And personal property owners in Lena.
This is mid-July numbers.
$150,000 Of that was approved.
Now that's not saying that the loans have been received or that these people have actually accepted the loans, but they did apply and they did get approval.
So I don't have the numbers as far as what actually was sent out.
That's an ongoing process.
On July 27th, we had a meeting with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
Deco again and they gave us because of the governor's declaration for our county there is an opportunity perhaps for another $250,000 that could be left for the county.
I have a meeting either Thursday or Friday with Scott Stauber and Tiffany Molo to try to proceed and pursue this grant if there is interest by the village of Lena.
Perhaps the county expenses that was made by both the County townships, the stability and so forth.
Now they'll prioritize that at some point.
And I think the village of Lena is probably going to take the lion's share of that with possibly sidewalk repair, curb and guide repairs, bump removal, and replacement, but these are things down the road that we want to pursue if there seems to be a desire and I believe there will be and we'll have, I believe 10 months yet, so we have some time.
So we'll go to pursue that.
And what else?
Office was busy this last week or last sub-month working with both the Tuddy Baker days and the Stephenson County Fair safety committees, weather warnings and so forth and so on.
The fair was a great success as far as weather went and attendance.
We had our LEPC by-command meeting.
That is a quarterly meeting that we have at the sheriff at the Cal courthouse.
I can't say enough how that meeting and that committee has grown.
We had over 20 members present for that meeting.
I'm really happy with that, especially with our key stakeholders in the community with emergency planning.
I'm really happy with that.
Other than that, that's really all I want to cover.
If you have any questions for me?
Any questions?
Scott, with Lena, have you guys had any kind of pulse meeting to discuss what went well, what needs to be improved?
No, we haven't.
I talked with the leader, Governor Brad Strong, leader, fire chief, and I want to get with him.
It's probably going to be next week when we actually sit out and talk, because we're going to be pursuing these tech funds with Steve Busk, their president.
And then I think we'll try to put together a day where we all meet and do what they call a hot wash.
We've had informal meetings, and there are things that obviously we can improve upon, but we have not had anything formal.
We do want to have that focus on the point.
Okay.
Any other questions?
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Out of the corner.
Our statistics for the last month, we had 34 deaths in the county.
We responded to four of those with one autopsy.
We signed eight cases.
The doctors signed 26.
Thirty-three of those were ruled natural, and I still have one pending.
Other stuff I have, we found that the title on the plates to the corners vehicle were still coming back to Enterprise, so the title on the plates had now successfully been transferred over to the county.
And also I found that the county overpaid Enterprise by $591.74.
That money has since been returned to the county, and I gave that to Georgia, and I believe Adam or she deposited that check, but I gave that check to her.
Thanks for catching that with the enterprise.
How are we doing year to date?
I just want to make sure that the corner office does not run out of money before the end of the year.
Yeah, we're on track for where we should be for the year.
To stay within the budget, yeah.
Thank you.
No quiz, so stay healthy.
I'm sorry?
So stay healthy?
Yeah, I don't want to be part of your report.
Okay.
There's no old business, so we'll move on to new business.
Approval of RFP for Shibley Tahoe for the Sheriff Department.
I don't know what you want me to say with this.
We're going up for request for proposal for three new 2026 Shibley Tahoe Police Pursuit Vehicles from the Operated Chevrolet dealers, bids will be accepted, or I'm sorry, received, until 3 PM Wednesday, September 16th, they will be opened on the 16th at 3 o'clock in the County Board room, which will be the day before the County Board meeting to get them approved with the County Board, if that works.
Yeah, normally the bids come back here, but I don't see any reason I can't go straight to the board.
That'll be 35 days.
I know that there's been talk in the past of like 31, 33 days.
That's 35 days to be out for bid at that point.
Sure.
Do we, are we replacing other vehicles or are these just additional vehicles?
These are from last year.
This is from last year's supplemental.
So yes, we are replacing vehicles that are, we've actually lost two this year to no longer working at all.
So yes.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
How old are the vehicles that aren't working?
Do they last so many years?
Yes, we usually like to replace them by 130,000.
With the Tahos that we're replacing, we should get up to 200,000.
So we're going to add about two more years, if not three, to the new replacement vehicles.
I have that for my supplement when I get that put in.
Any other questions?
Do we have to make a motion on that?
I make the motion to approve the RFP for the Sheriff's Department's three top votes.
The move by Ms. Hayes.
Seconded by Ms. Lawfer.
Any questions?
All in favor?
Aye.
All in all, Ayes have it.
Now we will get into the discussion of the fiscal year 27 budget.
We will start first with the emergency management.
Thank you.
The budget is pretty straightforward, pretty simple in my opinion.
I'll just kind of start at the top.
The first line item here we're talking about is our emergency management preparedness grant fund.
You can see that it's been budgeted $22,400.
That's an annual grant that I apply for.
