and Mr. Jogerst.

Any discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Opposed?

Motion carries.

4.0 review and approval of meeting minutes from April 13th, 2026.

Do I have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Mr. Diddens seconded by Cindy.

Any discussion on meeting minutes?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Opposed?

Motion carries.

5.0 Approval of Claims, Tolling and amount of cash requirements and manuals $971,124.50 Motion to approve.

Motion to approve.

Mr. Gray, do I have a second?

Mr. Didden, any discussion on claims?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion carries.

6.0 Public comment.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion carries.

6.0.

Public comment.

Do you want to state your name?

Number three.

Okay, thank you.

Again, thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to speak at the board meeting.

This one as well as the last ones.

And thank you for your service.

My name is Teresa Smith.

I'm a consulting dietician at the nursing facility that is owned by Stevenson County.

I have provided high quality consulting services and the county facilities since 1996 for 30 years.

Initially, my contracts were with the food service company in the past few years, my contract was with Stevenson County.

In April, I took the opportunity to speak to the full board to make the board members aware of outstanding invoices that have not been paid by the county.

At that time, I indicated invoices dating back as far back as December, 2024 have not been paid with a total amount of $8,450.22.

I have received no updates to share on that payment of these invoices.

Early in 2025, when invoices were not being paid, I was told by the County Treasurer that the state statute mandates that all debts are paid by the counties.

In October, I became aware of the sale of the building not happening in September.

Invoices could not be paid.

In November, I was told there's no ruling in the judge regarding the potential sale.

My invoices could not be paid.

In December, I was told the judge ruled the sale must go to the referendum with no time on it and payout of the invoices, up to two years.

In February, I was told the County was holding money to pay for a potential fine that the attorneys were hoping to waive.

Also was told by others in the community that invoices had been paid.

In March, I was told the County was still holding the money for the potential fine, but I could offer a settlement.

A settlement was offered with a March 31st deadline, but as far as I know, it was not shared with the Finance Committee as the Board.

In April, I was again told the County was reserving funds for a potential fine and my invoices could not be paid.

According to the treasurer's report dated April, 2026, it reflects that there is $56,424.51 in the nursing home fund, yet my invoices are not being paid.

According to the approval of payment prioritization and outstanding vendor claims for the nursing center, which all of you I'm sure are aware of, once the finance committee in March, my invoices along with several other vendors are scheduled for quote, pay next, question mark and full.

I am not aware of the prioritization practices of the County regarding the payment of these invoices.

Is anybody in this room aware?

As members of the Finance Committee, I feel this needs to be public information and at the very least all of you should know with priority guests.

The public should be given full disclosure of the prioritization process.

Small local vendors should be on the top of the list, but it does not appear that they are.

Again, thank you for your time and these questions.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Lynette Williams.

I represent Cominburg District E.

I'm here to give support to Teresa Smith who is a nursing center dietician.

She contacted a number of board members with her situation being owed money from the nursing center.

She gave public comment in April at the nursing center meeting last week and at this meeting.

I, along with my fellow board members, gave the authority to pay outstanding debts to the finance director and to the county administrator.

They have paid many of the outstanding bills, but $140,539.65 still remains to outstanding vendors, including the amount owed to Ms. Smith.

In addition, many Stevenson County funds are owed reimbursement.

These allegations were created in good faith that they would be paid in a timely manner.

Many are over a year old.

I feel the board can no longer wait to unpaying these outstanding debts.

I do have thoughts on how this might be done.

If any member wishes to contact me, I'd be happy to have an open discussion on it.

Thank you.

All right, moving on to reports to committee.

7.1 is Diamond Brothers.

I'll just briefly go over some highlights on the report from earlier.

I did attend a land bank meeting today over the lunch hour remotely.

One of the properties that was on their last meeting fell through so they had to have any meeting for a different sale to go through on that.

Sickitch, our auditing firm was on site April 28th, April 30th, and May 6th. We're working on wrapping up the final, final things with that. And I'm sure Adri, you heard that during her work.

Our Step Up Stevenson County First Annual Step Program for the county ended on May 10th.

I will say I saw more people out moving out of my window looking out than I think I've ever seen in downtown walking around.

So it definitely got people out moving.

