Sorry about that.
I already got these.
I got a phone too.
I got this new phone.
Hi.
My pleasure.
I wanted to give you a porous.
Thank you.
We're good?
Alright, we're going to get started with the Administration Legal Affairs Committee, Wednesday, February 11th, 2026 at 5 PM 2.0 prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this opportunity to serve the people of Stephenson County.
We just ask you to help us walk through these items on the agenda and make the right decision for the county.
I just want to say thank you for a beautiful day, Lord, giving us hope for spring after all.
Thank you and praise you in Jesus' name.
Amen.
All right, how about 3.0 approval of agenda?
So I move.
I will second.
In the second.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
So moved and 4.0 approval meeting minutes from January 7, 2026.
Move approval.
Second.
In the second.
We got a routine here.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
All right, approval of claims.
Before me I have a total of $73,823.17 and I'll make a motion to approve.
I'll second.
Okay.
All right, all those in favor say aye.
Aye. 6.0 Public comment is here.
7.1 Coming through, not here.
She did send out a thing, Monday night or something.
So, okay, let's go to 7.2 coming through.
Thank you Chairman.
Last month has been busy a little bit in our office.
Last month I discussed we had sent out the medical listing for the statement of economic interest where all of the districts have to certify the list we have as adequate or if there's new people on their board.
That was due February 1st and now it's the part where we give out the yellow forms with all those individuals and there's about 650 statement of economic interest forms that go out throughout the county.
So there's a lot more than you can imagine.
We have to thank all of the taxing districts, all of the commissions and boards.
So there's a lot of individuals.
Those are not due until May 1st, but they should all be out and disbursed by the end of this week.
The levy confirmations have gone out to all the taxing districts and last week.
That just includes all the amounts that they have levied that be certified to our office.
It's a good time where they can look it over before they get their tax comp to see if there was any errors in their levy or the way we had imprinted in our system.
It also shows all the bonds that they have or any of the new bonds that have been filed with our office.
That also appears on the levy Confirmation.
So getting started on the tax extension part online.
And then election, election judges, we sent out over 140 confirmation letters to our judges.
We've received 15 no's back.
The good thing about a lot of those no's is they are, they want to stay on and they want to be a We have 40 new voting booths, you can see them if you come down to the early voting room.
They came on four large pallets in boxes, so someone says there's not any manual work to my job, there's a little bit.
Each one of those had to be taken off in order to come through the basement because the pallets were so tall.
We had to take them out of all the boxes and then take them up here and then we had the moving company come pick up 35 of them.
So that was a little bit narrow but definitely worth it to get those 40 voting booths which were paid with grand dollars.
Last month I talked that I was looking forward to getting the certification from the state that way I could start the election process with the specimen ballots and all that proofing.
The good news was I did get the certification on time, but there was objections pending.
Just so you, there's a lot of behind the scenes that I would say the public doesn't always see, so I'm going to kind of talk about some of the behind the scenes that went through on my end.
Everyone's always anxious to get the specimen ballot.
I think I saw maybe one county have a specimen ballot out on January 26th.
That was the earliest I saw a specimen ballot and I could have missed it.
I set up early voting on the 26th.
That's downstairs, the machines have all the ballots voted into the system so if someone comes to vote, it's ready to go.
At the end of that week, we had to have the ballots out in the mail to the military voters.
So it's a tight time cream there.
On January 27th, one day later, the court ordered an updated certification to our office to everyone in the state of Illinois.
So we had to reset the early vote.
My specimen ballot was planning to be posted on that day, so I had to update my specimen ballot to remove a candidate for governor.
So we had that pending that had come from the circuit court.
Well, that governor candidate then went on to the appellate court with the objection.
So February 4th comes along.
A lot of clerks and election officials in the state of Illinois are trying to determine whether to start early voting on February 5th, have their vote by meal ballots on February 5th.
Many of the election officials did begin early voting on February 5th, including our office.
So I believe we definitely made the right decision there.
And then on February 6th, the order was granted that that candidate was to be off the ballot.
We proceeded on February 5th because that was the most up-to-date certification that we had from the State Board of Elections.
And I think that follows suit with the majority of the election officials in the state of Illinois.
As of today, we have 191 early voters, and we have over 1,400 vote-by-mail ballots out of the mail.
