All right, let's get started with the meeting of the ministry.

So you're leaving the first meeting, Wednesday, March 11th, 2046 at 5 p.m.

Thank you, Father.

We just thank you for another opportunity to come together and handle the county's business or to give us the wisdom and the guidance to do that to the best of our abilities.

Jesus. Amen. Thank you.

All right. Three people's agenda.

All right, 5.0 Approval of Claims, I have a total of $71,737.68, I'll move to the present house.

Second.

Okay.

Okay.

We'll pardon you over.

All in favor say aye.

Thank you.

6.0 public comments.

Okay.

And let's start out with 7.1 common pressure.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

So I want to just mention my portion of the claims.

It's a larger portion than normally.

And that total amount actually is larger than what this committee sees.

Excuse me.

My total $3,520. More than half of that was for the outsourced 1099s, excuse me. The rest was to reimburse me for conference expenses, zone meeting expenses, and membership dues.

Financial reports, I assume you all had a chance to review this, the link is at March 10th.

If you notice the front page sales and income tax receipts remain steady, thanks to the increased sales taxes from October, November, part of holiday sales.

Those taxes were made high into March, because March receipts are December spending, so then they should probably drop off, but after that.

Sales and income tax receipts were up for the first two months of the year by over 224,000 compared to the same time period last year.

So that's encouraging.

Given that some of the things are happening at state level, happy to have that now, because I know if you've heard the governor is looking to raise the revenue fund by at least $69.

So we don't know how that will affect us yet, but it's not been passed, but that's part of his budget.

So anytime we can see an uptick elsewhere, and that's a good guess.

Total county funds down only 1.58%, about $160,000 compared to January's month end.

Any questions about those pieces of information so far?

It was a pretty quiet month.

January was a little larger hit and that was the, primarily that transfer over to the nursing home for those checks anticipation.

dollars. Um, no investments matured in February. I think I mentioned that in my message to you.

So no paid interest earnings to report, but investments of course, continue to accrue interest, but no maturities number actually paid out. As of the end of February, there were 18 investments in place across 10 different County funds, maturity base between March and October.

Last week I did place some additional short-term investments that will mature in May, about 2.9 2.7 million in maturity value and 2.7 million actually matured last week.

Any questions about that report? Moving to the collector side because we're about to ramp that part up. My colleagues, the clerk and the assessor and I, we're meeting tomorrow to kind of plot out the public side planning calendar for the quickly approaching tax season. At this point, I do still We still anticipate a mental late May tax bill mailing date.

We are switching companies.

So I'm hoping to pick up a couple of days, faster turnaround time to get those out and give them what the U.S. Postal Service has been doing in telling us we're going to meet jobs, venture days.

And I literally on Saturday, as an aside, had a tax bill returned that we mailed last May.

Oh, my.

It's never been delivered.

So that's why we need all the time in debt and things like that.

I do anticipate that due dates will probably still be at the end of June, early September, subject to change.

Of course, given the November election and the things that the clerk has going on in August, I'm going to probably push our tax sale maybe to the second week of November.

She has the joyful legal responsibility of having to be present at the sales.

She's got a lot going on in early November, so we're going to push that out.

A couple of other things I wanted to mention to you we did receive notice from the Illinois gaming board last week that they are going to recoup something that they believe was overpaid to us last year, $3,996.80 that they believe you should not have.

they said that it was the results of a state accounting system programming error.

So if I say, instead though, of them asking me to remit it or refund it or reimburse it, they're simply going to just claw that amount back.

I don't know, I think it will probably be our April payment.

Yeah, the March payment was already in place.

So it's not a huge amount.

Our total budget for video gaming tax and last year this year was 140,000.

We had 143 last year, so hopefully this won't be all I have much of it at.

Um, and I did attend my third NACO annual legislative conference at the end of February, but out quite a bit.

So I haven't had a chance to put together a report that I want to share with you.

So I will include that with the next one.

Since you're reimbursing some of my costs, I think you should come home and know what I did.

Yeah, I was thinking, you know, always a productive event.

So, unless you have any questions, that's fine.

Just to clarify, the gaming commission, that was about the video gaming processing or what?

It's the tax part of it. So they said, actually the notice reads, you know, whenever there's a programming error, I question it.

said the overpayment was resolved in a county system program error related to the implementation of Public Act 103-0592, which increased the state video gaming tax by 1% in July of 2024.

So I'm thinking it was the very last two because video game payments are two months behind.