I think it's been going on for 10 years or more in a row.
This is a 50-50 grant.
It comes from federal through the state.
It's like a 50-50 shared cost.
The thing I want to point out to you on this particular budget proposal is the $42.50 that was brought in this year.
Was technically money from the previous grant and the previous grant is 2024's grant.
If you look back on 2025 actual at 18-114 at 42-50 comes up in 22-40.
So that's money that we received this year.
If you remember, we did not apply to that grant until about well July 22nd I think when I and I signed a downstate for submission.
I fully expect that we will get the full amount of the grant.
It might be a little later.
I have to add it before the first of the year.
So I'm anticipating another $22,400 from that grant that will be added into our budget.
Any questions about that?
I know it's confusing.
The grant's run a year behind, and the state, they are very slow, had a bad blast the last couple of years.
And Fimo would have considered to have this grant until mid-July.
So, we've been down to one now.
Interest income, I kept at $1,000.
You can see that we're well past that now, this year and this year.
Transfer for public safety, I did not increase.
That's been $82,800 every year since I've been here and probably before.
Here, and probably before that.
My cash carry forward amount is a very conservative $65,000.
We're totaled 171.20 for revenue.
Getting to expenses, my salary, I'm under contract.
And my contract states that I will accept whatever the County Board decides to give for a raise or not give a raise.
So that's 3.5%.
The numbers do not jive mathematically because my 2025-2026 budget, I was negotiating a contract, so to speak, and I really didn't know what to put in, so that would be more mathematically right, and in 2027, the request for $50,900 is just shy on what it has to be.
It's a hard time, the Deputy Director is mathematically correct, his is real simple, 3.5% add-on.
I kept stationary supply the same, I kept loading the same, I kept voluntary support the same.
Mileage, I've increased it $1,000 just because of a potential fuel cost increase.
I'm not sure you're going to see that diminished much.
I usually stay well within that budget amount.
Telephones, I'm not sure if all of you are aware, but I pay for a number of cell phones and Mi-Fi's to Mi-Fi that we're using here.
There are, I believe, 10 of them that I pay for.
I pay for three county highway department phones, the shop foreman and his two site foreman.
I pay for animal control, two for EMA, and the IT division I pay for.
And then the MIFIs, they're located.
I have one in my office that kind of roams around and it's kind of a catch-all with so I have so many needs in my life that I go to look dumb, but I always know where it's at.
SR30 has two of them.
The Treasury's office has one.
The administration in Georgia has one.
This boardroom has one.
And the county highway meeting room has one.
For helping broadcast meetings.
All these things are at my access.
If we have an emergency and I need to get to them, I can get to them.
But we might as well use them.
They're better than sitting in my office collecting dust.
Starcom radios.
I have two Starcom portable radios and two Starcom mobile radios.
The mobiles are bases.
They're old.
I would like to replace the two portables.
We're talking $7,000-$8,000 per radio.
I'm not in a position to say that I need to do that right at this moment.
These radios are older, but they still are fine.
They're updated to the matrix.
I would like to think about doing that in the future.
So that's where I keep that budgeted a little bit more than the $2,100 STARCOMP fee, annual fee that I pay in order to be a part of the Motorola's organization.
My fees pale in comparison to the sheriff's.
The sheriff has a lot more radios, obviously.
I'm sure he can talk to this better than I can, but it just seems like it's the price of doing business if you want to be part of the STARCOMP system and we need to be a part of that.
Equipment repair, I'm keeping, I bumped up just a little bit.
Tower rental, that is for our very high frequency, VHF frequency radio for EMA, that is up on Mound Road, that's JCWi-Fi owns that tower and we pay them $900 a month or a year in order to have our repeater stationed there and be utilized so we can have coverage throughout the county.
I kept that at $12.50 because I just don't know why that's going to increase.
Rent, this is, I know it's taking quite a bit of a jump, but let me see here.
In 2024, and I guess I'll explain this, I pay rent to the County Highway Department.
I'm out of the County Highway Department's office.
In 2024, I paid $72.75 per year for my office rent.
Grant.
And that covers utilities, heating, air conditioning, cleaning, just basic rent type stuff.
In 2025, that jumped up to 8564.
So this year, I wasn't sure where it was going to be.
I just kind of got a gentleman's agreement that this year would probably stay right around $8,500.
But he said the next year, maybe predict a 10% increase.
So that takes me up to $9,500, basically.
So 10,000.
Well, it's a pretty big chunk.
I'm basically paying another county entity.
So computer equipment I'm keeping at $6,000.
I'd like to upgrade two of the portable workstations.
And the reason I want them portable is we have a radio room out at the highway department, but I want to be able to move those workstations out of the EOC if we need to.
So we could have two up to date additional computers down there if we have something.
Membership is the same, Media Seminars is the same, Instruction and Schooling is the same, LAPC is the same, Homeland Preparedness, I kept that at $20,000, Emergency Fund, Flood Mitigation, and Emergency Equipment are all the same.
