Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Today is what is today?

August 29th, 2025.

And I call the Lake County Technology Committee meeting to order at 8 30 a.m.

In addition to being able to attend in person remote attendances are made available to the public via Zoom at the link on the agenda.

This meeting is being recorded via Zoom.

Do we have any members that are going to be attending remotely online right now?

I do not see any right now.

Okay.

Um all right.

Could you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance with the United States of America.

And two public for which stands one nation, another God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Can I get a roll call, please?

Member Compost.

Vice Chair Kasmin.

Here.

Chair Clark.

Here.

Member Dan Forth.

Member Frank is absent.

Yeah, with prior notice.

Member Peterson.

Member Roberts.

All right.

Thank you.

Is there any public comment today?

There's no public comment.

All right.

I don't have any chairs' remarks.

No unfinished business, I believe.

All right.

Our uh first item is the consent agenda, which is item 8.1.

Can I get a motion in a second place?

Motion by Robert, second by Dan Forth.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any posed?

Motion carries.

All right.

Item on our regular agenda.

Item 8.2 is a joint resolution authorizing an agreement with Priority Dispatch Corp of Salt Lake City, Utah for purchase of a backend database as a shared service hosted by the Lake County Emergency Telephone System Board and for the Lake County Sheriff's Office in the amount of 100,281 dollars and ninety-five cents.

Can I get a motion in a second, please?

Motion by Dan Forth, second by Kasbin.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Bernard Melkov IT manager, Lake County Sheriff's Office.

Uh previously the Lake County Sheriff's Office has been working off a waiver from the Illinois State Police 911 authority for not having emergency medical dispatch.

We're concerned that that waiver is going to go away in the near future.

So we'll need to have EMD protocols in our 911 center.

The Lake County ATSB has graciously funded the majority of this project, 74,000 in change.

So we're just here because it's over the threshold.

So we need approval for the entire project.

All right, terrific.

Lake County is only funding the what the ATSB hasn't funded.

Which is like the 26th Correct.

So thousand.

And then just for just a little about the technology.

So this is a system that allows is it that so dispatchers can do uh like uh medical help, like what people call 911, they could say, you know, helping a medical emergency, it guides the dispatchers through protocols that are approved through the Department of Public Health to give instructions while help is on the way.

Yeah, it sounds pretty important, right?

Like it saves time.

And so we currently don't have this.

We do not.

So this seems like a good thing to have done.

And so this will be the is this the training implementation or is it like an online system that helps guide you through it?

It's an online system that's integrated with our CAD system that we use to dispatch units.

It's all integrated so it goes into the call and it gives the questions that the dispatcher asks, and then they input the information and it gives the next step of instructions while the ambulance is on the way I think we've seen this like N T V.

And um, and so um and would this help cut down on call transfers?

Because we keep hearing about it.

So now if people call, they wouldn't have to be like transferred because currently would they have to be then transferred because we don't have this to someone who could help them with the metaphor.

It would depend because um fire dispatches have their own dispatch centers.

Um, and some are dispatched out of the county currently, but in the event that there was an outage, this would also allow us to back up for those centers and take over calls.

Yeah, and what is the time frame?

Because it seems pretty uh like pretty pretty important system.

Once it's um once it's approved and we can purchase it, it can be integrated quite quickly.

Most of the technology is already there.

It just needs to be turned on in the licensing, and then um we have to certify the dispatchers, which is a three-day training.

I think there'll be like some training.

And is is the and is this through Lake Comm, like or in partnership with Lake Comm.

The Lake Lake County ATSB already has the system, so this is already uh operating at the PSAPs in Lake County today.

Lake Com is also uh is gonna have the system, so it's kind of a joint system within Lake County.

Okay, great.

All right.

And I've got um Chair Hart.

Thank you so much.

Um and I'm in the car, which is why I can't turn my video on.

Um, I think I heard you say at the beginning that you currently have a contract with the Illinois State Police and you believe that contract will not be renewed.

Did I understand that correctly?

It's it's it's a waiver.

They're mandating that all 911 dispatchers be certified and trained in emergency medical dispatching.

And we're currently on a waiver because we did not provide any fire services prior, but we don't know how long that waiver will last.

I see.

And so this is going to be giving you the software so that you can provide that service, but you wouldn't be able to say contract with Lakecom.

It doesn't work like that.

I I think this is for the rare occurrence that we're going to get a fire call.

I mean, for example, we dispatch unincorporated no wood.

So there's a possibility that we may take a call for fire in the Nullwood area instead of that call going to Glenview.

So there's certain circumstances within Lake County where a call could go to us instead of going to Glenview, or a call could go to us instead of going to Deerfield, which may be a fire call.

So this would allow our dispatchers to be trained in EMD to handle those calls before transferring to a PSA app that's not Lake Comm that is still in Lake County.

I see.

So but also a null would call if there was a partnership or a uh agreement, those would have just gone right to Lake Comp, right?

So no, because they're they're just like fire.

Yeah.

Because that's oh, right, right.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

So can can you?

I'm sorry.

So right now, um, if a fire call does come in, then you guys will with this software be able to handle those calls without a call transfer.

No, this just allows us to start the call and provide the EM emergency medical dispatch for those calls.

In those circumstances, we'd still have to transfer that call to Glenview or Deerfield or the proper fire department.

I see.

Okay, thank you very much.

Member Peterson.

You were kind enough to let me into the garage downstairs this morning, and I appreciate that.

You're welcome.

But you're not gonna be happy with what I have to say.

That's fair.

I I I still don't understand why we've got two 911s in Lake County.

I I don't understand it.

If anybody could ever explain that to me because no one has to this point.

Um I mean, a hundred thousand dollars is not a it's a hundred thousand dollars that I I have to question if we're if we really need it when we already have established our new 911 uh center.

So anybody got any answers?

This also allows us that if Lake Comm were to go down, this allows us to take on those calls and handle those calls in the event of an outage.

And we've seen quite a few of them recently.

So are there going to be any transfers or yes or no?

Yeah, I think I've already stated that these calls are primarily will be for calls that would not go to Lakecom anyway.

These calls are probably gonna be Glenview calls, or these calls are probably gonna be Deerfield calls or maybe even Northwest Central calls.

So these calls probably won't even go to Lake Comm now.

These calls will probably be Glenview calls that would probably roll over to us.

Because we're the police jurisdiction, but not the fire jurisdiction.

And Lakecom's not even the fire jurisdiction, it's Glenview or Deerfield or maybe Red Center or maybe Northwest Central.

But we're we're not gonna have one 911 in Lake County because we still have Deerfield, we still have Glenview, and then there are a couple towns that are with Northwest Central Dispatch.

And our other are other uh police units or fire are they with at Glenview and Deerfield here in Lake County?

Yeah, Libertyville is Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Crazy Lake Fire, Barrett and Barrington Countryside.

There's a lot.

Okay, thank you.

And if you but in the sheriff's office is not with them, so you're like your own thing.

So then it's still call transfers.

I know.

Like, and I hopefully I'm hoping I'm I'm you know I'm like optimistic that maybe in the future eventually we'll have one Lake County where there's no more call transfers, everyone can just call.

And I know we're not there right now.

Um, and this is what we're dealing with.

But um, I do think so.

Just so we're so you I know the sheriff's office does police and fire.

No, please you do uh police, and then if someone has like so an example, like if somebody called and had a uh, you know, maybe somebody was on their property, so there's like an issue with uh they need the police, but they're also been hurt, injured.

This would be a call that could go to you, and then that would be the training that would help because it would also be a police and also medical in one.

And then once the police then they would be transferred, but you could help them in the meantime.

We could help them depending on the nature of the call.

Obviously, if it's something in progress that were a scene would need to be secured by police before fire gets there.

That is something then that the dispatcher could do both.

Yeah.

Um, and another dispatcher could start the fire department.

So it's good.

I mean, I think if we're gonna have the system, at least you can start.

I mean, I think it's important to be able to start helping people because we all know heart attacks, things like that every second counts.

So this is like you know, so if we're gonna have a call transfer system, this sort of seems like then before you transfer them, you can help them.

Is that right?

All right, vice chair.

Okay, that was good thing.

Okay.

One more comment.

Yeah.

So Keegan still has their center also.

Just so you know.

But the less centers we have, the less call transfers.

I do believe we'll have.

So maybe again in the future we can get to more toward that.

But this seems like this would be good in the meantime, since you do have your own dispatch and people do have to get transferred a lot.

This will help people get treatment before they get transferred.

All right.

Any other questions?

All right, all in favor.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Thank you for coming.

All right.

Our next one is item 8.3, which is a joint resolution authorizing an agreement with Oxcart Permit Systems, LLC, Palatine, Illinois, for permitting and collection of truck permit fees required for all oversized and overweight truck trips on the county highway system in accordance with the Illinois Vehicle Code at no cost to Lake County.

Can I get a motion in a second, please?

Motion by Dan Forth, second by Roberts.

Good morning.

Morning.

John Nelson, assistant county engineer at Lake County DOT.

Uh so this is an update to our 2018 agreement that we have with Oxcart.

