Will County Finance Committee met March 1
Here are the minutes provided by the committee:
I. CALL TO ORDER
II. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG
Ms. Tyson led the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
III. ROLL CALL
Chair Jacqueline Traynere called the meeting to order at 11:30 AM
| Attendee Name | Title | Status | Arrived |
| Jacqueline Traynere | Chair | Present | |
| Margaret Tyson | Vice Chair | Present | |
| Mike Fricilone | Member | Present | |
| Tyler Marcum | Member | Present | |
| Jim Moustis | Member | Present | |
| Judy Ogalla | Member | Present | |
| Frankie Pretzel | Member | Present | |
| Rachel Ventura | Member | Present |
Also Present: N. Palmer
Present from the State's Attorney's Office: K. Meyers
IV. OLD BUSINESS
1. Monthly Summary - Sales Tax and Cannabis Tax Collections
(Karen Hennessy)
Ms. Traynere stated I don’t know if Ms. Hennessy would like to comment on our growing pile of Cannabis Tax Money.
Ms. Hennessy stated usually you don’t have me go through it, but I’d be happy to do that if you would like me to.
Ms. Traynere said just if there were any questions from the members.
Ms. Ventura said on the State Tax and the supplemental. You have it budgeted at 19 and the actual is at 27; but then down below it says for the same period we have less sales tax; is that just because of the months accounting or are we seeing less money being brought in. I am not sure what the supplemental tax is.
Ms. Traynere said I think that is the replacement tax. Let’s let Ms. Hennessy tell us.
Ms. Hennessy said I am not quite sure what you are looking at. The first box is the FY22 which just started December 1st; We have very few collections. That little chart is just the budget, any collections year to date and then the precent. The second one is FY21 that ended November 30th.; we are still receiving payments for that period of time. That will have the budget, the actual collections, and then a variance between the budget and actual for last year.
Ms. Ventura said so you are showing 2021 it is at that growth. Thank you.
Ms. Hennessy said the reason I did that is because we are still having activity in 2021; and not as much yet in 2022 just because of the delays and the built-in process of the collection cycle. You are seeing two different years; that is so you can see the budget from year to year and then what we actually collected.
Ms. Traynere said to Ms. Ventura’s comment earlier, supplemental tax. I see here the replacement tax is separate; what is supplemental tax?
Ms. Hennessy said it’s 0.25% of sales tax that we collect countywide, because we don’t have or own so what the state collects, we get a portion of it. That is the biggest portion of sales tax that we receive.
Ms. Ventura said so we have a state sales tax, then the local use tax, and then the supplemental tax. If we are getting an additional 0.25% of the sales tax what is the first one, then.
Ms. Hennessey said off the top of my head I would have to go look up the definitions.
Ms. Traynere said I think that would be helpful Ms. Hennessey because I would expect to see RTA Tax here.
Ms. Hennessey said it is there, it is down at the bottom. The way this is broken up the first couple are in the corporate fund and used for general operations of the county. The bottom three are special revenue funds because those taxes are restricted as to how they can be used. For next month I will add a definition of each of the taxes.
Ms. Traynere said that would be great; I’m trying to bring a little more transparency to this whole process for people who are not professional bean counters.
Ms. Hennessey said I guess the point I can make is the county does not have its own general sales tax. Everything we get is a share of what the state collects. The only taxes that we have enacted are the motor fuel tax which is new; and the cannabis tax which are newer also. As far as sales tax the county doesn’t have its own.
Ms. Traynere said but we also get a portion of the state’s sales tax on the cannabis, right? It just gets confusing, and it would be nice if we could really be transparent about it and make sure that all our members can understand. So, thank you very much for that commitment to add that addition to the report.
V. OTHER OLD BUSINESS
VI. NEW BUSINESS
1. Appropriating Grant Funds from the IDPH COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Grant Extension into the Health Department Budget
(Susan Olenek)
Ms. Olenek said these are two of three appropriations that we are going to be bringing this week. Fortunately, additional dollars keep coming in for our COVID 19 response. This grant is going to address certain workforce and sustainability initiatives that we are looking to do. One of which is putting together a central call center permanently for the Health Department. We have found that having a central call center through COVID-19 has been a good thing; we feel it is the best level of customer service, we have an operations manager who has a lot of experience with call centers. She was our call center liaison with the initial call center with Harris and Harris. She is working on this to bring together a call center for the whole department. The thought is that when somebody calls the Health Department or Health Center to make an appointment, to ask a question, they get a live person. They will not get an automated attendant they will get a live person who will then be able to answer their questions and make an appointment for them, change an appointment, anything like that. we’ve got quite a few details to work out with staffing, space, and whatnot. This grant will allow us to do that call center, it will also allow us to provide additional funds for maintaining what we’ve used through COVID-19 to help do this. It is a big undertaking.
