Will County Gazette

Will County Board Democratic Caucus Committee met Sept. 13.

Here are the minutes provided by the committee:

I. CALL TO ORDER

II. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG

Mr. Van Duyne led the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

III. ROLL CALL

Majority Leader Meta Mueller called the meeting to order at 6:05 PM

Attendee Name	Title	Status	Arrived
Meta Mueller	Majority Leader	Present
Sherry Newquist	Member	Late
Amanda Koch	Member	Absent
Margaret Tyson	Majority Whip	Present
Saud Gazanfer	Member	Present
Jacqueline Traynere	Member	Present
Joe VanDuyne	Member	Present
Herbert Brooks Jr.	Member	Present
Denise E. Winfrey	Member	Absent
Rachel Ventura	Member	Late
Natalie Coleman	Member	Present
Tyler Marcum	Member	Present
Mimi Cowan	Speaker	Present
Mica Freeman	Member	Present

Also Present at the Meeting: N. Palmer, J. Bertino-Tarrant, B. Adams

Present from State's Attorney's Office: S. Pyles

IV. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

V. OLD BUSINESS

VI. NEW BUSINESS

1. Discussion of FY2023 Budget

(Discussion)

Mrs. Mueller noted in your email you have a memo that was written by Mr. Palmer that came on September 11, it’s a question/answer memo from when Mr. Fricilone and I went to the budget meeting and it’s a good place to start, if you have questions.

Mrs. Hamann stated it’s daunting to get this novel especially if you’re not a numbers person but again, if you just go through the front of the book the summary of revenues are pages 2 through 7 which we did today in Finance. Then if you go into the expense pages 8 through 14. Then behind 14 is all the individual department expenses that feed into all the front pages. Some of the special funds are separate because of how they are setup. If you have any questions I can try to answer and/or get you an answer.

Mrs. Traynere gave an update from the Finance meeting. I advise you when you are looking at the numbers because some of them change drastically. What you want to look at is what was spent in 2020, 2021, and what was spent year-to-date which the memo that came to the Finance Meeting today if you look at the agenda is a little more up to date because that was printed on September 8. When you look at the 3 figures you should see that the request for this year should be close to the average request unless there was something new that came up. Once again, I found that the caucus from the other side of the aisle wants to spend large amounts of additional funds at the same time not increasing the levy. Now they seem to be okay this time around going with new property, but they seem to have a real hard time accepting the CPI figure of 5%, even though the CPI was even higher than 5. They don’t want to go to the 5% and I find that’s going to be difficult to do given the staffing issues we’re having because we heard from the Health Department today that the staffing issues, they’re having but the people won’t take the jobs because we’re not paying enough, especially in a few key fields. The Health Department’s biggest problems is the 2 counties near us Lake County and DuPage County as well as private sector offer bigger salaries than us. I’ve heard this for years. I was going to sit with Mrs. Hamann to discuss things. The Health Department made a request today for extra money. I’m not sure what played into Mrs. Olenek coming before us asking for more money today, it just seemed very odd because the budget has already been printed (draft budget). Maybe, it’s true that they’ve started having applicants that’s taking jobs. We didn’t get a dollar amount today we just got the news that they dipped into their reserve bucket for $1.7 million. She said they we’re fortunate to have these funds that they dipped into.

Mr. Palmer commented first this isn’t a new problem. The Health Department years ago had to cut the budget and they lost like 100 people, so they lost like a quarter of their work staff and during an economic downturn. They get a levy and we set the levy. They request the money and we set the levy as part of our levy, so they can’t set it themselves. They work through their board and come up with a proposal and give it to us and then the County Board has to approve it. The funds are unexpended funds that they can keep it over there. They have money that was appropriated to them that they are using. I mean it’s not a new problem for them not to have enough funding. This is a draft and money can be moved around to give them more money if we want to do other things.

