6.30, We'll call our meeting to order, Dale and Lowreheads.
Certainly, certainly.
Lowreheads, Heavenly Father, we come today to thank you for bringing us all together and thank you for blessing our lives, help us do what's right for the County.
And we have a friendly and productive conversations Conversations, and this will be asked in Jesus' name.
Amen.
All right, 3.0, Google of the agenda.
Samuel?
Second.
Is there any additions or anything to it?
I'm going to add something to the, I think it's the new businesses.
I want to talk about the trail agreement, intergovernmental agreement.
I think that would be under new business.
Okay.
Anything else?
All those in favor of the agenda as added.
Are you opposed?
Motion carries.
We have approval of the meeting minutes from May 11th.
Motion to approve.
Any questions on those?
Hearing none, all those in favor sing in front by saying aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries as well.
We have claims this evening trolling $860.33.
Motion and a second.
Bush and Brandt seconded by Baker.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
There is.
Thank you for the signature.
At this time we have public comment.
Excuse my shaky voice, my name is Mark Curtis.
I live in 1990 Candlewick Lane in Freeport, Illinois, Mark and Cindy Curtis.
I'm involved in the area with the quarry and I just wanted to mention everybody just bringing this up but my concerns and thoughts about that and some of what it boils down to is I'm concerned about the groundwater contamination of when he gets into doing other things in and Corey and getting into the concrete and the asphalt and things like that with crushing and recycling that oppose risk to the groundwater.
My issues are also traffic and safety of the increased truck volume for residents, school buses and other users and conditions of the road and just wear and tear.
The noise and the hours of operation.
I think it's six in the morning until six in the evening or something like that.
So, and just the air quality and I moved out there 2015.
It's close enough to be a city, but far enough to be peaceful and tranquil.
And I believe that this is going to inhibit that.
And so this is, I mean, there is businesses, but I just wanted to state my concerns.
And I think I'm the only one in this closet that beats three minutes.
Please give me, thank you for your time and your consideration and if you don't mind, I wanted to be first because I have a sick wife.
So I'm going to go home and tend to her.
And hopefully that won't be in the minutes, thank you.
Thank you.
Chair and members, all except one County Board member voted a new fence ordinance in that last month's board meeting.
Are you aware of the fencing project that has started since that meeting at the 40 located at 466 West Fairview Road?
I'll speak of the activities the owners at Jeffery has been doing for the past three weeks along the property line between us.
He has graded up and cut out trees and shrubbery on his side.
In doing so, he has knocked portions of his existing steel coast and barbed wire fencing and still rutted shrubbery onto my property.
He has shoved piles of dirt under the fence line and onto my property.
Last summer, he and I spoke of working together to clean up the property line.
This no longer appears to be his intent.
Last week, a family member called me at approximately 7 PM and said he wasn't able to drive up my lane as landscaping waste shrubs and brush had been thrown over the fence onto my lane.
My family member had to throw the best back over the fence as Zach had already left the quarry for the day.
I don't believe when you folks approve the ordinance, you expected these issues for neighbors to have to deal with.
I ask that you consider amending and revising your ordinance to correct and alleviate these and other issues for people who live next door and aren't just zoned residential, but also zoned ag.
This morning zoning director Williams told me Mr. Jeffery will be allowed to use any old rusty thrown away nasty loafing or scrap materials he chooses for his fencing.
This is also an issue that shouldn't be inflicted upon neighbors.
Mr. Jeffery's actions for over a year now have been in constant county and state violation.
Why has this been and continues to be allowed?
Georgia, are you running the camera?
Would you please zoom in on this video?
It's voice activated, I can't control it.
Is it looking at my phone?
Yep.
Thank you.
This video was taken since your last PND development meeting.
This is a small dump trailer, but you can clearly see in part what our neighborhood has been exposed to and expected to endure for over the past year.
Multiply the intensity of the health issues with the semi-trailer dumpings.
As always, I invite all of you to come out personally, see what I speak of.
Please call and I'll let you up my lane.
You don't see much from the road.
For the official record, I request my remarks tonight and this video will be placed into the meeting minutes.
Mrs. Williams told me this morning that this type of request is only honored at ZBA and County Board meetings, not counting subcommittee meetings.
Is that correct?
Please let me know.
Thank you for your attention.
I don't know if you guys, is it Kenya and that's, oh, all right, okay.
Can I please leave this with you then for the thank you.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Now we will move on with reports to the committee.
Thank you.
Good evening.
How are you all?
Good.
Great.
