We are live, so let's get started with the meeting of the Administration of Legal Affairs Committee, Wednesday, September 9th, 2020.10. 6 Of 2.0, prayer.
All right, thank you.
Mary and Father, we thank you for this day.
We thank you for each of the individuals that are here this evening.
And we just, I said, you would have this meeting go smoothly.
I'll help us to wisely do the work our county and thank you for each one present to Jesus.
Thanks.
All right, 3.0, football with Jen Dauskin.
Do the football.
But Mr. Biden, you second?
All right, all those in favor say aye.
Aye.
I'm the first chancellor.
Yeah, there you go.
4.0, Approval meeting minutes from August 12th.
What's six?
Three.
Second.
Anderson.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Okay.
5.0, Approval of claims, I've got a total of $92,547.39.
What's the question?
I just have one question.
I have a question for Andrew.
Yes.
Identified for business appraisal in your.
Yep.
So the mall for where joint fabrics is and all that.
So they filed a case due to PTAB.
So Freeport split, we split on appraisal because usually when it's commercial like that and obviously a large mall and stuff like that.
The only way for us to really defend anything or whatever is to get an actual appraisal.
So we don't get them very often.
That's why you probably don't see them and stuff like that.
That's only the second one that I've ever had to do since I've taken over.
So that's what that is.
So, yup, yup.
And then we then made us been using the data and stuff like that to revalue commercial and different things like that.
So then obviously, um, we share that data and stuff like that.
So then we split the cost.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Yeah.
That's the question.
Got the, uh, or the bill's here for $92,747 and 39 cents.
So I can make a motion.
Mr. Moderow.
I will second that.
I'll second.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Okay, so let's go to the 6.0 public comments and let's jump down to 7.1, College Residence.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So regarding claims office specifically, 1% of total you just read was me.
$960 Of that actually was reimbursements for me to attend CIC, which is our financial software company, their workshop didn't come on my budget specifically came on with my next day software budget was really eye-opening.
I think that we are due for some long overdue, definitely good improvements to our financial software, which I hope now the next year, maybe the year after that It will probably make the audit a lot smoother and it will be a lot more user friendly for all of our users throughout the county.
So I think it was really worth my time to go to Wichita, Kansas.
So yeah, so that's where my expense was in terms of claims.
If you all can brush your memory about the report that I sent, I think I sent it Sunday.
Again, no surprises, really a very quiet month.
Overall funds were down by 3.5%.
Again, if you went by a monthly average, we'd be looking at eight.
And that's at a month with a very, very small property tax distribution.
So I think we're, you know, the ship is steady.
Let's see if I have a better way to describe it.
No, no major ups or downs.
The tax receipts, property tax, and I'm not sorry, sales tax and income taxes were down slightly, but I expect this month to go back up.
If anything, this last year, as Taunus is really open now, but always we seem to be staying ahead.
We're $700,000 ahead of where we were at this time last year.
So I don't really look at any month that's down that much to really seem to be indicative of any kind of problem.
So if you look on the Investments page, only two things matured in August, but it was almost 9,000 in interest.
So thank you.
We have another 13 million invested.
We're going to do a little more this month because the second property tax distribution, third property tax distribution is tomorrow.
So unless you have any questions about what you see on here, I feel kind of like a broken record every month.
There's nothing, I guess, no news, good news.
Really?
So good.
Yeah.
Yeah, so the property tax distribution tomorrow is pretty substantial on the counties looking to get about 3 million a little over that.
So the way that the schedule landed this year compared to our due dates, I had to schedule the distribution with funds we collected right up until the due date.
So since that distribution amount, which will come out tomorrow, I've already collected another 6 million.
So the next distribution is looking to be a pretty decent one as well.
So we are, as a county, overall 86.6% collected.
Great.
That's about where we are, there's a little buddy, half a million yet to be collected.
So if anybody has any questions in the FAFSA, I feel like I'm racing through.
You're fine.
That's anybody asking the questions here so we'll keep going.
Thank you very much.
7.2 County Courts.
Thanks Chairman.
Good news, there's a lot of people applying for marriage licenses in the county.
We have, they sign on a tablet so it transfers automatically and we did have a new tablet ordered already and the one we had did build down.