Mrs. Traynere stated that this doesn’t fit with the conversation we’ve heard at the July board meeting about how we didn’t need a separate mental health board because they had plenty of funds and they were able to provide all the services that were needed.

Mr. Palmer replied the history for many years they don’t give and we haven’t given people massive amounts of more money, so I think the attitude for a lot of people and Mrs. Olenek has been here for a long time is you get X amount of dollars basically your last years budget and don’t ask for a lot more because you’re not going to get it. Now, we can change that and give them a lot more money, but it must come from somewhere. I think when you ask most department heads, they’re like we don’t get extra money, so they don’t even ask for it anymore. They use what they got and figure out what the union increases are, and they try to make it work within that. She asked after Mr. Fricilone suggested we should give them more money. I don’t think she was planning to speak until he said something. There’s no reason why you can’t give them more money you just have to move the money around.

Ms. Ventura stated I believe we specifically asked about some of the grants or positions if Mrs. Olenek was to hire for these or if she was going to continue it and she said, if the funding was not there from grants then those positions would not continue. I don’t think we should increase the budget right now because ARPA is paying some of those things and there are grant dollars coming from the State and other areas outside of her budget. When it gets to that point in 2 years when ARPA is spent then they can look at that because there might be other grants the State is doing especially with the focus on mental health, opioid addition, and other programs like that. I don’t think padding the budget now when we’re getting money from ARPA isn’t appropriate especially when Mrs. Olenek said, she would not be requesting these dollars from us.

Mrs. Mueller commented she got a huge chunk of ARPA funds and there are other ways for her to pull money.

Mr. Palmer stated they go less than $8 million dollars over 3 years it’s really not that much money when divided by 3. I mean we have Board of Health members on the board Mrs. Tyson and Mrs. Parker can add to that or you can have Mrs. Olenek come and talk in more details.

Speaker Cowan commented as a bigger project I think we need to encourage our staff and department heads to make a case for what they need, but at this point. I do think this raises the larger question for the caucus of what are your priorities as a caucus member? Is it giving increased funding for these things? Is it like Ms. Ventura said, not raising the levy? We need to have ideas and a plan and we might not all be in complete agreement but we can’t also decide these as 1 off thing. I know in our hearts we like to say, give a lot of money to the health department, to the Sheriff’s department, we need to figure out what these priorities are and have kind of a guiding principle.

Mrs. Mueller replied Mrs. Tyson and I have been trying to talk to people and asking what their priorities are.

Mrs. Traynere stated I would just add that it’s nice to say we’re not going to levy for the $10 million more this year than we did last year because we had a consistent of only going over $4 million a year and now because the CPI was so high it brings us up $10 million. That’s all fine and good but it seems to all be allocated in that budget. So, it not just we’re going to levy for $5 million more. That’s fine and you can say that but then tell me where we’re cutting the other $5 million. The next 2 Finance meetings that we’re talking about the expenses bring your red pencil and list of things that we’re going to cut. I’m not opposed of going through each line item and taking off $2,000.00 off of each line item, if that’s what it takes to come up with the $5 million dollars and we then would reduce the property tax portion of the budget. Come with ideas because we can’t just say we’re going to tax less you got to say where are you cutting?

Mrs. Mueller commented Mrs. Newquist brought some things to my attention that she would like to see down by where she is like code enforcement and things like that, truck enforcement. More help with response and coverage.

Ms. Ventura commented I would talk to Mrs. Parker a little bit about this. I think this is an area that the Sheriff’s Department, down some of their officers and that also presents another budgetary issue which is we hired officers in the past to try to lower overtime and now we’re down officers so I imagine that our overtime on our budget is going to be high. That particular job I think that if we can encourage the Sheriff to put more people on enforcement for overweight trucks that can bring in revenue especially if they are not overweight but even if there are trucks on roads they are not supposed to be on but that’s a conversation we have to ask the Sheriff about because we can’t mandate where he puts his guys. We can encourage more officers.

