Will County Executive Committee met March 25.
Here is the minutes provided by the committee:
I. CALL TO ORDER
II. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG
Mr. Brooks led the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
III. ROLL CALL
Chair Mimi Cowan called the meeting to order at 10:04 AM
| Attendee Name | Title | Status | Arrived |
| Mimi Cowan | Chair | Present | |
| Meta Mueller | Vice Chair | Present | |
| Herbert Brooks Jr. | Member | Present | |
| Mike Fricilone | Member | Present | |
| Kenneth E. Harris | Member | Present | |
| Tyler Marcum | Member | Present | |
| Jim Moustis | Member | Present | |
| Judy Ogalla | Member | Present | |
| Annette Parker | Member | Present | |
| Margaret Tyson | Member | Present | |
| Joe VanDuyne | Member | Present | |
| Rachel Ventura | Member | Present | |
| Denise E. Winfrey | Member | Present |
1. WC Executive Committee - Assignment Meeting - Mar 4, 2021 10:00 AM
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Meta Mueller, Vice Chair SECONDER: Jim Moustis, Member AYES: Cowan, Mueller, Brooks Jr., Fricilone, Harris, Marcum, Moustis, Ogalla, Parker, Tyson, VanDuyne, Ventura, Winfrey |
VI. NEW BUSINESS
1. American Rescue Plan
(Mimi Cowan)
Speaker Cowan stated I want to thank all of you for making time to come to this special meeting. I am excited about why we are here today; we have an opportunity to do some interesting and good things for our residents and community. I want to set some goals and expectations for our conversation today, give you an idea of where I want to be at the end of our meeting today and what I hope we can do going forward. In talking to Leadership and staff about how we handled the CARES Act process and how this is similar in some ways but different in others the thing I kept hearing was because of our need for speed in the CARES Act process we did a lot of throwing ideas on the table, making motions in the moment and moving forward right away. We had to do that, it was necessary and the CARES Act Committee did a great job in moving through that process. However, with these funds we have more time. We are probably not going to get these funds until sometime in May. We have a little bit more lead time and more time to expend the funds. We are going to get about half of the funds this year and half a year from now. We have more time overall; most of it does not need to be spent until 2024. The whole process allows more time and that allows us the opportunity to be a little more thoughtful. Not to insinuate the CARES Act Committee was not thoughtful because they were very thoughtful, but we can put a little more time and planning into things. The way I envision this is instead of coming out with hard and fast, such as setting up silos with money today, I would rather talk about priorities. I will go through each Committee Member, then open it up to Board Members and then to county staff members, department heads or community organizations to hear from each person, individually, very high level, very briefly where you see the biggest needs in your community or how your community has been hardest hit or what ideas you have that would work for the whole county. I want to talk about priorities. I would like to come out of this meeting with not $5 million for small business and $10 million for nonprofits, but as an example, we want to lean hard on supporting small businesses and we want to support x, y and z. Staff will be taking notes on the direction we are thinking and over the next few days staff will come up with three or four more detailed plans for us. We will put those three or four plans on one-page each, not hyper detailed because we don’t have all the guidance from the Treasury Department at this point. Staff will give us the three or four plans and we will put them on an agenda. Board Members will be able to see the plans in writing, think about them and hopefully this would be on the Executive Committee meeting agenda on April 1st and we could vote on which plan we will move forward with. If we need more time, we could vote on this at the April 8th Executive Committee meeting. We could be a little flexible with the time, giving ourselves the chance to make decisions using data and structure rather than on the fly, right now, as any decisions made will be with us for the next two years. I consider today to be information gathering session, information from among ourselves and information from other county departments and community members. You can continue this in your communities and we can do this internally within the County as well and we go forward from there. My vision of how I would like to structure today’s meeting is I would like start with hearing from each Committee Member, this is not the time to say, I know this particular small business that needs x, y and z, but time to say what industries or areas in your district or from the whole county who you think needs some type of prioritization. What I am looking to hear from everyone is; in my area we rely on our bars and restaurants for a local economy. That particular part of our economy has been hit especially hard. From constituents in my District, support for bars and restaurants would be important. I think this will be a common theme and something that affects the whole county. However, support for mental health services and addiction services, are both important and there is some overlap there. This is very high level, very brief; I am looking for bullet points. Staff will take notes to guide their creation of plans based on these suggestions in the next few days.
Mr. Fricilone stated I want to talk about our procedure first. We are bringing this through the Executive Committee, so I assume we are going to the full Board for approval of what we decide. You mentioned moving this along, but we have extra time; once we come up with whatever ideas we are talking about, it is important to bring this to our caucuses to make sure we have buy-in on the direction each caucus wants to go. Hopefully, we are thinking the same way. Rather than discussing everything at a County Board meeting, we at least get our caucuses up to speed and have those conversation, so the caucuses could come to some general consensus on where they want to go with this. I would enough time to do that so we are not going 26 different ways at the County Board meeting once we come up a plan of where we see things going.