So I'm thinking something happened at the end of 24 that nobody caught in all 25.

So luckily it's not that much.

we typically get between 10 and 13,000 a month.

So it's not vacant, but next time if you see, if you follow that Adrian's report, you'll see that it's mostly present.

Very good.

Let's move on to 7.2 County Clerk.

Thank you, Chairman.

Facing the election time with the election taking place on Tuesday.

We are seeing an uptake in early voting.

We had 80 early voters today.

and that puts us at a total of 985 early groups and 783 vote by mail and then cost us excessively.

Just over 6% will return out so far.

Tomorrow we will be prepping the equipment that will be going out to the polling locations with a moving company to deliver that.

On Saturday, we will be open for early voting from nine until noon, Monday, 8.30 to 4.30 and then the election day, 6 a.m. to 7 a.m.

Stewart Center is a polling location on election day.

So if you know someone that needs to register to vote or if they have complications because their registration is not updated, they can do that at Stewart Center, 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. on election night.

We vote candidates for results on April 1st at 8.30 a.m.

March 31st is the last day that we can receive the vote by mail ballots back to our office by statute.

So the next morning we will certify the results of our campus.

On the tax side, we had great news today.

We received the final multiplier of one.

Haven't had one for the last two years.

And last year we got the final multiplier on April 15th.

So once the assessor rolls over, The numbers to me next week.

I can continue moving forward with tax extension.

This will allow the taxing districts going to have a little bit more time to review their tax computation reports.

And it will allow me to roll to the treasurer and make sure.

So the next month will be quite busy in my office, but well, greater reaching, it just might be a little bit of a penalty compared to usual.

Any questions?

Oh, thank you. Thank you. All right. 7.3, Supervisor of Assessments.

Like Jasmine said, we got the good news today and I was two weeks early, so I was very happy because the sooner I can get it off my desk, the sooner the rest they can do. So next Wednesday is um next Wednesday is when I'm going to roll the system so then we can start the process all over again and um this year um will be a little different um so um Cindy Davis was um doing some of the townships for um gathering data and things like that um a few weeks ago she contacted me and she um is having some health issues. So she cannot continue to do it for the townships that she had for this year. So our office now has that opportunity. So we will have seven of them this year. So about 15,000 notices will go out with seven townships. So I needed the extra time to get 2026 started. So that is what I will be doing busy and stuff like that. Because like I said, the last time we did this rotation, Sandy had four of the seven townships. So now we have, we'll have all seven of So we'll go do the data, value, send notices from A to Z.

So, yes.

Just a question, you will know the answer though.

How often does the city reassess?

I just ran into a property that was sold foreclosure in 2012.

They wish they could keep paying those taxes when I sell that property.

They're supposed to be done.

They're supposed to be done every four years.

So their last quadrennial year was 23.

And this was way before that, but it's just interesting, because Helms owns $400,000 house.

I would love to pay in taxes there.

Sometimes it takes us a little bit of time to catch up some things, but it'll get better.

It'll get thought out when it gets sold.

They are trying to, I don't know, speaking of that, there is a statute that is out there just so everybody is aware that somebody is trying to push to redo the assessing part of it. So what the proposal is, if you would sell it, then like in California, they go directly to their sale price. Okay. So that's what they'll do is go directly to your sale price. And then as long as you own it, if you're a senior, your assessment can only go up 1%. And if you're not a senior, that your assessment can go only 3% in one year.

So it's a proposal that's out there. We'll see. I just, it's going to mess up the uniform I learned of it a couple of weeks ago and I just wanted to pass it along.

All right, thank you. Let's move on to company administrator.

It's going to be brief because I don't have a lot of time as a voice, but my next partnership meeting is March 25th, since last time that Williams and I sat down with the friends of the PEC and went over their agreement that was getting close to expiring and that was presented Monday night.

and Approved. And Approved. I thought it had, so that'll be heading on to the board for people there.

It was a good meeting. I think they're definitely trying to do some recruiting and get some new people in there and help, but it was nice to sit down with them and make sure they understood the liability concerns we had and the property benefits and stuff like that. So we continue to I've been working with Animal Control, helped with the RFQs that will be put forward tomorrow night, and her contract, the move in the building, that's right, so.

This morning at the department head meeting, we discussed the wellness screenings that are scheduled for April 2nd, and we start pushing out the reminders again and more frequently to get as many people involved and signed up as possible.

And then we're also doing the STEP program, the county board will also get them information on that.

