Well, let's get started with the Administration Legal Affairs Committee, Wednesday, April 8th, 2026, 5 p.m., 2.0 prayer, if you'd like to do that, or not?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you, Steve.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the members around this table tonight.

We ask that you would bless each one.

We ask that you would give us wisdom and help us to judiciously do the business of our family.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, 3.0 approval. First and a second here. All those in favor say aye. I'm unanimous. All right, 4.0 approval meeting minutes from March 11, 20.6. Motion. Second. Second. All those in favor say aye. I'm unanimous. All right, 5.0 claims.

and cash requirements $88,591.25, maintenance and $65.09, a total of $89,256.34.

That's a pleasure.

I make a mood to accept that.

All right.

I can all second it.

Okay.

Then I have a question.

You do?

Okay.

On page 12 of those plans, it's got the Stewart Center rent.

I'm just a little confused. I know it's a different invoice number, but we're, if you look at the dates for the rental, it goes from, in the first payment, goes from 3-1 to 4-16, and then you drop down to the next payment, same amounts, but from 4-1 to 4-16. Seems like we're duplicating.

Like we're overlapping there.

Do you have the actual?

That's what I got right here.

I see what you're saying now. I didn't catch that.

someone when she entered a three, perhaps. Do you mind if I actually look at that?

Yeah, sure.

I'm sorry. I mean, take over.

I just want to take a look at the actual invoice itself versus what was keyed in by the department.

Okay. So there are two different invoices.

Yeah.

one says invoice date March 1st, one says invoice date April 1st.

So what are the other day typos here, then?

Yeah, I think that's a typo.

March 1st.

No, no, I'm sorry, April 16th is the day of the county board.

That's the due date.

Right.

That's our county board meeting date that we have too much.

I think that we did not receive the invoice in a timely fashion for the March 1, so that's why there's two.

That's what I thought I wanted to look at.

Sorry.

When you said the 16th, I'm like, why would I say the 16th?

Because we're not even there yet.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Very good.

Thank you.

All right.

We got a first and a second.

Any other questions?

All right.

All right.

I'll go to the favor, say aye.

Aye.

how about 6.0 public comments no one else is here so let's jump down to 7.1 county treasurer thank you I'm hoping everybody had a chance to review the March financial report I sent that out on Sunday night I'm sure you spent your Easter evening over these details another steady I guess that's just the best way to describe it. So income tax, sales tax receipts remain steady as the monthly report indicates that aggregate receipts increased by $33,000 and change over the previous month. You can see the total year today is $2.3 plus million. That public safety tax, I don't know if you noticed, was $315,000. That's a little higher up to, you know, between $75,000 and $100,000 higher.

that usually there's one time during the year that the Department of Revenue issues a supplemental payment, and that was in March this year.

So that's not normally $315,000. So that gave that a little boost. So as of the end of the month, total county funds were down.

If you go to if you look at page five, which I think is usually one of the most important pages, down 2.81 percent compared to the end of February, which is $728,000 in chains. Again, absolutely normal, less than normal if you were to kind of divide it out on a month-by-month basis in a month during which we received no property taxes. So all is well for the time being there. On the investments page, this last month we didn't have any mature. This month in March we had four mature $22,000, almost $23,000 in interest. So So that's always good. Still have 18 investments in place through yesterday. I've placed six more today, roughly $2 million. We'll get about $13,000 in interest in that very short term, less than 60 days. If you look on the back, again, this gives you the rundown of where we still stand relative to those funds that are due money from the nursing home situation.

can tell. Does anybody have any questions about this? Is the rate still high on the CDs? I'm kind of shying away from CDs right now. I think today I did T-bills. I mean, they actually dropped three basis points from yesterday, so I was not thrilled about that, but it's like 3.5 right now. So competitive. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions about the financial block? Okay. So on the collector side, the county clerk, Anna Sester and I, we met successfully last year.

Last month, we determined some dates and overall schedule to kind of coordinate our office functions for the upcoming season.

I haven't really changed my estimates at this point.

Mid to late May, tax bill mail-in probably closer to maybe just before Memorial Day.

Still looking for the end of June for that first installment, early September 2nd.

Always subject to change.