Speaker Cowan stated I really appreciate that. That is exactly what I am trying to get by structuring this a little differently than what was done in the past. I think if we can bring some ideas to the first or second Executive Committee meeting next month, we will have time for the caucuses to go over the plans before the full Board meeting.
Mr. Fricilone asked in the attachments on the agenda what are other non-county allocation projections? Does that mean those Will County cities are getting direct money as well?
Speaker Cowan replied staff went through the list of cities and every single Will County municipality is getting their own allocation.
Mr. Fricilone stated we have 62 municipalities, I didn’t see that many on the list.
Mrs. Adams stated it is just cities; there are no townships listed on the attachment.
Mr. Fricilone stated I thought we had 62 municipalities in Will County. I did not count all of the yellow lines and maybe it is all 62.
Mrs. Adams stated it was proofed based on the County Clerk’s website for municipalities.
Mr. Fricilone stated the last I heard, a city had to have a population of 50,000 or more to get a direct allocation and those are the ones that are in the metro. I did not realize there would be direct allocations to cities as well.
Speaker Cowan stated it is the non-entitlement allocation projections. It does look like they are getting something.
Mr. Palmer stated I was on a call with the Will County Governmental League and there is a difference, the metro areas are the bigger cities. There was some concerns from Joliet. For some reason even though they are the third or fourth largest city in the state, they are quite a ways down on the allocation list. I don’t know if that was a mistake, but they are 30 something in allocation, which is a concern. Springfield, Rockford and Peoria are ahead of Joliet’s allocation. I think there are other factors, but if it was based on population they should be much higher.
Speaker Cowan stated they used 2020 HUD data to identify populations eligible for assistance and may not include those that relinquished their CDBG allocation. It is not just a per capita allocation.
Mr. Palmer stated one list has the breakout is for the bigger cities and one for the smaller communities. We can provide Board Members with the list the Governmental League put out that has all of our Will County communities on one list.
Mr. Fricilone asked do the non-entitlement allocations have different guidelines than our guidelines? Do they have some other set of rules to follow? Are they getting it for something specific? Is it like us, they follow all the rules too?
Speaker Cowan replied the guidelines we have for state and local fiscal recovery funds does not say counties have to follow this rule, metro cities follow this rule and non-entitlement allocation areas follow this rule; it looks like they are the same. In reference to the non-entitlement communities, it says this means villages and town governments will be receiving a direct allocation of federal assistance, but village amounts are not included because of the complications of calculating those amounts. I believe this is going to be like the CARES Act funding where the Treasury kept sending out different guidelines. As far as I can see, the guidelines for disbursements by local governments are all the same and they are pretty broad.
Mr. Fricilone stated that puts a whole new dynamic on what we do, if cities are getting money. Since revenue replacement was part of it, I thought we would give a flat fee allocation to all our municipalities and townships for revenue replacement. Now that has changed if they are getting their own allocation. That is one component I would be interested in. We talked, in our last go around, about hazard pay and we held it over until we got this money. I think we should have a component where we give hazard to every one of our county employees for everything they have endured for the last year; that would be another component. Certainly the business grant. We said in previous meetings, we are reestablishing a business grant program. We just have to determine what money we will allocate and what kind of new criteria we might put on it. Is it the same criteria or will we expand it? This is my most important component and I talked about this at our last meeting; we need to immediately work on establishing the family stabilization unit. I think that group would bring together many of the disciplines you were talking about; substance abuse, food shortage, mental health issues, for those underserved populations and work with the entire family instead of just one little component of it. This will move the entire family into a place where they can be whole and move forward.
Ms. Mueller stated I like a lot of what we are talking about so far. I want to let my caucus know I agree with Mr. Fricilone about how we need to handle this. I hope you are ready to sort this out. My ideas, like Speaker Cowan’s district, restaurants and shopping are a big deal in my district. Downtown Plainfield is my district. I hope you have all visited and know this is a big deal for part of my district with dining out, shopping and the small businesses around here, they definitely need our help. I would like to continue with that. I am concerned about broadband in our County. I have been talking with folks and there are gaps in places I did not realize there were gaps. The reason broadband is such big deal, is because I have concerns that this could happen again, there could be a variant and I want our communities to be able to go back into working and schooling from home and not have it be such a chore as it was the last time. Broadband is a huge deal for every family whether you are remote working or schooling kids from home, broadband can really change a community’s ability to access service. I would like us to look at where we have gaps and see how we can support making that more robust. Another thing is our transportation services throughout the County. What Ms.
