Will County Board Republican Caucus Committee met Aug. 18.
Here are the minutes provided by the committee:
I. CALL TO ORDER / ROLL CALL
Minority Leader Mike Fricilone called the meeting to order at 8:46 AM
Attendee
Mike Fricilone Minority Leader Present
Judy Ogalla Minority Whip Absent
Jim Moustis Member Present
Raquel M. Mitchell Member Absent
Gretchen Fritz Member Present
Donald Gould Member Absent
Steve Balich Member Present
Annette Parker Member Present
Julie Berkowicz Member Present
Frankie Pretzel Member Present
Tom Weigel Member Present
Debbie Kraulidis Member Absent
Also Present at the Meeting: N. Palmer, B. Adams
Present from the State's Attorney's Office: K. Meyers
II. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG
Mrs. Berkowicz led the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
III. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
1. WC Republican Caucus - Regular Meeting - May 19, 2022 8:45 AM
RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Steve Balich, Member
SECONDER: Tom Weigel, Member
AYES: Fricilone, Moustis, Fritz, Balich, Parker, Berkowicz, Pretzel, Weigel
ABSENT: Ogalla, Mitchell, Gould, Kraulidis
2. WC Republican Caucus - Special Meeting - Jun 16, 2022 8:45 AM
RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Steve Balich, Member
SECONDER: Gretchen Fritz, Member
AYES: Fricilone, Moustis, Fritz, Balich, Parker, Berkowicz, Pretzel, Weigel
ABSENT: Ogalla, Mitchell, Gould, Kraulidis
IV. OLD BUSINESS
V. OTHER OLD BUSINESS
VI. NEW BUSINESS
1. Discussion of County Board Agenda
Mr. Fricilone commented about the solar ordinance. Mrs. Ogalla isn’t here yet, and I know she’s going to want to say something in regard to this.
Mrs. Berkowicz stated she was at the Land Use meeting and one of the biggest concerns that I have was that they took out the reference to an Ag Specialist so, they don’t really designate an Ag Specialist. I’m not going to support this, and I am going to vote against this unless they put that back in. That’s one of things the farm bureau wants that specification they consult with an Ag Specialist.
Mr. Moustis commented so you can make a motion to amend it.
Mr. Balich stated that the people who want the changes are the lawyers stated for the solar projects. We asked where they came from, and they wouldn’t tell us.
Mr. Moustis commented that’s one of the reasons why people should attend the Planning and Zoning Committee because it’s your district and you have an interest, and you can make a difference at those hearings. Don’t wait until it gets here. That’s the public hearing for people to know. That is the public hearing where you get input. On the one hand you have the Farm Bureau saying they want this and that. Who’s running the land for these people? The farmers. It seems like we’re against it until we get a check and then it’s okay. Remember they are businesspeople. They are there for profit.
Ms. Fritz asked is number 2 controversial at all? The packaged liquor and the addition to the gas station?
Mr. Weigel replied well we voted down the one down the street a couple of years ago. So, they are going to come in and ask, why can’t we get one?
Mr. Moustis commented Mr. Weigel I think you should mention somebody should mention we’ve turned this down before.
Mr. Weigel replied that I sent them an email and reminded them but apparently they don’t care.
Mr. Fricilone noted that the resolution for the solar farm stuff is getting sent back. We’re into Executive.
Mr. Palmer commented so everyone knows. We met with Mr. Smith, Ms. Curry and Mr. Hassert that were here. I was invited to sit in on those meetings and I’ll write something up, but this was the start of creation of next year’s agenda so, if you guys have ideas and I know there’s a couple Mr. Weigel has one send them to me and I’ll make sure that they get to the committee or get on the list and then we’ll discuss that. The hope is we can possibly approve an agenda maybe in November so, it can be printed and ready in December and going into the new year. I think that makes more sense because all of you who are here and know the issues -vs- come December we’re going to have a lot of new people who aren’t going to know the issues. That way the book is ready to go.
Mr. Moustis suggested that may be a good idea to put on the agenda for our next caucus.
Mr. Palmer stated maybe we can do both federal and state on the next agenda meeting because there maybe somethings on both. I can give you some information because I was invited to the meeting with the court system on it. The thing we really need to focus on is what is the financial. Today we get the budget, and we can see. There are people on both ends saying it going to be apocalyptic and some people saying, not that bad. In short some of the judges were saying that they think this is unconstitutional and it could get overturned. The problem is when will it get heard before a judge and will we have to implement the law as interpreted and then pull it back.
Mr. Moustis stated what I’m hoping is that the state has to postpone the implementation.
Mr. Palmer replied supposedly from what I’ve heard that’s the push but whether it’s going to happen in time, they must do it pretty soon.
Mr. Moustis commented Mr. Fricilone can I suggest especially if the group is willing to meet an extra day. I think maybe if we have a caucus earlier maybe in a couple of weeks where we can discuss these issues, I think it would be worthwhile. We’re going to have some real issues to discuss with this budget.