Of course, you never know if there's a wrinkle that gets thrown there.

So, but we did, I did determine dates for distributions, friendly reminders, certified mail, tax sale, all of those things are pretty much set at this point.

I think I mentioned before, we redesigned the tax bill, the bear color, so we thought it would be a little easier, because like, here's what we want, devnet, make it happen, well, that takes about four weeks, apparently, because we made some substantial changes, but we are on target, they expect to have those to be approved by May 1st.

so we have plenty of time to get them to our new printer can turn bills out once we get you know testing and everything done within two to three days so right exactly where we want to be I think and at Jasmine I just talked about this and I have discussed it with the assessor that there have been a lot of hot questions particularly from rural city residents based on the referendum and we even had a few people who asked if they could be exempted out of that and not understand. And, you know, that just displays really the depth of the lack of understanding of this process. So I'm kind of reviving the tax cycle presentations that I used to do around here to kind of stop them because nobody came. So we're going to bring them back and Jasmine and Andrew are going to join me, kind of do their part, a little cycle, but we think we're probably going to take it on the road maybe to Bull City as well.

specifically, because they're going to, next year is their reassessing care, so their bills are going to go up, so generally speaking, likely go up, so that referendum is going to hit at the same time that assessed values, so it could be, in many cases, very painful, so we want to maybe get in front of that, help people understand ahead of time what they could be looking at, so, so that's, we're looking, I'm looking at some dates, hopefully, maybe very, very late, in the early June, depending on what schedules look like for the rest of us.

So that's no more chance to do some outreach and help people understand what's in front of them.

Fair.

Right.

Right.

Or, you know, batten down the hatches, something.

But unless you have any questions, that's all I have.

I'll add one if I just know.

I had a couple calls from the Pro City area too on because of the sale of Pearl Valley acres and the value of that sale and they were like, well, if the value of that sale was assessed correctly, Pro City wouldn't have any issue.

And, you know, we have, I have tried to explain it, you have at least three counties plus other areas of Illinois and California that are all involved with what's going on there.

has really no bearing whatsoever, but people see dollars. Right, and Pearl City also has TIF district, so there are so many puzzle pieces, and there's really no one answer to what has happened or what's going to happen, but I think it will help if all three of us are there explaining each part of what impacts someone's tax bill. I think it's not going to make the pain any less, but at least they'll understand it.

Thank you for being here, ma'am.

How are you?

All right. Let's move on to 7.2. Thank you, gentlemen. Still wrapping up a few things from the election in March. People think March the election's done, but there's still a lot of work afterwards. We certify the election results on April 1st, and then there's still some reports to read to the state, and results have to be sent to overlapping counties.

so there's still work to be done there but wrapping up there sort of say March 16th the day before the election kind of had a snowstorm we were open and we actually had 78 covers that day most of them came in after 11 I think maybe two before 11 but we had 78 total that day and we had 22 polling locations throughout the county so we also had 22 election judges come in to pick up supplies that day so I'm It was extremely busy today, of course, still here You might have seen the company that delivers some of the equipment to the formal leashes That bill was a little bit higher than usual Usually they have one guy They had to have two guys due to the conditions So that's why that bill was a little bit higher We forgot about it Yep, so that was the reason there Every two years, we have to go out and do a foreign place accessibility survey that has to be to the state. That survey has to be completed in order to apply for the ADA grant. With that grant, we've been able to help some foreign locations make improvements. This past year, we were able to get 40 new voting books. It's so important. It takes time for us to go to every location.

and we're not certified in ADA.

We don't take that means you've done a training for RAM before, but the State Board of Elections has contracted with a company and that company is actually going to the fund locations today, tomorrow, and then to finish up on Friday.

So I'm looking forward to seeing the results saved.

See at those fund locations and what improvements we possibly could make to make the fund locations more accessible.

Tax Extension, I'm in the middle of the tax extension process. So I have sent out the tax computation reports to all of the tax districts, a little bit over 100 tax districts, including the TIF districts. And they also, if they are over the PTAL limit, they have a choice to choose to agree with the reset, proportionally put them within the limit, or they can reallegate. Most of the time, we see that they agree with the proportions.

so we do have some new individuals from some of the districts so they get some phone calls and people coming in to explain what PTEL means and why they didn't get the full 5% that they levied for. So it's been decent in the office, but mostly all good.