If you look at the page, you can see my expenses and revenues, $2,400.
I don't see that being a real point of contention.
I have $74,000 in the ESDF fund right now, and with the EFBG money and the transfer of funds for emergency services, There's plenty of funds on hand to more than cover the rest of this year and make a supplemental purchase Which I will talk about here in a little bit.
I kind of went through it pretty fast I'd say it's pretty straightforward.
It hasn't changed a whole lot.
Is there any questions or concerns?
Mr. Townsend on the 3.5% COLA that you've added in, has that been approved by the County Board yet?
It's in your budget policy.
Yes Scott and I, we met and we went through it.
The question I had was the rent.
Why is that?
Well, we have several departments operating out of one building that are usually divided by the tenants within the building.
Somebody's got to pay it.
It's no different than the nursing home Paying their expenses out of their building.
If you did not want to divide up the expenses among the tenants, we would have to figure out a line item to pull all the expenses out of in the general fund if you didn't want the highway department to bear the entire cost.
So you've got EMA, you have zoning, you have animal well, you did, you don't any longer have animal control out there, plus you have the highway department.
So they're all utilizing the space, similar to what we do here in the Stewards Center, the Treasurer's Office, the County Clerk, the Assessor, they all split the cost of police for this building, for the use of the building.
So, since the handle control moved out, is everybody's expenses going up?
Do they divide these across the board?
I mean, how do you determine that?
You can look at that in the budget for the highway departments.
That should be in there.
I would look at how that helps program out in their budget, but yes.
My assumption is it will be divided amongst three as opposed to four.
But I don't think it was equally split either.
I can maybe help, you can help me with this.
Thank you for that explanation because I've been here six years and I've never really had anybody explain it that well.
My understanding is that we pay a cost per square foot.
That's how they come up with it.
That was my question I asked today with Wilson's.
We had environmental health out there at one time.
Now animal control, they're gone.
Are we going to have to absorb the additional costs?
And Brian don't we know that's not how it works it's basically a panel on a square foot percentage so all right so the offices that are gone are they being replaced with something else or is that I thought animal control was out there they were a new building okay okay we're on Meadows Drive I entertain a motion for the management of the budget, motion to move it on.
Motion to move it on.
Moved by Mr. Newton.
Do you need a second?
Yes, I do.
I'll do a second.
Moved by Mr. Newton.
Moved by Ms. Lawfer.
Any questions?
I'll ask again, any questions?
No.
Okay, all in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Aye.
Thank you.
Okay, let's move on to law enforcement.
All right, so I got the law enforcement.
The top part of that is all contractual.
Everything that you see there is contractual.
Then we go into the operations, the things that stand out, our equipment and services.
So when you go down, you can see the first thing, stationary supplies, those deadline items gone up a little bit.
And it's also due to the more supplies needed for all of the new systems that we have put in place over the last two years.
So you've got that one, you've got the stationary supplies, TC's, there's about 60% but in reality it's $1,500 total for nine people.
The next one, lubricants have gone, the price has gone up, the automotive tires price has gone up, and automotive accessories price has gone up.
All the rest of those are zero percent.
I'll skip down to equipment where it went up to 20%.
20% Because of a price increase.
Ammunition is up 16% because of a price increase.
And just so you take a look at the right, the equipment went up $1,500.
The ammunition's gone up $5,000.
Same thing that Scott said, you're going to see radio and tower at 23%.
At Motorola for their licensing, for their tower usage, for the repeaters and all of that.
That's a total of $13,000 to use that radio system, which is basically the heart of our entire operation.
Like to direct you to instruction and schooling, that went down 42%.
So that went down $15,000.
And then emergency response equipment has gone up 33%, Which is the $5,000 increase and then radios Scott hit it right on the head.
It's $8,000 per radio now I've only increased that $5,000.
So I didn't even add one more radio So if you do the math with the $40,000, we're gonna hopefully we don't need this many radios, but that's only five radios Any questions about the law enforcement part of this project?
That's one overall increases 5.32%.
Any questions?
I have a question.
Yep.
For the Department of Law Enforcement, your sheet says here it's an increase of 6, I don't know, I'm sorry, you're right, 5.38.
Then what's the 6.45?
Right below it.
I'm not looking at the same sheet, I don't think.
Okay.
Or you have my sheet.
You have mine.
Oh yeah, yours, this is the All of the numbers that I'm looking at are what I put on the teams.
This is the one that Ronnie and I discussed and I believe my budget has actually gone down from what we discussed.
Okay.
All right.
It doesn't work.
No, it doesn't work.
Okay.
That's my.
Okay.
Next part is Merit Commission.
Merit Commission is staying the same except for advertising and publishing.
That's going up $1,000 for our app and our website.
Those prices are going up also.
So that's it for $1,000 at 6.35% increase in the merit commission.