Ms. Traynere said that is good news.
Ms. Ventura said if we are going to need a motion to move this forward, but that is very exciting. I know Ms. Olenek has heard me say that those automated systems are very frustrating; if you are calling the Health Department for mental health illness, or any treatment the last thing you want to do is talk to a machine. I think having a person answering the phone is so crucial to the service we can provide people so thank you so much and I will be happy to make that motion if you need one.
Mr. Fricilone asked I understand this grant is going to allow you to set that up; is this going to be a continuing grant that you are going to be able to get; or are you budgeting to accommodate for this. The second question would be on both grants, because the second one is health too. Are any of those things that you are doing with either of these grant monies something that you asked to do with ARPA money.
Ms. Olenek said to the first question; and I think you are asking for in terms of sustainability; that is what we look at every time we apply for a grant; if in fact this is something that we want to continue to do; which it is. This grant is going to help us pay for the hardware, the software, and some of the start up cost for the call center. We have space that we have identified, we have staffing through out the agency already. For example, in our Community Health Center we have four switch positions; those positions will eventually be folded into the call center. We have three COVID-19 call center positions right now that are filled; and we have customer service representatives in those positions; those will be folded into the call center as well. We are really not looking for any additional staffing except for the manager and the lead person that must manage the call center moving forward. I think we will be seeing some savings and efficiencies and I know we will be able to sustain the cost of this moving forward.
Mr. Fricilone said if you are just moving that staff over; is that staff that you are talking about the seven total people; are they currently in your regular budget.
Ms. Olenek said four are in the regular budget; three are in the COVID-19 budget; but we will be able to afford the three that we will fold into our regular budget.
Mr. Fricilone said the second question; any of the things you are doing were they asked for in ARPA Funds.
Ms. Olenek said I don’t believe so; I would have to look at it. I know that there are a couple of the positions; for example, the operations manager that is putting the call center together; that position was requested in ARPA just because we knew we needed to keep that person somehow. Any of the duplicative positions or initiatives will be obviously removed from ARPA when we are needing to provide our information or our presentations. If you would like us to do that ahead of time, I’d be happy to do that.
Mr. Fricilone said the sooner the better; as we all delve into. So, the last list we have is your most current list of requests. We should update that with something that is coming off.
Ms. Traynere said of course, I’m not sure even who is keeping that list right now. If it is Mr. Palmer or the County Executive, or somebody in her department.
Mr. Palmer said as the Board knows we appropriated money, or at least designated pillars or categories. There’s a list but as it was talked about before, departments are continuing to move forward with certain projects so may be things that Ms. Olenek for example has done because she had to do them. They may be off the list now as far as ARPA Funding but as we go forward, we can update with Ms. Olenek and do what we need to do. The key is we have not allocated those monies officially yet and that is coming hopefully soon.
| RESULT: MOVED FORWARD [UNANIMOUS] Next: 3/17/2022 9:30 AM
TO: Will County Board MOVER: Rachel Ventura, Member SECONDER: Margaret Tyson, Vice Chair AYES: Traynere, Tyson, Fricilone, Marcum, Moustis, Ogalla, Pretzel, Ventura |
(Susan Olenek)
| RESULT: MOVED FORWARD [UNANIMOUS] Next: 3/17/2022 9:30 AM
TO: Will County Board MOVER: Mike Fricilone, Member SECONDER: Tyler Marcum, Rachel Ventura AYES: Traynere, Tyson, Fricilone, Marcum, Moustis, Ogalla, Pretzel, Ventura |
(Jen Alberico/Kelly Gaffney/Julie Shetina)
Ms. Ventura stated said I know I sent an email asking when we have these delinquent taxes and get at the point of sale; if we hold those back potentially for the county to maybe look at housing options. I don’t know if that applies to this case. I guess I don’t understand how the taxes are being sold; does that mean they have to move out of their building?
Mr. Brophy stated these are regular cases that sometimes affect the tenants. Ms. Ventura are you asking about the case where there is a renter in the building?
Ms. Ventura said could you explain to us when we are executing these documents; then there is a delinquent tax and at what point does it go to sale. Is this one of those. What is your next step?