Speaker Cowan commented we can give the Sheriff more money but it doesn't mean he’s going to hire those.

Mrs. Mueller replied Mrs. Newquist is on her way here so, let’s have conversation about her request while she’s here to talk about them. One of the other things she mentioned was a satellite location somewhere on the east side of the county because folks have to come into Joliet at lot. Those are the things I was able to talk to people about at this point.

Mr. Van Duyne commented there’s violations everywhere. They are beating up our roads because they are overweight and we don’t have enough truck enforcement. What I want to add is we keep hearing this conversation that the Republicans don’t want the tax levy, so they need to decide what they want to cut. At the Forest Preserve the CPI was 7.7% and the Forest Preserve is asking for 5% which is way less what the CPI is. I mean 5% is the max you can ask for. You can ask for more, but you need special permission or what not. The fact of the matter is the Republicans don’t want the 5% and their balking because they want 0% so, it was said, what do you want to cut and that’s not what we’re going to do. If we don’t have the votes in order to pass the 5% on our own as a Democratic Caucus and we have to negotiate with the Republican’s, then we’re going to decide what we want to cut. So, we go from 5% to 0% that’s $500,000.00 in Capital Improvements. I’m not going to let them tell us what they are willing to cut; we’re going to decide. If, you want your 0% and we don’t have the votes this is what we’re cutting. I think that’s where our focus needs to be. And we need to decide at the County if we’re going to have all 14 of our members sitting there, then the discussion changes. If we’re all going to be there, then we decide what’s going to happen.

Speaker Cowan stated just for the record we took care of CAC.

Mrs. Traynere stated I said something to you about this before that each board member takes a look at a different section of the expenditures and see what they come up with. That way not one Board member is responsible for all this. If each Board member takes a section it would be a little bit easier on us.

Mrs. Mueller replied I would be happy for us to do that. If folks committed to do it.

Ms. Ventura commented I did have some conversation with our Executive that I would like to see some of the areas cutback. I specifically talked about our rents the $1.3 million that we have for rent. Some of that has to do with we don’t have the Copperfield building being used, we don’t have the courthouse being used, so looking at that we would need to get some very creative solutions going in a very short period of time to change those dollars. That’s one area we could look at. I did talk about the Clerk’s budget and first of all we saw a revenue that we’re not even bringing in from the state the amount of money brought in for election judges but there’s an increase of $350,000.00 ask on election judges. I’m not sure why we’re bringing on more election judges when we didn’t cut any thing but more than 4 precincts and more than we’ve got that vote by mail equipment that we bought that was supposed to be a long term savings and I would assume that those precincts were heavily vote by mail we would want to condense down and have less polling places in these areas where not as many people are using them. Obviously if there is a turn out of real people on election day in those areas we want to keep our polling locations but there could be some cost savings in that area that in the past we increased more money in the Clerks department that was the understanding that there would be money cut there and the PR dollars. Trying to use some of those replacement dollars the other thing would be looking at the replacement the $10 million in the ARPA dollars which of those dollars are being used for projects. I know there’s been talk about RNG, the morgue coming in costly, and other projects and we’ve asked for balance sheets so we can see exactly what’s in the plan and that hasn’t come forward because if there are projects that we can spend out of that $10 million we could decrease the budget but still have all of our services met and that holds well for everybody, if we can decrease the budget and decrease the taxes.

Mrs. Traynere commented the other area I like to look at is the River Valley Juvenile Detention Facility that business is not a good business model for us. I don’t know what the right answer is that going to take a lot of thought and research, but I think it’s just an astronomical amount of money you would send all those kids to Harvard.

Ms. Ventura commented 2 other things on that contract. One of them is our janitorial contract and we know that increased during COVID and I remember asking, why haven’t we brough this inhouse because this was supposed to be saving us money. If that contract keeps going up in price, at what point is it no longer saving us money and we need to look at that to be a good idea. It’s not a huge savings but it’s something for the radar and then the other contractual service was that emergency contract. There is a New Lenox school district that gets some food and prepares it at a New Lenox professional kitchen. Why don’t we investigate doing something like that and having it mobilized instead of being some State contract. I think we’re missing some opportunities here.