Any questions on that one or should I move on?
Any questions?
Okay.
Courthouse building, contractual for the salary portion.
And this is where there's some probably the most significant increases.
There's a lot of things going on with the courthouse, just handling updates.
And, you know, we did the HVAC two years ago, and this is, it's been kind of a nightmare that the connections that I've told this to several people, the new connection that goes into the old building connection, that's where we're having the failures with valves and pipes and things like that.
So that's, that's come out of the, that's cost me a lot of money this year for, for courthouse building.
I'm hoping to not have that increase next year or that much use next year, but I did do some small increases here.
The most significant is going to be electrical supplies, hardware, plumbing.
We've got four judges chambered restrooms that are disgusting and well-outdated.
We can't get parts.
I've asked them in particular, McClanahan.
He's got a drip on his faucet that has some sort of scum that's just piling up.
We cannot get any parts for that.
I said if you can just hang on till 2027, we'll get that taken care of.
Well, as we look into it, it's the original toilets, it's original fixtures and all that.
So I have a budget to take care of their four restrooms this year because they're all about the same shape.
All of the work is done by Tony, our maintenance guy, so we are saving all the labor on that.
If you go down through, you can see general maintenance.
That's going up $15,000.
That's where all the fixtures are going to come from, tile and paint.
That's really all the significant parts.
So the expenses have gone up 10.36% in our courthouse building budget.
Any questions about anything in particular?
I have a question about the cleaning, the line for cleaning.
Okay, cleaning is cleaning or cleaning supplies?
Interior cleaning?
What was 35,000?
Am I reading the wrong line again?
Courthouse building.
Something seemed to have gone up considerably in the building, the courthouse building.
General maintenance.
Is that what it was? 15,000 Went up for my four restrooms, they're all going to be taking care of this year, or 2027.
So that eventually then will go away?
Hopefully, but there's still, after those four, I have four jury room bathrooms, men and women, and then I have two general bathrooms that are in the main hallway, so there's still six to eight bathrooms after these next four.
I did four this year on a skeleton budget, and then I've added this into this budget.
And I will say bathrooms, they're needed, it's needed.
Any questions?
Interior cleaning went from 33 to 50.
No, you're looking at the estimated total for the area went from 2026 budget 50 to 50, so there's no increase on that.
Okay.
The Public Safety Building, nothing significant there.
The contract, contractual at the top.
General maintenance went down $500, so overall budget went up 2.4% and really the only increase on that was the part-time maintenance rates by contract.
Any questions with that one?
Next is the courthouse security.
This is where our courthouse deputies salaries come out of, the crime suppression salaries come out of, and their uniforms and equipment.
If you take a look, the salaries for the courthouse deputies, which are a little bit experienced, so they have several years on, went up by contract $46,000.
But because we have such new people here, the crime suppression and the compression unit salaries actually went down 39,000.
The only other significant increase is going, which is only 4% is $2,250 for security equipment at the courthouse.
So the overall budget for the.
So the overall budget for the courthouse security is up 1.23% and for all those budgets I just went over, if I'm not mistaken in any way, the whole budget went up, including salaries, only 5%.
The only thing I have left are the two budgets for corrections, the general fund and the public safety.
Any questions?
Corrections on the top ones all contractual on the operations The increase that you can see there with 27% is the phone.
The phone usage is going or the phone Price is going up about $7,500 The live scan increased $500 which is 6% and the radio there is also up $1,000.
At the jail it is a different radio so those are not $8,000 a piece.
The entire budget for the general fund for corrections is up 1.37%.
Any questions about any particular line items there?
If not, the new jail building which is the public safety fund, the only significant increase there is 10% which is $500 for plumbing supplies out of jail.
Other than that, everything else is well within line.
Overall budget increases 3.08%.
Overall budget for the jail went up 1.64% total.
Any questions?
I just, I guess I have a comment.
We know that from our discussions in the spring, the 3.5% COLA is not sustainable.
There's going to come a point where we just don't have money to keep increasing by that big amount and as much as we want to compensate our employees we're just because everything's going up right there's going to have to be at some point a time that we may ask you to take your budget down five in order to compensate for things.
So just please keep that in mind for next year, that this is not sustainable the way we're going.
And we don't want the we don't want to bankrupt the county, but we have to adhere to our contracts.
So just something to keep in the back of your minds that, you know, next year, we may, it may have to be a flat year, or we may ask you to go down by 5%, or something like that.
That's all I want to say.
Just budgeting, so does it necessarily mean that you need to use all of that, am I correct?
Well, that's it.
That's what it's sort of.
I'm using everything that we need.
There's no wants on that.
That's exactly what I need.
All right.
Do you have any other questions or comments?
When do we have to have things moved over to finance?
Sooner than later.
If you approve tonight, it won't go until potentially it could go to Monday night.
Tonight, but I have a doubt finance will approve anything until October.
It's got to go to the full board and there's two meetings in November.