So we did get a new one that was out of our contingency fund.
So thank you to Mike and Nate for helping get that tablet up and going for us.
Also thank you to Nate for the Department of Revenue.
You'll see in the report I submit it shows the funds that go to the state that is collected as well as the county.
They did a switch over with their URL.
Nate was very helpful with that.
A little bit of hiccups still on the state side yesterday morning and today.
So, the state is working through that, and we're trying to work through that with them as well.
Elections, last Tuesday, this Tuesday, and I'm guessing for many Tuesdays, moving forward, having calls with the Attorney General's office regarding vote by mail with the Coastal Service.
A lot of questions, not a lot of answers at this time.
As far as how our office is proceeding as well as many offices, both by mail will proceed as normal there may be added expenses with having to get new envelopes to comply with the postal service so you may see some additional expenses I know some counties have concerns about that with their budget I think Lauren could shape if there's concerns I'll bring it to the committee right in deadline was last Thursday we didn't receive some in the the mail the next day.
So those were invalid.
So we are ballot proofing and hope to have a specimen ballot available soon because the UOCAVA, which is military overseas, those have to be sent out September 18th and vote by mail the first day those can go out as well as early voting is September 21st.
And I think last month I talked about The permanent vote by mail cards we have to send out, just some numbers so far, we're still receiving them back, so these numbers are going to go up.
We have 2,788 people signed up for permanent vote by mail and 142 people that have signed up for a single vote by mail, so that's just for this election.
And we will have another election judge class.
And I talked about, we had the larger classes at Highland.
Some people were not able to attend.
So we will have an election judge class next Wednesday and Thursday located here.
So far as 2027, the election reached out to the school officials to let them know school board will be on the ballot to let people know.
And I've been communicating with the local election authorities, helping them work through the election process as people are circulating petitions and asking them questions.
Any questions?
Just a comment really.
This isn't about our County, but a friend of mine in Southern Illinois, he hasn't had children in his house for 10 years.
And this past week, he got five permanent vote by mail statements at his house.
At his house.
He says, I could send every Helms.
He says, I could send every one of these back and vote by mail.
How do we, how do you?
So, if I had someone that had that occur in Stephenson County, one, we would look at our plan, we would remove them from our vote.
If you are getting a piece of mail and no one's registered there, you shouldn't be accepting that mail.
But that's just the application.
So if we were to, let's say, if you want to break the law and you want to risk that, go to jail.
Well, I would work with our local law enforcement, but that's just the application.
So when you apply for it, we are comparing your signature.
So that signature, we are comparing to when you registered to vote.
That signature doesn't match, as well as that's just the application when you fill out the ballot to send back.
We also have democrat and republican compare that signature on file too for the actual gold by mail ballot and um doesn't happen frequently but last year most of the time people just forget to sign but we did have a signature that did not look anything like the one we had on file so we sent them a letter she came in she's not very happy but that um we wanted to show election integrity because she goes to the county.
So that's what we do there.
Thank you.
Question.
All right.
Dale, let's keep moving.
Sorry, it's 7.3 for civilizing and assessments.
So as we discussed in the beginning, I've used out letters for my last township of the seven that I had to revalue.
So six and a half of my townships are done.
I am working on the village of Lena right now and going through some of the storm damage and things like that.
I don't know if anybody caught it, but Governor Pritzker did deem it as a disaster zone.
So in that case and stuff like that, anything that somebody does because of the storm damage and things like that, then they get for better lack of terms of an exemption or for the four years and stuff like that, that you normally won't qualify.
So if someone under normal circumstances would put a roof, siding, windows, things like that, that doesn't qualify.
When they do it as a disaster zone, then you're replacing that because not because you want to, because you have to.
So then that just it's it's a little more work for for our office and stuff like that to try to keep track of those things so those those people that were you know unfortunately in the way of that storm gets the benefit that they deserve because it's an extra cost for them so but other than that we are still ahead of schedule on things like that so I think the last time we had to do and I knew seven townships and some of them were, you know, the San Diego and stuff like that.
I think I only had like three of them done.
So we are definitely ahead of schedule.
So that's all, it's all hands on deck in my office for that.
So.
All right.
Thank you.
So we did have court today for the nursing home face.
The next court appearance is October 21st.