Speaker Cowan stated I do think getting competitive salaries for the State’s Attorney’s Office and for Health Department, I think there are a few critical services that need to, and we got to do something. We are a modern major metropolitan county, and we are falling behind. If we can’t hire enough of the right people that has some real ramifications. I think those appropriate salaries for professional services, professional jobs sound dismal to what we’re trying to do here.

Mrs. Mueller replied that is one of the driving priorities right now and how do we do that?

Speaker Cowan stated I know there’s been debate back and forth about the long term plan, the Capital Improvement Plan. Having a plan and keeping up with it and making sure again, that we’re behaving in the way a modern major metropolitan county is behaving. We can defund all day long and if we have to defund this year, that’s fine, but I don’t know if it’s the most responsible thing to do.

Mrs. Mueller noted that November is budget month so you cannot miss any meetings.

Mr. Van Duyne stated do we have a count? I made phone calls to Forest Preserves, and I have a list. Ms. Winfrey and Mrs. Koch are the only ones that aren’t here right now. Is anyone here going to miss?

Speaker Cowan asked let’s rephrase that. Can everyone here absolutely 100% commit to being here in November?

Ms. Coleman commented that Speaker Cowan made me think about the meeting earlier today about having salaries that people want to stay in Will County and work for. The world I live in things go up in price so people’s salaries should go up and the cost of living goes up. I think it was stated that 100 deputies quit in 3 years and the quality isn’t good.

Speaker Cowan replied Sheriff Kelley did say, he has a waiting list of people who want to be Sheriff’s Deputies. He said he has no problem hiring people; the State’s Attorney’s Office is a different story and the correctional officers.

Ms. Coleman asked counter reactions to the world we live in with needing more State’s Attorney’s, police officers for fighting crimes. How much do we give to them to have proactive measures in place to ward off some of the crimes? What is the other side of that for the County and how are we investing in that?

Speaker Cowan stated that’s a problem with a lot of these requests because we can come up with ideas all day long but the department or the countywide elected officials have to create the program, be willing to run it and come to us and ask for the funding .

Mrs. Traynere stated look what happened today in Finance with the Health Dept coming forward telling us how they’re short money and they are using reserves and they can’t compete with the market. I didn’t put in a budget request; Mrs. Olenek did.

Ms. Ventura commented I felt there were ample opportunities for her to come and ask us for money back when there was CARES money now there’s $8 million, and ARPA there’s $7.9 million. On a monthly basis she comes in front of Public Health & Safety and does not talk about the fact that we still have openings on our health department and there’s never been a request for money or discussion about that. I feel like there’s been some missed opportunities and that’s on the health department.

Mrs. Traynere stated I remember when COVID first started, and they were swamped in the call center, and they needed some help, and it took her a long time to come to us to ask for help and then it took a long time to get it set up. There was no conversation about needing X amount of dollars for this or that.

Executive Bertino-Tarrant commented I’m just here because it may very well be I will be participating in these votes. So, I guess I’m just trying to get an understanding and some of the suggestions like River Valley. We were just talking about we have 70 employees for like 6 or 7 kids. We’re not going to fix it this cycle. Rent is another thing it’s gotta be like an overall goal what we want to stop, and Copperfield is going to play a big role in that, but we are on hold because we are waiting to see if CAC is going to go in there or not. We’re kind of in limbo there before we move. We kind of been talking to people about getting them in that facility but we’re trying not to be renters. Here’s just a suggestion, I know some people are leaving but it’s not going to matter but we’re going to bring new Board members. Some of these departments don’t talk to you about their budget because they are going through Mrs. Howard asking for a budget. It’s important that they sit with you as the Finance Committee; it shouldn’t have to be the Budget Committee and say, this is what we do, here’s my budget, I’m giving it to Mrs. Howard. Let me tell you why. I think that may be the way the Budget and Finance Committee does moving forward and then you’ll have a better understanding. It’s not only if you’re going to be in the meeting, but we also have to know which way you’re going to go because I think that’s important so that we’re not caught. We have to count and if we’re not going to have it, we want to be able to come back and say, we’re not going to get the full 5%, we need to work on another number and that’s all we need to know as a group. I have a feeling I may have to be one of the voters.