Okay, great. Any questions?

I want to relay some requests from a few election judges I was speaking to.

They wanted more tissues and better sticky notes And we actually have pink sheets that go to all the election judges where they can put suggestions So I'm going to do some things that we have marked Test that right along And if you guys know many, one of them, always looking for more election judges Looking to schedule the two-year certification right now I'm planning for that to take place in August So we send any election judges our way, we're always looking for new ones, we have some great ones throughout the county that are retiring, so for some new great ones, we did, but there are some that are retiring and we'll be doing it in November, true.

All right, very good.

All right, let's move on to 7.3, so you're not here, I didn't get a report.

I am so sorry. I also forgot to say a huge thank you to Nate. They did a server upgrade and Nate, I don't think, will to his own horn, but he communicated with us through the entire weekend, holiday weekend, and he continued to provide updates throughout the weekend.

may have not went perfect, but he continued to communicate and did everything he could to, I think, in his will to make it happen.

So we are really lucky to have Nate, and I can't express how much I appreciate his communication and his efforts.

That's good. Okay. Let's move on to 7.4, County Administrator.

Yeah. This morning I attended an HR roundtable at Greater Freeport Partnership. They have a series of meetings. The next one will be June 1st. But the topics today, they were trying to gather information from a lot of the HR directors in the region of the gaps in the employment of the people staying in the community.

So we have a real good rate of people in the community until about age 24, 25, and then returning at 44 plus.

So that middle group, which could contribute to a lot of tax dollars if they were raising families in the community.

So that is kind of what the topics were today, what they were adjusting and looking through and trying to gather some information from everyone.

that I will try to be attending the ones I can on that, but the next one is June to come.

The FOIA requests that I spoke about last month have become a monthly occurrence, and thank you to all three of you, because all three of these people have had to respond to bits and parts of the requests that have become a monthly occurrence.

In addition to that, I've had a pretty lengthy one that I had to seek an extension on, but it has been responded to now for nursing home information, as well as a couple others that are pretty in-depth and occupying quite a bit of time just gathering things, but we're responding to them.

We did get an accelerated payment notification for a nursing home employee that is being looked on currently between HR out there and Rayanne obviously will be the one finalizing all the information to submit it since she is the county's authorized agent.

I will say Reanne has done a very good job challenging them and submitting information and it's she's gotten most of them over the past couple years we haven't had to you know you get the notice and it's like you owe X amount of dollars but she has successfully challenged those and got them so don't want to take away from a report that Kristen will be giving for animal control control tomorrow. But the RFP for her kennels for the new location, there will be a bid for approval tomorrow. Still working with her on things throughout the move. She will have her part-time person starting, I believe, tomorrow. And what most of you probably don't know is that she was in a vehicle accident, totaled the animal control ban. But there was a ban that was donated by a local establishment.

so she's back off the ST. Yeah, yeah. I attended the Region 1 Land Bank meeting on March 24th.

All of you have received the updated salary survey and fringe benefit survey from UCCI. The wellness screenings last Thursday at the courthouse, there was 47 people screened. We have 27, I think, registered for tomorrow and encouraging walk-ins to get as many people as we can screen. The walking program, which some of us were talking about before the meeting, registrations are live for that. Larry, you're heading up the team. I think Chairman Helms has already said he's going to win. So when you register, it does say a team, but it says you can only put one person on a team. So just put your name there when you're on the portal registering. We will be grouping the teams by department or county board on the back. So yes, you will have teams, but when you register, don't put the teams.

and one of the block.

So, yeah, hopefully you get some motivation with that.

Department head meeting this morning.

Mark Bell was there and kind of did his annual updates on risk topics and online, you know, the portal for training materials and things.

He was able to meet our new coroner and made some connections with him to discuss some concerns that he wanted to address with him and things. So that went really well. We did talk about the STEP program and encouraging as much involvement as possible, trying to garner some healthy competition here in the county. And an update on the shredding services. They will be coming to the county to deliver the new receptacles on the 21st since the company that we had.