There's five districts throughout the county that have questions on the ballot, so that has also increased a little bit of pick-up in questions for our office or participation at the primary.
Sometimes people don't participate at the primary because they don't want to choose a party, but we are seeing individuals participate because they want to vote for a question or they just want a nonpartisan ballot.
Any questions?
So those 40 new booths, are those replacements or in addition to what we already have?
In addition to what we have, the ones that we currently have, every election, some break a little movement.
We have 40 voting booths, but one booth is four stations, and one of those stations is handicap accessible.
In my opinion, they're more sturdy than the old booths.
I ask mainly because I know schools and scout troops and whatnot, they often do mock elections, and one thing I've been asked personally about is, oh, can we get some of the booths that you use in actual voting?
And I know it's kind of a touchy thing and if anyone's going to be decommissioned, I was going to say, I know some people.
Yeah, usually if they have to be decommissioned, they're not safe for any one of the years and we don't lend out the account.
I totally understand.
All right, thank you.
Very good.
I like only one.
All right, let's go to 70.3 Supervisor of Assessments.
So in my office it is, I'm done with 25 or into the board review stage.
We did have four complaints.
We had a few commercial complaints and with commercial complaints, when you send out the tentative notices, you have to give them 30 days in order to meet.
In order to meet with the Board of Review if they want a hearing.
So we're in that 30-day period, so we're just sort of waiting.
But so far, we only have four hearings that are scheduled, and they're the end of February.
So I checked with Stephanie and Jasmine, and I have everything entered, everything whatever.
So as soon as the hearings are, it should just take me that afternoon to enter all the data.
So my goal is to have everything over in Jasmine's hand by the first part, March versus Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, so March 2nd.
So I'm going to be as early as I possibly can for her to get her things done with voting and up and coming wedding and all nine yards.
So then we can keep things on schedule.
So I'm just sort of waiting for my time period.
So that's what's going on in my office.
I like quiet.
Thank you.
Still daily communications with past defenders and prioritizing settlements, speaking to them about payment amounts, that sort of thing.
I had a conference call last week with the new shredding service company that will be servicing the county.
They have they said they probably will be on site within two months they have some procedures take care of on their end we discussed the pickup sites the individual departmental billing they were supposed to send me pictures of the receptacles that they use but I haven't gotten those pictures yet we're trying and line up all of that, so more information on that coming.
Last GFP meeting was on the 28th.
There was a new board president appointed because Josh Elliott's term was completed.
And two new board members were appointed at that meeting as well.
The annual dinner, which a couple of us at this table were at, was on the 5th.
Meeting for that is the 25th of this month.
Court was today at 1.30 for the nursing center.
Got another continuance to March 4th, but they will be entering the summary judgment on that day, so more court coming up on that.
Seems like we have had an influx of FOIAs lately.
I know Jasmine has spoken to some of her counterparts and there was an influx from the same person in many different counties.
So I had nine last week in my office and farmed out many of those two other departments as well.
So we also had part of you, and I don't want to take away from Nate's report, but I've I've had three emails trying to, you know, fake emails trying to change direct deposits last week.
January 30th, I attended the ribbon cutting out at Colblena, Presidencia that the governor was at.
Very nice event put on, they're pretty excited about the new line starting up and they're They're going to be manufacturing Brie Bites, so picture individual like the baby doe picks up their little individual breeds.
They will be the only one in North America making those and distributing it.
And they are sending I think 50 employees to France to learn how to do the process.
So kind of an exciting thing for everyone out there.
Out there.
They did take us on a short tour of where the rebites will be made and stuff out there too.
So, and, you know, we'll be expanding with that too.
Empower Health, the company that we have a couple things later on in the agenda, but they are the company that does the annual wellness screenings for employees.
I had the conference to set up the dates for the screenings as well as this year we are offering a walking program to get employees moving.
So I had a demonstration conference called How That Will Be Set Up which was distributed to the department heads as well for input.
The two wellness screening dates are April 2nd and 9th for the employees and we're going to do the walking program from the month of April as well.
Hopefully the weather will break for us and be good for everyone to get their steps in.
February 4th, Mark Bell from IPMG came and met with me.
He wanted to discuss, there's a new portal that their company is moving to.
It's just how we'll be submitting claims and different things through that.
We went over counties' open claims and discussed the NeoGov portal where there's online trainings and he'll be coming to the department head meeting in April to kind of do a refresher for department heads on that.
