Good morning, everyone.

Today is October 21st, 2025, and I call the Lake County Health and Community Services joint budget hearing to order at 8 30 a.m.

In addition to being able to attend in person.

Remote attendance has been made available to the public via Zoom at the link on the agenda.

This meeting is being recorded through Zoom.

Is anybody coming on Zoom?

Okay.

I am now gonna pass it over to F and A chair Frank.

Good morning.

We are now at 8 31.

I call to order the Finance Administrative Committee.

Um we do have a quorum physically present.

We have no one uh from the committee participating remotely at this time.

So can you please rise and join a committee vice chair Altenberg and decide and pledge allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Oh, so this is just all agenda.

I'm gonna do the HCS roll call.

Okay.

Can I get a roll call, please?

Mr.

Altenberg?

Here.

Member Casmin?

Here.

Member Cunningham?

Here.

Member Danforth.

Member Kenny Snake.

Member Main.

Chair Park.

Okay.

Present.

Okay.

And the finance committee roll call, please.

Member Clark?

Chair Frank?

Here.

Member Hewitt.

Member Maine.

Vice Chair Park.

Member Peterson.

Member Falitzik.

Okay.

Is there public comment?

Yes, there is public comment for HCS.

I'm gonna go ahead and uh read a statement before we bring over um Carl Zegan for the public comment.

Yep.

An individual has three minutes of cumulative time to provide their public comments.

Public comment must be related to the business of the county board and not be redundant or political.

When appropriate, matters raised by public comment shall be referred to the appropriate standing committee.

The public shall refrain from commenting about private activities, lifestyles, or beliefs of others, including county employees and elected officials that are unrelated to the business of the county board or county government and their public comment.

Comments that are uncivil, rude, vulgar, profane, or otherwise disruptive will not be allowed.

Candidates running for public office must refrain from including comments that are political in nature or that promote or support a candidate, including refraining from identifying oneself as a candidate for public office.

We have Carl Zegan.

Is he available to speak?

Yes.

Yes, good morning, board.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate getting the opportunity.

I just wanted to encourage as you guys go through the budget process.

We live in Lake County, and I would like to encourage the board to consider uh putting forth some efforts to clean up our local lakes.

Uh there are there's an organization locally in Libertyville called, and I'm not affiliated with them, called Global Waterworks, and some others I found out they're testing some of the lakes in Lake County, and there's some lakes you can't swim in at certain times of the year.

And I think it would be uh a good idea for the Lord to the board to consider some methods that are less toxic methods to clean up some of the lakes, spend some money in that.

We are Lake County, and it would be a good idea to not have a situation in the future when we want to attract visitors to the county and they can't use our lakes.

Uh, that's all of my comments, and thank you very much for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Any unfinished business?

No unfinished business.

Okay.

Handing it back to Chair Paul Frank.

Thank you.

We don't have any identity agenda.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

So we have a request for additional public comment for someone who did not submit the form.

Can you please just identify yourself?

And is the item you're commenting on on the agenda or not?

Mr.

Bryson.

Hello.

Uh my name is Rob Breyson.

And I want to, it's almost like a follow-up comment to the previous person.

Um I live in Lake County and I'm familiar with the watershed plan that was developed by the chain of lakes.

And one of the things that they identified is that there are 8,000 septic systems around the chain of lakes, which are having a negative impact on the lake.

There are 80% of those are within a thousand feet of the um of the lake.

And so uh what I'd ask you to consider is when when you're considering a budget is to think about how we can work to expand sewer systems in this area so that we can have lakes that are usable.

So that that's what that's what I'm asking.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have no additional public comment.

Okay.

Um I just have one quick chair remark, which is regarding our process today and tomorrow.

Um, I would like to suggest to the finance committee members that we consider any amendments that are made by the individual subject matter committees, and we and we hold off on taking action on any changes until the end of the day tomorrow, so we can have an aggregate perspective on the total budgetary impact and consider how to uh fund any additions that might be made.

Um, and so you know, correspondingly to the HCS and and the other committees, you know, we will consider whatever you forward, but um I think uh FA should should hold off on taking final action on any changes until tomorrow.

Okay.

Chair Prack.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm gonna go ahead and uh ask for eight dot F1 on our agenda to proceed with the presentation and consideration of the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget.

Good morning, Michael Wheeler, budget manager.

Just want to roll through our normal kind of opening presentation where we talk through some of the specifics about the budget and how the process was prepared.

I will test the clicker now.

Here we go.

Now, so the first slide we have is really just kind of a review of the process and how we got to this point.

You know, there was the county board policy guidance that was updated back in April.

Um, and then we have the budget guidelines that we put out for departments and agencies to use to prepare the budget.