Passed around are an extrapolation of I know on 7.8 within the agenda is the Illinois Department, IPPS's Monthly Digest of Unemployment Numbers.
The chart there is references the labor force employment and participation rate in relationship to the job posting data.
And Jeff.
So as you can see, we continue to have more jobs posted than we do people unemployed and looking for work.
Consistently, same companies seem to be at the top of the list.
They just rotate kind of which position they're at.
GPAC as well as K&A recruiting and AMN health are all healthcare recruiters.
The one, I would say kind of more significant thing that stuck out to me, unemployment rate has dropped from 5.2 to 4.0, which is pretty substantial in one month.
And the median salary has decreased significantly for the last several months.
It had been a little over $30 an hour.
Is at $26.54 per hour at the median salary.
So just some things to make you aware of.
At the bottom of the page, I won't go through the list, but our upcoming events, you're all welcome to participate in those.
Moving on to some other economic development activities in the past month, we continue to work with the site selector for another healthcare organization entering into our market.
There will be exciting news and an announcement in the coming weeks for a new retailer who will be locating at the forum.
Taylor, who will be locating at the former Joann's location.
We continue our work with Jeff Modica in Alberta's airport and helping him craft five-year economic development.
Enterprise zone applications are in earnest, hard at work here.
We have submitted an application for the Department of Ag Review for both AutoSmart and LENA.
Again, we're expanding this enterprise zone to encompass development and expansion at AutoSmart.
That's a former visitor center and we're encompassing some areas of Lena within the village proper for residential development.
Per the process for enterprise zone boundary expansion, we need to get an ad review for each application.
A public hearing will also be held for on June 17th at nine and nine 30 back to back public hearings that will be at the greater Freeport partnership office Public hearing notices have been published and we're in the Village Voices and Journal Standard last week.
I am busy drafting ordinance and resolution for our six units of government.
In the last month, we met with Sevencia's team and representatives from the DCEO talking about their next stage of investment.
As you know, about a year ago, they put an addition on to their facility to facilitate a new line of cheese product.
That is going well and orders have increased.
So now their next problem is how to deal with their waste strength.
So there will be an investment of some sort in helping to expand capacity in their wastewater treatment.
They are also investigating a feasibility study partnering with Purpose Energy to look at a biodigester.
So part of that process would be taking their waste stream, seeing how they could capture methane gas in the process of that waste being broken down.
Purpose Energy is a separate company that they're partnering with to do this study.
Civencia has a corporate location in Pennsylvania where they're already sort of building a biodigester adjacent to a plant.
So part of the understanding is what other assets or what other waste streams are in the area from other manufacturers and would they be also willing to partner in this?
So we've conducted kind of introductory conversations and contacts with all the players that you can think of, Berner, Poor Valley Farms, Chortleston Cheese, et cetera, et cetera.
So more to come.
Leslie is hard at work with putting together an incubator, a business incubator program and in the process of writing for the USDA Rural Business Development Grant to help fund a revolving loan program.
Oh, I skipped over.
We are also in process with City of Freeport to do another boundary expansion of the enterprise zone, again, also to help expand residential development.
Had a beginning conversation with the Village of Stockton and a value add manufacturer that's located there looking to expand the enterprise element to the Village of Stockton to help facilitate some development that they believe will be to come, as well as talking to our friends in Kent.
They are also interested, an investment is planned, timeline is a little bit to be determined, but I want to have conversations earlier rather than later because it really is about a six month lead time in terms of expanding the enterprise out to help with their development.
Workforce development continues to be a strong priority.
Our Midland CEO program, we were able to hire and just a facilitator for the fall semester start that program.
The offer of employment was just accepted today.
Again, the partnership is not the employer of record.
That will be for the Freeport School District helping facilitate that CEO board.
We held a manufacturing round table last Friday morning.
We had representatives from CoreFX, Verner, StarForge, Danfoss, TriStar, Highland, CareerTech, Freeport High School, DCEO, the Workforce Connections.
Two main topics were apprenticeship programs, internship programs, developing both of those, as well as DCEO has a new program called AIM.
It's geared towards manufacturers and it's to help them with investment that isn't necessarily going to create a lot of jobs, but there's significant investment maybe in automation or other equipment.
So there's some thresholds that the manufacturers need to meet.
Again, the state has announced this program.
They have some guidelines, if you will, and guard rails, but there is no application ready for a business to apply quite yet.
They're expecting that to be later this summer or early fall.
We continue to partner with Mercy Health to provide community tours to their physicians that they're looking to recruit to this area.