And I believe it's the second Tuesday or Thursday of November.
There has to be a 15 day layover November 10th.
So you have time.
You don't have to approve anything tonight, but, you know, I guess from my thought is if you've had this for a couple of days, actually since Friday, hopefully you have questions already.
Hopefully they're being answered for you.
If you still have questions or you want more time, of course you can lay it over till next month in September.
But at the end of the day, if you're comfortable with it, I don't see a reason not to pass it.
Or make recommendations for changes.
We'll let y'all make that.
I'm going to be honest, I just haven't gone through it.
This is the biggest budget we have.
I believe it's great.
Just a couple more days and look at it would be good.
But if you all feel comfortable, I got a whole committee here.
So I'm not the only eyeball.
So no, I'm not ready to pull the trigger on this yet.
I'll entertain mostly laying it over until next 30 days.
I'll make a motion to lay it 30 days and then it should fly.
It's a great presentation.
I don't see any problems.
But I just want to look a little deeper.
But that's my opinion.
Yeah, I'll second that.
A quick question.
Is that for all of the budgets the sheriff went through?
No.
Yes.
You said yes.
So I want this to go with her.
You know, since she was seconded mine, it won't hurt.
They're going to go quickly.
So I don't have any objections though, because I saw that they were good.
The largest one that I wanted, you know, some of them I want to just go through a little bit deeper.
So that's my problem.
Well, let me ask you this.
We already approved the emergency Manager.
Do you want to do it for all?
They are all old until next month or what?
His is older.
I mean, it's more straightforward.
I just think this is our largest budget.
Okay.
A couple of extra looks at it for me.
Okay.
I'm just asking.
No.
Okay.
They're not all equal.
Okay.
All in favor?
Aye.
All opposed?
Aye.
All right.
I'm sorry, I skipped over you.
That's all right.
We'll go, we'll go to now.
The first three that got their salaries, I pulled mine off of a resolution that I was given by the county secretary was just a minor pay raise.
And then the third one is the general pool that we have to pay all of our seven deputy coroners.
Supplies went up.
That's just office supplies.
As you guys know, I'm spending more and more time in the office.
I need paper, ink, toner, letters, envelopes, stuff to that nature.
Like I explained to Mr. Bush, I was kind of just getting the office back to a baseline.
Photos and media storage stayed about the same.
That went up a little bit for just different supplies we need for that.
Meals.
The reason why that one looks so big is because I didn't have a budget for meals in 26.
So the number I pulled was off of the 25 budget, and that is just to pay people when they're at different training conferences and stuff so that they can have lunch.
Medical supplies didn't go up that much.
Gear and operational equipment.
I have a lot of stuff that's aging that needs to be replaced.
I also have maintenance items as we found out from previous meetings that weren't getting done like our $1,500 error filter that needs to be purchased every year so that was why that line item jumped up just to get all that stuff, keep it current or up to date, vehicle maintenance that didn't change anything, autopsies, I raised that a little bit and that was because when I looked back at the 25 budget the county paid out just shy of $70,000 for autopsies so I just wanted to make sure that we weren't going over budget on that mileage and fuel.
I bumped up a little bit just because of the rising cost of fuel mailing and paper, didn't go up at all.
The telephone bill went up slightly due to the rising cost of the fat bill.
And we added a couple more devices, mobile radios is the same thing where you operate on the star com system.
It's the licensee star com radios.
And I would like to add a couple more licenses to that instead of getting We're using actual radios due to the cost of the radios.
I know that was a share when we talked.
They have an app that we can get, and we just have to pay the licensing fee for the app, and it's a lot less than what the licensing fee is for the radio, so I don't have the radio cost, and I don't have the full licensing fee for the radio, so I saved some money in that respect by using an app.
Computer programs and licensing, it's just because before, like I said earlier, there wasn't a lot of use of our office.
While we're using it, I've given the deputies a workstation.
I have to put the different licensing and programming on all the computers that we have.
I've also added a few computers in our office.
And then our training budget is because I need to still attend the 40 hour corners class.
And then I also need to get the rest of my deputies up to the state mandates for training for their hours and continuing education, just to get everybody for, like I said, and I explained to Mr. Bush, put in the office back at baseline.
Any questions?
I would say, you know, this time last year, we didn't know where we was at.
We didn't know where we would lose that part with the corner budget.
We just had to do it anyway.
I really commend you for, I mean, even with that, you still kept close to what we came up with.
So, I want to thank the motion that we approved this budget.
I have a second now.
The move by Ms. Hayes.
Second.
Second by Ms. Law.
Any questions?
One question, Mr. Chairman, before we go forward.
On the salary line item, I know we must approve it, but did it go up that much from 26 to the approved from 60,471 this year?
I have the resolution right here, can you hear?