So Oxcart is our online uh web app that we use for overweight and oversized permitting on county highways.

Um, as you mentioned, there's no cost to LCDOT uh to use this software.

Uh this software has been used by quite a few agencies, about 165 municipalities and townships in the county are using in uh Illinois, along with 23 counties are using this um software.

And then as mentioned, there's 16 uh municipalities in the county that use it.

Um so uh what Oxcard has done is they have updated their service agreement, uh just changing some of the terms and conditions.

Um also they increase their service fee that is charged to the trucking companies.

So on average, fees will increase about a dollar per permit.

So for example, uh $50 permit for to move an oversized truck, uh incurs a five dollar flat free from Oxcart, they'll go up to six dollars.

So this is just them kind of updating their terms and conditions and their fee schedule that they put on top of the fees that we charge to those these overweight and oversized vehicles.

So this is just a um, because I first read this, I thought maybe this was something that helped like track the weights of trucks, but that is not what this does.

No, so this is like the permitting system.

And is there um like is it so this is is this outside of our IT system then?

Like all the cyber they have their own cyber.

It's just a website, so it's a website that trucking companies log into.

Okay, say we want to move this vehicle through the county and it'll go to the state, it'll go to us, it'll go to the township, wherever roads that they're gonna be traversing.

Then we say we will assess their fee, and then they pay the fee on the website and we approve it on the website.

So from an IC from a technology standpoint, then so are they very much outside of our network?

Completely outside of our network.

Oh, okay.

So they just kind of send us the check.

We don't, but they don't have access to all of our uh our our things.

So okay.

All right.

Any questions about that?

All right.

Any all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right, thank you.

Motion carries.

It's easy.

They're like outside or never.

All right, item 8.4 is something I've been very much looking forward to.

Is our presentation?

I all of them I look forward to, but this one especially.

Presentation of Lake County Passage and Traffic Signal Technology.

All right.

So I'm joined here by Ryan Legree, our TMC manager.

Morning.

So we're just gonna go through just uh just uh just an overview of like high passage and just uh uh traffic in general, traffic signals in general, just the technology that we use on the street today.

So um so for the agenda today, we just want to talk about the passage network.

We're gonna talk about traffic signal components and the software we use, our ATMS system, also how we get that information to travelers uh throughout the county, uh security that we are have in place, and then also what we're looking to do in the future.

So uh for history, so uh feasibility was done was conducted by Lake County in early 2000s.

Um, after that feasibility was can say it was conducted.

Um we were uh granted a uh 2003 um IT uh IT grant, ITS grant from the federal government to start the Lake High Passage system.

So we had three goals in at the time was to improve signal system coordination to provide real-time trouble monitoring and then to direct a more efficient incident management.

So if you weren't aware of the high passage passage stands for, it's an acronym, but it's programmed for arterial signal synchronization and travel guidance.

It's rough, but it's there.

So yeah, that is what's supposed to be programmed for arterial signal.

I always wondered synchronization and travel guidance.

It's there.

You made it happen.

Before us, before us.

It was like, let's make this work.

So at the time when we put everything together, we had about uh connect about 24 cameras together and 150 traffic signals.

We did that all with on fiber.

So I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with fiber optic cable, but I'm pass this from you and Ms.

Remember Dan Ford or just one.

There is a white buffer to there's six buffer tubes in there.

One of those is the white one.

If you look at the white one closely, you'll see I took off the little piece of white at the end.

There's a little piece of clear glass in there.

You'll see the clear glass on the white one.

And so that fiber is what we use to communicate all the different video and um traffic signal data through the system.

So today we have about 314 miles of fiber that we use.

This is Lake County fiber, it is IDOT fiber, it is municipal fiber.

It connects 677 traffic signals together.

We have about 467 pantosium cameras that we use to monitor traffic.

And we also connected to IDOTs, uh Cook County DOT, the tollway, and many of the municipalities as well.

Sorry, network, it's it's complex.

This is kind of one of the drawings that we use, showing kind of how we uh track all the fiber that's in use, what's connected to the system.

So again, it's uh a lot of details, a lot of coordination, a lot of um tracking of all the different things they have going on with the network.

So um kind of the way I looked at this presentation is imagining that you guys are with me at a traffic signal cabinet.

We're about to open the door, I'm gonna show you kind of what's inside a traffic signal cabinet, because my guess is not many of you have been out there in the field to see one of these.

So here's one of our cabinets.

We have a phone number on there on all of our cabinets.

So if anyone has any issues or complaints out there, they're feel free to call us and that'll bring it to our passage uh traffic management center.

So inside a cabinet, uh, this is what you see.

So this is one of the newer ones that we installed uh recently at Eal and Long Grove.

Um and we'll go through the kind of the components that are inside there.

And just for scale, Elon Long Grove is a T intersection, it has two crosswalks, uh just one left turn lane.

So not much going on in this cabinet.

Um the one on the right is an ID cabinet that's uh hunt club and grand that has lots of detection.

It's got pedestrians all the way around, it's got right turn overlaps, phasing left turns all the way around.

It's also one of our communication hubs, it's got a lot more equipment in there.

So just as the intersections get more complicated, the equipment becomes um more in there as well.

So we're just gonna focus on the the Elon Long Grove cabinet.

So first thing is this controller.

So this is kind of the computer that the brains of the system.

This is what we use to program and timing in there, our yellow times, red times, what it does throughout the day.

So we have different patterns for the mornings, middays for afternoon rush hours.

Um you program our detections, our preemption uh for emergency vehicles.

So all that is kind of it's like the computer that runs the intersection.

Right next to that is what we call a malfunction management unit.

So this is kind of we have the computer is the brains, but this is kind of overseeing the brains.

So this is looking at do we have enough the right power in this intersection?

When the computer, when the computer says, I want a green for my northbound direction, this thing will say, did the green show up or not?

If not, I'll put the corn flash.

If it's it senses that uh a red and a green show up at the same time for that shouldn't, it'll flash intersection.

If the power is not right from the power company, it'll flash intersection.

So this thing is constantly tracking everything uh at the millisecond level, right?

A flesh corner at a moment's notice to keep the intersection safe.

Um, we also have detection.

So you you're you guys familiar, we have there's lots of different types of detection.

We typically use a video detection system.

So that's and we'll have a picture later on kind of showing what the video detection looks like, what the camera's seeing, but we use video detection.

Um there's also loops in the pavement.

Um loops are uh electric wires on the pavement that are looking for a car to roll in there, creates magnetic field that um sees that that when the car enters the intersection and enters the magnetic field, see the change in the inductance and says, hey, there's a car here.

So that's older technology, it is in pavement.

So if you move lanes around, or you resurface the road, that is damaged.

So but it is something that is uh quite prevalent throughout the Chicago area.

Um we do have our preemption on most intersections uh in the county and all of them on at on Lake County signals.

So this is what uh allows the fire and police to take over the intersection, provides them a confirmation light saying, Hey, you guys are coming, you have to now control the intersection, so you're gonna get the green light and I'll flash white light uh at them to let them know as you're approaching the intersection that they have the green and they're gonna be um able to continue through the intersection.

So I know I just yeah, I just learned this from one of my friends.

She said if it's flashing at you, that means that you are supposed to keep moving through to try to get that so the cars can go by.

But if it's just a solid light, you should stop.

So the yeah, that's so the lights are more indication for the police and fire vehicles to let them know that they are if it's flashing for them, that they have the right-of-way, that they are versus if it's solid.

If there's two fire trucks come in from different approaches, they know that hey, if I'm flashing, I've got I'm the one that has taken control versus the one that doesn't.

So as a driver, we also know it's that as well.

And so yes, when it's solid, then you know that a different direction is getting the green light for the fire vehicle.

So if it's solid, like that's what I've started doing.

Like if it's out, then you don't move.

But then if it's flashing, I'm like, let's get out of the way.

Because it means it's coming that way, which actually thought was cool to know.

So right below the computer is kind of what we talk.

Talk about the field wiring.

So this is where the computer then sends the says to the load switch, which are those silver boxes down below.

Hey, I want you to give a northbound a green light.

So it sends it to the load switch.

The load switch then sends the power to the wires down below, and you'll see the red, yellow and green wires.

Every radio and green module out there has a direct wire going from the head in the field back to the cabinet.

So if there's three green lights that you see as you're approaching northbound, there's gonna be three green wires that come back to the cabinet.

So those bottom wires are all the ones that go out to the field.

And then we also have mentioned communication with all that fiber.

We have a network switch in every cabinet.

So if we plug in our uh all the communication that we have out there, it's all Ethernet based.

So we have um controllers, the um various detection uh pentel zoom cameras all come to that communication as well as that fiber you see on the right that we just passed around.

And then it's mentioned power is important.

So we have lots of different types of power.

So we have a whole power supply in the cabinet, and then when the power goes out, we also have a battery backup on every cabinet.

So that will give us power for about depending on how busy the intersection is from about four to six hours worth of um power to run the intersection or flash the intersection until those batteries drain.

Um that also will clean the power.

So if we get a brownout, we get a spike from comed.