Mrs. Traynere stated I’m fine with that but tell me what you want to cut because you can’t just cut the revenue you have to cut the expense to match what you’re cutting in the revenue. If you’re not sure what the revenue difference is between 3% CPI and 5% CPI, let me know and we’ll ask, to find out what that dollar figure is.

Mrs. Mueller asked with that Mrs. Traynere would you like to divide up the pages?

Mrs. Traynere replied I can. You guys’ text me if you’re interested. There’s nothing we can do with the special funds, just the corporate expenses for next year.

Mrs. Mueller commented I would encourage everyone to look for things that the Republicans want to cut. We’re going to tell them what’s going to get cut.

Mrs. Traynere commented it should be our call, we’re the majority.

Speaker Cowan stated in fairness to Mr. Fricilone, I think he got in trouble with his caucus for saying, this the other night.

Mrs. Mueller stated reach out to me if you have any more budget questions and Mrs. Hamann is a good resource too. Also, reach out to Mrs. Traynere to get your portion of pages to conmb through.

Ms. Ventura commented we did ask either the Sheriff, the Chief Judge, to come before us in Finance and particularly talk to us about what we can expect from this Safe-T Act and how it might impact us. They keep saying I heard some notes from the Legislative Committee and their saying there’s millions of dollars but legally when we’re looking at the revenue line item it’s $450,000.00. So, if the impact on our budget is less than $500,000.00, we need to know that. If they are going to increase electronic devices and the fees for that would be an increase in our budget we need to know that. If there are going to be other finds that they can’t access, we need to know these things. I think it’s appropriate and it’s our job to prepare for these things. The law has not changed. It does not look like a trailer bill before January 1 and our budget does take effect in December. We have to plan accordingly and if the law at that point changes, then sure we can adjust the budget, but I do think we need to pass a budget that is represented of the law. If they can come before us and say, these are the cases we expect so that might change our budget too and we need to know all this before we vote.

Mrs. Mueller stated when we had this conversation I asked Mrs. Howard, to give us a list or to tell us which revenue lines were going to be affected by this because we need to know which revenue lines don’t need to be debated or argued. Just tell us where the money is coming out of the budget, and we’ll figure it out. I asked her this in Finance today.

Mr. Palmer stated we were talking about corporate funds revenues; we weren’t talking about the special funds revenues. I think once the Board does make the decisions on the ARPA funds, the Capital Funds, the cannabis funds I think we must explore how the Safe-T Act is impacting the special fund revenues. We were having the same conversations, where is all this money. I think it’s in the special funds and if the special funds drown in revenue, then either you must make the corresponding cuts to get things paid out of that or you must subsidize it with corporate funds. That could be where this big pot of money that everybody’s been talking about, and we need to get to the bottom of that. Where is the loss or is there really not a loss. We don’t control those special funds, but we have to deal with the impact when they don’t produce what they used to produce.

Mrs. Traynere stated maybe that needs to be a special meeting or leadership meeting or something. I do think we need more information on that.

PLEASE BRING YOUR BUDGET BOOK WITH YOU

2. Review of Purchasing Ordinance - Current Version Attached

(County Board)

3. Review of County Board Rules - Current Version Attached

(County Board)

Mrs. Mueller stated I asked Mr. Palmer to print one out for me. Please make sure you all read this over. This is something that we’re going to be talking about at Executive. Please look those over so we can make any suggestions while we’re still here with our experience on the Board. I know that Mrs. Adams tries to keep a running tally on her list of things coming up. If you have any questions about the County Board Rules, Mr. Palmer is probably your best resource explaining things and Mrs. Adams.