Yesterday we had Caitlin on site.
She was contacted through IPMG to do reappraisals on all of the county owned buildings and the monument and different things.
Can the County Board do the logging program?
To be one of the teams.
Yeah, I just want to point out, I tried to get you all off to the half marathon.
And we did talk, you know, with the department heads to try and get some ideas and brainstorming around motivation for engagement and of course ran us through our younger.
She thought it was a good idea too.
I wouldn't want to like lose to the County Board.
I kind of like the idea.
That might actually be a good motivation.
Question on that cold cheese thing.
Did they say that was due to the tear thing at all or just a new business?
I think they just they they said the technology behind the process is an older technology that they finally caught up with the equipment and um there's been kind of the demand and you know I meet now um and the stability the shop life forum I believe is a year where most free is like 90 days so it's it's a good alternative um she talked about how they would be doing it production of that throughout the months where they're not heavily producing the shorter lifespan or shop life.
A lot of this will be going back to Brandt's Tips.
Continuing with the phone installations across the county, tomorrow we're going to be doing the probation department with the courthouse being closed.
It was just the easiest way to swap out a lot of phones or not cause disruption.
That will have us with everything done, except for the health department, they will be our last site to get fully installed, which will probably happen in the next week or two.
Working on some grant projects, Chanel got, the grant wasn't as much as what it's been in the past, it's kind of a lot smaller, so I'm doing some laptop projects and new workstations for a few people.
And then on top of that, got a notification last night that there was a vulnerability.
The new firewalls we have in place, lets everybody know when they have an issue somewhere else required an upgrade and in that upgrade, it broke our current VPN configuration.
So I've got four offices to reconfigure VPNs on.
It took me most of the day today to figure out how to work around and recreate the wheel to have a more secure VPN because the technology we're using was phased out.
So I expected to hear from more people on that.
I really didn't, so I'll take that as a lesson.
But that'll be my next, I've worked on it from home the other night.
Hopefully by the end of the week, have them all back up and going.
Once you get one, which we got the one today, I'm trying to figure out how I can export the configuration.
So most of the work is done.
But other than that, that's pretty much my life right now between the phones and the routers and such.
I will be scheduling a recycle day as well because all the old phones are creating havoc everywhere that they are.
So I really don't have a place for 300 phones.
So I've kind of got each department hanging on to them until I can get that scheduled.
And then I might see if they can come early and just kind of give us one of those boxes that they set up on a pallet and then we can just start throwing stuff in there until they come back.
So that's on, I'll probably have that next month at some point.
Just want the weather to be a little nicer so people can have enough us around.
And although it hasn't really snowed in a while.
So with that, that's pretty much it for now.
I know EMA has some projects for me.
They're waiting for my slate to clean up a little bit.
So that's plenty for now.
All right.
Thank you.
Any questions before we move on?
OK.
All right, let's move on here.
I was told the AI policy for 8.1 is not quite ready, so we'll just get it.
Well, Mark Bell, we referred it to him for an opinion and he referred us to someone else that we supposedly have an account for.
We've been blocked in every avenue of trying to get that opinion.
So he went to bat for us and he's having trouble.
So as soon as we hear back or we get some clarification, I will be ready to move forward on that.
But unfortunately, it's stuck in another liability.
Just leave it on there until we have a way to deal with it.
Absolutely.
Okay, let's go 9.1, Approval of Agreement with Demnet and CAMA, with Edge License Maintenance and Support.
So, George just gave you guys a copy of the contract, it's just a continuation of the that we've had for the last, I think Ron set it up in 2011 to 2012.
My office uses it for the drawing program and DevNet, and then Stephanie's office and Jasmine's office uses it for text inquiry.
So it needed to be approved in January.
It came into my email a little later than that.
So it didn't get on the the agenda for um in January but I talked to her and they continued the service and stuff like that um it's good until 2030 and um I knew the increase they usually increase just with everything going on a little each time so I did the budget for that so about how much did they Yeah, I don't know if they do a percentage or whatever, but roughly.
Alright, but you've got it covered in the luncheon.
That's a good job.
Alright, any other questions?
Church wants over there or something?
No!
Okay, well, it sounds like we need it, so maybe we've got it budgeted.
Do you want to make a motion?
I'll make a motion that we accept the contract.
I have a second.