This will kind of clean that power up before it sends it into the controller and the computer and stuff.

Then as mentioned, as you guys all know, we have stream crossings.

So again, all of our crossings have a countdown timer on them.

So uh you've seen those, you're familiar with that, the walk and don't walk, as well as the push buttons.

And we are in the process right now of changing over a lot of our push buttons over to that APS or accessible pedestrian signal, which is the ones that will beep and talk to you, and um, which is kind of a requirement by the Pro Wagger ADA law.

Again, typical intersection, you're gonna see a uh virus, you'll see a street light, you'll see the pencil zoom camera, you see the video detect detection as well.

Um, some of our higher speed locations, we are starting to go towards a reflective backplate that allows um people just draw more attention to that signal, kind of highlights them more.

It's also helping now with uh cars that are actually looking, try to see what the signals are saying.

Some of the cars are starting to read what the signals are doing.

That reflective back plate also helps the cars identify where that signal is.

For the cameras, can pan tilt zoom so are those you can move them around to like look at things?

Cool.

Yep.

Yeah.

So then we get into the software sideware, Ryan's area.

All right, so good morning.

Uh so John talked a lot about the hardware, the infrastructure in the field and the fiber.

So, what do we do with all that equipment and how do we bring it back to our office and what do we do with it once with once it's there?

So we have tons of software, probably more than you uh can imagine.

But uh, this is we're gonna show talk about a bunch of them, and I'll give you a little overview.

And if you have questions, please interrupt.

Um, so the first one uh I want to talk about is a traffic signal system.

Um, this one is made by the uh the maker of the controller that John mentioned.

It's called Send Tracks.

Um, so this allows us to bring communication on fiber back to the TMC in Libertyville, and it connects all the signals into that center there.

And so we can talk to them all in real time.

We can see what's happening with them.

Um, as John mentioned, though those they'll push buttons, the pedestrian buttons.

Um, some of the older ones used to get stuck, and so this system would notify us if that got stuck.

We'd send a contractor out there.

Um, this also allows us to see if a signal goes into flash.

You mentioned four-way flash.

This would alert us if it goes into flash.

Um, and this also gives us the ability to control the signals.

So if we want to currently they're programmed to run what they would normally run uh in a given day, but this allows us to override that and uh give more green time into a certain direction if we need to.

Um, or kind of uh, you know, the way we explain it is if there's a crash blocking uh uh the intersection going north, we can kind of increase left turn time to get to get traffic kind of around that incident.

This system gives us the ability to do that um all in real time.

And then lastly, this one um it does notify the contractors automatically.

So if there's one of those faults that we talked about where the signal goes into flash, it will email the uh the contractors who are on call 24-7, and they will go out there and respond to the signal.

And this connects all the jurisdictions that John talked about.

So there's probably seven or eight jurisdictions that have signals connected to our system.

So that's this system.

And this is all in Libertyville at the like in that central.

So you can change things, or you could see like there you can see that like right there.

That's correct.

And so everything comes back to TMC.

TMC actually happens to be pretty centrally located in Lake County, which is helpful.

Um, but we do have a redundant system in the basement here.

So we have a disaster recovery site or back up here.

So we could but the based on the way the network's laid out, this is a hub as well.

So we can control everything from here as well, if we if we needed to.

So the fiber comes here all the time.

Yeah, the fiber comes into the basement here as well.

Yeah, so there's a bunch of uh communication cabinets in the field.

Um, this is considered one of those hub locations here.

So it's kind of like a mesh network.

When you talk to one, you can contact you can talk to them all.

Um, so this system is called the uh the automated traffic signal performance measure.

So this system um is similar in the way that it collects uh communication, it collects data from the controllers in the field that we just talked about.

Um, but this is in use for our traffic engineers.

So the it collects data at uh the signal controller collects data at like a tenth of a second, and it stores that data in the controller, everything that's happening with the signal, every single thing that's happening with the signal gets stored.

This system goes and pulls that data, brings it back, and then puts it into some really high res information for us.

So the engineers can see not only are there faults, not only are there there could be a signal flash or a problem the other system would show, but this shows the very fine-grained stuff.

Why are we why did that left turn come up when it shouldn't have?

There wasn't a car there, why did it come up?

And so you can see the engineers can really dive down and look at these all these graphs and charts and say, this is what's going on.

And so at an intersection level, it's very helpful, but at a system level, it's helpful as well because it can give information of performance.

How are we performing?

Are we performing good at this individual signal, at the group of signals, or the system as a whole?

Um, this has all the county signals and and some IDOT signals in it as well, but it gives us real high res inf uh information about how the signal's operating.

Member Dan Forth.

Just an observation, some kind of is the wrong way.

You know, oftentimes I'm at traffic like in Lake County, and I know it's being monitored by passage.

And traffic is back up in my lane.

And there the road is clear.

I mean, there's just nothing coming from miles around.

And I'm waiting and waiting and waiting.

Is there going to be some type of system, like an algorithm or something that's gonna be or AI that's gonna monitor this and say, why don't we let these people go?

Why are we making them wait?

We talk about that.

Actually, one of the next slides talks about that.

That's what I was gonna ask too.

I'm like, I'm like, when does this come in and make this better?

So real just a real high-level answer to that.

Um, we're we have a lot of multi-jurisdictional again with passage.

We're connecting IDOT signals, we're connecting Cook County.

Um, the way that the way it works for the most part is that the owner of the signal is responsible for their traffic signal timing.

They give us permission to override that if if and when we need to.

But the engineers at IDOT will say we're we're gonna program our signals this way to help the uh the congestion or to help traffic flow.

And so depending on the signal you're sitting at, it may be slightly different.

Um, but we talk about what you talked about, uh, what your question was a second ago about the kind of the adaptive signal control.

So we will get to that.

And and I think that's an important question too about the um different jurisdictions.

Because I get a lot of questions about some state uh intersections in my area and they about the timing.

And so I always say it's really iDot is doing that timing.

And then even if they're on the passage network, you Lake County is not setting that time, but could talk to IDOT and kind of do.

So we get the calls in a lot of times, like John mentioned that phone number that's on the side of the cabinet, that's at the IDOC cabinets too.

And so that phone call comes to us.

And so we'll look at this system and we'll look at what's going on and say, you know, this is what we think should happen, and we'll talk to the engineer at IDOT, and a lot of times they'll take our suggestion, or they'll look at it, look into it more on their own.

So we do work closely with the different jurisdictions uh when it comes to their signals.

And how often do you look at the um to see how things are doing?

Is this like a daily thing?

Like this intersection's kind of, or is this something that like as it pops up, or is it like monthly?

Like, is there like what like how often do you kind of analyze what's going on?

You want to answer that?

Sure.

So I think we look at, I mean, we try to look at them when we can.

It's sometimes it's complaint-based driven, but with the newer systems that we're getting, we're trying to get more alerts saying, hey, something's not not functioning the way it should be, like Miss Member Danforth mentioned.

And so we are getting more and more of those alerts to kind of be more proactive and looking at all the different operations of the intersection.

Um, and then a couple of things.

Uh, first on this slide here, it might be hard as for you to see, but on the lower right corner of that graph.

So if we're looking at there from the engineer's side, is you're gonna see all the black dots.

Those are vehicle detection.

That's a car hitting the one of the loops that we mentioned.

The green is when the light turned green and the top of time's going up on that graph.

And red is when the light turned red.

And you look at that and say, did most of my cars arrive between while it was green, or they show up while it was red, stacked up, create a cue, and then released, or is that signal timed correctly where cards are showing up as it's green, come through the intersection and then turns red after the cars are gone.

So that's one of the things we would look at.

So example, like Dan Forth said, we look at that corner, we look at this, say are cars approaching where they should.

The other thing is with um coordinated signals, how the coordination works right now is we create like a green band or kind of like a tunnel for when the cars come through on the main line.

If you're on the side street coming in, if that it's based on time of day too.

So if something happened where traffic is not normal on a major road like uh Washington Street here, you come out on the side street, signals could be set up expecting a normal rush hour pattern.

If cars are on Washington like you expect, that side street may be waiting with no one coming.

Because expecting that, because it's an older technology, it's not the AI side that we're everything's moving towards.

Yeah, so uh we John talked about the uh the uh the the detection, the video detection.

This is what it looks like from our end.

So we have the ability to see what's happening at the intersection uh with the video, but also we can control the boxes that you see up there.

So the gray box meaning there isn't currently no car there, and then the green meaning that it's activated, there's a car here, and this gives more of that intelligence information to the controller saying, I have demand here, I need you to serve this car or this this uh direction when uh when when possible.

So this gives us the ability to kind of adjust and control.

Um, and then we can also do traffic counts from this as well.

So the some of the stuff in front um when the car drives drives over that, it just gives us a count so we can see daily counts of what's happening.

Um, and so there's a lot of fluctuation.

John mentioned the coordination patterns.

A lot of that is it's kind of pre-programmed, it's engineered, it's pre-programmed, they put it in and they this kind of what they expect traffic to look like.

Uh uh during COVID and after COVID, there's a lot of fluctuation to that.