Garlich’s department does, if we had more of that, all over the county, we would be able to get our seniors and people with disabilities to where they need to get to, especially during times where it is harder to have family helping out. I also want us to work on subsidizing mental health benefits to help middle and low income families where there are gaps in services for things they need for their children and families to live their healthiest lives, whether it is mental health services or developmental services for children. Another thing I would like to see is subsidizing childcare so we can help our single parents get back to work more easily during this time that people are starting to go back into offices.
Ms. Hennessy stated for the non-entitlement communities, the money goes to the state and the state will distribute it. Right now, the only guidelines out are the assumption everyone follows the same thing. I think that is something that will develop before the funds actually get disbursed. I wanted everyone to understand, those communities are not getting a direct allocation from the Treasury, it has to go through the state. They will not get their money in 60 days like we will; it will be 60 days to the state and another 30 or 60 days before they see anything.
Mr. Moustis stated I represent a large rural area. I am going to propose, right from the beginning, that 10% of all the funds be dedicated to rural communities and issues. It may be different programs or it could be the same programs that go throughout the county. I think the rural areas should get their share of these funds and 10% is not unreasonable. This is not like the CARES Act, where we had seven months to disburse the money. At the very end, they gave us an extension, but through the whole process we were working on a six month timeline. This is really a three year program and with a three year program we should have flexibility as we go along. Things could change a little bit or the needs could change, but the broad based issues we have we will have for the next three years. Those issues are housing and food insecurity. I don’t think we always recognize how insecure people are with food. I am very involved with food pantries and I can tell you, the need continues to grow. It is not always the people you think, they just don’t tell you how dire things are for them. We have Will Ride, which is the county’s mobility program and we have townships that are part of Will Ride that provide local transportation. We should take a hard look at transportation and give an allocation to Will Ride and how that filters down to local providers, we can discuss later. Certainly, there should be funds for mobility. Allocations to business should be job protection, keeping employees on the job and there should be a connection between their allocations and workforce. In the last round, which did not come from us, many businesses took advantage of the PPE money and owners of businesses were just putting that money in their pockets; they did not lay anybody off and it was a bonus for them. I think workforce is an extremely important area. It should be part of a three-year program, continuing to improve people’s skill levels and giving grants or scholarship where you can go to a two year college or technical school. We should take a hard look at workforce. We have our
Workforce Services who gets allocations from the federal government, but it is not that much and we should improve that area over the three-year period. We should look at three year budget and project three years out, not one year. In the three year plan there should be some flexibility to shift if we need to. I don’t think we need to rush. Today we are throwing out ideas. I think we should go back to our caucuses and talk about ideas being thrown out, see what comes out of the caucuses and then get together as a group or the entire County Board. We don’t need to rush, we can give this a lot of thought as opposed to the CARES money.
Ms. Ventura stated I agree having a three year budget is a good idea. Instead of doing a Band-Aid fix for some of these things, it would be nice to use this money as an investment for longer term programs or some type of infrastructure. The biggest need in the Joliet, Crest Hill and Lockport area is better paying jobs, living wage jobs. We have lost jobs and many of the jobs that stayed were “essential workers”, but a lot of those were warehouse jobs and not all of those paid very well and they are a lot of work on peoples’ bodies. Job creation is a hard thing for us to funnel money into. But a long term training program, almost a three year job guarantee would be nice; you would do training and then you do a job. The job could be tied to what other Board Members have said, like when Ms. Mueller talked about broadband. Will County could potentially create public broadband to offer competition and get rid of the monopoly in the areas, but the workforce would have to be paid for people to put this work in. Then people could choose to purchase Will County broadband in the future. That would be a long term goal and future work, but the investment up front would create jobs. The other thing is the food and housing insecurities. We had housing needs before COVID and I am hoping the ERA funds will help keep people in their homes. But, we still need housing, especially for the homeless, transitional housing and even if we were to expand some of our specialty courts a lot of those need housing, especially drug court or some of the mental health courts and those are areas we could look to build housing. We could work with a developer and once those houses were built we could turn them over to HUD or some other agency to would run it. I am not suggesting Will County become landlords, but I am suggesting we spend money in housing. There was a HOMES program and it looks like money went into the act for that particular type of program and there was definitely money in there for investment into broadband. Continuing with some type of food pantry or money being put into the entities who are doing that would be good. I would also like to see mental health services expanded, whether it is at our Will County Health Department, it is important to expand those services beyond what is currently available in the requirement base. Right now, you have to have an income below a certain amount in order to receive services. For people who make more money, their insurance may not cover mental healthcare. This is an area we could look at. How do we expand mental health services to every single person who needs it? We have never gone through COVID and we don’t know what the fallout is going to be and how people are going to deal with going back to work or school or whatever fallouts might be happening. There is a lot of anxiety. When COVID hit we did not know it was coming and we have all adapted. Now we are going back to “normal” and people are thinking about that and the fears, so we will probably see more mental health situations and we need to be prepared for it. Europe is putting billions of dollars into mental healthcare for their residents across different countries. There is a stigma about mental health and our insurance doesn’t always cover it and when it does there may be limited visits. This is an area we could help more people out than just those on Medicaid or whatever the income requirement is. The last, very specific thing, which I don’t know how we could help, but Joliet needs its bridges working. The state pushed back the opening of the Jefferson Street and Brandon Road bridges. This prevents people from getting from either side of town and creates traffic hazards to other places. I don’t know if we could pool with the money the state and city are getting and make sure these bridges get fixed and again, that would create jobs. If we created an aspect where you could come to Will County, get trained for a job and go work on that job that would be really ideal.