Mr. Fricilone replied we’ll see if we can get a date earlier just to get some of these issues out and if we need another caucus we will.
Mrs. Berkowicz commented Jim Glascow is running around the state talking but he never comes before the County Board and talk to us. He’s in DuPage County and Naperville talking. Why aren’t they coming to us here? Why are we not getting any feedback from them? Same thing with the Sheriff.
Mr. Fricilone stated we’re in Executive amending the liquor ordinance or cleaning the liquor ordinance up. The next three things are about ARPA. The first one is authorizing the obligation of the ARPA funds; the obligation and expenditures of the ARPA funds on the unmet needs pillar. That’s the stuff that we did with townships. We didn’t do a Resolution on that. There are some back and forth on whether the Executive Committee has the authority to do stuff, so we’ll be bringing everything that we do in Executive to a Resolution and full County Board. The second one is allocating ARPA funds for Anser Advisory. We had a lengthy conversation yesterday and we kind of decided on one thing, but I think we’re going to go back and just approve this as is right now. Next month we’ll be bringing a Resolution forward.
Mrs. Adams replied we were going to remove this one.
Mr. Palmer stated we we’re going to remove 2 Mr. Fricilone, yesterday we talked about this.
Mr. Fricilone replied right. We’re going to bring a Resolution back next month that will establish a line-item pillar for administrative cost. This will be included in administrative cost. There are additional administrative costs. I don’t know if anybody read what we hired Anser to do but we didn’t really hire them to do websites and all that other stuff. Even when we did Bronner, I think $1 million dollars was our initial number and we were at $1.7 million or whatever it was and we were done. We are going to need additional money and administrative cost and then at Executive we will also talk further about its administrative cost going to include us hiring someone else in Finance to help because this one is different than CARES. CARES when we gave out $10,000.00 grants, we basically had to code that was given out as a grant. Now you have to have mountains of paperwork which is why the software is on there which I will talk about next. It’s a much lengthier process to do what we have to do for the Feds to make sure that we’re meeting all the rules. We’re going to establish that next month and then the Anser money will be in there and we’ll talk about that at Executive.
Mr. Moustis asked certainly I was concerned because the Executive’s office was spending money from those funds without any real oversight from us. So, is that going to cure that for example?
Mr. Fricilone replied no, not yet. That’s why we have to ask the State’s Attorney’s Office if we do a Resolution saying, we’re putting this money in Administrative can we put the caveat on there that with the approval of Board, so we get to see the expenses of approval.
Mr. Moustis stated here’s what I think the caveat should be. Anything over a certain amount they have to come to us. Can we do anything like that?
Mr. Fricilone answered I don’t know. We have to ask the State’s Attorney’s Office.
Mr. Moustis stated I don’t know why not. The Board can make the rules whatever we want. The Board can put out the process and say, this is the process you follow. They don’t make their own process.
Mr. Palmer commented the difference Mr. Moustis and I think there’s support on both sides of the caucuses is they should bring a proposal to the Board and say, here’s what the cost of doing this grant is X amount of dollars or that we project, or here’s the work to do because the Board approved $1.5 million not to exceed for Anser and it may be more, but that’s what we started with. If there was additional work that needed to be done in the best practice, it would have been the Executive’s Office come with we need to hire a communication firm to do X, Y, and Z. Here’s the cost. The Board approves it. It’s fine. Instead, they just went and did and then they spent the money which there is some grey area whether they have authority to spend the money without appropriation. Best practice would have been to tell the Board, spend the money, and everybody’s good with it.
Mr. Moustis replied with the absence of that we need to put some kind of process in place where there is a check and balance. Right now, there is no check on what they are doing.
Mr. Palmer commented that thing you brought up at Executive last week Mr. Moustis and I’ll remind you is the purchasing ordinance has not been updated in a very long time. That was discussed at the beginning of last year and there’s been no movement but as a policy we get into the question of Board policy, Executive policy. Historically we work together because the staff is mostly on the Executive’s side. I would suggest that we start looking into purchase orders while we have the people who are here. Some people have a lot of experience. Again, in December we’re going to have a lot of new people who aren’t going to have any experience with County government. We can tweak some things in the purchasing ordinance right now and there are some things that can continue to be improved on in the future.
Mr. Moustis replied we should also put in a purchase ordinance or at least put it on our caucus radar and say, we need to start going through this.
Mr. Palmer stated they are just something that need to be updated like dollar amounts and such.
Mr. Fricilone asked Mr. Palmer can you send that to us?
Mr. Palmer answered sure.
Mr. Moustis commented the other part of that is that’s a policy issue whether we need to get some outside help for that.
Mr. Palmer stated I started polling smaller counties, but I’ve also pulled from some of the bigger counties that are similar size to us from around the country just because I’ve met people at NACO to see if they have things that we don’t have that would be helpful. I think that would be to your point Mr. Moustis about what can it be spent on I think we have to follow state law, but we also have to codify some of this into our purchasing ordinance. When pressed last week Mr. Schaben was saying, well it’s a policy thing. I just think we have to, we’re not in silos like the Executive’s Office can propose policy but the Board is the only one that can pass the policy. If there is no policy in place, then they do have some liberty. No one told them that they can’t do something. I hate to say it but asking forgiveness or asking permission.