Um, so a lot of the technologies that we're looking at now and that are emerging are more of this kind of adaptive control and and AI-driven type stuff.

Um, John was just at a conference in Atlanta and they talked all about that.

So uh, but this gives us the ability to really see what's happening at the intersection and and kind of um make adjustments, micro adjustments if we need to um at the intersection based on detection.

And does that happen automatically, or do you have to actually go in there right now and the adjustments?

So we would have to go in and make adjustments to to this to say this is where we anticipate the cars would be.

But the nice thing about this technology is John mentioned the loops in the ground.

So the loops are just a metal that's cut into the ground, and then if if a resurfacing project comes and cuts that up, that's where you'd see like at a construction project, you're just waiting in a signal and you're just waiting and waiting and waiting.

You're like, what's going on here?

They took the detection out of the ground, and they're like the the this actually allows that to not happen.

So if the roads resurfaced or construction projects happening, this is unaffected by that.

This also gives the ability to if they they move lanes over, adjust them, close them, we can come in and actually move them over and adjust the the detection accordingly.

So without using the loops, and I always wondered on those, do you have to sit on them, or is it just if you like if you go over them, it's it's not pressure, it's detecting the metal in your car.

So yeah, which is why they say that sometimes motorcycles can't sense them because there's not enough metal on the motorcycle.

So they tell motorcycles to kind of like like go a little bit towards the side because it's a six, it's what six by six, six foot by six foot square or circle cut into the pavement.

And so if you're if a motorcycle is sitting like right in the middle, yeah, it's like maybe there's not enough metal there, but it's not so it's not pressure, it's metal.

So it's metal.

Yeah, and so they can actually turn the sensitive sensitivity up in the cabinet as well.

So if you like roll over it, and then it would still trigger it because you rolled over it.

Yes, if you're in a car, yeah.

So if you don't have a metal car, yeah, I was like, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a yeah.

But so if, like somehow like there was a diversion, you're saying like if the lane was closed or something, and then you had to go on the side.

This this system would let you like adapt for that.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay, so a couple other systems we wanted to mention.

So uh in the upper left, we have uh inventory database.

So we have about 3,000 devices total on the set on the network.

John mentioned um most of them are Ethernet connected.

So those devices, every single one of them in the cabinet that he mentioned, um, has an Ethernet plug.

We plug those into the switch, those come back on fiber to our our office.

There's about 3,000 of them.

So it's quite a few of them.

So that's the system up in the upper left, is just an inventory management system.

We just inventory all those devices, what's their IP address, what's the make and model of them?

So we keep track of that.

All built in-house by Ryan.

Yeah.

Wow.

The uh the system in the middle is more of what member Danforth was talking about, which is the adaptive control.

So we do have one system on Butterfield Road in Libertyville.

It was kind of like a trial system.

How can we see if we can get more adaptive signal control?

So it takes what would be your normal program or normal pattern for the day.

And this will say, I'm seeing something different than I should be than I would expect.

And I'm gonna make adjustments to the signals to help that coordination down the road.

Or also I'm seeing some delay on the side street and there's nobody coming on the main line.

Maybe I can serve this signal real quick and then get back to what my coordination would be.

So this is kind of um, this would be considered an adaptive signal.

Um, but it's not it's not fully adaptive, in which there are parameters that it has to follow.

But I'm I'm almost certain, and we know that there are AI systems that are coming that will do full-fledged um adaptive control, but it's all about the inputs that those cameras we showed you a minute ago.

The system needs to know where the cars are.

Um, where we're also going to, though, is the self-driving cars, the the cars that are connected, and the ones that are connected to the infrastructure, all of those will be talking to the cabinet, they'll be talking to our signal system.

All of them are talking together to say this is the more of a complete picture of what's happening.

Let's let's be more efficient and let's serve better.

Then we never have to stop.

Yeah.

We'll see.

We'll see.

Um the beauty part is that we've been doing a lot of this stuff initially uh, you know, already, but our system is already built out for this.

A lot of what's coming, there's some systems and some some agencies that are are just kind of now building up.

But the fact that all of our cabinets have a switch in it puts us kind of at at an advantage when all this stuff kind of really pops off.

And when you say adaptive signal system, you said that you know, I do that.

Is that you has to with adaptive, can it make some of these adjustments on its own, or like there's still a traffic engineer.

Yeah, there's still traffic engineers to make some kind of a more adjustments, like kind of uh, you know, a trained engineer to say, like, this is really what we should expect out here.

So you're building in those kind of parameters and barriers, and then this will kind of live within those barriers.

Okay.

Kind of like a machine learning type thing.

Yeah, that's what's gonna add was machine learning AI.

Yeah.

That'd be like I think the the full AI is is probably a ways away for most things.

That might be good.

Traffic and I like machine learning AI has it can do a lot.

Maybe we'll stick in that realm.

Uh, I'm sorry, and then this this bottom right thing here gives us a little more control over the signal if we want.

So currently, our traffic engineer, if there's an incident in the intersection, he would like us to flash the signal to make it more safe for first responders.

Um, so if police and fire are working in the intersection, we will proactively flash that signal to slow everybody down, let everybody know that that that's coming.

That system on the bottom right kind of allows us to do that and also gives us a little more control if there's some really heavy delay along a leg, like really very heavy something happened.

94 closed.

94 is closed, something like that, where there'd be just a ton of diversion, uh diverted traffic.

That system also gives us the ability to just kind of hold the green light as long as we need to.

Five minutes, we can just hold a green light as long as possible.

We don't do that very often because it could be, you know, I want to say it's unsafe.

It's just not good practice, but we do use it if we need to.

Did you coordinate with law enforcement then?

Like yeah, not only law enforcement, but uh also uh local villages, agencies, and um other engineers as well.

If it's an IDOT signal, we notify them as well.

Okay, yeah.

Um, so our our ATMS system, the system brings a lot of that information in.

So on the upper right, you can see all the cameras.

John mentioned the cameras.

There's about 480-ish cameras in the county, including that.

I'm sorry, that doesn't include the detection cameras, which we can see as well.

So all told it's about over a thousand cameras we could see.

That system allows us to see and control them, move them in real time.

Um, and then the upper left, though that is our our uh kind of event module.

So we're tied into police CAD.

Um, and so the police CAD uh tells us, like, hey, there's a crash on this road at this location.

Um, and so we can bring it up on camera, confirm it, and then we put that out on our passage system.

Yes.

Yes, member Robert.

Maybe I was already familiar by the way, because I'm curious.

Yeah.

You ever get calls to say, hey, we do, we do a lot.

So though it is.

So back when John mentioned back when the initiative came to build passage, I think at that time the board, whatever whoever the board was at that time, um, said that we were we're not gonna record these cameras.

So we still don't record them.

We do take snapshots from them.

So every couple of minutes, we take snapshots of each leg of the intersection, about three to five minutes, and we post those on our website, and then we keep those for about 10 days, and then they purged automatically after 10 days.

We get FOIA requests all the time.

It's very easy to say we don't have recorded video, but those snapshots within that 10-day period, we will share those.

So if anybody wants them, we'll share them.

Um, in addition to that, you you mentioned police.

Most of the police departments in Lake County or the um the dispatch agencies that uh the former uh group was talking about.

All of them have access to these cameras as well.

Um we kind of had like the administrative uh role of that.

So we can continue, we can kind of take control and uh and kind of lock them out if we needed to, but they all have that for a public safety purpose.

Um they they love having it every time there's a connection issue, they're always calling us about that.

Uh we know the sheriff's department has like 10 dead dedicated screens to it.

Um we're currently almost done integrating with the rock.

Um, so they'll have all the dispatchers there will have the cameras.

Um and we anticipate there could be upwards of maybe 50 to 75 active streams at a time at the rock.

So we know it's it's very uh important information and data for the uh first responders as well.

Yeah, I'm just thinking, so they could record it.

Or do they sign a thing saying we have an MOU with them with all of them saying that so we get their CAD data and exchange, they get the video.

So that's a sharing agreement.

Yeah, makes sense.

And again, we could lock them out if we needed to.

Um okay, so so the the uh I mentioned the TMC traffic management center, that's where I work, that's at DOT.

Um, you hear passage, that's kind of the public facing side of what we do.

So um, this is the passage website on the left.

Those are the snapshots I mentioned that we post to the website.

You can look at each leg of the intersection, kind of give travelers an idea of what it's looking like in uh uh out in the field or sorry, out on the road.

Um and then on the right is just a picture of the smartphone apps uh that we have as well.

So um website and smartphone apps, iOS, Android.

And we developed the the smartphone apps in-house.

So we didn't pay anybody for that.

Yeah, which is good.

Excellent.

So people download it though.

Yeah, so it's our app and okay.

Yep.

Great.

Oh, and if you want any improvements to it, just let me know.

Um so then we're also connected.

We are also on X.

So our system, when we post something, it goes out on uh Axe or Twitter, um, which are I guess the left two pictures there.

Um, it's email on the left.

Yeah, sorry.

I've sorry, we have email notification as well.

So users can sign up to be notified via email.

We don't encourage anybody looking at that while they're driving.