And we are holding our next workforce alignment meeting this Thursday morning at 730.
From the initial meetings we had a couple months ago, we have sent out a workforce survey asking for data from HR departments.
We have had a fairly significant response from companies.
We are looking to aggregate that data and create a dashboard to get more real-time data.
The information from IDES is great, but we're also looking to understand recruitment.
How successful are local recruiters, local companies able to recruit talent and hire here?
And how else can we get more strategic, maybe surgical strategic, if you will, in our recruitment efforts?
We continue to work on housing in two facets, again, expanding the enterprise zone, as well as the team continues to work with building owners in downtown Freeport who are looking to renovate upper floors for residential units.
And last but not least, we held our first music on Chicago Friday.
We were lucky enough for the weather to hold off.
It was a wonderful evening.
And Saturday morning was a free bike ride, the free aquanose cycle.
So that was the first time that we have ever kind of helped co-host this special partnership also with the Department of Natural Resources and Lake Liaquanah.
They had about 35 bike riders registered.
They started off here in Tuddy's Crossing and continued all the way out to Lake Liaquanah and then turned around and some of them stopped at Lena Bruin Company for a little refreshment.
So, happy to answer any questions you might have on anything I've mentioned.
What was the name of that lake?
It's the one by Lena.
Maybe you've been there before?
Yeah, it's that one.
Sure, I might have a couple questions.
Sure.
You didn't really touch on the hotel motel situation, but are all the rooms at the, what is it?
Any one?
Yeah, the big hotel downtown, what is it?
Oh, the Hampton.
Hampton.
Yes is that all those all those rooms available here are they to my understanding yes it has been the Faymont which will later on in June will be rebranded um and it will become I'm going to blank on the name but it's going to change from a Wyndham chain to a Marriott chain and there have been a number of rooms each week that have been pulled off the inventory because they've been Remodeled.
So I think Nicole has accounted for that when she gets her occupancy data every every week from the hotels.
But to my understanding, all the rooms are at the Hampton are available.
I've never been in one.
You know what?
I, being the fact that I live here, I have had many family members stay there, but I myself have never been in there either.
Yes.
And just, I'm sure you can't, I'm sure you don't have any concrete answer for this one, but has there been any interest in the old Holiday Inn plot of land?
I've heard lots of stories of what's going to go there.
We have suggested that site to many different players.
To my knowledge, there has been no one who is moving forward at this time with purchase.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
It's a pretty good chunk of land.
It's about five and a half acres or so.
Yeah.
That's it.
Thanks.
Sure.
Anyone else?
Okay.
Moving on.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Yes.
Thanks, Andrea.
Sure.
How's that?
All right.
Deposit for the month for the month of May totaled $11,369.36.
Total deposits to date for the general fund are 162,715.10.
That's over our projected, as I always say every month now.
Building permits have been going good.
We issued 11 code enforcement violations for the month of May.
Four violations were sent to our new inspector, three for overgrown grass that weeds and other vegetation, two grand operable vehicle violations, one no permit special use and one for excessive vehicles on the property.
That's a special use that was only allowed 40.
We closed two cases, one is pending and stator eight are still open.
We met with We met with Doug Rominsky, our new building inspector to discuss the process of his inspections.
I emailed him last week with the information on four homes that are considered to be dangerous buildings, nuisances that needed inspections.
He said he will get on these right away.
Nicole performed 16 inspections and I performed 14 for the month.
We had our monthly meeting with the representative from IBEW.
Nicole and I attended a team's meeting with Andy Shaw, Dan Payette, and Abel Gale, Abel Herr, I'm so sorry if I butchered that name, with Blackhawk Hills to discuss the potential of the BRIC grant, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities application.
We'll discuss that in a little while.
This grant will let us update the zoning code in its entirety.
Nine single-family dwellings have been permitted this year so far, and in 2025, we permitted 11, so things are looking good for single-family dwellings.
And that's all I have.
Questions?
I would just make one comment and I'm sure you're aware of this.
That house on 26 North, I drove by there a couple times this week.
That is just a shame.
The only thing we can do is send her back to the hearing officer after I do the letters.
And then if we wanted it taken care of, we could have someone in the county take care of it, hire it out and then be paid off that way.
But I need to reach out to our attorney, Warneman, he is on paternity leave right now.
So it's kind of hard getting answers back out of them, which I don't expect right away.
So that is one question.
What we can do know next, because he did state at one point in time, we could, don't 100% take my word that we could possibly foreclose on the home.