Okay yeah let me be but that I just would like to see that I should probably I just wanted to see your number on the board yeah no there it is in black and white so I just didn't it wasn't in my mind fresh so that's all I had that's why I asked for that because I didn't know what the number was either I knew there was one but I asked them to email me a copy of that so I had it for reference for my budget this year All is well.
I just want to make sure that if somebody says something that I knew, because I don't remember.
Yeah, that's where I got it.
Copy right off of there.
Gotcha.
Chairman.
Okay.
All in favor?
Aye.
All opposed?
I was happy.
Thank you.
I have some little requests.
Do we take care of those tonight?
We can discuss it.
I don't think there's an action item for it.
No, there's not.
I think Mr. Townsend would like to probably talk about it.
Yeah, yeah.
OK, go ahead.
I have submitted to you guys here before you walked in my request here for approval for something to request.
I guess I'll start off with my current vehicle is a 2020 Dodge Ram.
It's a classic crew cab 4x4.
It's got just a basic pickup truck with a 5.7 cubic engine, 5.7 bed.
It has 30,500 miles in six years.
It is in excellent shape.
I do not want to trade that in.
I'd like to keep that vehicle and pass that down to the Deputy Director of EMA.
Right now, he's using his own vehicle.
And we ran into some troubles, obviously, with the Lena and Pearl City issues and other issues throughout the years.
I know it's a bad time for the county in some respects, as far as asking for this, but I have the ability and my budget and our, uh, as the fund to pay cash for a new vehicle.
And I'm requesting a 2026 or 2027, uh, Dodge Ram treatment, 2,500, three quarter ton crew cab, four by four with a long bed.
Um, and I just feel that this vehicle is much more suited for me to be able to utilize towing, we have a hundred K, uh, W generator that is basically My plan is that I want to get this set up so we can run the EOC in the courthouse if the city of Freeport loses power, but not just for that, for any other village, any other entity that needs that power.
We have it.
We just have no way of using it, operating and towing it.
That's part of it.
I think our UTV, pulling and towing.
And then, again, I hate to keep going back to the U. N. Incident, but that taught, I think, I think all of us have a great lesson in mind, how under-prepared we really are equipment-wise.
That truck would have came in handy on a number of different reasons, as far as taller equipment, barricades, personnel, it could be utilized in a number of different ways, and that would free up the sheriff's office, free up other places too that would be utilized.
I wrote out a nice, have a justification for it.
I'm asking politely, I mean this is not necessarily a 100% need, but if we do need it, it's definitely going to be a tool and it's going to be a resource and asset for the county for many years to come.
My vision is that 2020 truck will drive for another 3, 4, 5 years and replace that.
And then that truck can go to another county department, or office, sheriff's office, county health department, highway department.
There's always need for utility trucks to run parts or whatever, training for officers.
I'm speaking out of turn here, but I know in the city we've always had that need.
That truck at that point will probably have 50,000 miles on it.
It'll be a good truck for another department for probably another five years.
So that's that's my thought process and why I want to maintain it.
Another thing is you know in a situation like we had in downtown Pearl City it's kind of foolish for Rob and I to drive around together and I don't want him driving his personal vehicle.
We both have used our personal vehicles in the past with floods back when Kevin Countryman was here before we had the truck we use our personal vehicles it's just not the way things are done.
So I just like to look at it as I know you have to go out for bid, but what kind of prices have you already been doing your homework?
Yes, I have been.
And again, this is premature because 2027s are really just starting to come out right now.
The trade in value on that truck right now, because it is a classic, would be $21,000 to $23,000.
I feel pretty confident with that.
I don't want to do that.
I'd rather keep the truck and utilize it as an asset.
A 2026 MSRP is right around $55,000.
A 2027 state bid, which is what we would go after, their forecast should be somewhere in the range of $53,000 to $55,000.
So I requested 58 because I'd like to put a hardcover top on the back I got to put lights in it and I want a little radio in it so I think 58 would more than cover this and understand the truck I'm having right now the classic is a stripped down truck I mean it doesn't have any real bells and whistles we have radio in it we have lights in it we have topper in it that's about all there is I'm gonna do the same thing with this truck but this is going to be what they call a tradesman because in the three-quarter ton range pickup truck they do not make a classic.
So I don't think it's going to be any more flashier, have thousand whistles, just that's just what it is.
That's the name of the brand of it.
So I was actually pleasantly surprised thinking that it was going to be more than that.
So I think the $58,000 projected cost is in line.
And again I want to reiterate that this is not something that's going to come from the budget.
This is something that's sitting in my account right now that we can pay Chairman, would this come as a supplemental request?
Is this how it is being brought to us right now?
Capital projects, capital purchases, I should say, yes.
So I'll just say that, you know what, I would not necessarily, Chairman, consider it a.
It is a need because I don't know why but it seemed like Illinois became the capital of the United States for tornadoes and you know I always tell people if you fill the plan I guess you plan to fail so I commend you for looking and having vision so I wouldn't project that it's something you don't need you probably do need it and the shared department and our department have done such a good job I would just like to add that if we forget to move that generator today, hypothetically for the Dakota Fire Station, we would have to borrow County High School.