Speaker Cowan stated Ms. Caroline Portlock is on the meeting and we have those services in Will County. I think we could definitely talk about expanding. That is a federally funded program so maybe we can discuss with Ms. Portlock how some of these funds could be used to expand their services.
Ms. Tyson stated I agree with most of the people who have already spoken. I would like to see more money thrown into childcare. Once people start working again, whether they are single person or a couple, childcare is going to be very expensive. People need someone to take care of their children and they may be working more hours to earn more money to supplement the money they lost over the last year. After school programs need to be funded more because some of them require a certain income level or it costs extra. After school programs are a good way to use the money. We need to have something for eldercare. Many people have three generations living in their homes. Eldercare is very expensive so that would be a nice place to put some money. Then there are people like me, with family members who have cancer. You have to take off time from work to care for your family members for cancer. There are cases where you still get paid, but in some cases you don’t and that would fill the gap. I have a friend who is a psychologist and she said her workload is so much right now that she needs more people to come onboard because so many people are suffering from the pandemic and need mental health services. More people are doing illegal drugs because they need a respite from the stress they are feeling from the pandemic. We need more mental health services for our communities. When it comes to bars, restaurants, nail salons, barber shops some of these businesses are gone, but some of them can come back if we give them some funding.
Speaker Cowan stated a lot of the things we are talking about, are receiving funding from the federal government. There is support for childcare, nutrition assistance, bars and restaurants and that is one of the pieces we have to investigate; how much support is going to certain programs and certain areas and do we want to put even more support toward those areas.
Mrs. Ogalla stated I agree with a lot of things people said. We need to make sure whatever we decide, we remember this money is not going to be there forever. We can’t over do in an area because some people will be left with nothing. We need to make sure we do something to help people move out of their current income level and that would be with job training programs. Child and eldercare makes a lot of sense because those are all issues most of us dealt with. It would be nice to have some extra money for those programs. I asked in my community and the biggest things are water and sewer lines and stormwater. With so few drainage districts around anymore, stormwater and flooding are big issues in the unincorporated area. Due to technical issues Mrs. Ogalla left the meeting.
Ms. Winfrey stated I have four things on my list; the first is the family stabilization program presented by Franklin County. I see that as an overall framework that could expand to three years and would allow us to put the programs in place longer term so we can budget that money. I want to support that. I want to support small businesses in two ways; direct money to the businesses to keep them going or bring them back around. The other would be a program that allows us to create a fund for businesses that are operating or those that want to start up to be draw from the money as a loan program. There is framework for that and I have an article about that from the Chicago Tribune. The other is broadband. People on these calls don’t have broadband or full range broadband services so certainly that is a need in our county.
Speaker Cowan stated I agree about the business grants. We can do some direct payments to help people get through the next few months. Mr. Palmer and I have been talking to some people about what we were calling a revolving loan program or microloan program. I think that is something we should look at; building longer term success. Ms. Winfrey you mentioned you could reach out to Franklin County about doing a presentation for us. Would you work with Mr. Palmer to find a date we could do a Committee of the Whole with them?
Ms. Winfrey replied yes.
Mrs. Ogalla rejoined the meeting and stated I was saying stormwater is a big issue. I would like us to provide the Stormwater Committee with additional money for matches for projects. The local, small communities have a hard time addressing their stormwater issues. Another issue is food insecurity. We having been working with the National Hook Up of Black Women and MAPP to put together a program for community gardens and training people how to grow food, market it, how to sell it and that could come to food pantries. Some of these areas don’t have food pantries or freezers and refrigerators large enough for this. I have worked with a lot of popup food locations and sometimes those foods are not properly stored during the time people are coming to get them. Also a training program and possibly scholarships to JJC since they have an agricultural program. There are so many jobs in agricultural and we could train kids in local areas to develop a small mini farm, while going to JJC for the Ag program. That will allow them to apply those skills and get a better paying job elsewhere. I agree with what others have said and these would be my additions. I like Ms. Ventura’s idea of getting transportation and capital projects moving forward in our area. Bridges are a big issue and you can’t drive around because they are not working.