And from June through July, departments were preparing the budget, and then in August and September, that's when those of us in the finance department and in the county administrator's office met with all of the departments to kind of talk through their budget, identify some areas where maybe some changes could be made, understand what the thoughts were behind their budget, and that's also when we're kind of doing the balancing, starting to do the balancing of the operating property tax funds, hence the note of it being in green, the color being green.

Then we move into the document that many of you have before you, whether that's digitally or in person, you know, the hard copy, which is the county administrator's recommended budget.

That's what's before us now, and this is where we are today for the next couple of days.

After that, you know, of course, we have the meetings today and tomorrow, and then there is the approval that is currently scheduled for the county board meeting on the 18th of November.

So what did we do in terms of the budget preparation process?

We were going along with the county board guidance, which is trying to have the budget and everything aligned with the strategic plan uh using the property tax levy guidance.

There are two scenarios.

What is included in the recommended budget document is half of the allowable CPI growth per the policies uh under the PTEL Act.

And then there are some discussions about alternate scenarios or things that could be done if the additional or some portion of the additional uh half that's allowable uh is actually considered by the board.

Um of the things to note this year that's very important is this is the first year that in the budget document the compensation study increases that were approved back in, I think it was October of last year, are actually included in the department budgets, department and agency budgets throughout the entire year.

If you all remember last year, we had those budgeted for the property tax departments in general operating expense or in contingency, because we weren't we were still learning what how much each department should get, and so we have it there prepared to transfer to departments if needed as needed throughout the fiscal year.

So this budget actually includes those amounts.

It's kind of a fully loaded personnel labor cost budget for 24 in each of the department's budgets.

Uh also part of the budget preparation process was a review of all of the positions where we kind of sat and talked with departments, where we look for and to be in consistent with the uh county board policies, identifying those positions that appear to have been vacant for the 12 months, identifying those, talking with departments about those, understanding if they really had been vacant, if there had been some effort to recruit, and we made adjustments accordingly based on those conversations and evidence that we had of that recruitment.

It was also the process where we talked about new program requests, and we did something different this year.

You see, I've got the note about the collaborative peer review.

I'll talk about that more on the next slide.

But it was something very different that uh our county administrator kind of had all the departments go through.

As part of the review of the budgets, we did the revenue analysis, understanding what people projected, what was rolled into those projections, trying to understand if that seemed reasonable, see if there were some opportunities for adjustments, just kind of kind of a review of that.

And then one of the other things I think we want to note is the policies talk about having the operating budget capital contribution, that is the transfer we do from the general fund to the capital fund.

It has to the very least cover the facilities maintenance requests from facilities and other departments, and it does that in then some.

So we'll get there when we get to those pages, but I wanted to note that because that's a that's a good thing.

Uh next slide is the new program request process.

And I'll ask the county administrator to jump in if she feels I don't do this justice.

Um the departments created PowerPoint presentations for each new program request.

They were submitted to county administration.

Uh, and what we had was a day-long session just like this, except it was all uh department heads of their representatives, and they came and they presented to each other what their new program requests were.

It was an opportunity for them to do a I think it was a five to 10 minute presentation, uh, QA feedback with other department heads and uh managers and leaders in departments, and then they all kind of voted or rated what they thought should be considered by the county administrator.

Now the final decision rests with the county administrator, and that's what's recommended in the budget.

But I think what uh she was going for was an opportunity for everybody to see what others were interested in, understand each other's needs better, and I think to create a culture of we're kind of all in this together, and we have to prioritize based on one of the limited resources that we have between tax dollars, special revenue funds, et cetera.

So the recommendations that came out of that kind of fall into one of four categories.

One is it's funded and included in the recommended budget in the you know, one half of the allowable.

The second is it's recommended for funding in scenario two.

Should the board decide to do any or all of the full allowable property tax.

The third is something to be considered in second quarter of fiscal year 26, and then finally, some just weren't recommended at all.

So that was kind of a major step during that process that was different for us this year.

And we did that kind of as the before we got into the conversations about how much are you requesting, how are your revenues looking.

So we tried something different this year.

I'll look at the county administrator.

Is there anything more you wanted to add to that?

All right, I will move on.

Um next slide speaks to, and and we go through this every year, but I we think it's worth repeating.

The county board is approving the budgets at the category level.

So as you can see in the slide there, you see, particularly under uh revenue, you've got personnel, commodities, benefits, contractuals.

There are many different personnel line items, whether it's regular salaries, part-time salaries, excuse me, overtime or what have you.

All of those, but the budget level approval is where those all roll up, which is in this case it's at the A5X personnel.

Same thing for office supplies, operational supplies that may fall under commodities, and so on for benefits and contractuals.

So the actual approval authority rests at that level, and it's not necessarily 150 dollars for this line item or 200,000 for that line item.

It's how it all rolls up because that's where we manage budget control.

One other thing I'll mention, I was going to mention this later, but I know it kind of can throw people off.