I do not have any upcoming meetings, land bank meetings scheduled, last one was in July, but those are kind of on a busy basis.
We are on track to have the audit presented to finance and the board this month.
So that will be coming forward.
Kerry, well, McWright will also be at Finance on Monday to discuss some of those liability agreements.
So I have more information on that after Finance on Monday as well.
Have been working with liability attorneys on a couple of things.
We'll have a supplement coming to the Board next week.
Earlier this year, and I think I had mentioned it back in January, February, we were randomly selected as a county for an IMRF audit.
So, uh, Brianne being the authorized agent for the county, she is the only person they will talk to for correspondence through all of this, but it's been an ongoing undertaking since then.
In the last, I would say, month and a half or so, it's really ramped up.
It's, she's somewhat confident that it's nearing the end, but, um, so she has done a lot of work with hitting to the department heads, getting the backup documentation.
It's kind of like what you would have to do for an accelerated payment, but it's random names that they pull from random time periods.
So it's been quite a lot of work, but she's done a lot of stuff.
Other than that, continuing for animal control to get things ready for.
Question is that is that open house this weekend?
No, no.
Oh, we have not scheduled it yet.
Oh, okay.
I'm like, oh, no, they're okay.
No, well, we'll let you know.
Okay.
Special invite.
Yes.
Questions.
As far as the nursing home court date, why was it pushed forward again?
There was a mutual agreement with the attorneys for more time to respond to the interrogatories and Ernst, Motion for, I'm going to say it wrong, Motion for Admission that was set.
Okay, thank you.
It was a bending site today.
Amen.
All right, we'll keep moving on.
7.5 IT Manager.
I don't even know where to begin.
Busy month as usual.
You don't know the health department is now completely moved out of the ninth floor.
There was a lot of work on those projects.
We had to go over and wire new offices because they were using some of the old exam rooms that FHN had.
They had no internet connectivity, so we put in a new switch, ran some lines.
I got fiberglass in my eye last Thursday.
It was a great time, but we got it all hooked up and ready to go through Rock Assistive with the final loop yesterday.
This morning I built a site, the site VPN, because their stuff is actually housed on the server out of the highway department due to them being out there.
And Beth, am I correct in saying they access your zoning program in some aspects?
So they give them that for any reason.
Well, I don't know that they are.
I just don't know why their stuff has never been with the health department.
It's always been out on the highway, probably because that's where they were are at.
So that may be something we move over at some point.
But for now, I built a site to site VPN so they can access their environmental health folders out there.
So that project was hopefully done.
I don't know if I have anybody else to move.
I hope not.
We've facilitated didn't probably 15 to 20 moves I think over the last month or so with that did some projects for Jasmine with the state and I figured that wasn't going to go smoothly just on how they communicate it.
So did what they asked, any side issues and as far as I know, you've been good through this?
Yep.
All right.
So other than that, I am, I leave for vacation next Friday.
I may or may not come back.
No, you won't.
I'm heading to Tennessee, so I will not be back.
I'll be gone like the 18th through the 28th, or something like that.
It's seven workdays, essentially.
Three Rock is ready to roll.
I gave them marching orders, but I'm also going to put out an email to the county before I go.
If it's like a ticket that's just preference or something that's not pressing, I'm just going to tell them to hold that, you know, because sometimes there are tickets that people think are emergencies that really aren't.
So if it's just like adding a second monitor or something like that, I'm just going to ask, you know, so we save on some finances that they just hold that until I get back.
So, but other than that, that's pretty much what's been going on, obviously budget season, which we'll talk about here soon, but it's really got a whole lot that's changed.
So any questions?
You can save the glasses.
You know, that'd be a good thought.
Luckily, I did find out that the health department has an eye washing station.
Oh, I'm sorry, it's not.
It's always something.
After the fact, I was like, safety glasses probably wouldn't be going to apply here.
You don't know what you're getting into until you get up there.
It's well insulated.
That's all I had to say.
Yeah, I'm fine.
Okay.
Well, let's go on to 8.1.
So with my contract pending, there's nothing plugged in full of my salary.
The other salaries show the 3.5% privilege policy.
Everything else has stayed pretty much the same.
I left the county-wide photocopy paper cost the same.