Mr. Van Duyne stated I am enjoying listening to all these ideas; I have not heard a bad one yet. I want to see the small businesses, bars and restaurants try to make a comeback. They have been devastated by the pandemic. Like Mr. Moustis said; I don’t want to see the bar owners and the restaurants to have the money put back into individual pockets. If we could tie it into making sure their employees are employed so the money can filter down and see more people employed would be nice. At the beginning of the conversation we talked about municipalities getting money, I don’t know if park districts, school districts and other taxing bodies are included in that. A couple of park districts, not only in my district, have reached out to me and explained their loss of revenue because of the pandemic and I would like to focus on the park districts and school districts as well. I feel the school districts tried to do as good of a job as they could with e-learning, but I don’t feel the education was as good as being in person, so if we could somehow, supplement the school districts to make our education even better when they kids come back.
Mrs. Parker stated there are some great ideas being thrown out. I agree small businesses like the bars and restaurants were hit hard so I would like to see some money go back into them. There have been a lot of businesses shuttered. There are vacant building now. Maybe helping people who want to start up a business, but are uneasy about doing it at this time; so a loan or some aspect like that. Increased transportation for disabled and elderly. Helping with mental health and addiction needs. Lastly, there are some nonprofits not included in the CARES funding, whether they had youth programs or others that were not part of the 501-c-3 area. Maybe helping them with programs they are doing in the community.
Mr. Brooks stated my comments are no different than Ms. Winfrey. If I had to pick low hanging fruit it would be small businesses, minority owned businesses and nonprofits. I have hundreds of people come through my church and I literally have to hid under my desk to stop people from stopping me to tell me about the suffering they have gone through in my district with small businesses
Mr. Brooks left at this juncture.
Mr. Harris stated my top would be small businesses and doing something for them. Included in the small businesses you have maintaining their workforce. Also encouraging the trades and training on getting the paperwork in place. I have encountered many businesses that don’t know they are in business and they need the help. We need to help them strive to be self-supporting. The nonprofits are the backbone of our community, they are looking for help and they want to help, so we need to do something for them. As far as job training; an example in a restaurant or fast food place, something as simple as knowing how to clean is what they are struggling with. If they can’t find an adequately trained workforce then they will have problems if they are the owner and doing all the work. I encounter that a lot. I have businesses calling me who need help getting their paperwork in order and they need help. A lot of what we are talking about; food banks, rental assistance, utility assistance, seniors, a lot of that is falling under the local governments. I am hoping people now see the importance of their local government. I have been trying to share as much as I can with our township and to let them know they have to step up their game. I am looking forward to addressing some of the issues that have already been outlined, such as rental assistance, broadband, mobility and we need assistance for our township. I hope other municipalities do their planning as we are doing our planning so we can get answers back to the residents. I hope they would work with us to avoid confusion. We should try to do more communicating and try to step up our game as far as communication to Board Members. I am still getting inquiries about the CARES money and now we have the American Relief Funds, so I hope we can get some communications out. I’m not talking about more e-mails, I am talking about links to remind people there is a press release on behalf of the County Executive that we can refer people to. I agree this is a three year program so we don’t have to rush, but we should try to get the information out and let the residents and taxpayers know help is coming and just be patient. We have an opportunity to make a difference in our community and based on the last year the community has a new found respect for County government. I would like to continue that and let them know we are here, we are major force and we can make a difference in the lives of our taxpayers.
Speaker Cowan stated you brought up a point I thought of, but forgot to mention; that is communications. I agree with you, making sure we are communicating outwardly about everything that is going on, all the good things we are doing in this area and actually putting aside some funds to get this information to the public might be a good idea.
Mr. Marcum stated I agree with focusing on things that pay a dividend in the future. Like several members mentioned, doing training through JJC, other community colleges or Workforce Development. That will help us in the long run not only recover from the pandemic but set a higher bar for the future. The Joliet Park District has been decimated by the pandemic. They had a lot of good programs going and they are doing everything they can to get all their programs running. They run a lot of programs for kids and the SRJC, which is a special rec program that helps people with special needs. Those are programs that can help and I know other park districts have similar programs that we can help support that will pay dividends in the long run.
Speaker Cowan stated right before you said special rec districts I wrote that down on my list. Park districts have been hit really hard because their programs had to be shut down. The special rec districts have been hit even harder because the work they do is so much more interactive and hands on. That goes to childcare. Parents rely on the special rec district programs to support their kids with special needs while they are at work. In other cases, after school and summer hours are important so I think that is really great. We might want to talk to the Forest Preserve to see how we can support them, all in the park district arena. When Mr. Harris was talking about job training, people not having some basic skills and wanting to get somewhere; I mentioned this when I met with Ms. Caroline Portlock. She had some really awesome data about what employers are looking for and where the gaps are in our workforce. I think relying on Ms. Portman to get some of that data and figure out where everyone is saying we can invest so that we make some long term, bigger changes for people.