Since the company that we had prior went out of business, they have offered to remove the old receptacles for us because that was a question we all had was like, what do we do with the other ones since they wanted theirs? So they did offer to do that and they started their contract then.

I also attended the Workforce Connection meeting yesterday, Tuesday, yeah, yesterday, like what day is it? I've had early meetings every week or every day, so yeah, that is all I have.

That's a lot.

In detail, what's the number of four-year-olds I've interviewed?

There's seven of them that have been coming through every month, four records for the month.

That's just from the one requester. I would say four to six in addition to that.

Okay, so I'm just curious how many requests they vary, I'm sure They do, they do, and I think if some topics hit agendas, then it triggers more, but All right, I was just curious It's increased from Yeah, yeah Okay Any questions, should I move on to 7.5, the fee manager I don't know where to start As you guys already heard, we upgraded the ST-Coil-1 server this weekend I say we, because 3Rock was a huge component of that as well I put in probably at least 25 hours this weekend trying to get that server upgraded and moved over The problem we ran into is the server speed and it being so old We originally were going to start pushing the information out from the old server to the new server, and that was kind of choking the system, so then we had to regroup, come back, go to the new system, and pull from the old, and that wasn't much faster.

We had a lot of hiccups in the way of moving data. I started to panic about Saturday night. I started contacting the department. I was like, I don't know if we're going to be ready to go for Monday or not.

and we did have the old one still in place that we could have went back to but once you work that whole week that's just more data we got to try to pull. So the goal was to always be ready by Monday morning so we had all hands on deck. I called three rocking on Saturday. We got here about 7am and we plugged away for about another six hours. Long story short, we got here. I came in early on Monday. The biggest frustration with this is both of our vendors knew we were doing this and they need to do some work on their end and everybody I tried to call or email this weekend nobody was there so we got it to a point that we could get it to and then it was at the mercy of the vendors so I came in early on Monday morning and tried to get ahead of the game Fiddler's been pretty decent to work with I will say DevNet and myself have plotted ads quite a bit Fiddler I think we've got just what everything figured out now there were a few hiccups. We had DevNet up and going on Monday morning. Fiddler had to catch up because there was some stuff they had to do on the back end. DevNet has some stuff they got to do as well. And right now, I don't know if all their stuff is firing like it's supposed to on their end. I think they extract data. But right now, the guy's not too cooperative in returning my call. So hopefully, I'll hear something back tomorrow. I do know we're working. We've pulled reports. We've done queries, all kinds of stuff.

and all the data is there. Everything's working. And we think we're good, but I would just like to hear it from them on their end that we're good.

So we do have the old server still in place. We re-IP'd it so we can still get to it if we have to do anything.

Just a lot of data that was on that. We were about a terabyte and a half that we had to move over.

A lot of small files, so it just never picked up the speed we would have liked this weekend.

but long story short we got there so we're up and running hopefully it alleviates any stress for tax season and whatnot and and we can just move forward with that outside of that just been putting out the daily fires I'm still working on the Adobe licensing I sent out another email just to make sure people understood that you don't need a special Adobe license just to view it so I was making sure that we weren't paying for something we didn't need didn't really help our numbers too much. So, I mean, I was dealing with some sales reps, but then found out that we can just get it cheaper through the website. I feel like they were just trying to mark up their own commission a little bit. So, kind of, Google's got it off and we'll just go directly to the website when we get to the point of doing that. So, other than that, I've been working on the ADA upgrades with Revise, which we'll talk about in a little bit. And the AI policy, our first one got hunted back, but there was a a few holes in it that they wanted to see short of. Stephanie shared one with me from another county that they're using, and I don't know if it's been approved liability-wise, but I was like, well, this kind of shores up the areas they were asking for, so I redid it with Stevenson County and sent it back in, and I'm waiting to get back on that one.

so um it's still working it's a process but they're not exactly quick so I'm sure they're reviewing a bunch of them right now so um that's pretty much where we're at any questions so we want to meet on that uh they they I use pilot usage policy we can just talk about it again but yeah we'll not be out there this month yeah all right yeah that question excuse me me no okay I'm good all right okay well I guess we just talked about it You just go perhaps in the end I'll see you there Liabilities looking at it Yes, not our liability the company that they referred us to We finally got access to that website and I've got people there that I'm talking with The first one probably needed about 25% you know, redone The other one had a lot of what they were asking for so I was like well this just makes sense it had everything I had plus that so I just went ahead and submitted that to him for review and then if uh once I get back from that hopefully that'll be good and we can see through this. Yeah on the policy specifically I was looking through the new one or the updated one um I just had two things I wanted to get clarification on um when it's talking about exceptions in writing from the administrator is there any this might be county-wide is there any the specific definition of what in writing means, because I know, is that, would a quick text work, or, you know, and I think the more clarity we can have.