So I want to see what that process entails too.
Yeah.
That one looks worse than yesterday.
It's, it's bad.
Okay.
To relatively years.
Not that I can determine.
She's got three homes.
I kind of wish she was a relative just given to me.
A lot of things didn't, right?
It is.
I've asked several of my relatives then to claim that it's part of a different clan.
Different branch.
I have a question, Beth, can you tell me what the goal of meeting with the IBEW is?
Sure.
They'd like to see if we have any potential big builds coming up so they can get their name in for bids and such.
And a lot of the solar, they like to get local.
So they go out and then, you know, if it's one that I think that's going to have project coming up to be permitted, I'll let them know and they try to get their name out there.
So they hire in our area, Rockford Freeport area, because some of them they're from out in California being from installation companies.
So that's great.
Mr. Chairman, I thought about one more question, Chair, somebody asked me if it would be possible to rent the old landfill, the grass, grassy hill, out to like a beef farmer or a milk farmer.
It had the cows grazed on it.
I said, okay, I thought it was the city of Fricke, yep, no, I wouldn't know anything about that.
I didn't know anything about it either.
Well, the only problem I would have is that right now with the price of beef, people might mistake them for other animals and they'd hang them in their garage and turn them into steak.
That's been happening out in the country a couple different places.
Is that right?
Yeah, really?
I guess I don't buy enough beefy to even know what the prices are.
I've heard that's getting a bit ridiculous.
Yeah, yes and no.
Exactly.
That's fine by yourself.
Anyone else?
I do not have anything to report from Soil and Water.
I did not go.
I don't go every month.
I did not go there other than to say that Mr. Helms asked about trees last month.
And I got a whole bunch of those trees and they're doing really good.
Other than that, I don't have anything.
Dale?
Recreation and trails?
There's a pretty good sized bridge repair coming up that will close part of the trail up towards, well, further up towards Orangeville.
They'll put some signs up recommending different alternative routes.
And there's a grant that's going to pay most of that.
And Mr. Zimmer has the bike rentals started.
If you go to the surgeon out on Facebook, He's going to be in different locations, Teddy Crossing and then, uh, the one in Orangeville, I think, and, uh, one by the, uh, one I always go to, what's that called, the one just towards to the hotel.
It's West Black.
I don't know why I can't remember that.
Sometimes he's going to be there too with his van and bikes and none of the bikes were over 20 miles an hour, which is, uh, I don't know if it's a law or we decided that at the trail, but we didn't want anybody getting killed on a Bicycle.
But I think it's about $25 an hour, depending on which model.
I haven't tried it yet, but I'm planning on doing that soon.
It'll be interesting.
Other than that, that's all I got.
Questions for Dan?
All right.
Blackhawk Hills.
I have not heard anything from Blackhawk Hills.
Now, Georgia, if you could reach out to Dan tomorrow.
We haven't heard from him quite a while.
He used to have a monthly meeting with me.
We haven't.
I think I've been six It's been a number of months because I think there might be one coming up in July if they're annual meeting.
Can you get me within a little bit?
Yes.
I'll reach out.
Yeah, it would be nice to get an update.
We're contributing about $11,000 a year to Blackhawk Hills.
I'm not sure what.
You don't have anybody on there?
Sam Newton?
Okay.
I'm not sure what we're getting for our investment at this point, so it'd be nice to have it I don't have a report, but I do have some questions and I'm not trying to pick on anybody.
Sometimes I like to do that.
Well, what as we look at all these issues that we keep getting here and now we're going to get it is getting larger and larger.
Is there anything that the county can do?
As far as, I mean, I know like, okay, the fence was supposed to be built.
It's starting to get built.
I'm glad to see that.
I've been out there.
He has a right to do those things that he wants to do.
And I'm behind that 100%.
And I also know that he's, we have questions about fence rules, there's a law about fences, and part of that fence, whether you built it or not, is still half of that fence is yours along the property line.
If it's not holding up, you could be held responsible if you were keeping cattle out or something like that.
A landowner can be, at least we can in the country, in real world things.
I just would like to know if there's nothing we can do, then we need to say, this is how it is, this is what it is, and we're going to move on.
I have over and over until I'm blue in the face.
There's nothing we can do.
I had to give him ample time to get the fence installed.
I had to give him ample time for the trees.
He has until August 2nd to get the trees and the fence done.
Like I told Mr. Rivers this morning, on August 2nd at 4 PM when I'm off of work, I'll go out there and look, if it's not done, I'll go back out in the morning because technically has until midnight.