We decided this morning, thanks to a brainstorming session and a little help, that Step Up Stevenson County is what it's going to be called now, so there'll be a little virtual map of your steps around the county.

We talked about audit things that the government should be working on, making sure they're getting their cataplysis updates updated, checking their emails and the portal and getting up to date with that, getting their year-end totals to our office.

We had a really good conversation, I felt, about the Cross-Bridge Shield app.

and reaching out to Kerry McBride for more support guidance on that to hopefully get more interaction for users on the app to to fully utilize the benefits which will hopefully then in turn help with the renewals and things as well. The shredding, the new shredding service has received all of our information and we're setting up their start dates for shortly. They sent it off to the Department of Health meeting today and they said they would touch.

So we also talked at the Department of Health meeting about RxMapper. I'm reaching out to get new totals to see how many people have been screened and we had a conversation about if it was a smaller video than what was sent to everyone because it was pretty much being Maybe they could show their inter-department meeting to try to open up the employees' interests a little more.

I got a lot going on. Finished up the jail today with the phone installation. I do believe I believe we're at like 98% done in the county.

There might be a few areas that I need to check in on that I hope I didn't overlook.

We got some phones down in the election room that I am not touching.

They didn't cooperate and they need phones during this time.

So I just let them be until early voting is done and then I'll go finish those up.

So the phones are rolled out.

They're in every office across the county.

so we're completely over to the new, not only do we get new phones, we got a new phone system.

So everything's switched over, I'll have more control of that internally.

So that'll help all our ID changes and routing.

And I think I've read on a few call trees already.

So that's just helpful for us.

And we don't have to wait on the other company to get things done when we get them done.

So tomorrow is the county recycling event for all the Stevenson County locations.

We have four drop sites.

We have the highway departments, the courthouse, the Stuart Center and the health department.

I feel like I bring in this type of weather every time I schedule it, because it was nice.

And I am not looking forward to being outside tomorrow or getting all this stuff collected, but that'll be tomorrow.

So I'll be starting out at the highway department meeting them.

We start off south of town and then head north because they're out of Milwaukee or somewhere in that area.

So they try to make it easier for them that they're not backtracking.

Currently working with Revise who is our website vendor to do checks on our website to make sure that we are ADA compliant for the June, 2027 federal deadline.

So we're working towards that.

This will progress includes reviewing current content, accessibility features, and finding for updates to ensure the website remains accessible for all users.

So we've been running some audits, I've got to go through some reports and see where we're at.

I do know that they have like an ADA bot that we can add to the website that kind of helps when they ask questions or different things that kind of help ease that.

So I have to look into that as well with my free time.

So the nice thing is that we do have some time.

I am not leaving it until the last minute, but we do have a little bit of time there.

Lastly, we have SD COIL 1.

We have a new server up and ready to go for the offices here at the Stewart Center.

We are waiting.

here at the Stewart Center, we are waiting.

I actually, I don't know when is a good time now because I think we go right from the primary right into taxes.

So I really don't want that.

More taxes, more taxes, definitely.

The problem that I'm going to have with that is that there's four terabytes of data that has to be moved and we can do a weekend.

I just don't know that I can guarantee that it will be done by Monday's opening of business.

So we may have to schedule that and know that there may be some downtime on a Monday.

I was trying to pick a three-day weekend that would give us a little extra of a buffer because there's a lot of information to move and to get on that new server and to verify and make sure everything's up and working.

So- So you're trying to figure out how to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're trying to figure out when we can get that schedule for what we can do.

And, um, taxes are a win.

We need to have, yeah, I don't know if we can get it off our extension, but DevNet is incredibly painfully slow and we tend not have that.

I think we both experienced like a report that you should see most comments with like a couple minutes first, or in front of us.

I understand it's been a pain for a while. It's just trying to fit it in. And now with the amount of data that's on it, we just have to make sure I didn't want business to be affected. So we may have to sit down and talk when we come up with a plan. I'm going to meet with Mike in the next week or so, you know, because we have to see what all the vendors need to as far as the moving goes. So that is on the horizon.

We do have the new one up and ready.

We just got to, obviously we have to take all the data from a certain point, move it over and then make sure everything works.

Just that data transition, that's going to be the most difficult and doesn't matter starting it after hours, you know, on a Friday, we still may not done by Monday.

So there's really no good schedule at this point.

So we may just have to, I don't know what we do.

We'll discuss that and go from there.

It's worth the sacrifice of being down, even if it's during the whole day.