4. Discussion of County Board Agenda

Mrs. Mueller stated we have 5 proclamations this month Ms. Ventura is reading National Suicide Prevention and Action. Mr. Marcum is reading Energy Efficiency Day and I am reading the Election Judge one.

VII. OTHER NEW BUSINESS

VIII. COMMITTEE REPORTS

1. Land Use & Development

Mr. Marcum noted that Land Use met today:

• 1. This item did not come out of committee and that’s the one for Homer Glen. Next month we have to make a decision or otherwise it’s automatically denied. That one’s getting removed from the agenda.

• 2. Zoning case was a request for a special use permit for a sports and recreation. Participant this is in Plainfield, Wheatland Township, District 13. There were no questions. It was in an industrial area, special use permit. They have to bring them into compliance. There’s really no discussion on this one.

• 3. Request for a zoning map amendment from R1 to C1. This was in Homer Township on S. Archer Ave. No questions. The only comment was that Mr. Balich liked it.

• 4. Request for a zoning map amendment from E1 to C1. This is in Wheatland Township, in Plainfield. No questions, no problems. It got passed unanimously.

Then we have our Resolutions…

• 1. Solar farm ordinance this was the one we sent back last month. The issue that people had and that the Farm Bureau brought was with farms’ special requirement. We added a requirement that the whole South Cook Water Conservation District is a separate governmental entity.

Ms. Ventura stated I hope everyone will be at this meeting because I do think on this one, we’re going to need all the votes for all those that’s in Land Use. To me it’s clear that some of the barricades that are being put forth really have nothing to do with messaging and what we’re being told. It’s trying to prevent solar from coming here. We need to get on board and our County has been an amazing leader in pushing green energy and we need to continue to do that. We need to approve this.

Mr. Marcum continued with the Resolutions…

• 2. Zoning ordinance for the battery and energy storage especially for solar. We were contacted by the Will County Association of Fire Chiefs. They would like to discuss this, and their meeting is next week. We did not send this forward to the County Board. This will be removed from your agenda.

• 3. Amending our zoning for our warehousing, wholesaling, freight movement, and grain storage in an industrial district. Redline attached. We’re removing all warehousing from I1, which is our lowest intensity industrial. Other than parcel and package delivery services will be available by special use permit and grain storage will be available by special use permit, otherwise, they are all I2 or I3.

Ms. Ventura stated this is another one we all want to be present for. It sounds like Mr. Balich is trying to get Homer Glen to put a legal objection in for this, but this isn’t the one I think he wants it to be on. We need 20 votes, and the idea is this would solve a lot of the problems with people wanting I1 in the county, not for warehousing. Hopefully, we can get this passed because we did have Republican support at one point.

Mr. Marcum continued with the Resolutions…

• 4. Service storage facilities. I’m sure there will be complaints about this one. We have our redlined of what we’re moving around. This came about because every time that we have self-storage issues we ran into different complaints from different municipalities with commercial and industrial, so we tried to make it so that you have self-storage facility in the higher end commercial, C2. You will only be allowed to have self-storage facility and no outside storage, and it will be a special use permit. C3 and C4 would be a special use permit for indoors/outdoors storage. I1 and I2 would be special use permit for both and the only permissible is self-storage facilities with outdoor recreation vehicles and I3, which is our most intense industrial. Still gives us control because they’re special use permits.

• 5. Request for a refund of fees. This was a building permit that our staff did all the work. Everything was ready to be issued then the applicants decided or discovered somehow that the water table was too high and too expensive for them to fix it, but they never signed any documentation or anything. We usually do not give refund of fees unless it was a mistake on our end. It was not a mistake on our end so, I recommend not approving it. I will make a motion to approve it, but I will recommend that we vote no. The cost is about $3,500.00 and again, it was not our fault.