So it's kind of a pre-planned thing.

So if you want to know about if you have a route, say I want to be notified about my route.

If there's any incidents that happen along my route, sign up for email notification and it will uh email you when there's an incident or event on on that route.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, yep.

I think that the police are there.

Yes.

Oh, there's debris.

Yeah, so there's always debris.

So Waze has a system called uh Waze Connected Citizens Program.

And uh I think they've actually changed it uh since then, but they've gone a couple of different iterations.

We were in very early with them.

Um and so we are tied in a two-way sharing agreement with Waze.

They provide us uh the user reports.

So if someone's on the road and they report a crash, they provide that to us.

So it's just another in-source for us, and we can verify whether it's real or not.

And then we provide all the vetted information that we have.

So one of the things Waze isn't good at is road work.

All the road work we know about, which is comes from our traffic engineers, our sorry, our construction engineers, we work with iDots construction engineers.

We post that on our system, it goes to Waze, and then Waze has good information about what's happening in the field.

So we do have, we are connected to a with Waze, and then we also know that Google and Apple use our data as well.

So however, however, you get your information, it's coming from us.

So if I've always wondered, so like if somebody reports like something fell off a truck and it's in the middle of the road on Waze, then you actually would get that also.

Yes.

And you could help.

And then do we help send it to the appropriate things or does like everyone get it?

Yeah.

Yeah, we will do that.

Yeah.

Oh, we found it's a it's change over time, but we found what was really strange is that we found initially that most people were reporting something to Waze before calling the police, which we thought was kind of a strange thing.

There'd be like a crash would happen.

There'd be like five Waze reports, but no police report.

Somebody pick up the phone, maybe.

I don't know.

Uh so it seemed to kind of like settle down a little bit from there, but you know, stuff's always bound to happen.

And then on the bot on the right, there is our portable change and changeable message signs.

So we have nine of those.

Those are message boards that we can deploy in the field anywhere.

Our sign shot takes them out, and then we can control the message from our office in Libertyville.

And so we put those out for construction and our special events or the fair.

So like wireless, you can like send a message there.

Yeah, and then one of the we actually we don't have, I think a slide for it, but we we have a camera trailer as well.

So in addition to these trailers, we have one trailer that has a PTZ on it.

So it's like a 30-foot mask that has a camera mounted on it.

We can put that anywhere, which is nice.

So if we don't have a camera currently in the area, we can deploy that and kind of watch things, how they're going.

That is cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

So uh you guys are familiar with Sam Sarah.

Uh, that's the AVL system that the county uses.

Um, we are also tied in with the Sam Sarah system.

So on the left, that's just an image of what the Sam Sarah system looks like.

But we get um, so all the plows that are are connected to that system are also connected in our passage system.

So our website and apps um will post the location of the plow, the heading of the plow, and then snapshots from the front dash of the plow as well.

Again, in a couple minute interval.

So we post that out as well.

We like I really like the plow.

Yeah, people like that.

I'm like, what are the streets look like?

Should I go to school or not?

You're like good in Lake County.

Yeah, a lot of people like that.

Yeah.

And that's sort of like in real time.

Yes, it is a real time.

It's every two minutes, it's updated.

And so it comes from the plow.

You're and then it kind of comes into your traffic system and then it goes out.

It uh, yeah, it's more like it sits on their system and we go grab the information.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

Um, and then obviously talking about technology, security is a huge thing.

I know it is for you guys as well.

So we are obviously all aware of security.

We try to do the best we can, best practices for security.

Um, I'm a bit of a nerd, so I like to follow that stuff just in general.

So we try our best to make sure we're up on the latest um uh any vulnerabilities there may be.

We'll patch systems.

Um, this is this diagram on the left here, kind of shows how we're connected to central permit and then the rock ultimately.

Um, it's just more to give you an idea of that.

There's there's network switches and firewalls involved, and then there's fiber in between them.

So it's just kind of like an overview or a high level view of how things are working.

But obviously, firewalls are imperative.

Um, we work with Lake County IT.

They do the CISA scan, which is the scan from the federal government.

They'll scan the systems every, I think it's every week, maybe, just to see if there's any current vulnerabilities on any systems, and they send that to us, we'll patch them quickly.

Um, best practices I mentioned, and then um, you know, when we're setting up all these devices and all of these switches, we keep security in mind.

How can we best secure this so we're not having any holes or or any issues, vulnerabilities on our system?

Yeah, really good.

Because obviously, here a lot of uh thing like bad actors get in through peripheral systems.

So your system is um so since you have your own fiber network, is it more than self-contained on your network, or how how does it integrate with the like county overall network?

This system sure.

So the field system and our office are on a completely separate network than like county IT's network.

Okay.

Um, and so which is good.

So there's some already some DMARC there.

Um, but there's also a firewall between the systems and only very specific ports get through on either end.

So there are people on the county system that want to see the video.

So Shane being one of them, or somebody here may want to see video, our permits department, they're allowed to see video through that network, but nothing, you know, not a lot of other things.

So we keep a very strict list and port list device list of what's allowed to communicate through those two networks.

And there's nobody else, because I mean fiber, because is this expandable fiber fiber?

I mean, this is like fiber fiber.

Yeah, so and no one else is using it that there's a lot of people.

No one else is using it.

Um, the police departments are connected on the fiber, but there's also a firewall in between them and our network.

Um, but when it comes to like public or I'm sorry, like uh eight uh uh businesses, there are no businesses using the fiber.

There's been some question and discussion about that in the past.

It's very hard to do that if it's not dedicated for that purpose.

Um it's we don't own all the fiber.

A lot of it's on iDot roads or cook county roads or even the tollway.

So we can't even have we don't even have permission to say, yeah, this business can use that communication.

But in addition to that, the fiber is it stops at every cabinet.

So if a cabinet gets knocked out, there's some there could be some fiber lost.

And then now is our priority to do what we do, or is it to bring that system back online, which we don't even own.

And it's a mesh system that's it's a mesh system.

Okay, good.

So it's not just like one notch.

Yeah, there are there's there's some redundancy between them, yeah.

And then in the IDOT part, like are they in charge of like their cabinet cybersecurity, or is this just one network that we kind of overdo?

Yeah, so they're responsible.

They own their cabinet and most of the devices inside of it, but but the switch inside of it, we own and maintain.

Okay, good.

So the switch and the communication back to our network, we own a maintainer.

You're in charge of that, or whoever's in charge.

We are in charge of that.

Okay, so we're basically in charge.

And that's no one else is coming in, and it's sort of its own thing.

Okay, yeah, and we're very aware of who's coming in and using it, like the police departments are using it.

Um, yeah, we're we're we try to we we do keep a very good tally on who's coming in, and then like John mentioned uh about the ox card thing.

If somebody has access to the system and they no longer need it, we take it.

We we they no longer have access anymore.

Because this is a question I've actually gotten from people is like there's no way someone could just like tap into our network to like record stuff because to do it, they'd have to physically like somehow get in the cabinet, and you would probably notice that.

Right.

There's them right.

Thank you.

I know there's always conspiracies.

All right, so that's it for me.

John will finish now.

Um, so as maybe many of you are on the public works transportation committee.

So we do bring projects through about passage.

So we're we we have an expansion project coming through soon that we'll continue to expand some cameras and it's more signals, more fiber networks.

So uh we are continuing to do that.

We continue to look at ways to uh have our fiber also be more stable.

Um, we do have some issues in the winter with freezing conduits and fiber.

So we're looking at different methods on how to improve the downtime or reduce the downtime of that fiber.

So we will be bringing those projects through uh PWT.

Um we're also continuing to do those APS push buttons or the accessible push buttons as well, we'll be going through.

And then we do have um federal money right now to do a connected vehicle demonstration project.

So um we got that money probably about four years ago now.

Um we've been holding on to it because technology, the whole industry did a 180 on which way they're going with the technology.

So we're kind of sitting back, but um myself and the engineer of traffic who couldn't make it here today, uh, Charles Askar.

We're just in Atlanta, as Ryan mentioned at a connected view, ITS World Congress, which has people from all over the world.

I mean, a lot of people from Asia, Australia, Europe, we're all there with the the US group, about 5,000 of us looking at the new connected vehicle technology coming out and how cars can connect to infrastructure and now it all is gonna be working together.

So we do have some ideas, and we'll be bringing that through uh committee once we kind of get a handle what we want to do with that.

Yeah, and I remember when you talked about the connected vehicle thing, I guess four years ago when it came.

So this would be the idea that vehicles would communicate with the network and vice versa.

So they would kind of say we're coming and we could like time those over.

So we can do like preemption and give away from the obstacles, put our equipment on our fleets or on mercy vehicles to say, hey, we're coming up on light, and instead of preempting light, which they do right now and messes.

Yeah, the traffic just stops and everything that takes a while to get back in coordination.

Now the system could say fire truck's gonna be here in about four minutes.

It's coming down around the corner, be here about four minutes.

So let's start adjusting the coordination right now.

So when it gets here, it's not a big step to bring them through and without affecting everything in the area.

So and do current vehicles have like technology that are starting to communicate, or is it still?