Mrs. Ogalla stated I spoke with a couple of groups; one is the small, local EMAs. Their funding levels from the Village, such as Beecher, are very low. They don’t have radios to communicate, they are looking for generators and lights to put up and a portable sign. The Will County Fairgrounds is a designated emergency shelter, if there is a tornado or blizzard the local, state and county police bring people to the shelter. They could use some generators to run the whole place should they ever have a large need.
Mr. Moustis stated Mr. Marcum made me think of something; that is one of the areas that made our CARES program really successful and unique is we included all taxing bodies; libraries, park districts and townships we included everybody. We should continue that inclusion of all taxing bodies. They don’t all have the same needs and some may not have any needs, but just the fact we are including them is extremely important. Mr. Marcum brought that up and I wanted to reiterate and say it is one of the areas that made our CARES program uniquely successful.
Ms. Freeman stated I would like to see assistance go to small businesses. I would like to look at nonprofits that specifically support the community. So you are looking at food pantries, American Legions, VFWs, the shelters, foster care hones. I was raised in a family that took in foster kids and I am aware there is a burden there to begin with. Also childcare, eldercare and transportation is something we always need to look into for our elderly and special needs individuals to get them to where they are going. Job training, but I also think we need to help with a job search. I have talked with several middle aged residents who no longer have a job, their job was eliminated and being middle aged it is harder to find employment. If we could provide job searches or someone to help them with the search and the development of a resume I think that would be beneficial.
Speaker Cowan stated Workforce Services provides those services for not just middle aged workers, but for all aged workers. There is help with resumes, job training and finding a job. If you have residents looking for a jobs, you need to talk with Ms. Portlock immediately and she will give you the lowdown on how to get those people the help. They will help recent high school graduate and the person with a five page resume of executive level experience. They do the whole range of job services with help finding jobs, especially in this time who has lost their job in the last year or so.
Ms. Ventura stated I am very familiar with Workforce Services and I share their workshops all the time. When I talked about this, I meant specific new job creation the County would be creating. As an example, if we were going to lay broadband we would train those individuals to do the job and they would go out and do the work; much like how the federal government had a job guarantee with the work program. I was talking about something in addition to what Workforce does. They can keep doing their thing, but this would be specific training for jobs we would do. If people are not sharing the flyers we are getting from Workforce, you should, they are great things to get out into the community.
Mr. Pretzel stated I want to make sure hazard and bonus pay specifically for our Sheriff’s deputies and COs, remains high on our list. The Sheriff’s department needs additional funding for vehicles. I have heard from someone in the IT department that said for $400,000 they could completely update all of their computer systems to make them more compatible. With the passing of HB3653 additional training is going to be essential regarding use of force, cameras and de escalation tactics. I would like to see us allocate some funds for that. They could use a full time clergy, a media relations coordinator or a new position for media relations, three area captains to directly oversee day to day operations and possibly up to five new deputies for patrol. I heard requests from multiple people who work in the jail they would like to go to 12 hour shifts and that would require additional manpower. I agree our parks could use some support. We have realized now, more than ever, the importance of getting outside and exercising. I want to find some funding for that. I would like for us to look at modernizing our county buildings as well.
Speaker Cowan stated that is a good point about the increased training costs for the Sheriff’s Department. It looks like we are going to be getting rid of cash bail we need to find another source of revenue to support the operations of the courthouse, ADF and Sheriff, there is a whole bundle of things we need to consider there.
Mrs. Berkowicz stated my conversations with those in the community revolves around mental health and the increasing impact of drug abuse. I would like to make sure we keep that as one of our top priorities and to assist those organizations that work in the community, including the Health Department for Dr. Burke’s programs. I feel it is critical, it takes a long time and some people never get over this. Every day is a challenge and our programs are strapped. Our therapist don’t have enough time in the day. I think that is very important. That is all tied into everything else we are seeing; homelessness, increased needs for transitional housing and giving people the ability to pick up the pieces and provide for their families with job training. We have great organizations that have been mentioned. Many community colleges and schools that provide these services. I would like to make sure we keep that as a priority to support these existing organizations, not to recreate the wheel or create our own county functions, but to support the existing organizations. They have it all set up, they are doing great things and I don’t think we need to recreate it, but we can really be there to support them and help their programs to grow. We have seen the impact to agricultural. I would like to support our local farmers, agricultural businesses and our Farm Bureau. Let’s support them and open up the doors to bringing in more people and getting them involved. Supporting our local libraries and colleges who have a lot of these programs. EMA and law enforcement are trying to pick up a lot of the pieces and coordinate a lot of services because of COVID and because of our transition to getting back to normal. We need to support them. I think the county has done a great job and we are not out of the woods yet, but I think that we have done a really good job working together. We have some really great ideas and I am looking forward to getting through this next program.