Okay. Before tax season has stopped. In my opinion, I just have people day where they have those bills in their hands. Our homes will not stop and they have to be able to pull it off. And right now, as they're just screaming at us, the sooner the better. Yes.

So we will work together to figure out when that is going to be. And then obviously that'll be a full weekend of making sure we get that to her.

I mean, you know, a lot of this stuff can probably be done remotely and just watch it.

But the problem is, is that we just have to make sure that it stays going and that everything goes like it should, and then we have to verify, you know, and that'll require probably you guys because I won't know what I'm looking at, Gianna, so we'll get that figured out and get that scheduled up and go from there.

One thing you got to love about IT is everything's an emergency.

Recycling events, county offices, and county equipment only, correct?

And not open to the public.

Correct.

Just saw people showing up there to watch the video.

Yeah, no, that's it.

Yeah, yeah.

So, good question.

Yeah, thank you.

All right, let's go to 8.1. I'm probably not ready for that one yet.

I actually checked in. This is not a delay on our end.

IPMG and Mark Bell, there's some agency we're supposed to go through that is coordinated with them. It's still not figured out. So he asked if we could expedite it and go around the process and we still haven't heard back from that. So we just have to table it until we get some clarification. That's the AI news policy that was online. So is it online somewhere? Okay. Yeah, there was a copy that we had. I could send it back out.

It's just been tabled for a few months. So nothing's been altered on it since then. We're just been waiting for a review to see what changes we need to make, if any. So yeah, Mark Bulte apologized profusely, but he's like, I'm going to try to get this in because it has to go through or somebody else, so at this point, hopefully, I mean, my last correspondence was probably Monday-ish, so hopefully we'll hear something by the end of the week, maybe, and if not, I'll ping them again and see what we need to do, so.

Like we said last month, I think it's better to do this slowly and correctly.

I agree.

Absolutely.

Have you gotten any guidance from some other counties, I know we talked, and everyone's kind of just stepping up their feet.

Yeah. I think we're probably a little bit further ahead than what some have been, but yeah, that's, we'll definitely do that. You know, so usually you share, you know, secrets between, you know, what works and what doesn't. So.

I have some things.

Yeah, go ahead.

It's on the February agenda, I apologize I didn't have any updated to attach at the link in the next, this was helping me out when I was on here in my next, so that's fine, but it was on February, so that's fine, thank you.

Okay, let's move to new business 9.1 approval of ordinance amending check 29 of the Stevenson County Code.

You all had a chance to take a look at that.

I'm going to show you.

That's their email.

So, they sent out an email with the auditor's response almost after they've interviewed all of us.

I guess I'm going to make a motion to approve it and then we can talk about it maybe in a second.

I can second it for discussion.

Okay.

All right.

So this would be limited.

See, I got to get to page two.

This would close out at the end of our first meeting, first regular meeting of the County Board in December, 2026.

This would revert back to old policy.

As we were, I was talking to Chairman, was talking to me about it and kind of discussing it since Tim was leaving off the board and he's current Finance Chair.

Trying to understand who the best person or who would be the best qualified to be the Finance Chair.

and, you know, Scott had been the finance chair for four years previously, and probably currently had the most experience being in that position.

This made sense to change this policy and allow him to do that.

Otherwise, again, we're going to have to move a bunch of committee people and chairs around me and we'll probably have pretty nice event like the cutting and moving people around to get somebody in directly.

and myself would have had to completely realign the entire committee organization, I guess, to lack of a better term, to make this work.

And again, this is not something I'm looking to have put in place permanently.

The reorganization meeting for the county will be in December of this year.

There is possibility of new board members coming on.

there'll be a new vote or another vote for chairman and vice chairman of the board.

At that point, whoever the chairman is can realign communities however they see fit.

This is the path of least resistance in my opinion to get us through the 2027 budget process.

Do we have a vice chair?

Vice chair of the board finance the board of finance or the board of both?

We have currently the vice chair of finance.

The chair is still vice chair of the board.

His resignation is not effective until the end of March, at which point we will, what's the term?

Declare a vacancy for his seat.

And at that point we'll have a new election for vice chair in April.

so we'll open it up to nominations.

Any board members that have the opportunity to make nominations and vote for vice chair and board?

See what else is in here.

So it doesn't change the current structure of the finance committee.

The finance chair would still only have one vote on that committee.

I understand trying to streamline.

trying to streamline things.

I understand the, this gets messy if we don't.

That's the, you've got a lot of people to balance, a lot of issues to balance.