The cost of that has gone up, but we've seen slight reductions continuing throughout the county with the paper usage.
So I feel confident with that.
Fewer discussions on, we have the five-year photocopy contracts where we biannually have overages, not huge, but everyone did not previously budget for those because that was taken out of budgets to go to the countywide.
So we kind of talked and- Oh, classy question.
Didn't we prepay for overages and they're still billing us?
Okay.
So we talked about some adding line in my budget just to cover those, if we get them.
It seemed like a place to put that so that it's paid through one place and not all of the funds.
If we already prepaid for overages, why are we getting billed for overages?
So we got a percentage overage and they were over that.
I am tracking with them in certain departments to not maybe accurately report what they were using, or if they're the culprit moving forward all the time, or if it was just the time of year where one department had a huge, you know, mailing or something that they had to do where there was a lot of copies to try and do it.
I think if I can check one in, the orange, I think if I'm correct, it pertains to color.
Mostly color, yes.
So I think if we just, I think a little bit of education, I think we can not limit on our color copies.
And it wasn't, it was a very small amount.
And so I think there was some discussion of portioning it to each department, but it's such a small amount and unpredictable.
So it didn't It really makes sense to put $12 in one department, 78, and this just made more sense.
I was going to say, I talked to the treasurer and got the answer after on it, but it's kind of a lovely thought made the most sense.
That's huge.
Okay.
All right.
Some of you were in there, some of you want to be paid next year, right?
So is there a date on the calendar that your contract is being discussed?
Um, later on in the year tonight.
Oh, tonight, huh?
Perfect.
All right, thanks.
So, I mean, I don't know what the committee would like to do if we want to pass the finance or So, do I make a motion to hold over this Administrative Budget?
Has administrative budget until next month, where they can fill in all the questions.
Why can't we do it?
Because we don't have it on the agenda.
I'd like to say why can't we move that issue down under 9.2 and then approve it after we've had our discussion.
And then we're not holding it over, move it under 11.0.
Dale.
Oh yeah, 11.2, but whatever you want.
Yeah.
Thought about that.
What, can I start and stop and then post, but you have to sit here a little bit, maybe.
Well, if we do anything as action, you're going to have to have it on anyway.
Right.
That's true.
So, we do that.
We didn't even do that at the agenda, though.
I think we'll just do it until next month, okay?
So, we have a motion.
I have a motion on the fire, but that's it, the way it's on next month.
One more second.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, I think that's fine, so that way we can talk about it.
We have time to think about it.
All right, all those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Aye.
Okay, let's go to the IT budget.
I don't remember exactly why we laid it out for last month, although I think the whole it is an IT paying for versus is the rest of the departments showing it was the discussion otherwise chairman it's gonna get laid over it was actually passed the finance I think was your first ask where to come back due to the storage for the state's attorney yes so how that was going to come out of this budget yes is that correct that was yes that was in the meeting minutes there well I have volunteered to pay for that but it will not come out of this budget it's going to I'm going to come out with a capital improvements, so it's called, Adrienne?
Yes.
I'll say it.
There's IT upgrades in there that I was going to use five grand out of that to pay for it.
Okay.
So it's technically not in this budget, but it's right there under IT upgrades.
Yes.
So that $60,000 that was not spent is going to be carried over.
They're going to try to do something online or in the cloud or something?
That will be on the cloud if this gets passed or, you know, becoming agrees.
But at the end of the day, whether Carl pays for it or this line, I'm still trying to fund money.
So, thank you.
I understand it's been resolved and I understand what Nate's trying to do there too, but I think it should really come out of that department's budget so that we know where that money's being spent.
I'm not going to stop the budget for that.
You want it to reflect in my budget or state's attorney's?
This was, it's not in IT manager, this is what I use on this phone.
I think, I'm just going to put my head on a platter here.
Before I left the circuit board, he was talking about all the department heads moving some budget into the IT budget, so IT phase to IT vans.
It sounds like that's no longer what is wanted.
So I think the discussion needs to happen as far as, I feel like we were moving one way, now we're wanting to go back.
So I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
So I would love for the County Board to kind of determine which way you want it, because if it's one way or the other, it shouldn't be a little bit of both.
It gets too confusing.