So that was a big discussion at this conference was the who's should who needs to move first?

The OEMs, uh manufacturers, the I'm manufacturers are testing a lot in RD.

But they say for them to move into production, they want more infrastructure in place first.

And infrastructure side's government side says, Well, I don't want to put all out there if you guys aren't ready for it.

So we're at this kind of point right now, there's certain third party companies are starting to come out with devices that people can add to their cars that will talk to the devices.

So like a standard is that is that been that standard standard communication.

It's won't be like there's seven different standards and then we have to.

No, there's standards, but there are a few like Audi right now is doing some stuff with connected vehicles as well.

So there's some few of them starting to get out there.

Again, we'll never have to stop.

That's my point.

So and then um again, here's a picture of the center as we Ryan is talking about.

So we are there from 6 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

Monday through Friday, but we do have remote access.

So I've been known again there, Ryan's been known again there on the weekends.

We've got calls from the sheriff majors, something's going on Saturday.

We can log in, we can do all the stuff that Ryan talks about from the website to the video to events from home.

So we can access any of that we need to.

Uh cyber securely from the county's VPN.

Using the county's VPN for that.

Yeah, do the county VPN.

So that's it.

You know, I have a couple questions.

Any questions?

I this was I have to thank you.

This was such an interesting thing.

I mean, we hear about passage all the time.

We spend a lot of money on passage all the time, and it's really interesting.

Um, it's super interesting to see how it works when we're out there.

And I only wish we could send this to Kenosha County so that uh someone who drives there every day and misses like they time the lights, so you miss every light on Sheridan.

Anyway, uh, questions?

Remember Roberts.

It is but no, thank you so much for this.

This is fascinating.

I I had a question with those cabinets.

How do you keep them from not overheating?

So there are fans, so there are fans in there.

So some fans in there that keep them cool.

This summer, like how did they not blah?

And the all the devices in there are hardened too.

So they're meant they're built to maintain that kind of temperature.

There's heaters in the winter, yeah.

We use the same equipment they use in Texas and other parts of the world.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, I had a couple questions because that's high roll.

Um, so one is when we're looking at um the future of these cabinets.

I mean, you look at it, it looks a little, you know, it's a little, I don't know.

They look kind of new.

What are we looking in the future?

I mean, are we looking going wired?

Like we've got the wired network, but are we going to when we look at like potentially AI, if it's machine learning AI, whatever AI, integrating these cars?

Are we gonna need like big upgrades to the technology that's currently there?

Or is this technology really like expandable?

Do you feel like just for like a planning ahead thing?

Yeah, I think it's very expandable.

I think the when you talk to different areas or you see people what people are doing, basically it's having a network in place and fiber is big key and fiber's all on the ground for most of the county already.

So fiber's there, the switches there, that's my devices we plug into that.

So it's very expandable.

Most of our controllers we have are fairly new.

Um, so they are all Ethernet based.

So again, that allows us to do more things than some of the older controllers that have been out there in the past.

Okay, that's good to hear.

So we can hopefully use the same technology with all the new technology for a while.

We don't have to replace it.

That's good.

And when you um for communications, like there's like, and maybe you do this, but like I think some of the stuff you talked about, like about like the lights or like is there really like it's to sort of just tell people about what's going on.

Do you have like a little TikTok channel or something?

Or like what do you guys do to like let me know?

Yeah, that's that's a good question.

So we'll work with our communications department on that, or uh, but we do have an Instagram, and so we like to post out on just some some like little anecdote stuff about uh you know, here's the inside of a cabinet, is what it looks like.

Nobody knows what it looks like.

So we do have an Instagram that we we do that.

We do try to share out things on that.

Okay, yeah.

I think it it helps.

I mean, I think it helps people understand what's going on.

Also it helps them with driving.

Like if you kind of understand what's going on, then you're not so annoyed when you're sitting there, like, why is this light not changing?

Or if you're like, oh, and knowing even just about things like about the loops, like how to trigger things.

Because if you understand it, you're having people like more chill when they're driving, I think is uh Alex on that.

I mean, he does some, he obviously does some stuff on Facebook and stuff, but yeah, good idea.

Yeah, and I'm interested to see where you go with the with the at the AI with this.

I mean, I you know, I I feel like you know, AI is not um the most reliable.

I know, and we've been having a lot of discussions in my teaching job where everyone's like, it's kind of good.

You know, if you take it apparently you take it for a quiz, usually you get about an eight or nine out of ten.

I've learned from my students.

And like we don't want that with traffic, right?

Like it traffic has to be right.

We can't have it just oops, you know.

So um I think that's why it's been kind of a a slower slower, but just kind of like they're taking their time to build in, make sure that everything's gonna be good with it.

Yeah, we gotta have like a high.

So yeah, well, it'll be interesting.

And it's really, I mean, I I would say that we are, you know, you guys are doing such a great job that we're probably way ahead of many counties.

And uh hopefully that will keep going.

All right, I know.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you again.

It was a fascinating um presentation.

I have to invite them back to WT.

All right.

Got to ask all my questions.

All right.

And um, item nine is active project updates.

So an item 9.1 is the um enterprise resource planning, the ERP system implementation update.

I know there is a lot going on with the ERP system.

So uh Dr.

Blanding, why don't you give us an update?

Good morning, Chris Blinding, CIO.

I do not have a handout or a prop, which I've learned that could be very effective, or cookies or something.

So next time we're learning.

Yeah, yeah, edible fiber.

So start off with a joke.

All right.

Um, so Patrice Evans, our internal project manager is taking a well-deserved day off.

That is good.

So um, I don't have a pretty slide or anything like that.

So I'm gonna walk through kind of where we're at, and then I'll field any questions you may have.

Yes, there's a lot going on, and there has been a lot going on.

Um, most notably end-to-end testing.

So this has been going on for five weeks and it's ending this week.

That is where we've described that people are seeing everything how it works.

So bill becomes a law from the beginning to the end, how the workflows, who sees what?

Does this work?

Prior to that was configurations, little pieces.

Hey, we needed to do this, this, this, great, but you never saw it all together.

So it's exciting.

People are seeing it all together.

However, then you find some things are not working, perhaps, which is expected, and those are bugs in the software world.

So then that goes back to our implementer to work out the bugs, right?

So we're in this this cycle.

Um, I will give props to the team.

There's over 70 plus people on the Lake County side that have done a ton of testing.

And I can't, I can't uh overstate how much testing they have done, and it's really impressive because if we don't get the testing done, we can't find the bugs and things like that.

So props to all them doing the hard work.

Um, and believe me, we're getting stats each day on testing the number that need to be complete this week, last week, et cetera.

So again, all the credit to them for getting the testing done.

However, now we're gonna get the bugs and we're focused on can the bugs get fixed and retest.

So we go through that process.

Um, there's a lot that happens through that.

We may under uncover some things that aren't working and certain things can still be worked out and tested, etc.

Um, we may run into some functional changes, right?

Hey, well, we thought it was going to do this, now we want it to do this.

Those are okay unless they're foundational, we'll call where they're really big.

Um, then we really kind of have to say, well, here we're we're gonna go live with this.

Uh that's a question.

So um testing is great, but it has it will bring up how are we doing now, right?

Can we get these bugs fixed?

So I know in the past we've painted a pretty rosy picture, and it is rosy, it's great, but through the testing is where we're gonna find stuff.

So we are finding it, and we it'll be on our integrators to fix the bugs and can we keep up?

Are we um minimal changes, foundational changes, because that would affect things.

Um, and then we we keep moving on.

So that's where the testing is.

So I just want to give you an example uh or uh kind of an explanation because we've been doing it for five weeks and it's just been, yeah, they're testing.

Well, they find things out during testing.

So um, as they should.

So moving on from there, the next step is uh a payroll tenant build.

So and then that moves into payroll parallel testing, which is basically they've they're they're focused on payroll because we want to test that thoroughly and have that working, obviously.

Um so this will be setting up a real environment, part of our environment to run payroll in.

And meanwhile, we run our current payroll in our current system parallel, right?

So both at the same time, you're running in boss, you see how it works with real data, you compare it to work days, real data matches up, tweak, fix, that goes on for several weeks.

Um multiple iterations of that testing.

So that's a big part that's coming up as well.

Um at the same time, we're planning for cut over, which is the prerequisites to going live.

So a lot of work there, um, understanding what that means, when you're gonna, you know, freeze the system, things like that.

So a lot going on.

Um I guess I'll stop there for questions if you have them.

I said a lot there.

I know from the testing part, it's I mean, it sounds like this is where like the sausage is made, right?

Like, I mean, you've been like putting it together, and this is where you find out all the things that aren't working, correct?

So it is sounds like it's a very arduous process.

And uh, as you said, if our 70 people involved, and I think for everybody at the county to realize how much I've heard how much how hard everyone's working on this and how much time it's taking, because it has to, right?

We have to do it right.

So I want to just thank everybody who's working on this in the entire county, which is so many people, um, to get this right.

I mean, obviously, we're probably gonna use this system.

I don't know, how long do we use the boss system?

Too long.

Yeah, long time.