Mr. Moustis commented it’s funny that State’s Statute and Mr. Meyers you can correct me if I’m wrong. In some instances, say like the County the statute might say, you can’t do it you can do it. If you look at township government is it saying, you can only do what the legislature says you can do. So, it’s not always equal on how you approach local government State Statutes.
Mr. Palmer stated there’s also a grey area of professional services which you don’t have to bid professional services but if the Board institutes a policy that says, anything under a certain dollar amount at least it’s putting an ask out there, a request.
Mr. Moustis commented I think you have to do something like that because it’s the Executive form of government that’s the problem because every Executive thinks other County codes does not apply to them. And it doesn’t matter it can be Will County, Champaign County that have these same issues on what is the power of the Executive and these Executives think their all-powerful.
Mr. Palmer replied some of those ideas can be put into a purchasing ordinance but also could take the form of legislation in Springfield to say, the County Executive’s Office has not been modified very much. There’s a lot that we talked about last year a bunch of things that could be clarified that most people would agree both Executive and Board.
Mr. Moustis commented that could be a legislative item for County Board on both sides of the isle.
Mr. Palmer stated just to say, here’s what you do here’s what we do here’s how we work together.
Mr. Fricilone stated we are going to pull that number 3 the second ARPA Resolution off until we get the line items for administrative done. Now, on the 3rd one which is #4 that relates to ARPA for the grant management software we did talk about taking the money and the Resolution says, taking the money from the revenue replacement money. Leadership talked about establishing this administrative cost, we should take it out of there. We think we can pass it the way it is and then just change it to the expense in the next.
Mrs. Adams stated we’re going to amend the Resolution to just award the contract so they can start working on getting the software with funding TBD.
Mr. Palmer stated someone has to make that motion.
Mrs. Adams stated Speaker Cowan can make the motion to amend when she brings it up and then we’ll bring it back next month after we set up the administrative.
Mr. Palmer stated when we talk about the administrative piece of ARPA. I think one of the key things the Board as a whole needs to define is what do we mean by administrative? Do we mean consultants because there are some folks that’s been proposing that we book staff time to our ARPA so, if Ms. Hennessey, Finance Director she’s spending time on ARPA do we book some of her time and give some of that money back. I would recommend that you don’t do that because the staff is already paid. So, any dollars you do that puts more money into the budgets that you may not have control over but also, it’s taking money away from projects out in the community and we were told yesterday that we were doing very well as far as the amount of money that we are pushing out and not using on admin and stuff which I think is a good thing.
Mr. Fricilone stated Anser told us that the average you can take is up to 13% of ARPA dollars. That’s about $17 million and Anser had proposed a budget of $8 million; I think we cut down. That’s what they’re doing to us they are paying for internal work and I think in the budget it shows hiring another finance person. I mean that person may be dedicated to just ARPA for the next 2 to 3 years. The software we’ll just approve with the funding to be determined later and we did get more description on the software, we do need it. The amount of reporting on this is totally different than CARES. The number of forms that have to be filled out that will all be in this system so that we can look back and make sure that we have all the forms that are needed. After that we’re ratifying the lease amendment for VAC which I know Mrs. Traynere has some issues with and mentioned it the other day. They are already in this lease we just never ratified it. It’s not like we’re extending the lease.
Mr. Balich asked the County Board is completely separated all we do is budget their money, right?
Mr. Moustis replied the VAC is on their own.
Mr. Fricilone replied we just allocate the money.
Mr. Balich asked when we allocate the money is there any oversite by us on what they do?
Mr. Fricilone replied no. They have their own board. So, we’re just ratifying the lease on the VAC which they are already on the lease. Number 6 on the JAG Grant we already put the grant in just so everyone knows. We did not put a grant in last year the Executive didn’t get to it they missed it, which that money is almost automatic. The lease is until May because we never ratified it.
Mrs. Parker asked for the VAC lease we’re just doing 6 months are we working on the 1300 Copperfield at all?
Mr. Fricilone replied we never ratified it because they never brought it to us. So, the lease is until May. Right now, we have not said anything about Copperfield. I get the feeling that they Executive’s is waiting until the new Board comes in so she can ramrod something through. Nothing is being done at this point. The other stuff is routine. The group benefits plan. This is all stuff renewal contracts of AON this will be the last year that this is automatic with them. Next year H.R. is going to go out for bids on that we’ve been asking about that for several years, but the new H.R. person is definitely going out.
Mr. Moustis commented I’m saying this to you as leadership. You have to push to get the RFP together now.
Mr. Fricilone replied whoever is here after December they have to keep pushing.
VII. OTHER NEW BUSINESS
VIII. PUBLIC COMMENT
IX. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR
X. EXECUTIVE SESSION
XI. ADJOURNMENT
1. Motion to adjourn meeting @ 9:20 A.M.
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