I think that's just what it would be.
My halftone I think could be safe pulling it from the County Highway Department downtown here, but I don't think I'd be too comfortable taking it out on an highway going much faster than 40 miles an hour.
So, again, I know it's a lot, but I just feel that my budget can handle it, and that money sitting in my budget isn't doing us any good, and Lynette did teach us some lessons, it'd be nice to have that asset, it's a county asset, obviously if the highway department needs it, the sheriff's office needs it, corner, you know, it's a county asset, I view all of our stuff that way, we're growing emergency management and services, so.
That extra money, that $65,000 that's just in your budget, not doing you any good, where is that from?
That was just accumulated in my checkbook that they pay bills from.
I was just going to say if that money is in that account, it doesn't have to be spent, right?
It can carry over from year to year.
Yeah, I've been carrying a balance of around between $70,000 and $100,000 in that account for the four years I've been Director of Credit.
I'm not sure prior to that I didn't look back there, but it's been pretty steady.
We have not dipped into it.
It just kind of fluctuates as bills get paid.
Scott?
I'm assuming that's not the cash carried forward.
Do you have any revenues on this?
So where's the cash carried forward from the General Fund?
Cash carried forward is part of that.
Cash carried forward is my ESDA account of $74,000, my EMPG grant, which is $22,400, and emergency transfer, budget transfer of $82,800, which has not taken place yet.
That will take my account to $179,000.
I have projected $80,000 or $70,000 in expenses between now and the end of the year, so that would be approximately $100,000.
Are those on-book accounts or are they off-book accounts?
On-book accounts.
Yeah, I don't have any off-book accounts.
I'm not even sure what that is to be honest with you, but no, everything is in my blood.
Yes.
Can I continue?
The dodge that you currently have, is that being driven every day?
I would not say.
I would say five days a week.
Okay, so I guess what I'm asking, are you taking it home?
Yes, yes.
Okay, this truck, would you be taking this home?
I would say yes.
Okay, so even though the majority of the purposes for hauling this?
Correct.
And why would you be taking it home?
Because I want to give the current truck to the Deputy Director so he has a vehicle to respond to.
Okay, but you're still having to go out to EMA to pick up the equipment for this truck to haul, correct?
So yes, yes.
You've got a follow up question to that if you want more.
Yeah, no, and believe me, my questions aren't pointed directly at you, just history with the department, and it's not fair to bring that back up, but it would be, I think, irresponsible for me not to consider that because I don't know how many may directors ago, it doesn't matter but that individual had a county vehicle and drove took it on vacation took it everywhere it's always on call so that's my only concern especially with a three-quarter ton truck that is primarily for hauling it sounds like not necessarily quick response to a scene it would be my response vehicle I mean the the three quarter ton, half ton.
It's not a one ton, obviously.
It's in the middle.
And I think it meets the load panel capacities, what we want to do with it.
Um, yeah, it may be more expensive to operate.
But I wouldn't say it'd be much.
And I guess to kind of justify our use of the current vehicle, I mean, the vehicle is six years old, and we've got 30,000 miles on it.
That's a very low mileage.
I'm good with three-quarter ton.
I have your duty to pull things.
I'm good with that.
I'm just trying to go through my mind to make sure that the purpose is to haul.
I could care less if it's a one ton or three-quarter ton.
Just trying to figure out what the purpose is.
Daily driver, I guess.
Versus, I guess the point I tried to make was showing why I needed a three quarter ton versus a half ton.
I agree.
You do.
I agree.
Sam?
Yeah.
No.
Man, those are good insights.
I think that, I mean, because it's emergency management, that in itself, it would be like the sheriff's to me if they didn't take them vehicles home.
I'm assuming they'd take the vehicle.
How can you respond quickly if you have to drive back to the new job to get the emergency vehicle?
I know it's always, maybe somebody thinks it's a waste of money, but the fact, it's just part of the duty in my mind, in my mind, I'm trying to wade through it too, is that if we're going to be quick response, then you need the vehicle with you, even if it's burning a little more gas.
I don't know, my follow-up question was going to be, how far are you driving?
I'm on the north side of the report, so I can't direct you out of the source files.
Robin is the same.
Robin lives in Moorland.
That just makes it even better for me.
But that's all.
I think to be emergency management and respond as quickly as a sheriff could, if there was a disaster, probably go with the territory.
I also have a question.
Is it possible for an option of trading in the Dodge?
I mean that would make me vote yes on this because then we're not looking at a $60,000.
I want you to keep some of that in case you need it, some of that money.
You know, it's in a rainy day fund because it goes from year to year, but it's going to rain someday, so we're going to might need that.
But if we could do a trade in on it, that would make me more comfortable with the money.