And so to get this right, I think it's important.

So for right now, then it's really like people are very busy making sure in every department that they're like testing to say, like, here's what I usually do every day.

Does it do that?

Correct.

If that's kind of where we're at, and then it's not doing that, which we expect, right?

You expect sometimes you're like, oops, it's not working.

And then who fixes that?

Is that like the the company, the consultant company?

Like who then fixes all these like issues, the bugs.

Yes, absolutely.

The the integrator does do the fixing of the bug.

Are they keeping up?

Like, do you feel like it's on track more?

Like it's um that's another that's something we're closely keeping an eye on, and they are, and we're all aware of this right now.

You know, hey, the testing had to be done.

If you don't have the testing done, you're not gonna find the bugs, and specifically related to the payroll parallel.

So we focused on getting all the testing done for that so that that could move forward.

There is some buffer time built in where we can continue to test and keep up with the bugs.

I think it's maybe too early to say no, they couldn't keep up with the bugs or so.

We're focusing on the the high severities.

It doesn't seem that those are out of control.

So again, we'll find out more as we go.

But yeah, that's a valid question and something, you know, people who don't do this every day might look at this amount of bugs and say, Oh, how are we gonna fix all this?

Well, we rely on our our integrator implementer to um work on that and work with us, and we have to do our part to test.

So a valid question.

We'll know more uh as we go on, you know, each each update.

And I assume that we test after you fix the bug, you test again.

Yeah, to make sure it's keeping it.

And I'm glad to hear about the payroll.

Um obviously that's really important.

I know I will just say I went through a workday implementation in my other job, and we all got paid wrong.

We got paid wrong, and then they took out the wrong amount of money, then they put back money, they took it was like it was really not pleasant when you're just getting paid all wrong.

You know, suddenly you have all this money, and then they take away all your money.

So I'm really glad to hear because it was really bad.

And it took, and it also took like a year, like a long time to untangle.

So I'm glad to hear that they're doing parallel.

So you could see like so just so the the numbers are matching till we get up to that.

So the date is December 1st, right?

From what I understand.

Yep.

Do we?

I mean, it was an ambitious target, I feel like to begin with, but do we feel like we're still on for does?

I mean, I know it's our fiscal year, there's lots of reasons, but do we how do we feel how you feeling?

Yeah, solid question.

Um, I'll I'll first address that we are we are following a process that workday and their implementer do to roll it out.

So while it it seems aggressive, it was to us as as we first learned about it.

I just want to make it clear we don't have some custom super fast track.

This is how they do it.

Yeah.

I just wanted to clarify because I've asked myself these questions.

Yeah.

Um, because usually you have a two to three year thing, you're going down that.

Um, so it is aggressive, and all pieces have to go into place.

And the testing and the bug fixes all have to gratefully they build in some uh buffer for us to do that.

Um so currently we're heading towards the go live, yeah.

But and you know, to be fair, um, and to and we'll have to see those bugs, and if there are foundational changes that may come, or and this is where we get into kind of change management.

Well, we we don't want to do it that way, or something like that.

Those could lead to foundational changes, and that could affect it.

So I'm not gonna say we're not, we also are doing due diligence and looking at that stuff and because I think it's wise to do and prepare if you would need to push or change a date, etc.

Better to plan ahead of time, I think, than in the moment.

So we are fairly doing that, but currently the project status from our implementer is yellow, which kind of tells you what it's right in the middle.

Uh, but we're heading towards the go live.

Yes.

Yes, because December 1st is as we we can tell by the chillier weather is uh coming right around the corner.

And and maybe next month too, just hearing about all the ways that you're reaching out to the for the change management part.

So people are gonna know the difference.

It's a big difference using black um not blackboard um workday than it is our current system.

I think in a very good way, as is that I use it for my other job, but it does have its own thing.

So new, you know, we can hear soon because I'm sure training's gonna be rolling out.

I mean, all the information about it since it's right.

How many months?

September.

Yeah, like three months is gonna be life.

So maybe next month we can hear more about and how we can help be ambassadors and tell people about it, embrace it and use it.

So yep.

Uh, and that that's always the the challenge in any big project, the change management.

And um, unfortunately, you find a lot out during end to end.

That's the process.

We're when we're configuring, hey, it's just pieces.

And now you see it work.

You rely on the leads and the teams and all that to build it right, but now you see it, and it's it's whether those foundational changes need to be made if there are some, or we can, I'm not gonna say live with it, but the way the the implementer will say in work days about it on day one, you're not gonna have the perfect product.

That's just the fact, and that's not us.

What you do is then you have hyper care production after support, and they work with you on that.

That's the beauty of workday and the way the database works is you can continue to tweak things.

What we have to understand is are these foundational changes that will be really hard to tweak afterward.

And so those kind of play in.

So, yes, it is change management.

People are all finding things out through the end-to-end testing.

So that kind of brings that up.

Wait, this is gonna be different.

Yep.

Uh, when we have to work through those.

So it's a valid point again.

Yeah.

Well, when you start having like sessions to train everyone, I'd love to know because I'd love to go to one of them.

Absolutely.

There's a heavy focus on training and um absolutely.

Yeah, we're gonna have a terrific system.

So we just want people to use it.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions?

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

And item 9.2 is our broadbate from our broadband team.

Kim and Kay.

Hi, good morning, everyone.

Kay Crandall, Digital Equity Manager.

Good morning, Kim Lunt, Digital Equity Coordinator.

Great.

We're gonna be bringing an update on some of our programs to you all this morning.

Uh, we do have a presentation, and we'll also share a brief video about one of our partnerships that uh we've been working on this summer.

So really excited to share that.

We're gonna focus on some metrics from our digital navigator program, digital literacy programming, and our digital equity coalition.

Does the video part?

No, no, we're gonna start the presentation first.

Uh sorry.

Great.

Thanks, Kevin.

Okay, so uh this is the overview that I mentioned of what we'll be reviewing, and the video that we're gonna be sharing will highlight the summer youth employment program and that partnership with workforce development over this summer.

And um, we will share some more information about uh status of the North Star licenses and uh our upcoming or recent and upcoming coalition meetings.

So we're gonna kick it off with these metrics.

And I know last month, last meeting, we shared uh similar graph, and we're just adding to this so you can see the July points on the right.

And so we're really excited to be keeping up this momentum and upward trajectory with the number of residents served at 2,315 residents, which is really exciting.

And with that uh 1,700 hours of engagement and over 1,800 uh sessions, group and one-on-one sessions held, and then 537 laptops, uh, both refurbished and new laptops have been distributed.

And I know already we we're at the end of August.

This number, all these numbers have increased, and I'm I'm really proud of our team and all the work that they're doing, all of our digital navigators, working with folks in the community and their dedication and expertise to providing these services, is making a great impact.

Um, so I will pause and have Kevin pull up our video uh about the SYEP program.

Hi everyone, my name is Kay Crandall.

I'm the digital equity manager for the Lake County Digital Growth Initiative.

The Summer Youth Employment Program or SYEP is an annual program that workforce development organizes for youth in Lake County to participate in a work environment and to gain experience and income during their summer months.

This year we were able to partner with workforce development to engage the youth in workshops and provide laptop devices.

The collaboration between the Summer Youth Employment Program and the Lake County Digital Growth Initiative has allowed us to engage the youth in digital skills workshops, teaching them about internet safety, responsibility online, and how they can use digital tools to benefit them in their daily lives.

I've learned how to just navigate my way online.

The classes have really helped with us gaining knowledge on how to move safely and responsibly on the internet.

Gotta download the windows, how to add that.

How to use AI.

I learned how what I should not say online.

I learned how to set up the computer.

I feel like it could help me organize a schedule, like on calendars and stuff like that.

Digital skills and access are really important for today's youth.

They may have access to technology at school, but maybe they don't have access to technology at home.

And they may use technology, but it may be on their phone.

And so we really can't assume what skills they have.

And so we engage with youth and we talk with them about what they know, what they don't know, and what they want to know.

By hosting workshops with them to engage in internet safety and talking about online resources.

We can get a better understanding of where they're at and where they want to go.

I think it's really critical, especially for the summer youth employment program participants because these youth ranging from 14 to 18, they're in high school and they may be going on to college or trades or their careers soon.

And so to equip them with skills and a computer is really critical to their growth and whatever direction that they want to go.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for um letting us play that video.

And uh, and thank you to the team for getting all of that coordinated.

We worked with our uh marketing team, and Kim is leading all of those efforts with our marketing team.

So uh we've been able to put together some really great videos and materials to share online about our programs and to raise awareness and just celebrate the work that we're doing.

So it's really great.

And I do want to highlight that uh over a hundred youth have earned laptops through that partnership with SYEP.

And I think I have it here.

Yes, and so that partnership is ongoing.

We completed all of the workshops and uh session learning sessions with the youth.

The summer youth employment program has ended as of the first week of August, but we're continuing to connect with the youth and their families to make sure that we get laptops to all of those that are eligible and participated in the in that partnership that we had.

And uh through our partnership with workforce development, I also want to say a thank you to Lake County for uh funding the Summer Youth Employment Program this year.