I'll go back out there in the morning.
If August 3rd rolls around and they are not finished, then we start the proceedings for the revocation of the special use.
The land issues of him pushing over a fence or putting dirt on her property or the brush, that's not zoning.
That's a civil matter.
It's not, my neighbor dropped a tree on my lawn and left it lay there.
I couldn't call the zoning department and say, Hey, my neighbor dropped a tree.
You need to do something about it.
It's not a zoning issue.
It's civil.
So the issues that they're having with the brush here, the fence there, he's doing what he's supposed to.
I hate saying my hands are tight, but my hands are tight.
There's only so much we can do.
And they think that I can do something about it.
And if I say, I can't do anything about it.
Oh, you're just giving him the red carpet.
I don't know Zach, anything.
I don't know anybody, anything in this County.
I'm impartial.
I don't care who you are.
The rules pertain to everyone.
He's getting a fence permit.
He's got, he got a fence permit.
He is planting the trees.
And if he gets that done.
And if he gets that done by the second, then he's allowed to do what he's doing.
He told me he has the EPA permits.
I asked him if I can see him sometime when I go out there and he'll show them to me.
I don't need to keep them in office because that's not something we have a requirement for.
But.
Well, I know that a lot of what goes on with this whole issue is if he said, she said, and personally, I'm getting tired of it too.
And I'm not saying that there's something that you need to do differently.
I just, I wanna know if there's nothing that we can do to stop the issue and he's doing everything within his rights, they're actually probably doing more against him than he's doing them at this point when it comes to that quarry and whatever people want to complain about, he still has the right to do that.
Right.
Same thing comes with the solar facility that they complain about.
That's that company's solar facility.
If they don't want it to generate electricity, that's their problem.
Right, and they cannot understand that.
You know, it's frustrating to me.
I was in the office by myself today, Nicole was off, observers came in, I'm gracious to talk to anyone.
It was 45 minutes almost, and the phone's ringing and ringing and ringing.
And I just reiterate the same thing every time we talk.
And it's inhibiting me to do my job with other things.
I don't know what else I can say without, you know, just saying, I'm done.
I can't talk to you.
Our door's closed.
We're not, you know, I don't know what else.
I honestly don't.
If somebody has a good suggestion, but it just doesn't seem to get through anyone's heads that there's nothing we can do.
You know, I talked to Zach.
I said, I've been told you're hauling in landscape waste.
He goes, I have not hauled in any landscape waste.
I said, I'll take your word for it.
I take her word for it.
I said, but I just, I don't know.
There's other people two miles down the road that are hauling in landscape waste and burning it as well.
I said, that's not here nor there.
We're focused on the quarry and that's it, but there's nothing I can do.
I think one of the things we need to do is change our language.
Oh, definitely.
It's, it's, we need to, there's nothing we can do is it's to the point now where we've done what we were supposed to do and we're going to go from there.
So I've told them it's civil.
They have contracted with an attorney of homeowners out there.
So they are contemplating legal action against, what's his name?
Zach Jackson.
Zach.
Oh, I told this morning they didn't.
But that's not us.
Well, regardless, if they did name us in the soup, the only thing we have control over is the specialties from them.
They want it shut down.
That's not us.
Right.
I just want to make sure that as a group here, we're all on that page.
And Beth put up with a lot and been accused of a lot of things that that's not what should be happening.
If somehow we're going to have to somehow, then it needs to go there.
And we just say, you guys hired an attorney, you talk to the attorney and let it go.
And we were not going to talk about it.
Honestly, what I'm hopeful I told Ms. Rivers this morning.
I said this, you know, contact an attorney.
I don't have that kind of money.
I can't afford an attorney.
So I just want you to know, we're, I'm not trying to accuse you of anything.
I don't want you to think that I just would like to see this over with.
Oh, we all would.
Definitely.
Yes.
And Georgia.
Okay.
We have a facilities maintenance report.
I didn't see anything.
I did talk to Wally.
He has wiped this bill the end of last week, but I know the trees have been the one that was getting taken out.
They've been removed down to the stump.
The stump he does not plan to have removed until after the event because of the amount of mulch that I'll have to get hauled out.
And have we communicated that to Pearl City?
I will follow up on that.
I know he was going, he had been talking with them, so, but I'll follow up.
Well, they had talked to, I know we don't really want to see that, but they would have helped too, if they could get some of it going, if they're just so obsessive.