The Monday after the STUP program ended, I ran into, I went out to try and keep up the habit and ran into three people from the county that I normally don't see walking, but we're still out there trying to get some movement in.

So I'm hoping that is starting to encourage some healthy habits for the departments, for the employees that will hopefully trickle down into some savings with our health insurance, which was kind of the goal with this, is to have healthier employees.

That being said, I have all of the names of the people eligible for the random drawing for two $100 prizes. So let's thank her. Oh, there we go. There we have one. Okay.

Who was one of our top stuff getters? Jen Miller from the Circuit Clerk's Office and Casey Wooden, who I believe is from the health department. We will get those out to them. The top stepper in the program was Sally Braschek from the county clerk's office and the top stepping team was the public defenders team. So a little update with that. Kind of tagging along with the wellness, in this, in 2026 we had 78 participants, in 2025 we had 75, but we also have a significantly less inflatable this year without having all of the nursing home employees on our payroll.

So I think that was a definite good increase in participation. Hopefully we'll get those numbers to continue to go up. We did limit it to two sites this year. And I think that is what we will do again next year because we cut the cost quite a bit. I think two sites as opposed to the three or four. So some changes moving forward with that. Attendant of Rise and Shine at Highland, and they presented to the attendees, their plan on repurposing the Y and where they have the daycare facilities, kind of what they envisioned for moving forward with their sports flex for the college and kind of how they're working with the Y to make sure all the needs are met.

Ms. Winger, Ms. Whipple and I put together the proposed updates for the solid waste plan that's presented at P&D and we'll be submitting that for feedback from the state so that we have something to present for approval to the board hopefully in the next month or two.

And next Greater Freeport Partnership meeting is Wednesday.

Any questions for the County Administrator?

Did anybody talk about how they're going to fund business housing improvements out of college?

So, the college is looking into grants. They did talk about not trying to raise tuition, or anything out there. They were trying to lift the grant funds.

The original proposal, and I don't remember the exact number that they gave with everything that they were hoping to get more of the wants than the needs.

They had to revisit and redraw plans and cut the cost of our plan.

So.

Any additional questions?

All right.

7.3, Finance Director.

Okay.

I will just touch on this report really quickly.

This is just a summary of the large Summatt page report that I sent out on a monthly basis.

really nothing earth shattering to report.

You'll see in Youth Diversion, which is fund 27, that 99.6 of the expenses have been incurred.

So that is because those entities, those checks were cut.

So that's kind of something to pay attention to.

You'll see a big uptick in a lot of these funds in July.

That's when the first real estate tax distribution will be.

And that's the major source of revenues for a lot of these funds.

So I don't need to go through that whole thing.

Does anyone has any questions?

Okay.

So as the administrator mentioned, the audit team was on site three different days since our last meeting.

Every year there is basically an area of focus and this year is the ETSB 911 department.

So they're kind of having their own individual audit this year.

So there has been a lot of extra requirements and questions for them.

and so I just want to kind of give a shout out to Robin Stovall because she's been really responsive and fast with getting information to them.

So the nursing center did supply some of their information to the auditors, but it was incomplete.

So Lindsay Fish from Sikich reached out with the complete list of what was missing.

We're still waiting to hear back on those outstanding items.

So that's kind of where we stand right now.

Questions and back-up paperwork requests are kind of trickling in based on the time that they can dedicate to our audit.

So we're just addressing those as they come.

I did want to mention the fund listing that I passed out before the meeting started.

This is just kind of what the budget season kind of kicking off, especially to new board members.

Our budget is very complex.

So this is just kind of a cheat sheet of how things are set up.

I wanted to point out the general fund, which is fund 001, and that is the fund that pays to pour the majority of our departmental operations.

So the other ones we kind of reference as standalone funds.

We'll probably go through those quite quickly.

You can tell right away if they're balanced.

So as we start that process, and as always, I try to get the general fund revenues projected as soon as possible.

The only really sticking points in that regard are real estate taxes.

If the County Board decides to raise taxes or not.

And then our health insurance, the expense on the expense side.

So that's obviously a huge expense and the real estate tax is a huge revenue.

So those are kind of the things that kind of take some time to figure out.

but everything else should be in line.

And I always do use the real estate tax amount from the previous year, just as kind of a guide so we can see where we're at with all the department requests.

So I guess that's, I can do the budget policy now.