It's really incredible that uh there was funding available for the program.

I understand that the typical funding source was not available.

So uh Lake County really made all of this possible for all of the youth that participated.

I believe I was around 150 youth from across the county that were able to engage in this program.

So it's really incredible.

And here we're just highlighting two of our recent program cohorts that graduated.

On the left is our digital navigator, Tiara Garland.

And she led a class at the Patricia A.

Jones Center here in Waukegan.

This was the second cohort working with older adults to learn digital skills.

And we have several upcoming cohorts scheduled with that organization.

And then on the right, we have Hector Gueffaro, another one of our digital navigators, along with uh one of the interns at the job center and uh some of their program participants, and we've had great success partnering with the job center of Lake County as well to host uh these programs.

So the um these are the learn to earn cohorts, but there are basic computer skills classes that folks are completing.

And then I'm gonna hand things over to Kim.

Okay.

So um North Star Digital Literacy, uh, as we've talked about before, is a program that we use that supports residents through our program.

Uh actually in those learn to earn uh in the last slide with the pictures, um, we do a pre-test and then also at the end do a post-test uh to see the improvement that the residents are gaining.

Um ultimately with a with Northstar, we have online learning accounts.

Uh that's where the residents can do learning on uh their own independently.

We uh receive curriculum from North Star so that uh teachers in the community and our uh digital navigators can follow that curriculum uh that NorthStar has created.

There is proctoring of tests, and that's that certificate that they um that can lead to a certificate uh if they pass the test at 85% or higher.

And um, yeah, so uh we are giving out uh licenses as well, and we have about 20, I think that we still have available to organizations to um to give out.

And let me go to this slide here.

So um we've been using it from March through August, and the um you can see on the left side there that we've had 289 unique users, and then there they have taken 634 basic computer tests and passed 331.

The assessment pass rate there of 52.2%.

Um, and then in the last 30 days, I did this.

This is a little bit of July and a little bit of August included here.

You can see that um actually that number 142 is supposed to say 104.

I'm sorry, 107 um unique users, and the tests that they've taken is 142 with a 57% assessment pass rate.

We saw a little bit of an increase in the last few days.

Uh I'm sorry, in the last 30 days um with the pretests at the university center, which was interesting to see that the pretests were higher.

So okay.

Where are we going here?

Remember, yes.

Um the users have gone down.

Yeah, uh, yes, yes.

That's what we're anticipating.

Also, August is even even lower because of back to school.

So last minute vacations as well as uh back getting ready for school.

So yeah.

Okay, so here's what I was talking about earlier about all the things that we get with that uh with the North Star uh licenses.

And the main thing that organizations can do, and you can see the QR code on the right, is if anybody wants to take that to organizations in your um areas and um encourage them to apply for it, that be would be wonderful.

Um, because this is something that will help these organizations um to, you know, their their uh our goal, our goal is, I'm sorry, um, give me a moment here.

Our goal is to help our organizations that need like the health department needs to have um the digital skills, patients need the digital skills, and so and that's what we're doing here.

So I'm gonna move on here.

Um what types of organizations um would be the best to contact?

Yeah, so we've given out to excuse me, to libraries.

Um also we the Lake County Housing Authority has uh earned one, the UMA Center, family first, and then the University Center.

We have uh Mano Amano is another one.

So really nonprofits um and and libraries are really big ones.

In fact, I have some meetings next week with a few libraries, Lake Filla, Lake Bluff, and Grays Lake to discuss the opportunity with them.

Community anchor institutions.

Yes, C I those are the AIs.

Yes.

C A I said that's right.

A while since I said that.

I know throwback to be a long time.

All the networking.

All right.

Okay.

So here's the digital equity coalition meeting.

We just had one on Tuesday, and we had 45 attendees with a total of 22 organizations represented.

So that was exciting.

You can see that on the left there, we had that the agenda that we followed, which we've been starting off with having our digital navigator or K presented some teaching strategies at the beginning of the meeting.

We then do a member spotlight, which as I had mentioned earlier, the Lake County Health Department is who we spotlighted.

And it's wonderful to have uh have uh a department, a lake county department come in and show that cross section uh between the needs of the patients, and then then being able to actually learn how to use their patient portals through the efforts of our digital navigator.

So um then we did all of our updates and our um next steps.

So our next meeting, which I would encourage all of you to uh sign up for and join us, um, is actually in person.

And we're gonna, it's on September 23rd from two to four at uh the Lake the Lakeshore campus here, College of Lake County in the Eleanor Murke Community Center.

And so hope to see you there and also encourage your residents to attend as well.

Um, and then we'll have a Zoom meeting on October 28th uh for our next one.

All right.

That is it.

Yeah, and I encourage everyone to go to that.

I'd love, I mean, all the meetings are great, but the in-person meetings are so much fun, so much energy.

And to meet the people that we're you know, talking to is so important.

I'll be teaching, so I can't be there.

But I also wanted to say, I just wanted to really again thank this board.

I mean, look at this, over 2,000 people have you know been trained.

I ran into someone who um runs a fiber company um and a private fiber company, and they really was like, Oh, you're from Lake County.

He's like, you know, he's like, you are nationally known.

He's like, this is a person from not from like from Illinois.

He's like, this company said, you know, Lake County is known as such a leader.

He's like, you are far and ahead of almost anyone else in the country on all of our things.

Accessibility, you know, having the internet, the training.

He's like, you guys really get it.

And it even starts with the maps.

And I just want to thank Betsy Brandon again for our maps.

I don't know if you all remember when we did the maps, and I remember how much time we spent on making sure the maps were good and the community anchor institutions and like making sure everybody replied to the maps.

And he said, you know, he's like when he's like, when people saw your map, it realized that because remember in our map we learned that we didn't have much fiber here in Lake County at all.

And he said it put Lake County, he's like became Lake County in this area, one of the number one places for fiber companies to come in the entire country.

And we're seeing it.

And it's you know, private fiber companies are coming, which will bring lower rates for us and actual true high-speed internet for all of us.

But it really started with the work we did here.

And then it's not just that, it's also this work.

He's like, we've heard about the things you're doing about training people.

And the guy, the fiber guy's like, you know, the hardest part really is the training, the getting people have devices.

And he's like, and you guys really know what's going on there in Lake County.

He's like, we all talk about you.

I was like, oh, that's kind of cool.

But I want to thank our team, you know, Matt here, Matt Myers, all of us, like all of us on this committee and the whole board for really putting a priority on this and changing, you know, really changing people's lives, investing in our our residents and making this for the better.

And I got to give a shout out to our marketing team because everywhere I go in Lake County, people have seen the videos.

I think video is where it's at, and people are like, I love what you're doing with you know, with with our digital skills, people really hear about it.

So thank you and the marketing team for doing such a great job.

Video is where it's at, and um, and just so people can hear about all the great work we're doing.

I think it's the number one thing people bring up to me is how impressed they are with the things that we're doing with digital equity.

So I just want to say thank you to everybody.

Vice chair.

Um I want to congratulate you on your visionary trailblazer award.

Could you tell us what that was?

Thank you, um, vice chair.

So, yes, um, and and another thank you to Betsy Brandon for applying on behalf of the county for the National Digital Inclusion Alliance or NDIA's um visionary trailblazer award.

And so we uh receive this recognition for 2024 as a local government body uh that's making significant progress towards digital equity.

And so there are certain criteria.

I think there's probably about 24 different criteria that you're um put up against, and we can submit documents and information about the work that the county has done.

And so uh we met almost all of them, which is very exciting.

And uh Betsy and I were able to uh receive that uh recognition at the Net Inclusion Conference that was held in uh the Gila River um uh reservation in Phoenix, uh near Phoenix, Arizona.

So uh that was back in May, and that was incredible.

And I believe we're gonna be uh applying again for for that um to maintain that status for the county.

So it's incredible.

And I want to also say um, Chair Clark, that we uh we are anticipating folks from out of state to join us for our coalition meeting in September.

And there are folks that are calling and emailing us to learn about our work and to understand our plan so that they can iterate those practices and uh bring the same type of um opportunities to their communities.

So it's it's excellent.

Thank you.

It's excellent to hear it.

It really goes back to our strategic plan, right?

We are like winner national leaders and we really are in this space.

So thank you for all that work.

And I feel like digital trailblazer is kind of a good way to describe us.

So vice chair.

Um, I just also want to add that when we're talking about digital equity, we're talking about leveraging the skills and talents of everyone.

And the more if we don't do that, if we don't try to level that playing field right now, what we're talking about is people who are unable to perform and contribute to society at the at the rate that everyone else is, and that that benefits everyone.

So they're bringing their skills, they're bringing their talents, their abilities, and this is no longer, this is just no longer a barrier for them.

So I'm really grateful to you for all of your hard work.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much.

All right, do we all right?

Now we have director's report from EIT.

CIO Blandy.

I have no directory.

All right, we will not argue with that.

All right.

Is there a county administrators report?

There's not.

Okay.

There's no executive session.

Are there any members' remarks?

All right, then I declare this meeting adjourned.

Our next meeting is October 31st.