I think he was worried that the amount of dirt that would have to be hauled, Okay, we've had a little conversation already on 7.8, the Illinois Department of Employment Security report for April 26.
Anything additional?
And I hope it's good information I have.
All right, with that, we'll move on to new business with the approval of the zoning department's application for the resilience grant.
Yes, you received in your packet a brief synopsis of what it would be about.
I know it states to fund and develop and fund to develop and adapt building code, we can't right now adopt a building code.
We do not have the funds nor the employees to do that.
So I spoke with Dan Payette and Abby, and he stated we could approve it as it would be a phased approach, stronger enforcement efforts in higher risk areas and gradually expanding the enforcement over the years.
Since we have in our code flood development and flood hazard area, this is why we would be allowed to apply for this grant since it's through FEMA.
They want to see more enforcement through your code with the flooding issues in the county and area-wide.
So that's that.
And the match would come out of the trust fund and not any county funds.
$100,000?
It would dwindle me down, but that's the only way I can get my code written.
We reached out like three years ago, I have, we signed with Hinshaw and Culbertson for $20,000 and I've not seen anything.
Anytime I talk to them, it's like, well, we need to sit down and we have me to have a conversation on which sections you want changed.
We need the whole thing, just in whole rehab to the whole zoning code.
So this would do the entire zoning code for us.
But if I read, I don't know, do you need a motion in the second first, before we discuss this?
It has to be turned into FEMA by the 26th of this month.
Technically, you should have a motion to approve the application processes or second.
I'll second it just for the discussion, as well as for discussion.
So I'll start with the first thing that stood out to me that concerns me is that this seems to me like all of a sudden now we're going to hire another consultant.
And when does that consultant go away in order to make this happen?
Because in the application it says right in there that we have to hire an approved consultant.
Correct.
Right.
And is that just for this grant process or is that once we're done, they're consulting us on what's completed?
On the code.
They will be the consultation people for individuals for the revising of the code.
And then that's that.
Once the code's revised, that is it.
I just want to make sure of that because we do these things and then we hire somebody and now we're responsible for another person.
Right.
No, no, no.
No, it's just to rewrite the code.
Okay.
Yeah.
And we can do all of that stuff by July 26th?
No, this would be for the grant, to write the grant.
Black Hawk Hills would be writing the grant for us.
But that all has to be done by the 26th.
Yes, the grant application has to be done by the 26th.
But there's a whole lot of things that have to be gathered by then.
They'll work on it.
They're working on it now.
I told them I had to present to this committee before and finance and County Board for final approval before we can even, and they understood that.
If we didn't get approval, then their work was for nothing, but they understand that.
My concern is how much control do we lose over our own ordinances by hiring somebody to start writing code for us?
I mean, do we have to follow their.
There can be revisions throughout the process.
Throughout the process.
So once the code is in its entirety, it has to sit for a number of days and it has to go to public hearing as well.
So it has to be visible to anybody in the county.
They can look at it.
They can come to the public hearing, suggest, well, this is this, this is that.
The County Board can make suggestions as well.
That's how it would be if Hinshaw were writing.
Would be if Hinshaw were writing it for us.
It's, to me, code revision has gotten a lot harder throughout the years that I've been here because when I started, it was less is better.
And you can see that in some of our codes, like, you know, it doesn't define things and things like that.
And so with the newer codes, as you see that we present every now and then, they're more lengthy.
Before they were half a page.
And a quarter of a page.
So now we need to get into the nitty gritty so we have definitions we can, you know, there's no gray area.
And we're just a small rural, you know, county and you start getting a whole bunch of rules and regulations that don't necessarily, you know, relate with the farmers or, you know, small businesses.
That's my concern is how much control do we actually lose over what we want to control and not control.
If I may, this is through FEMA.
Correct.
So am I wrong in assuming that it's primarily geared towards flood prone areas?
What you're saying about the phone revision?
No, they're allowing us to apply because we have the hazard mitigation plan for the county.
And I have flood development, hazard development in our code.
If we didn't have any of that in the County, we wouldn't even be allowed to apply for this grant.
You said repeatedly, Ashley, that you want to revise the code and update to come.
Can you give me a couple of examples where the code has failed in El Paso?
Fences for one, that's one that we just did.
Inoperable vehicles that we just did, that's why we revised that.
We didn't have campgrounds in there.
I think our campground code needs to be more strict.
So if I may, what's wrong with updating them as we get to them?
How is the consultant going to see all this?
They read our entire code.
And then they reach out to us in the zoning office and discuss it with Nicole and I. I mean, there's words in there like haberdashery.