So we did kind of solidify the dates on the back page just based on last year's calendar.

and then we kind of had a meeting about the COA, which we decided on 3.5%.

A lot of the collective bargaining agreements are 4% are over for 2027.

There are some for like corporal corrections that are 13%.

The deputy sergeant is 15%.

So there's some outliers there, but overall it's 4%, 4.5% of those CBAs.

So we thought that 3.5% was in line with that.

And looking it up on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CPI over the last 12 months was 3.8%.

So that's how we arrived at that number.

Does anyone have any questions on the budget policy or?

You know, I just have a comment that I'd sure like to see if we're going to just continue and this has nothing to do with anything going on here except me.

We don't get any benefit out of these automatic pay raises at all, we get nothing.

We're going to give somebody 15% and they're not going to do any more than they did last year.

And I think that's often the same thing.

I have folks that is the right time to bring this up, but on budget policy, we don't have a contract with the Jane Anders Trail anymore.

It's fired in 2022.

And is that something that we should pursue or they should pursue or how is it?

If we're going to continue to contribute through the policy, or not through the policy, through the budget, we absolutely need to have the green in place, but that's not through the budget policy, and other things, you know, budget policy was user fees, done by the policy board that was supposed to review them, January 30th, they were supposed to be reviewed, but we haven't had that study done since, what we thought, 2019, unless the board wants to spend another, it's probably 50,000, 40,000 when we did that first time we agreed as a board to increase a percentage every year, I believe.

I still think that's probably the way to go.

I don't personally believe we need to have another study done.

The problem we had was no fees were raised for 17 years.

While wages continue to go up, cost of everything went up.

One thing I would like everybody, I don't know if everyone remembers or not, but last year through the budget process, many department heads came forward and said, I understand the COLA is X, but I've got certain employees that serve six or seven or something like that.

So I had made a comment then that I hope that through this process and improving this policy, we do draw a line in the sand and say, this is it and I told the department it's the same thing if you really believe you're going to need more than what's approved with three and a half percent or something you need to come before all of this happens and talk to us about it I haven't heard anything from anyone I don't know if you have but inevitably somebody's going to come forward some department was going to say my chief deputy or whatever deserves way more than what this is and I want them to have, I mean, state's attorney's office did it, circuit clerk's office did it, those are the only two I could think off the top of my head in 2026, but they all wanted more money than what was approved in the budget policy.

We did accommodate state's attorney, we were given three and a half percent last year, three and a half percent this year. I don't recall the numbers, but I do believe something like that was fast and so that'll still be soon. I think the Assessor's Office came forward too, you know, Murray's now that I think about it. Thank you. Well, it was just a couple things that I thought was bad issues. That's all I have. I think there isn't any other questions.

Any questions for Adam and Sarah? Any more questions?

Yes.

Discussion item on county board agenda for Thursday, just like we did last month for the salary resolution for the gradually and county clerk.

That'll just be a discussion point, I'll walk the entire board away and on.

Okay, so 7.4, Treasurer's Report, Stephanie could send that out.

So I think I'd send that out and she's not going to go over anything.

So if you have any questions, I can reach out to her.

8.0 old business, 8.1 and 8.2 are the global resolutions established, the salary of the Office of the Charger and the County Clerk.

Are we able to discuss those beforehand or how can we do it together?

Do you guys agree with discussing beforehand or?

All right, so we can get a motion to approve the resolution established with the salary of the Office of the County Treasurer and County Clerk and Recorder.

any discussion on this? So before you, it is bringing all three of them to putting them both on one and with the circuit clerk.

So does anybody have any questions from anyone like that? Discussion?

I believe that this fits in the parameters of the three and a half section.

So in your packet there was the previous back in 2024 when the circuit clerks salary was raised and that is currently in effect for 2026 and 2027, I believe, and this resolution would try to get it all in the same year thing and also the same number a cost per year. And so they're asking to for a 3% raise. And I know that's within what we talked about with three and a half COLA. Nobody has a crystal ball of what inflation is going to be or whatever. But looking out at the one of the indicators like the M2 money supply, and that has been going up, for like 3% to 5% per year, and that's usually an indicator of what the inflation is going to be about 82 months from now. So I think that's probably where we'll be unless we have some kind of special cause with the Iranian thing or something. So I think this is in line with is what our three and a half percent COLA would be.