Mr. Brophy stated after the tax sale the process goes to the Clerk’s Office. The property owners can redeem for a certain amount of time. If they don’t, we must move along and put those into where the trustee takes ownership and we either sell them to someone else or they go to auction. In this case you have got this little one is $475.00 the total collected is $10.25. it looks like you are authorizing the Executive to execute a deed. Now no one bought it and the property owner didn’t step forward and pay it. We are deeding the property to the trustee; by doing that we remove all previous leans and anything that is owed on the property; then the Will County Trustee owns it. What happens is we have a lot of these in inventory, they will be put up on the annual auction for the public to purchase. It is standard, and we see these almost every month.
Ms. Ventura said yes, we do see these a lot; that is why I was getting an idea instead of just auctioning them off if there is a need in our county for a specific type of housing whether it is through our Drug Courts, or our Recovery Programs, or even Mental Health, or whatever. I have two questions, who is the trustee, or you said they can sell it to someone before the auction. Who would buy these, and do they own the property when they buy the tax?
Mr. Brophy said typically there are a lot of neighbors that pick these up. This is a small parcel I don’t even know if there is a building on it. We have entries that come to us; we send them to the trustee; the trustee then evaluates if this is a reasonable purchase price to transfer the property. In other cases, we hold them for our partners that are doing housing projects; we look at the Community Housing Development Organizations (CHDO) like Habitat for Humanity or sometimes the Municipality will want to take a parcel because it has some useful advantage to have the parcel. The trustee with negotiate with them to purchase it and it gets off our role if you will as a delinquent property then the buyer or municipality respectively choose to make that property tax exempt if they qualify. Sometimes you could have a private buyer.
Ms. Ventura said we are at this step; what you are saying you have already notified any of our housing partners. This obviously is not a property that would qualify; but if you had a larger property, you have already gone to them and asked them, and they don’t want it either, so we moved on. Then we approve it at that point.
Mr. Brophy replied there is a regular sharing for those who may be interested so that we don’t miss the opportunity to get it either in the hands of one of our affordable housing partners or to a local municipality for various things.
Mrs. Ogalla stated Mr. Brophy I was wondering if you could lay out the steps that are taken to contact the landowner to ensure that they are aware that their tax bill was sent to them. I know in the past there were other situations. If you could give us that information, it would be helpful.
Mr. Brophy said would you like me to email that to the members?
Mrs. Ogalla asked can you just tell us now?
Mr. Brophy stated when a parcel is first not paid; we send them a delinquent notice.
Mrs. Ogalla asked how we send that notice.
Mr. Brophy replied by certified mail; we track it, so we know where it went and when it was delivered.
Mrs. Ogalla asked how soon after they haven’t paid that tax bill is that letter sent.
Mr. Brophy said during the collection period we send that registered letter about a month after the final due date. If the taxes are not paid, then get sold about another month after that. This year the delinquent notices went out in November and the tax sale was January 10th.
Ms. Traynere stated not to interrupt Mr. Brophy, but I have two things and I know you probably have this written down; I know it is part of my real estate class. Maybe you could provide that to the County Board Office, and they could send that to everyone; I think that would be helpful.
Mr. Brophy said yes, we could do a life of a delinquent tax payment, where it goes and what happens to it.
Ms. Traynere said I do think it would be helpful; it is not something that happens frequently given the total number of parcels in our county. I also wanted to mention if I am not mistaken; don’t we have a process where a land or property owner can name a second person to get a copy of that tax bill? So, if you know people in your area that you want to inform them, especially someone who is a senior because it tends to, I think be some of what this is. To make sure that they have somebody else in their family on the tax notification system. There is a bill in Springfield that they are talking about this week that is very similar but not pertaining to real property as in land. But pertaining to storage unit rental. You’ve got people who have a storage unit they pay their bill and suddenly, they get called off to war; they have their mind focused on other things and they miss a payment. They come back from serving and find out all their belongings are sold. I think the article I saw was in this morning’s Herald News. I don’t know if there is an actual bill; I don’t recall the article to that degree; but it was an op ed. In California they have that rule in place where there is a second person that is notified; again, to avoid you losing your belongings and in this case to you losing your property. If you could get that to us that would be very appreciated.
Mrs. Ogalla stated Ms. Traynere honestly that does happen quite often because my local paper had a quite a large list of the people this has happened to. I was thinking it would be nice for everyone to have this information and to talk about it and discuss it. Apparently, you don’t want that to happen; I just want one more question to be answered. You said the delinquent letter is sent out a month after it is due; at that same time is it printed in the local paper?