2. Finance

Mrs. Traynere stated that she has nothing to add from the Finance meeting because it was already discussed in the budget meeting, but Mrs. Tyson may have something to add.

Speaker Cowan stated we don’t need to go through each line item unless it was contentious. Did everyone vote yes on each line item?

Mrs. Tyson replied yes.

Mr. Palmer stated I want to point out that number 2, Allocation of Additional Funds for the Board, that was the big one.

3. Public Works & Transportation

Mr. Van Duyne stated the only thing out of the ordinary, everything passed unanimously, but I wanted to point out #9, no parking areas. Down in the Wilmington area there’s warehousing and cold storage and the City of Wilmington had passed an ordinance not to park in front of the cold storage because of their hours, they’re not opening up so the semis are coming and parking and waiting for the facility to open. Since they’ve been ran out of there now they’re parking on the county highway, along the side. So, we are changing our ordinance to put signage there as well. Trying to force the warehousing and businesses to accommodate for these semi’s and not allow them to park on the street. That’s the only thing different this month.

4. Diversity & Inclusion

Mrs. Tyson stated at this point we are not talking about getting a consultant, but we are still looking at data. Internal data and they are still collecting. There is money there to hire a consultant, but we are not hiring one at this time.

5. Public Health & Safety

Ms. Ventura stated we have 2 Resolutions before you. This is another reason it’s important to have all Democrats at our committee meetings because we have an opportunity to increase the spayed or neutered or specifically looking at the ones that are not spayed or neutered fees, so we could bring in a little more extra revenue and Republicans barely motioned what the animal control director was asking for. I did try to increase it and compromise with what I had, and they weren’t going for it. If we had one more Democrat there, we could have been bringing in revenue this way. So, it will go forward with what’s written in your package. Please vote yes to it. I don’t know if the Republican’s are going to be on it. The other one was a bid on Sunny Hill Nursing Home therapy services. They should be easy votes.

6. Legislative & Judicial

Ms. Coleman stated nothing for tomorrow. Next month because we passed a motion to ask our legislature to extend our start date to delay implementation or the Safe-T Act, that is going to come up for a vote in October. Would that be a Resolution we create?

Speaker Cowan replied yes.

7. Capital Improvements

Mr. Brooks commented I only have one Resolution and that’s asbestos removal of the old courthouse. Nick, did we have a price for that?

Mr. Palmer replied it was $600,000.00 something thousand. That was at your committee that they had this on there.

Mr. Van Duyne stated $645,000.00.

8. Executive

Speaker Cowan stated the first thing to note is that we have about $1.3 million more bid packages to approve and they’re all separate, so bring snacks. We have some of the stuff that we worked on with ARPA in the past 2 meetings. The first when we set the original pillars, we didn’t plan for a separate amount for administrative cost. At leadership we talked about having that come out of each pillar separately but then through discussions with leadership and at Executive we decided it really made more sense to have a separate pillar for administrative. Just to be clear, we’re saying administrative but just because it’s called that doesn’t mean that all $8 million is going to be spent on administration of this program. It kind of a catch all topic for yes, administrating the program but also a buffer zone. We had originally called this contingency and we’re told that the Federal government does not like that term so, we don’t want to be spending money and doling out money and all of a sudden, it’s like, “oops we’re $200,000.00 short somewhere.” The buffer is in this administrative category. That being said, it is still a large amount. I expected more conversation about this in Executive. It was a long meeting.

Ms. Ventura asked there was possible discussion about lessening the amount and are we making a motion to do that?

Speaker Cowan replied I have not heard any talk of that.

Ms. Ventura asked weren’t we supposed to get an opinion back from the State’s Attorney? The one about retro fees being paid out of it and going forward.