If you see the A there in front of all of the account numbers, it's just literally the shorthand for account.

And we have that there because our system by default and default includes that in the reports.

But so it's just it's just shorthand.

So we'll often throw out account numbers and we won't say A, so I'll apologize for you that for that ahead of time right now, but it's really just account and it speaks to the account class.

So I'll move on.

And so, how did we do the revenue budget?

Uh the finance department entered the property tax amounts for all departments.

It's consistent with the annual estimate that was approved by the FNA committee uh last month as required by state statute.

The final distribution will be determined after we complete the budget meetings, and we're preparing the final budget that comes before the full board in uh November.

Uh and there's a separate property tax ordinance.

Some of you may remember this or maybe have looked back and been refreshed.

Uh, that's considered by the FNA committee at the November committee meeting.

So there's like an ordinance for each of the property tax uh funds that we're dealing with, and those are approved by FNA, and they also go to the full board.

Um, interest income, that's one we always kind of like to look at because that depends on what market conditions are.

Have rates gone up, have rates gone down, you know, do we have investments coming to maturity?

Those are determined by the treasurer's office, and to some degree, recommendations are also provided by the finance department.

So between the treasurer's office and finance, we enter those numbers as well.

For all other revenues that are out there, uh non-property tax amounts, you know, your fee, your intergovernmental revenue, charges for services for services provided.

We see this a lot in many departments, such as the health department and miscellaneous revenue that can be copy charges and miscellaneous fees that miscellaneous revenues that are collected for, I'll call them one offer, you know, inconsistent activities.

Those are all budgeted by the departments in the budgets.

So on the expense side, uh we broke this into two categories.

There's what the department does, and then there is what uh kind of what they did as part of the process.

The department's entry dealt primarily with non-labor expenses, commodities.

When I was referencing office supplies, office equipment, contractuals, that could be consultants, that could be trips and training, that could be certain other kinds of services, uh, professional services and capital expenditures within the targets that were provided by the county administrator's office and finance.

And I will uh mention that just as we have done for the last few years, uh, between the county administrators' office and finance, each department has been given targets, those that are in the property tax funds to say, okay, we're looking at, for example, the last few years of actuals, and we're looking at what you're requesting, and we're looking at what we think you can get used to, you know, successfully provide the services that are required here, and this is the target that was set.

And so when a department came back to us and said we can meet the target, it was great.

If we can't meet the target, we had a conversation about that to try to understand what was changing, what was different from what we'd seen in the last few years of actuals.

Um departments also entered labor expenses, so that's the overtime, uh, those that's special pay.

Uh sorry that that's in there twice.

My apologies.

Judges of election is entered by the county clerk's office.

They enter those pieces.

Most of the rest of the labor expenses, the finance department does, but there are a few like those which the departments actually do.

In addition to that level of budget entry, departments also review the position inventory.

I mentioned the conversations that we have with them uh earlier, where we're going through and talking about positions, talking about vacancies and all of that.

They kind of confirm we in finance prepare the position inventory, give it to the department to review and to make sure that it's consistent in with what HR has on file and with what they understand the case should be.

And if there are differences, we talk about that and finalize that for the upcoming fiscal year budget request.

Uh departments, as we mentioned earlier, also submitted NPRs for you know any new or any expansion of current programming or adding additional personnel.

And then for those that have the performance metrics, all of that's included there.

They provide that information to us to populate the charts that you see on those pages in the budget book.

Moving on, um, and I know I may be just kind of going through it.

If you have any questions, please stop me.

So getting to labor costs, what we did with that, yes, sir.

I'm sorry, yes.

I'm sorry, you opened that door.

I've been sitting on my hand.

Um, but it is related to the new program requests and um to the the previous slide that you had about um uh expense budgeting.

Oh yeah, those and you had talked about that process that was used.

Yes.

Um, which sounded great.

What I was wondering is so if a department had a new project they wanted, new program.

Could they just say, hey, we don't want to keep this old program and keep our budget flat by getting rid of this and adding this instead.

So I don't know where that question goes.

I I think we tried to look at those on a case-by-case basis and try to see what the financial impact was to see if that was a because in some cases we could be talking about it's a you know, even exchange.

Right.

All right, in other cases, it could be where it's more, or other cases it could be less.

So I I won't get too far out ahead.

I see the county administrators reaching for her microphone, but I think that's generally what we did on a case-by-case basis and looked at them that way.

If I may, yeah, if they're able to absorb the change, um it's not new or expanded.

If they can do it within their target, then there was no need to do a new program request.

So if they decided, hey, this program isn't working, we don't want to spend our money on this, that is something they could have done.

They could prioritize here's what we're doing, here's what we want.

Maybe some of those things should drop off and other things should rise to the top.

They could do that internally without any process.

Yes.

As long as it wasn't something statutorily required that we had to do.

Exactly.