We'll have a conversation, otherwise we'll vote.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Thank you.
Alright, let's go.
9.2, Approval of agreement with St. Power Health Services, employee wellness procedures.
Yes.
So this is, I think, year four now with the wellness screenings.
We do an annual agreement with them.
There's a slight change in what the Blue Shield plans cover.
So there's a minimal increase per participant that the county would be covering.
We planned a cushion in the budget for an increase.
We also narrowed it down to two locations as opposed to the three that we did last year.
The year before, we did four locations.
We were trying to get one at remote buildings and things.
But I think having the two locations and starting at the courthouse an hour before the courthouse opens will be able to hit our minimums at two locations, which will decrease the cost of having the three sites should offset pretty well.
Mr. Larson is seeing the contractor.
Very good.
Do we need to do any good stuff?
Yeah, we need to go to the board because it's a contract.
Got it.
So I told them once we have the approval of the board, then we'll send out the advertisement information for our dates.
All right.
I was hoping to get a cover to the budget.
So, all right.
I guess I'll make a motion to approve it as presented.
And I will second.
Yes, Chairman.
Any incentive to the employees who have done previously?
We had budgeted for similar to what we had done last year.
At the department head meeting, I think pretty much everyone said that cash in hand is what will motivate their people to take place.
So unless the board feels differently, that was our intent was to proceed as we had planned.
My other question is non-insured individuals such as County Board members, can they participate as long as they pay the full cost?
Yes they can and once we get the informational flyers it'll have the costs listed they won't they won't release those till I sent back the contracts I have another question.
Last whenever we approved on the board for that screening for people who chronic diseases.
The RX mapper?
Yeah.
Has that been rolled out yet?
Yes, yes.
And I know Carrie will be presenting information on that Friday.
I have finance.
It has been rolled out.
I think I can get an updated count and let you know.
I'm screened.
I got the DNA, the kit to submit my DNA.
So I have not sent it yet, but I believe that there was a pretty good, I want to say seven or eight people that have already been screened to the point where they would be sent the kits.
So I can remind Ron that off.
I'll ask for an update because we're going to have to pay more if there's a lot of people that do it.
I mean it's just, it is what it is, but we don't really have the budget to make it.
It heads off to future costs, the higher future costs.
Right, I mean, all of these things are to try to keep the annual renewals, yeah, contained, so.
This was just discussion, sorry.
Okay, any more discussion?
All right.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
So moved.
All right.
Let's do the last one here.
9.3 Approval Agreement with Empower Health Services for a walking program.
Yes.
So the walking program was something that through discussions last year between our insurance broker and the wellness screenings we discussed movement and getting people moving.
Empower Health offers this program.
I thought the cost was very reasonable.
Ms. McWright thought it was a good idea.
What it will be is we'll come up with a theme.
They will create a virtual map that as you walk your steps you can track where you're at compared to where your team is compared to others.
It is an app you put on your phone so you don't have to have a tracking device or anything like that and as long as you carry your phone with you, it will automatically upload your information into the app and into the walking program.
The little demonstration video looked really cool.
There was a lot of discussion about incentives for involvement with that.
Obviously, we talked about one in two people departments, how they compete against departments like the highway department that has how many people out there.
So they talked about how you do averages.
And we talked about some people that may feel beaten before they actually start the program.
Doing like an individual prize and then like a team prize but also doing all participants that didn't win either the team or the individual like a random drawing for something very good that way people that may think I don't have a chance anyway like why do it I don't know so we're open to ideas but that was what we discussed this morning.
I would think for a prize for that like a $500 gift card to Brown Shoes to buy me tennis shoes.
Ah!
She was asking for ideas.
I was asking for ideas this morning.
You know because of course our office we came up with you know different things and we were talking about how you know if you already feel discouraged how can we get you to buy in and it's like well as long as you did it and met your goals then randomly drop her like bigger that's a great idea for everyone loves New Shoes.
But the consensus there was cash or gift cards is probably the most Motivator.
I like the showing.
It's more local.
So it's 700 bucks for the plan to do everybody, so that's reasonable.
Anybody want to make a motion?
Second.
Second second here okay about 10.0 any comments from the committee members I'll make a motion for you.
I will.
Oh, you?
You can second it.
Adam seconds it.
All those in favor, say hi.
Hi.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
Larry, I will not be here next month.
You have to make sure.