Yeah, I would say, I'm probably going to make it email-based, so there's always something to go back to. I save all my emails, though, if somebody says, hey, you didn't respond, or whatnot, I can go back and pull it, so I'm huge on emails, so that'll probably be the written request that I'm going to ask for, and I'll clarify.

Yeah, like I said, just the more, to your point, the more we can eliminate questions later Yeah, I agree The other thing I was just, I know there's a spot in here for regular review, but given the speed at which all this is changing and whatnot, when this does get finalized, I think it would be a good idea for us to have it on the books to review it in a year, and that might even be a bit much just to Absolutely, and you'll see down at the bottom of the one, it has like a revisions history so you can keep track of every time we revise it and what we've changed.

So before we approve this one, we should plan on to revise it.

And my question, Nate, is then are you going to become the auditor of the AI use?

I mean, there's really no way for me to police it.

What's going to happen is if someone violates it and we end up in something, then we're going to be able to, you know, there'll be consequences to violating it per se.

But there's no way, like if someone's using a co-pilot or something, there's just no way to manage and tell who's doing what.

Yeah, but we will know, obviously, if someone breaks it and, you know, they did something we're supposed to do and it comes up, that's what this policy is for.

Then it will be up to us to decide, administration-wise, what the consequences of that is going to look like.

We have to incorporate that into the employee policy.

They review it.

I think the biggest thing that we're going to get across, and it'll be in the policy, is you don't put anything, social security numbers, any personal accounting information, like this should be very generic in use, you know, because once it's out there, it's out there, because they'll tell you in the fine print anything that you ask or whatever is, you know, like case studies and things that they can use.

So once it's out there, it's out there.

So they're not supposed to use co-pilot? Is that what that is? Is that what that means here? They're not supposed to use co-pilot? I mean, they're all the same. So, I mean, you should have the same protocols for all of them.

Okay.

Certain ones for every kid.

I mean, we can come up with a list of do not use, but that list is going to be growing, you know, that's going to come up with that, okay, yeah, makes sense, there's a new one that pops up, it seems like every couple of weeks, makes sense, all right, let's keep the tires on that one, let's zoom down to 9.1 approval, revised ADA, upgrade for the website, So I've been meeting with Revise who currently manages our website or the ones that constructed it.

The only way to come up with a secure ADA website was to go to the vendor that we're currently getting it through.

There's nothing that we can do third party or anything to integrate with their copyrights or whatever.

so I went to them and they do have everything that I'm requesting in this this bid here will cover us ADA wise he did say that it's like 97% he said there's always going to be that 3% that you know somebody may overlook but he said that it will never be anything that you'll be anything for he goes if they come up with a question that we don't cover he goes then we have time to rectify that he goes but what's in the act We'll have like an AI bot that will be on the website when we move forward. Any questions that they have, it'll change the text for those that you can't see. It'll read to those that, you know, it covers everything. And it'll even be the second part of this, the ClearDocs also takes our documents and we'll read it to people and kind of help them fill out documents if they need to.

or so this does cover us completely but as with anything there's a cost so that cost will be a yearly thing going forward it's the maintenance agreement keeping that on the website and I'm keeping it up to date.

Question there are two questions I guess so is a maintenance agreement going to be less than what this startup is?

No, it's going to be the same going forward. And what I'm going to say is that everything obviously year to year, you know, once they have a demand, they could have it. Right. So just keep that in mind. But this is and I had them check our numbers. We went through every web page that you click on because it goes by the amount of web pages you have and the amount of documents you have on the website. So we did an audit together. We went through and we're actually not at the top tiers of this. We're right in the middle because we're on the middle side.

middle-sized website per se. So good news is it didn't cost us as much as what I thought, but it will cost us, you know, going forward. But again, I like to stress this to the board and I will use access as a reminder that, you know, sometimes you have to pay up front to save you in the long run. And I will say whatever this cost is, it's going to be cheaper than any fine we would get if we were missing something.