Ms. Tyson stated I think it would be nice to have a mentorship program coupled with providing grants and scholarships to 2021 high school graduates. I think that would help them get a good footing because of the uncertainty they have had to deal with over the last year. Many students didn’t have the fun that most seniors should have. I think if they had a mentorship this would help them go forward. If they had someone in county government to talk to about jobs and have a career day, maybe they would look at county government as a job to go to. I think that would help a lot in our community and it would keep students in Illinois and Will County.
Mr. Moustis stated we had this issue about hazard pay or bonus pay. Part of my problem was how it was presented last time and it just included the Sheriff’s Department. I support and will support hazard pay for all our employees, especially for those who came to work every day, on premise. If we are going to do something along that line, we should include all employees not just some of the employees.
Mrs. Ogalla stated when we are talking about hazard pay, we need to consider that certain employees had a higher possibility of exposure to COVID than others. That would be our jail, our Sheriff’s Deputies and our nursing homes; front line workers in other situations, probably not as much. My concern about providing hazard pay for every employee is that our county employees never lost their jobs, nobody was let go, they were provided with health insurance and all their benefits for the entire time and paid while they were at home and possibly not working until we got it set up and knew they would be working from home for a longer period of time. Many people who are not County employees went to work every single day. My husband was one of them and he is currently laid off. I think we should be careful because our employees were paid. Hazard pay should go to those who had an exposure. I would support hazard pay to the deputy coroners, but I do not support hazard pay for every employee because they were fortunate to have a job when many people in the public did not have a job and some are not working today.
Speaker Cowan stated we all recognize the need for some hazard pay so we are going to have to discuss further. I think that will need to be a specific agenda item at some point. We will have three plans in front of us and know exactly what the costs are, who we are talking about, what the designations would be and we are going to have to take a vote on that.
Mr. Ronaldson stated you are talking about mobility and transit; I meet almost weekly, with my counterparts in the nearest counties. Some of their systems for transit are more developed than ours and that is a big issue for them. They are the same issues you are mentioning, mobility and the impact to suburban back and forth, not necessarily to Cook County but amongst ourselves between our local counties. Development of that, is something that could be looked at. In the County’s 2040 Plan a transit study was recommended. It is something that might be worth considering, investigating and working on that as part of this. The second thing my counterparts were talking about is the revenue replacement aspect of this new plan. While most of our funds, thankfully, held their own, the State MFT did not. To put it on the record, as you move forward, the county DOT’s state portion of MFT loss is just under $2.9 million, in our fiscal year 20 budget. This is something to keep in mind as you move forward with your deliberations.
Mr. Brad Staab, Joliet Park District stated I heard park districts mentioned a couple of times and I appreciate the support. The Joliet Park District is set up a little bit differently than other park districts; we are 30% funded through taxes and 70% through user fees. The mandated closures really hit us hard. We were forced to lay off around 450 people last year. I heard special recreation mentioned; we partnered with District 86 and Troy schools and created a remote learning program in the fall of 2020 which helped the community and we were there to support local families. We continued to maintain over 70 parks and 15 facilities. We have been here from start to finish, those of us who have been able to stay with the district, have been here for the community. We offer a lot to the community and we think we are going to be a big part of the recovery as we start getting back to normal. We are the third largest park district in the State. The mandated closures and cancelations cost us around $4 million. We know we are going to be key part to getting the Joliet and Will County community back on their feet. We intend to uphold that obligation. We are hoping you understand our unique situation and that we only get 30% of our funding from taxes. It really devastated the district last year. We not only offer special recreation but we have 15 facilities from the east side to the west side of Joliet and we serve well over one million people each year from all age groups. We have heard park districts and special recreation mentioned throughout the morning. We have not been addressed at all. We were not eligible for PPP or any of the funding that has been available. We have basically been left to figure it out for ourselves. We have been doing the best we can, but we could use some support. Thank you for your consideration. If you have any questions, we are available and we would love to sit down with you for a longer conversation, if you have questions about our situation.
Speaker Cowan stated thank you. I think that gives some color to our conversations about the park districts, especially the part about the 400 plus jobs lost. Supporting our park district is not just about making sure there a programs and we have fun places to go, but it is a job generator. We will probably reach out to you, because having that kind of data to support our decisions going forward will be important.
Ms. Portlock stated thank you to everyone who put an importance on workforce and workforce training because we believe it is very important. Workforce Services, works closely with employers on recruiting and retention needs. We work with our training providers to be sure the skills people are learning are aligned with employer needs. We work with job seekers on job ready initiatives, including job searches, creating resumes and career scholarships. I will follow up with Ms. Freeman with specific information on how we can help folks displaced at this point. All of the services available, are at no cost to the residents. It does not matter if you are unemployed, underemployed or you just want to refresh your resume, we have services available for that. Workforce is available and willing to assist in any way to be sure the funds we receive are allocated in a way that will have a lasting change for the unemployed, underemployed and our employers in the County.