Speaker Cowan replied we’re putting in the Resolution that bills processed have to come through the County Board. In the Economic Development Pillar one of the things Mr. Palmer and I, like a year ago reached out to universities in Will County to ask them what they can put together as a collective to apply for the ARPA funds. They came back to us and said, look we had a couple of meetings and there’s a shortage of teachers and nursing and part of that they see is people not being able to afford their degrees. So, they came forward with a plan that said, we’ll educate these folks. We’ll give it basically 50% tuition, but they have to stay in Will County a couple of years afterwards. I think the total for the program was $10 million for the program. So, we passed that through Executive and that will come out of the Economic Development Pillar. This is kind of a big program. When we first discussed it there were some questions about whether or not we know there is a lack of mental health service professionals and Dr. Johnson response to that, from University of St. Francis, he’s the President, was that is a graduate school program so, that would have to be something separate. This was something that they targeted as an undergraduate program that Governor’s State, Joliet Junior College, University of St. Francis, and Lewis could all do together. Anser has some work to do at putting together how this will work. How we make sure there is compliance. How we get the money out the door and that we don’t get dinged if someone doesn’t finish the program. We must work out the details.

Mrs. Traynere commented my only concern about it is the 2-year requirement. That just seems so short.

Ms. Ventura replied that’s because the program now is 3 years to stay.

Speaker Cowan stated but it’s for a whole scholarship. The university felt because this was only 50%, they couldn't say more than 2 years. We also passed the general structure of the economic development pillar; however, we’ll be coming back to work on details in Executive. We did move forward with requesting that the Finance Committee allocate $500,000.00 of the cannabis tax revenue to the Child Advocacy Center. It’s going to be part of the budget. This isn’t even a quarter of the cannabis funds. I’m trying to put together how we’re allocating this cannabis revenue. I have really tried to incorporate everyone’s ideas in one way or another and because of the balance of the Board, I don’t get to do everything that I want and frankly our caucus doesn’t get to do everything we want. With the balance of what we have here we don’t get to do things that differently balanced bodies do. This is something a majority of our Board needed to be funded and this is one way to do it. Feel free to vote the way you want but do remember what our balance is, and we try to make deals that bring the majority of our Board together. The IMRF participation thing.

Mr. Palmer stated all I can say is previously Board members had pensions and there was a change that the County did pass a Resolution that allowed not to continue for a variety of reasons and so, ended. There were some people who sued to basically get this back and they were successful. Someone said, we could do this Resolution to allow Board members that qualify to either get their pension or we’ll let them buy their pension. My understanding is that it’s for people that are active.

Speaker Cowan replied it’s not for anyone elected after Aug 2016. It sounds like we need more information before we move this one forward. The Interim Supervisor of Assessments.

Executive Bertino-Tarrant we finished interviews this week but the Resolution is appointing an interim supervisor of assessments. It can only last for 60 days. That’s just so we can finalize the process of hiring and by October we’ll have the final candidate. Remember they have to hold certain certificates. So, we don’t have a ton of people who applied for this. We have not determined the final. We are in the process of checking references, but we are done with the interviewing process.

Speaker Cowan stated the RNG ribbon cutting should be coming up at the end of October and you should be getting that. Next months Executive meetings are probably going to be pretty hefty, and we will provide lunch, if it’s past 1:00. The other thing is we are hiring for a communications person, if you know anyone that would be interested, please talk to Mr. Palmer.

IX. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR

1. Speakers Update

X. PUBLIC COMMENT

XI. EXECUTIVE SESSION

1. Motion was made to adjourn the meeting @ 7:45 p.m.

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS] MOVER: Margaret Tyson, Majority Whip SECONDER: Jacqueline Traynere, Member AYES: Mueller, Newquist, Tyson, Gazanfer, Traynere, VanDuyne, Brooks Jr., Ventura, Coleman, Marcum, Cowan, Freeman ABSENT: Koch, Winfrey

XII. ADJOURNMENT

https://willcountyil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=12&ID=4393&Inline=True