I understand, and I don't disagree with that at all.
But the reason I don't want to is, again, I want to keep that truck because it's in such good shape.
And I would like the Deputy Director to have a vehicle so we can go in a separate direction at times.
Again, you know, we're an expensive insurance policy is how I kind of look at it.
You know, we're, we may have multiple villages we need to respond to if a tornado starts in Pearl City and runs through, you know, Freeport or something.
I mean, that's kind of how this business is and Robin and I driving around together.
It works, but it's not efficient.
And you know, he is very qualified Deputy Director.
I mean, if something happened to me, you could step into my job tomorrow and we would miss a beat.
So, I do think that having a second vehicle, you know, is, that's the reason why.
And it's in such good shape, and that's the other reason.
I don't think the county is going to get, you know, the value in a trade-in, other than the monetary value, when we have a good vehicle that we know is good, has been good for six years.
I know the service record on it, we've taken great care of it.
That's that's my thought process for keeping both of them and you know down the road if something happens and It rains and you decide you only want one in our department or you downsize You have asset there that can either be utilized in another department.
It's a good treat or you can sell it in two And the trucks are a high high value vehicle.
I get that but they serve great purpose, too Any other questions?
Well, I'm in favor of it.
I mean, after we met with Scott and we talked about it, I think it's a great opportunity to take advantage of it.
I mean, he got the money, it's not costing us.
The truck is in good shape.
I think we're both going to have a truck to be able to use.
I guess my question is, do you want this as a supplemental or do you want us to both?
No, we can't do nothing in that.
It's a supplemental request just because it's a capital purchase, right?
All right, if there's nothing else, you guys have anything else you want to bring up?
Commit?
Any comments?
Thank you, Scott.
One, with the sheriff's budgets, please utilize him, ask him questions, meet with him, go over it if you have questions or concerns.
Don't wait until September meeting, if you can, please.
At least come down with it, the rest of them.
Yeah, come down with it, but that's what happened.
Well, I need to ask another question, Chairman.
What was that overall increase, just because I'm looking at the numbers now?
I broke it down even farther for you.
So anything not contractual?
Yeah.
The law enforcement budget has $73,275 of wiggle room.
I'm sorry, $76,025 of wiggle room, and the corrections has $60,245 wiggle room, that's operations, that's not wages.
Do you have an updated one that you were saying that you had an updated one that you worked with?
It's on Teams, for all of you.
I can't get to Teams.
That's all right, that's all right, I'm not going to get to it on here, but I've got to do it on my phone.
I'm not criticizing you.
I just want to make sure we're utilizing the sheriff.
No, I know.
I can't access it.
Get a paper copy if you can.
Yeah, I can access it.
Am I going to pay for a paper copy?
Is that what you said?
That's not what I said.
Go down to the administration office and get a paper copy of it.
Or I'm sure the sheriff would probably supply you with one.
No.
Everybody got teamed up.
I thought I could get in through here.
I can't.
I can't get in through here.
I get it on my phone.
And I admittedly did not look at it completely.
And like I said, I think it was good.
It was presented well.
I just wanted to make sure I did not get in through here.
I did not answer your question on him either.
Overall, law enforcement is 5%, including wages, and then the overall corrections budget, which I didn't have, oh yeah, 1.64%, which is really very good.
So it's the courthouse that's.
Yes.
And when you say it's still only, that's the 10% and that one is 29,000 out of the 38,000 is operations.
So that's going to be the updates on the restrooms and electric.
Have you done any, any researching on grants to help with that because a couple of those bathrooms have to be ADA.
I already did that.
I did the two in the basement.
I don't know if I showed you those before or not.
We already have two updated, phenomenal, 3DA compliant bathrooms.
I will have to check those out next week.
I think it was $78,000 is what we ended up putting into those.
One thing to think about that courthouse, it was largely ignored for decades until Steve was elected, it's great but it's just going to take more to get it up to where it should have been all along I understand and if I just put in the more part we are really narrowing down right now the bathrooms are probably the the worst thing there all of the lighting all everything's been painted not the back Hallways and things, but those aren't utilized all the time.
Every level has been taken care of.
Every office space has been opened.
From what it was if you did squirt footage and if you remember signs years ago, move everybody out of this building back there because there's plenty of space.
All the offices have been open and every one of them is utilized.
Anybody that wants to take a tour and I'll show you what it looked like before.
I've got the pictures of the boxes to the ceiling, with the ceilings knocked out to what it is now and tell you what was in that room, nothing, and now it's a flat head office.
So I'm more than happy to do that because I'm pretty proud of it.
And you should be.
I agree.
Okay, thank you.
Can I make?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Where's all the evidence?
That used to be upstairs back in the 80s they had.
For the Sheriff's Office, that's now with the Public Safety Building.
We utilized basically that whole room.
Because that was a big room too.
Can I make a motion to adjourn?
Yes.
I'll second that.
Thank you.