Again, as we look at the rest of the budget, we got to try to make sure we stay in-bounds here and not everybody has for all these big raises.

So I'll try to do that as the administration chair.

So that's what I have on that.

I was just going to say, just kind of add to that information because we had a good job kind of talking about why they're on there.

The circuit clerk is a judicial position, so the position is set for the four years with the two remaining after this year.

The county clerk and recorder and treasurer constitutional positions, and those need to be set for the four year term.

So that's why, right, there's different years on, yeah.

Again, it's for the position of the people, you know, right?

And then I think at the bottom of the thing in your packet, it kind of gives you an overview of what the other counties are doing.

There's some that are way higher and there's some that are lower.

and Bill. You can look at that as well. Yeah, it's a mixed bag of tricks with all the other counties. There's a big swim. A lot of those counties are really big, bright big counties.

Absolutely. You look at the ones near us, I think we're pretty, pretty close to them.

And in that information that's in there, it talks about the zone that they're in. So that's kind of a better comparison. That's like all over the state as well.

So it's over. Yeah, that's true. Is that kind of based on the income that's coming in off of these other counties?

I think it's the area, not necessarily the size, but then that will be more revenue coming in when that if it's larger.

Well like King County is way bigger than us, I'm pretty sure that there's a population of 517,000. So there's a, I think it's in our area. So I'm not saying it is. So I think it does make you look bigger in the population of the Creusel, which is the way I see it Any other discussion?

Any other discussion?

I was looking at your mind.

All right. Well, if there's no other further discussion, then I have them.

All those in favor say aye.

Opposed.

All right. Motion carries. New business. Approval of the bond payment for NRC Synergies 2020 A and B debt interest.

So this is the bond payment for mill rice crossing that is due to State Bank.

So the way this we receive this invoice, we receive it every six months.

This is just for interest, not for principal on the bonds or on the debt certificates.

and the way we receive the invoice, it just doesn't jive with our AP cycle.

So we needed to do a manual check in order to get it to State Bank by 6-1.

So that's why it's before you tonight.

All right, motion to approve.

And Mr. Fricke, do we have a second?

Mr. Diddens, any discussion or questions for Agent Fricke?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

All right, motion carried.

And I think that's your last item.

Yes.

10.0, motion to adjourn.

Can I ask one question for you?

I talked to Mr. Fricke about inviting Steve Elback, who's in charge of the Jane Addams Trail Commission to speak at the planning and development meeting.

Should I ask him to come to the full board, too, or just the planning and development business?

Mr. Fricke's committee.

Okay, I'll go through the committee process first.

Okay, that's all.

I do that?

Yes.

Go ahead.

I just want to understand from the committee's standpoint, it's just him presenting information, he's not bringing anything for just information.

That's all I want, thank you, just information.

A couple things with the budget for 2027. I believe the economic, I'll call it TIF, but it's not the TIF. It's not a TIF.

For no race, I believe it expires in 2027.

It's an economic development.

I have talked to not all nine taxing bodies that participated in that, but I've talked to a few that have already said they're absolutely not willing to support extending that.

So there's really no point in talking to the others.

There would also be two state legislators present this to the General Assembly to get it extended.

and I don't have any legislators that are willing to do that either.

So that increment is going to go away in 2028, probably part of 2027 I would assume, but I'm not sure how those distributions would work if it's taxable in 2028.

But that's helping with that service, which I think matures in 2031.

So there's going to be some expensive, I don't know how we're going to pay for it. I don't have to worry about it too much.

2024. I don't have to worry about too much in 2027, but definitely 2028 for sure. Just keep that in mind. It's a chunk, half a million a year. And there is a free payment penalty on the bonds with the state bank, I believe, when we refinance those. You can correct me The other thing you had mentioned, if you have questions for the Treasurer, she is out of the country at least until Tuesday of next week, so if you do try to reach out to her, she's not going to respond.

I think that's it.

10.0 adjournment, do I have a motion to approve by Mr. Diddens, do I have a second?

Sure.

All right, any discussion?

I'm really disappointed in Mr. Bush.

Me too.

I know.

All those in favor say aye.

I say aye.

Opposed?

Motion carried.

Have a good evening.

Brown.

Oh well, I'll be the president by the kids in August.