There are so many definitions of things that we don't even use anymore today.
I just think it's harder and harder, like I said, to revise the code.
I reach out to Hinshaw and they revise the codes for me more or less now if I can't get them done myself.
So.
Have we tried to reach out to you CCI about this?
No, I had no idea that they would be able to.
I had no idea you were doing this with Hinshaw.
I guess my point is I think there's other options if we're doing it piecemeal.
I'm sorry to cut you off.
Can I finish or not?
Since I've already kicked the door open, I guess.
Is this something Dan Paya reached out to you about or did you reach out to him about this and he started telling you what he was working on?
Similar, somewhat the same.
We have a quarterly meeting down in Oco County with Black Hawk Hills, with Oco County, Whiteside County, Lee County, Boone County, Carroll County, Joe Davies County, sometimes Winnebago, and Lee County had used this grant a few years ago to revise their code.
So we were discussing and I said, that'd be something great, you know, we could use something like that.
And so he reached out to me about this.
Not too long ago.
So I guess, and this goes back to the fact that there hasn't been a County Board Chairman meeting with Blackhawk Hills in a number of months.
This is something he should have brought to me.
This could be something he's budgeted for.
That said, you do have funds available.
You're probably the only department in the county that collects access revenue in that regard.
But I agree, I think there's other avenues that we could possibly look at before we would go down this road.
That's my opinion.
Frankly, I'm not very happy that Dan didn't reach out to me and talk to me about this.
Not that he can't talk to you about it, but it's not the correct way to handle it.
But I think UCCI could be a resource.
There's lots of counties that have been updating codes.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that they're the answer necessarily.
Maybe they're using consultants too, but this is an 18 month project, if I looked at it correctly, and I'm not sure what the finished product is, that you referenced.
I'm not sure what we're going to do with it once we have it.
Enforcement's an issue, just like you had said, I believe, as far as do we have the manpower to.
That's if we adapt building code, and there's no way we can adapt building code.
I agree with you a hundred percent it needs to be done in some way, shape or form, but this is something he should have been talking to us about months ago.
If this is something that we're under a deadline already for them to get, when is the deadline to apply?
26Th.
I'm sure they've known about this for at least a month or two, haven't they?
That I do not know.
It's a leash how he started to utilize it.
So I'll be quiet now.
So if we had kind of followed, you know, we have another source and we could do it one at a time instead of redoing it.
That's, you know, that would alleviate my concerns about losing control over the whole situation.
Situation, so I think I would vote to not do this.
I would vote against this.
Emails?
With that, I guess we have a motion and a second and it asks then that all those that are in favor of the County Zoning Office applying for this building resilience grant, signified by Satan High.
All those opposed, please, same sign.
All right.
That motion fails.
So at this point, we may not do that.
Dale had another item that he asked to have on the agenda or just to talk about it tonight.
Well, yeah, just to get it on the agenda for next time.
The funding of the Jane Addams Trail, the continued funding, we don't have a contract or an intergovernmental remit anymore.
And they're on the impression that we're just going to continue on as it has been.
And when they raised it from 16.5 to 20,000, the other governmental agencies agreed to that.
We didn't, because we didn't have an extra $5,000 they didn't think was cool.
So we need to revisit the intergovernmental remit.
And we need to decide if we're going to continue to support the trail.
It's a very nice trail.
You know, it's well maintained.
In my personal opinion, it's way underutilized.
I don't believe any of the numbers that they give from the usage.
There's trail cameras out there.
You've probably seen the numbers.
A thousand people a month on that trail.
I think it's something like a 12,000, 13,000 annual.
Yeah, I mean, you can look that information out.
Yeah.
I just like better cameras now.
They're more sophisticated.
These things would read anything in Wi-Fi, you know, whether you went like this, you know, count 100 or whatever.
People should go on the service.
No, I'm actually not.
So anyway, you know, that's a big, big concern of mine is that you, Scott, do you walk on the tram?
I do.
Do you run into?
Occasionally.
It depends on the day, during the week.
I'll be lucky if I see two or three people.
If it's on the weekend, I might see five, six.
I see more in the winter time than I do in the summer.
I mean, that's how, when I was running out there a lot, a lot of times I'd run, you know, 10 miles and seven miles and not see anybody, maybe two people.
Usually a biker more than a fire or water.
I believe that intergovernmental agreement, if I saw that correctly, you'd get married at 23, something like that, yeah, but you know, it is a great trail, but years ago when I was on the County Board, I took a poll at one of the County Board meetings and asked how many members had ever been on the trail, and I don't remember anybody raising their hand.