So, I'm confident I sat through webinars, I looked at everything, and again, I'm not an ADA guru, but everything that they're asking us to do, we will have covered by doing this.

And as soon as we vote on it, if I had county board, I could have it implemented probably within a week, and we're way ahead of the deadline, and we're stopping going.

So, my second question was, I don't know if you saw my email, because I know you're a busy man.

but this provides us doing the Tipton County, Tennessee's website.

I was going to say, I opened it up and I got to the homepage and that was as far as I got.

Okay, fantastic.

Yeah, I don't know that I made it that far.

I didn't see your email.

Last few days.

And it sounds like you got the AI thing in there.

Because I will say there's nothing that they're offering that we're not purchasing. So I would say that we're probably at least what they have, but I'm going to try to click on what's here. But, you know, it looks great. It's like, wow, that's confidence. But I was digging through the Vice PD website, and they got that they're using that same system, and it went, wow, it's fantastic. So for some reason, I can't find the email.

I was going to be, let's see, when did I set it, D31, last night, yeah, it's not in my inbox, I'm mowing me on this file, but okay, so I'll set that up, let me find that, but I will let you know, but I, if they're the same, if it's revised, we're getting everything that they offer, I don't know, Tipton County, what, Tennessee, you said, Tennessee, it's beautiful website, yeah, it's, so, Well, be mindful, this doesn't change, this doesn't change our website, it just gives us the ability that ADA accessible information, yeah, it's not changing the website, no, it's just a website, this is just for ADA compliance, people get where they're trying to go, if they're having trouble reading it, it'll take it, and I forget what they call it, invert the colors to where it's a black background, you know, things to help So people with vision issues, hearing issues, things of that nature.

So it does not change the whole website at all.

So it's just the ADA portion of it.

It has a website.

Yes, Jerry.

So four years ago or so, I got contacted by a law firm in New York City that was just randomly looking up websites to see if they were ADA compliant or not and they would offer a settlement to avoid litigation so I got hooked up with a company called Audio, I, okay, completely independent of who manages my bank's website and they were able to put on there and pay eight or nine hundred bucks for it annually when I went to Byron Bank, same situation, they did not have ADA compliance, a much bigger bank, I think it sounded like 11. So I know you said something about you have to do it with this. A month or a year? I'm sorry, a year. Okay. You had said something about it having to be this company because of our website. Well, it's with the clear docs and everything, I would just have to make sure that it's going to read the documents that we have loaded into our website. You know, because every department puts in PDFs and things of that nature.

We might be able to get something that can do a search for us, but we have to make sure that whatever we get is going to be able to read the documents if we're required.

That's why there are other agencies that are out there, but what they want is our whole website business.

So I can definitely look into that and see what they can do.

I mean we have we have plenty of time we're ahead of this because I think it's April 2027 I think is what we have until so if you want me to look up that company I'd gladly contact them and just see what they can do so yeah I just did a they offer a tool you can scan your website and it tells you your issues with it right away but I'll send it to you I'm not I mean I'll skin in the game on this but Bill heeef.

Jason Zepancki D'**a thousand bucks for 13,000 , that's a big number, so it's workable.

apert Muskarцы Thanks man yeah yeah absolutely, I mean I just wanna make sure we're over and over here, but we have plenty of time, that's why we started now, yeah yeah my biggest concern would be the documents.

I mean i'm sure there's people that can do the search or。 I guess a question probably altered the website for vision but that I'll find out by scheduling was not.

Yeah, yeah, so, okay, absolutely, fine, so, I think I'll make a motion, we'll lay this over.

I'll second.

Okay, you guys have a conversation?

Oh, does it in favor say aye?

Aye.

Thank you.

Nice, doing the 10.0 challenge, any clean numbers, anything?

Seeing none, just do 100.0, it's yours.

Make a motion to the judge.

I'll second, all those in favor say aye, right?

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Stop reading.