Mrs. Ogalla stated I worked with Workforce Services and Ms. Portlock to put together a job fair in my area so they could find the local employers looking to hire. People were able to come, they had someone who could help with resumes, some people had an interview right there and several were hired by local businesses that came out. We provided cookies, coffee and water and it was a nice day. We did a great job advertising and we did it right at the time high school students were graduating. For students not going on to college it gave them an opportunity to look at the types of jobs they might get. One high school graduate was able to get in with Aqua Water, which has been beneficial. Others were able to get hired as well. I think that would be a great thing to work with Ms. Portlock to put together little job fairs in your districts, because the employers are different all over the county. Then you could reach out to those who lost their jobs due to COVID shut downs and see if there is a local job they might be able to get right now. That was a huge benefit, they provided different forums for people; writing resumes, learning how to use word, anything they needed to brush up their job skills. It was a great, successful day. I think that is something that would be beneficial for everyone to look into.
Mr. Fricilone stated I wanted to mention after the Joliet Park District talked; when we do our calculations on where we are going with money, we are going to have to be very cognizant of the fact that there are a couple of cities, like Joliet, getting a direct allocation and that is where the park district should be going, directly to the city, especially if the other list means the state doesn’t give other cities direct money. We are trying to help everybody and if Joliet already is getting help directly from the feds then we have to look to see who is not getting money that we can help.
Speaker Cowan stated that is a great point. I have a great list and I kept notes on everything. I am going to take a look at these, try to put them in categories, sit down with staff and leadership in the next couple of days to come up with a couple different formatting ideas about how we move forward. I want to make sure there are items we can put on an agenda, people can look at it ahead of time, think about, have discussion about it at one of our next meetings and vote on which plan we would like to move forward with in guiding our work from here. We heard a lot about workforce development and I am really happy that everyone seems to agree this is really a great opportunity, not just for a one off payment. Off course, there are some businesses that need a one off payment to get through the next couple of months, but that we are going to be leveraging this money, as Mr. Marcum said, it pays us dividends in the County. I think that is great. I was thankful Mrs. Ogalla and Ms. Ventura brought up infrastructure issues. This is a great example of why having County Board Members in different areas is great because honestly I tend to forget about the infrastructure stuff, because where I live, that is not the most important thing to my voters, but it is very important to our county and to our economic development. I think we have a great list of things. This is the silver lining to what has been an outrageous year and now we have the opportunity to make some substantial differences in a positive way in our community. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to do this. I hope everyone is excited about that.
VII. OTHER NEW BUSINESS
VIII. PUBLIC COMMENTS
Mrs. Jakaitis read the following e-mail into the record.
From: Deb Savage
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2021 9:58 PM
To: CB Public Comment <publiccomment@willcountyillinois.com>
Subject: Comments for 3/25 10am Meeting
I see that the Cities and Villages will be getting an allotment of funds from the American Rescue county funds. I am wondering if townships will also receive funds directly to further assist township residents in need with housing aid, homeowners assistance, utility bills, and low income childcare or if the township role will be helping residents to access village/city, county, or state funds?
Thank you.
Debi
Debi Savage RN, MSN, BSN
IL Health Facilities & Services Review Board Chairwoman
IL COVID-19 Ambassador
Will County Regional Office of Education Trustee & VP
DuPage Township Democrat Precinct 13 Committeewoman
Bolingbrook Beautification Commissioner
District 99 Education Foundation Board Member
IL Democratic Women of Will County Membership Director
ANA-IL Legislative Committee Member
Exchange Club of North Will County Board Member & Community Service Chair
Christ the Servant Church Administration & Finance Council
Speaker Cowan stated we don’t typical respond to public comment, but just to clarify, we did cover this. It looks like townships are not receiving their own allocations, but might be part of our conversation to give townships a direction portion of our allocation. We would certainly help townships get connected with the services as the comment mentioned and directing townships to come to County for services or municipal services as needed.
IX. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR
Speaker Cowan stated I will mention this at all of our meetings, so hopefully everyone remembers; it is that time of the year again, where if you are on the County health plan that you need to do your Will Be Well points so you don't have to pay the surcharge. I know this was a problem for some employees and Board Members last year because in the mist of everything we just forgot to do it and had to pay the surcharge. I wanted to start reminding everyone to watch out for the Will Be Well e-mails and message, get your points and don't pay the surcharge.
X. EXECUTIVE SESSION
XI. ADJOURNMENT
1. Motion to Adjourn at 11:33 AM
https://willcountyil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=15&ID=4016&Inline=True
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