. We're working through everything, and I mean, I've got a pretty good idea right now, but I don't want to say anything because I want to reserve, and it won't be more than what I'm thinking, but I want to reserve the right to revise it over the next month.

We'll take that contract forward.

Thank you.

Anything else?

now coming to us next month.

We're going to do all the personnel ones, and then you'll send us a sheet out like you did for the supplements and stuff.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

I hope that's all we can put it.

Thanks, Carl.

Thank you.

Next room, Ms. Bardell.

Good evening.

You should have my report.

If you have any questions, let me know.

I did receive the access to justice grant $7,500. So that's nice to receive that grant. Again, we can use it towards our mobile app, carbon copies, orders, envelopes, reminder slips, we're going to get new printers in the courtroom. And it'll also allow me to attend the access to Justice Conference next month in Cincinnati.

That's all I have unless you have questions.

Annual income tax, is this the most you've ever had come in one year or is that just about average?

I don't know that question.

Okay.

So, but you're still having some come in yet?

Yes.

That looks like a pretty good number.

You're getting a lot of complaints.

the program for us to tell you to get that message. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Here's diversion. If you did notice behind the report, there is an end of program report that was submitted.

I've used the version of the version of the version, isn't that right, sir?

Well, that's just from, that's from Brandt.

Yes, that's their end-of-program report of how they spent the $1,600.

We could, we could, we could about, we could about three or four, so I'm thinking four facilities.

And we should get a report from all four.

I just wanted to make sure you saw that one.

And all four checks have been cashed.

Yes, I contacted, we figured out which one it was, and I contacted them, and they, they had a cash.

Anyway, the month, the month's addition is $508.73, leaving us a total of $4,164.03.

So that program is going long, long.

Old business, we have none, new business Old business Should I announce it or just talk about consensus?

All right.

First new business is the approval and prioritization of supplemental requests for the public defender.

So we can take care of that next month yet?

Yes.

And then I see there's the personnel thing that will be next month also.

Yeah.

Okay.

So this one is, is this the health club?

Yeah.

Reimbursed.

The year, the yearly, yearly proposal that I have had.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm just curious, did you shop around to other places and that was the best deal?

This is the, the one that I based the amount off of is the cheapest one that it can possibly give me.

So it was based on the Willis number and that also was based on the discounted rate from the Blue Cross Blue Shield app, or the online service, you guys want to log in and get your membership through the insurance benefits that we already have, so it was based on that alone.

All the places are mainly.

Did they pick up a percentage to Blue Cross Blue Shield?

My understanding is that you pay your fee, I think that was $19 a month, to the Blue Cross Blue Shield, and then they reimburse the gym every time that you log in.

for however, whatever discount rate they could figure out.

I don't know the back end so much, but I know that you pay your upfront fee and that fee goes to Lou Cross and Lou Cross deals with the reimbursements in which you have to get some passion.

They kind of like the Silver Seniors does with how you get paid that way.

That's just kind of the prospects point.

I think it's a great program.

and I just don't, the other departments don't have the financial wearable to be able to do this if we do the countywide.

Yeah, and I don't necessarily think it should be a key, other than that, I just can't say it for everybody else, but I think it should be a countywide thing.

I mean, I want all my people engaged and healthy, but I would love for all people who substitute the county to do that as well.

Well, let me ask you this question, I'm just thinking out of the box, you know, this will be up to future county boards to do this, but, you know, right now, I think we're paying like, county's paying like 24% of the health insurance, you know, what happens if the county came to an agreement and said all employees, if they go, they have to show proof and everything that will pay 24%, you know, that's something that the future county board can look at, you know, we're not out the whole 100% or something like that, you know, we're just, you know, 24% of a membership.

Well, again, I had thought that, because when we did the insurance before, if you, at the end of the year, you had to go to the Y, which is where I go, but anywhere, you get a print off how often you go, and it averages it all out.

And then if you average to be three times a week, you get 100% if it's two.

I mean, I don't remember exactly what the breakdown was, but it's a tiered system to kind of convince you to go, my understanding of Adrian, did that start that?

So maybe I need to pass the baton to Adrian on this.

In our farmer's plan, there were wellness dollars included.

it. So we found those dollars, I think it was a $500 per year allotment. So we got reimbursed based on the number of times that you attended, Jim. But it was earmarked for that.

Yeah, I agree. It should be a countywide program. And the ones that really want to do it, you You know, I mean, no, you know, we just can't get memberships for everybody.

It has to be, you know, shown that they really want to do it.

And that's an alternative, too, when you say, well, we'll pay 24%, and so if it's $100, you know, we're paying $24, and they're paying the other $76, you know, and that's the difference.

You want to do it, you know, and stuff.

Yeah, now everybody in your department wants to do it, or?

Yeah, I would say that they're all, most of them are engaged in the gym anyways, so how much of that was forced by me?