So when we created the IT manager position and the IT budget, it was thought at that time that everyone was kind of doing their own thing, buying their own equipment, and no one knew what was going on, what was being replaced, what wasn't being replaced, what where our entire inventory was, it should be on a replacement schedule.
There, and now we have Nate.
So it just, we centralized everything just to make the purchasing more seamless in one place.
I will say the caveat to that is though, is my budget is not paying for everybody's workstations per se, some of that has come through grants, some people pay it out of their own budget, so it's still not fully, I have oversight of it now because it usually runs through me in some way but I usually send the invoices back to those departments or those PCs cause I don't have like a county wide budget for, I do for IT upgrades, but I've been using that for like a surfer level or like, you know, infrastructure.
So, they do come to me and I have reports now and I can tell what's old.
They'll come to me and say, well, machines need replaced.
So, we do have a better grasp of that.
But again, if, and I'm open to that, like if eventually they want all the purchases and payments to come through me for those, we would just have to make sure that we're accounting for that.
But right now, the process has worked.
I mean, as far as that goes, they come to me and I order it set in the and the infos for that.
But again, if we're trying to go one way or the other, we kind of got to fit the lane and it's too confusing for everybody.
It also makes sense on most things that the end of that department paid for it, but I remember all that conversation.
It made a lot of sense, it still does.
Especially when it's the one big general hot pot of money, It doesn't make sense for the charger to have these small maybe line items where we can just centralize it.
I think that was the goal to begin with and I understand like a separate fund could alleviate some distress for the general fund if they're making big purchases, IT purchases, but.
I also remember like 3% of everybody's budget going into the IT salary, I don't know why.
Am I joking?
So, reel it in here, Larry.
It looks like we've got 3.5% for the age.
We had to find a payment which helped out, so we're actually going down by 8%.
9.1 Approval of resolution of authorizing acquisition of all Certificates for the tax year 2025.
Yeah.
Sorry about that long reservation name, but I really needed it to be descriptive.
Um, so if you recall last month, I mentioned some of the more painful parts of the changes that the legislature made to fix the broken property tax code, which then in turn broke 20 other things.
So this is a big piece of that instead of having the tax sale that we traditionally do where tax buyers come in, bid against each other for low rate of interest to then win the opportunity to buy the taxes.
Um, and then, you know, half of the parcels go to the County as trustee anyway, because they don't want, and this, the new law gives us the option, us, the County Board gives you the option at my request.
So that's, that's kind of the frame of this too, rather than holding that typical traditional tax sale.
We just allow the County as trustee to purchase all of those.
No money changes hands.
It's just, instead of half of the parcels coming to the County, all of them do.
Several benefits for that.
One, the rate of interest that the affected taxpayer would pay is dramatically reduced.
The taxpayers can bid up to 9% and all indications now are that they will because this negatively impacts them statewide.
That's 9% every six months.
Allowing them to come to the county as trustee, the rate of interest is 0.75% per month.
So it's not upfront.
So if someone redeems in two months, they've paid 1.5%.
If they redeem a year later to the county, to the trustee agent and gets the interest, it's 9% or to the taxpayer, it's eight.
So this is the most friendly option for those affected who are unable for whatever reason to pay their taxes, this per step plus, which is one of the major reasons I'm inclined to think that this makes more sense.
And administratively, we would probably need to hire at least 1.5 FTE to accomplish the new duties that a company having a tax sale that we always have.
All the port notifications, all the reminders, all the mailings, court appearances, state's attorney.
The estimate on a state's attorney for the county bar size was one half FTE, state's attorney time to do that.
Additional expense.
And then again, the taxpayers paying more interest too.
So there's really, nobody wins in scenario of doing it the way we've always done it, except the taxpayer.
And I'm, you know, they've been a necessary component previously to make our system work, they're not any longer.
And there's some other more dramatic changes coming that will affect our budget in terms of what the state has now made the county, I think I discussed this last time we're responsible for because the state failed to act for three years.
So I'm really not further inclined to help them anymore than we are already there.
They have sued us, they are gouging the taxpayer, they're coming after us for additional funds.
And I feel like we did it the other way.
We're basically rewarding them further to continue those same activities.
But, so the flip side of, I think those are positives of why we should do it.