Mr. Brophy said not at that time; we give them some time to react to the delinquent notice and then the publications are put into the paper.
Mrs. Ogalla said okay, so there is a little bit of time before the tax sale that happens in December.
Mr. Brophy stated this year it was January.
Mrs. Ogalla asked if we ever have any returned by certified mail saying that they haven’t gotten them; and what do we do at that point. I know specifically of a person who says that they were never notified.
Mr. Brophy stated that is one of the tasks that we do here in the office all year round; is trying to connect and put back the property owner with an address correcting tax bills making sure it is going to the right place. We can only use what is in our system and when those delinquent notices come back those triggers us to then try and find them, where are they. That is one of the jobs that my staff is busy with, always trying to find those two or three thousand that just aren’t responding.
Mrs. Ogalla said thank you, I will call you afterwards to discuss this specific case.
Ms. Tyson said my question is, are all tax sales final; what happens if three months after the fact that person surfaces and they contest it.
Mr. Brophy said when your taxes are sold one year it doesn’t mean you are out of your house; it must happen for 3-years. During that time the tax buyer has to notify the homeowner several times via registered mail and publication that they are moving toward that deed. Only after missing tax payments for three consecutive years would a homeowner be at risk of losing their home. They can redeem at any time.
Ms. Traynere stated it is quite a lengthy process; and property owners if they are paying any attention at all are not going to lose their home as Mr. Brophy said. Three years that is a long time to ignore your mail. That doesn’t mean you won’t get into trouble in the meantime by just missing one year here or there and having to go through the whole process of then paying that delinquent tax as well as any penalties, fines, fees, etc. to get your property tax bill taken care of. That is why I ask that Mr. Brophy put it in writing because it is complicated, and it is nice if you have the whole picture of each part of the process step by step and know exactly what the Treasurer’s Office does to try and assist the property owner by reaching out to them. It’s a big process.
Mr. Moustis said I have a question for Mr. Brophy. In the last couple of years, we’ve had an extended collection period. For this upcoming year are we going to go back to normal; which is June and September collections; or are we going to expand it again or is that something that the board must do; will it be four payments as opposed to two. I am thinking that we only approved that for last year and it wouldn’t be going forward.
Mr. Brophy said that is the plan, I sent a communication out to the board last November or December that said if you are going to consider such relief this year to please indicate so by January’s meeting. Because we need all that time to prepare the tax bills. Right now the bills that are prepared are one page with two coupons due in June and September.
| RESULT: MOVED FORWARD [UNANIMOUS] Next: 3/17/2022 9:30 AM
TO: Will County Board MOVER: Rachel Ventura, Member SECONDER: Jim Moustis, Member AYES: Traynere, Tyson, Fricilone, Marcum, Moustis, Ogalla, Pretzel, Ventura |
Ms. Howard stated this is the last round for the FY21 Budget Transfer; this is basically the routine year in clean-up. This is the last one what will be brought forth.
Ms. Ventura said it looks like most of it evens out; you take it from one and put it somewhere else in the budget except for the GIS. There was a lot of money there that I guess was for a salary; did we not use it because we expected more map cuts; why was there such a large amount there? The Recorders GIS, I don’t know if that’s different.
Ms. Howard stated you are referring to the Recorders automation?
Ms. Ventura said yes, the Recorders GIS.
Ms. Howard replied there was some movement; they should have had some people in their automation fund. They had budget in their GIS; so, it is just moving monies around.
| RESULT: MOVED FORWARD [UNANIMOUS] Next: 3/17/2022 9:30 AM
TO: Will County Board MOVER: Mike Fricilone, Member SECONDER: Jim Moustis, Member AYES: Traynere, Tyson, Fricilone, Marcum, Moustis, Ogalla, Pretzel, Ventura |
VIII. PUBLIC COMMENT
IX. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR
Ms. Traynere stated she didn’t have any reports or announcements; just stay tuned to your email so that you can find out how delinquent taxes are handled and tax sales. Thank you all for joining us.
X. EXECUTIVE SESSION
XI. ADJOURNMENT
1. Motion to Adjourn @ 12:03
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Mike Fricilone, Member SECONDER: Rachel Ventura, Member AYES: Traynere, Tyson, Fricilone, Marcum, Moustis, Ogalla, Pretzel, Ventura |
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