Jesus Christ, I don't care.

Or like pushed, they pushed, but after, yeah, after we did the walking challenge and we did all that, the breathing ways that generally weren't doing it, they still go every day.

a day, sometimes twice a day, so they'll show up to work early and walk with a couple people, one of them from the state's attorney's office and walk before work, and then one of them stays late after work to walk, they do something to lunch, and I've seen a bunch of people in the county that have traditionally not been doing all of that, that are actively walking now, so the things that we have started to do in the county, started to do a growth gig off, it'd be nice to push it over the issue.

Not that I expect this to get pushed over to match.

But we appreciate your enthusiasm.

I mean, if you can get people up moving, that certainly is a great thing.

This is expensive.

Yeah, if we could maybe tie it under the next floor and bring something.

It's not actually possible.

Thank you for, yep, we'll discuss this, okay, moving on to 9.2, Mr. Larson, would you like to, yeah, we've began interviewing legal recruiting firms in an attempt to locate people to hire as Assistant State's Attorneys. The first firm I contacted wanted $30,000, $7,000 up front.

I said, man, they wanted to lock in all of my open positions and have me agree not to look for people myself. I responded that maybe we could do that with one position and, you know, asked if that $7,000 up front would be refundable in the event that they didn't within a set period of time and they immediately responded that they were no longer interested in working. So we moved on to Robert Half. Their fee is 25% of the first year's salary of the individual. So I think that that will end up being about $20,000. But I think we're at a point where we need to, and we're under no obligation to hire the people they bring to us. But I think we're at the point where we got to start turning over all the stones. And next Thursday night, I would encourage you to approve this.

So, Carol, you base the 20, this is going to be for one person only or with multiple people on this. Well, we're going to keep all our options open. If they bring us three good people, we'll hire three good people from them. But if it's only one for none, then we'll hire one or not.

So, you know, have, what's the base salary we're going to start off at? Did you tell them a base salary or you have a base salary?

or we're just, well, it's going to depend a little bit on the personnel request next month.

But what we've been discussing is the low 80s.

Entry level coming in, the low 80s.

And then there's just one flat.

So let's say it's $80,000.

There's one flat fee that we have to pay them.

Correct.

And that's 25% based on the...

25% of 80.

So $20,000.

$20,000.

Which I have in my budget, so we could pay that this year.

Okay, so, but you're going to be requesting to beef up some of the salaries of the states during this next month, then?

Yes.

This is not for this or anything, add more money in there?

Well, then, whether or not that's approved will determine what I can pay and how many positions I can have, but we're going to start right now.

Yeah, it sounds like this is a good program and I have done LinkedIn, I've done Indeed, I've done lawcrossing.com, I did the law schools have like a subscription service, I've done Fricke and Service. I've done those things, and it's like Fricke's. I read something in here about a bonus.

What's, is that if we allow a bonus that we have to give them a percentage of that too? Maybe, but I don't know.

Yeah. I don't know if there's, it would be a percentage of the bonus, but we have not discussed bonuses, and I have not contemplated doing any bonuses.

Well, you know, law enforcement, that's been a big thing in all over the United States of law enforcement, to get officers in, you're giving bonuses, you know, and that might be another thing you might have to walk down the road to, you know, first year I don't think anything is off the table, Bill Yeah, I mean, I feel bad that we can't draw people into Stevens County, but it's pretty much, I mean, the cost of living is very reasonable out here compared to where they're getting jobs maybe in the bigger cities, in the suburbs and stuff.

I agree.

I say that every interview I get with people, but we don't have any interviews.

I mean, when I stop in a supermarket in the suburbs or something and price something and say, oh, boy, I get that to be cheaper out of Freeport, you know, but I mean, the cost of living is a lot here.

So, but, well, I hope, I support, I'll support this next week, any way we can, you know, it's, you need attorneys, you can't not do it all by yourself.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'll support this too.

For what it's worth, the three people that are left in their office is going to be unmanaged.

They will be unmanaged.

there's just not a way that there's not a way to do that without absolute burnout.

Are you willing to trade for maybe future draft picks or something like that?

I'm just saying there's might get lost into that thinking that there's still three people there and that's not even like to have more spending the open positions for a while.

Now, maybe I shouldn't even talk about this, but I think it is coming up.

Go ahead and get done.

Yeah, we are on the verge of crisis, without a doubt.

How is the retired police officer working out for you?

Hopefully he's still with you.

Yeah, he's there.

He's doing great.

Good.

That's alleviating a lot of the few problems for you.

It is, absolutely.

Yeah.

You and Tom are playing pickleball right now.

Good exercise.

Okay.

That's it.

Completed our meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you all for coming.

Fine work you're all doing.

Appreciate it.

I do want to be in.

So I'll see you next week.

Got the schedule all messed up because of the holiday.

Well, thank you, I can suggest.

Thank you for calling, please.