It must have been before you started walking.
I don't know, I've been on that trail for a long time.
I don't know but maybe you were the only one that raised their hand but anyway that's but that's those are the things we need to discuss do we want to continue to fund and how much funding do we want to just because the city wants to give them twenty thousand dollars I don't I don't know why, you know, that makes us that long been $20,000.
So, and we can put it on that.
And I appreciate that.
So that it gets on the agenda.
First on the description and Steve Elbeck can't make it next month, but he will be up here the following month.
If we put that, put that on, yes, now we don't really need to put it on the agenda, but he'll come out and, you know, try and promote the trail and talk about the finances.
And.
Is he sending you any financial information yet?
No, you should be getting some as I asked that at the last meeting that they would send it to you and then you pass it on to us.
Okay.
Anything else for the comments?
Mr. Chairman, I guess real quick.
I became aware of the condition of the, I'm just going to call it what it says on the plaque, the Poor Farm Cemetery out by Menards.
It's in really poor shape.
So I've asked Wally to look into, I don't even know what the word would be, rehabbing it, I guess, for lack of a better word, restoring it.
Yeah, it's in bad shape.
There are tombstones that are missing.
There's tombstones broken.
Several of them are leaning, falling over.
I found one perched up against a tree that is probably 50 feet away from the cemetery itself.
I didn't even, I didn't know we maintained that.
The disturbing part to me is there's a nice monument out there.
And the last sentence of it says, you will not be forgotten.
And we have not done a good job remembering.
So I've asked Wally to look into it.
We do have to have the permits to do anything out there.
And I think it's through the DNR.
Is that something, right, ladies?
Public health.
Not public health.
I think it was DNR.
Was it DNR?
Do you think so?
Yes.
Did we mow it?
Yes, Wally knows what he can because headstones are laying down and leaning.
I could pull them out of the ground if I wanted to.
The problem with a lot of those headstones, though, is that they are very, very old and I don't think you can just replace them.
You have to replace them with light material.
You don't know if we know who's buried in all of those plots.
Some of the headstones are still legible.
Some are just completely smooth.
It gets worn off.
But we have a responsibility, I feel, to do better than what I've done with that.
So hopefully looking into some grants, trying to get the headstones restored, repaired, straightened.
While they did all the straightening of the headstones out of the Kent monument, did a great job, but this is four or five times the number of sites that were out of the Kent monument.
So I don't know that we can expect him to do something like that, plus keep up with his other duties.
It's possible I may be coming back and asking for dollars in the 2027 budget for getting it back to where it needs to be and then making sure we maintain it.
I've never walked that cemetery.
I don't know if you'll have the same reaction I did, but it made me almost physically sick to look at it.
Yeah, it's not good.
We have definitely derelict in our duties when it comes to that cemetery.
But you're around the city cemetery a lot, and it's kind of, some of the areas are kind of the same, actually.
I don't know what they have for money either.
It's kind of cheap to get that stuff we have.
Is that the only cemetery we have?
It's the only one I'm aware of.
Yeah, it's the only one I'm aware of.
Last person that was buried out there I think was in the 50s.
In the 50s, but it goes back to the late 1800s.
So I've got them determined that we're going to make it right.
Good, good.
Thank you.
Question, is there a way we can schedule a board work day to straightening what laws is?
You have to have a permit.
We have to have a permit.
And there's requirements of how you manage a cemetery.
So it's possible that they don't know what the permit looks like.
They don't know what the requirements are.
I don't think I want to try and move a 150-year-old by the horse, that's the problem.
Well, the part that, the straightening will probably be the easiest of all of it.
Yeah.
I mean, you can literally pull them out of the ground now, the ones that are leaning.
It's a matter of getting dirt shoveled filling a hole in and creating a new one.
I don't know how to do it.
I guess I could Google it and find out.
Sounds like an awesome Eagle Scout project.
I just want to make sure we're doing it the right way.
There's missing headstones.
I don't know what we do about that.
There's one that's broken off maybe three inches above the ground.
And that other piece is not there.
There's one headstone that they literally have to lift up, mow over, and then they just lay it back down.
I mean, we can't do that.
You know, it's.
Yeah, that's just disturbing.
So, but we're going to make it right.
Good.
Motion to adjourn?
Second.
Thank you Clayton for coming on board here.
Thank you.
Don't be afraid to ask questions.
Adam, I haven't seen you in a long time, I haven't seen you in a long time.