Regarding how it looks to the tax districts, because we hold the tax sale, there is money that is gained from tap sales.
It is roughly half to seven-tenths of 1%.
So it's not huge.
The bigger the taxing body, the bigger the amount of money, but percentage wise is relatively small.
So because 90 to 95% of parcels are redeemed, people do pay those taxes back, that money will come back to them.
It just won't come back in November.
So we'll be collecting it throughout the year as they redeem through the County Clerk's Office.
It gets held in an interest bearing account and then it will go out with my first distribution and to kind of lessen the blow a little bit.
I'm probably going to now have a main distribution.
So the entities that have the tax year this July or June will be able to still capture that in that same budget year.
It'll just be at the end rather than at the beginning.
So I don't think there really is any pain to this plan, but there are a lot of downsides to not doing it, I think.
And so it does mention, and I did attach the reference statutory language.
I did not include the list because I do have to give you a list of parcels that you have to basically say yes, and you give it back to me.
But I didn't want to present that list right now because it literally changed right before I came up here.
So I was going to wait until just before I went through the agendas for the actual board meeting to give you as concise of a long list as I possibly can.
But you do, and this is something I do, I'm hoping, I'm asking you as a board to approve it that I will do every year.
So, and because this is something, if we, for whatever reason, I can't imagine it, but you know, legislation may change again, This is not something we have to do every year.
We can make a decision to take a different path every year.
So we're not stuck in any one.
Yeah, but I don't I don't see a downside to doing such things.
So I want to come on these other pieces of later.
Yeah.
So you want that.
So this is the easy part.
There is one.
This is the easy part.
Yes, I can.
Do you want to make a motion here?
Make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing acquisition of all tax certificates for the tax year 2025, April of 2026.
Just a clarification.
Last month, and I forget if it was this or some other component, you mentioned the, because it's kind of a transition step, the first year is going to be the last one.
And then it will come up.
Is this the- No, that's the hard one.
That's what I want.
That's what we call the dollar signs attack.
I thought so, but I want to clarify.
This is a win!
So the other one is, has some, I'm still compiling that data right now because we're getting to the point where taxpayers may potentially want to purchase subsequent taxes.
So I have to add that those dollars back into our estimate because we are, my association is submitting hundreds of millions of dollars across the state.
This will cost counties if the legislature doesn't change course.
So it's not good.
It's not good.
Please follow us.
This is exactly what it is.
It's exactly what it is.
We broke it, we fixed it, we pay for it.
Alright, I'll be quiet.
Yeah, I think this is a good thing.
And it sounds like it's good for those that don't have the line of things that they don't have to pay attention to.
With that, any more comments?
Yes, Mr. Chair.
Yes.
Who drafted this?
The trustee agent attorney helped me draft and it's his language.
I just inserted more appropriate language for our child.
So it's been reviewed?
The state's attorney has seen it, yes.
Okay, just want to make sure we're not but the part of the class actually lawsuit based on this resolution.
I don't believe so because the smartest real estate attorney, Service, Real Estate, Attorney, and State, just behind it.
So that's good enough.
Good question.
Thank you.
All right.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Those say thank you.
Unanimous thank you.
It's looking great.
9.2, We have a County Board and a committee meeting calendar for 20.7.
Well, it's just a couple of things we had to move around because the holiday is very tasking.
I think it was February was one of them.
I'm going to start from January, the finance meeting.
We're going to go to the 15th, the 12th, the finance meeting moved to Thursday in the evening.
Juneau, Thankin, Andy, Austin, Juneau, July, planning and development, that Tuesday, Juneau, DeMeester, September, planning and development, moving to that Tuesday during the Labor Day, October, planning and development, moving to that Tuesday during the holiday, and then November is those dates for the budget presentation approval that was just what I thought if you guys want Well, on the 29th would be a full calendar day for anyone.
I think it looks fine.
I'm going to make a motion to approve it.
Second.
Okay, I got a second.
For our conversation.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
All right.
Comments from committee members.
Do you need anything before we go into executive session?
Sure.
I've seen your signature a lot.
I'm sure you know it by heart.
All right.
I want to make a motion to go into executive session.
And Mr. Moderow saying the same thing, the same things, although they were saying hi.
Hi.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.