However temporary, the consolidation of this kind of responsibility makes me nervous.

I don't, just on go, I don't like having that much responsibility with one person, however much of an emergency as it is.

and part of me always resists a move to make us do less work.

As tempting as that is, that's part of our job.

That's part of our job is representation.

And just because it would make less work for us, I don't know that that inherently makes it the right decision.

I understand the temptation.

Again, I get the temporary nature of it and all that, I just, this makes me twitchy.

Yeah.

I'm not sure I understand the last work of the phrase, but to the point of, to avoid the restructuring.

Oh, this is all I'm getting at.

Okay.

Well, if I can, I can hear a brief example.

Planning and Development, Mr. Perkins, Chair of that committee.

So I put Steve into finance.

and I didn't ask you because you get corned and being during the budget process most of the time.

Your vice chair is Nicole, who's also chair of nursing.

You have Brian Brandt, who is chair of public works and you have Dale Diddens, who is chair of court services.

Can't just plug in the vice chair into chair of P&D.

without them revamping nursing home. His vice chair right now is Nicole Baker.

And again, if I put Brian Brandt, which he can't because he also picks corn and fall during the budget process. If I did that, then I have to have a new chair for public works and move somebody else onto that committee. So it's been same with this committee. It's not secure too.

It is, you know, I had a long conversation with Adrienne because I want to make sure she was comfortable more than anyone else with the process.

She gave her blessing.

She had no issues.

I've worked very extensively on it.

And as far as, I guess, consolidating or changing the power of it, nothing comes out of finance that doesn't ultimately end up as board level to be approved.

I also have final say on all agenda items as it is right now.

And believe me, I understand the appearance of it, but that's why there's 15 other board members.

And I am not looking for more to do.

Well, and that's why I do pick the word responsibility rather than power, very, very intentional.

and we can all have the utmost respect for you and your experience. I'm trying to take the personality out of it and just think of it as a structural thing. Again, even if it's a temporary issue, that's where I struggle. Oh, that is why there's a sunset to it. Sure, it's not a grand and I'm not as eloquent as Adam, but I'm struggling with it too on the parameters that it looks, how it looks to the people we represent and what are we saying to them? Are we saying, okay, I understand what Chairman Helms is saying too about putting people in positions that have other responsibilities, Trent.

Well, there's 16 Board members.

I'm just struggling with that part of it.

And the number of polls I got today.

I didn't have any that were very positive on that.

So.

On this?

On this.

What are the calls did you get?

Six.

I think it calls on nothing else.

That's impressive, but at least six people are looking at the agenda.

But to me, that's a lot when you look at anything else we do drop.

Well, I'm impressed with six.

Well, it's still answering calls on my drive here.

So, well, going back to, I guess, my previous comments, I think, not that Scott needs more to do, but if you're looking around the room and who's doing what, then he's already done the job.

I think he's the most qualified.

So it makes sense to get the, say the best person in that position for temporary.

That's the way I'm gonna decide the thing.

Yeah, it does definitely, everything's, if we approve this tonight, it still has to get approved by the board on Thursday.

And again, the structure of the finance committee doesn't change.

We still have the same number of votes.

He's old, he doesn't even want to vote.

And like I said, we had a review by Carl, we had a review by the auditors, and we didn't have any issues with that.

So, yeah, I think we've got plenty of oversight with everything that's going on.

So, I'm comfortable with it.

I think we have elected people as well as appointed people that are more than capable to oversee what we do, sure.

Yeah, that's the intent, we don't want to be like Dixon all the way, right, when we have an issue.

So that's why we have this oversight, things like that, so then let's not have to change.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

we'll get two of those okay yes yes so business okay let's come up with another plan I guess all right okay let's move on 10.0 comments from committee members so uh it's a little early but I did bring this up I have brought this up at various committees um but but as we're getting towards nicer weather, as we're getting towards parade season, I'd like to re-voice my opinion.

I think the County should have a more diverse and celebratory presence at parades.

The Sheriff's Department always gets out and that's great but if we can get some of the highway department trucks down the road or whatever else we got, I think the more positive case we can put on the County and our presence in the community, the better.

So again, that's a, this seems like a logical place to start that push.

Um, yeah, I think everyone would want to get out there and throw some candy.

I think they are taking things for the mobile and they are ready to read it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So again, everyone, everyone.

Hold on 11.0, adjournment, make a motion, adjourn in a second.

All those in favor say aye.

Pat, Patrick, Sue, Kathy. Thanks everybody.