Thank you.

All right.

I'll go back.

So getting to how we budgeted the labor costs.

These things are budgeted through kind of a systematic process that we use.

And I mentioned earlier the exceptions that departments enter, such as uh overtime, holiday pay, special pay, judges of election.

Um, we we basically kind of look at what the position inventory is.

We know what the benefit costs are going to be, and we calculate those costs out to prepare the budget that we present to the departments to say, is this position inventory?

You know, this is what the position inventory is.

Make sure we're on the same page about that, and we kind of enter the costs that are there for the position.

So in just about every case, uh we in finance did that, or we worked very closely with the department while they did.

Um moving to vacation sick payouts, this is something we've done for years.

We don't budget vacation sick payouts for employees who depart.

We uh anticipate that being covered by the existing budget that the department has.

Vacancy savings, which is where we kind of budget a negative offset to account for the fact that most departments are not 100% staffed throughout the entire fiscal year.

We do those calculations by finance and we tweak those each year.

Uh this year is a little bit different where we budgeted a little bit lower than what we did back in fiscal year 25 because we're starting to see some hiring uh kind of stabilized and employee retention stabilize in recent years.

We're coming out of the pandemic, things are kind of changing.

Uh so we the rates aren't as high as we use in 25 and in some cases in previous years before that.

Uh and the way we calculate that, you can't physically see it in the budget document that's before you, but it's netted out of your regular salaries and wages, five, that the count number I've noted there, and the benefits line items that includes uh FICA, uh IMRF and HLD or health life and dental insurance.

So we do have vacancy savings baked into the budget, into the department budgets.

With the salary and wage increase, the recommended budget includes a 3% as a lump sum for non-union employees, uh, and department heads have the ability to distribute distribute based upon merit.

Some may recall that during the uh discussions with the compensation study, there was a recommendation to kind of move the table at some degree every year uh so that we don't end up in the same situation that we are trying to rectify.

So the I think this was just approved by the county board last week.

There's a going to be one point in the policies, there's a change, so that represents a 1.75% increase to salary and wage table, and individual employees can receive between 1.75% and 4%, as long as a department does not exceed the lump sum amount.

So to give an example, because I think this is the way I would need to hear it, so I don't understand it.

If your total amount uh for wages is, I'm making up a number is $50,000.

You can give your employees anywhere between that one and three quarter percent and that 4%, but you can't exceed that $50,000.

Uh the one of the ways that that can kind of work is uh as we talk about in the next bullet, the increase for non-union employees can be distributed based upon a merit basis.

But if you've been with the county for less than six months, the current HR policies say that you're only eligible for kind of the cost of living adjustment, which is that 1.75% increase.

So there is in theory some savings there.

Um so but the idea is we're going to move the salary and wage table up, which is good so that we try to stay at pace with market.

And then on top of that, we're giving the parameters for what department heads, department agency heads can give to their employees as a wage increase.

Um we also, in terms of what's budgeted here, factored in the collective bargaining unit compensation schedules, you know, based on those contracts.

So those are all included here as well.

So I'll look around.

No questions, I'll move on.

Uh so what are our benefit numbers for this year, the percentages?

IMRF went down slightly from 6.05 to 6.02%.

The SLEP pension for the sheriff's office went down a bit from the 22.91 to 21.6.

That was great, although those decreases weren't huge.

They helped to offset.

We had an increase in health insurance.

The blended average increase, as we've calculated it is 7.4% between the county's HMO and PPO plans.

So it helped that increase and not be as challenging to absorb as it could have been.

And where does our money come from?

It comes you know, our revenues total 655 million.

That's up about three and a half, not quite 3.6% from FY25, little less than a third.

It's property taxes.

Uh we have other taxes that that compare.

Uh intergovernmental revenues, that can be money that we get from the state, can be money that we get from the feds, uh, charges for service, that's 14%.

Charges for services can be things like um, I'm thinking of as an example, the health department may provide certain types of services.

There may be services that are provided by some of our departments to other uh to two people as a kind of a fee for service.

That's all included in there.

Transfers, that's where we're moving dollars around.

Sometimes those are from external places, that's 10%, and then that miscellaneous bucket that is basically for everything else, that's all in there.

There are a couple of small pieces for licenses and permits, licensing and permitting revenue and fines of forfeitures are very, very, very small.

So it's zero point something percent.

Now, knowing where it comes from, where does the money go?

Uh, as we see personnel benefits for all funds is about 42%.

When you add the um when we look at debt service, that's about four percent capital.

It's about 17% in services and contracts.

That's you know, that comes back to consultants, that comes back to trips and training, that comes back to any anything where we're not buying stuff, but we're paying for a service.

That can be software and online subscriptions for some of our computer applications that we host that we have that are hosted remotely.

All of those things fall in services and contracts and commodities.

The way I like to simply put it is it's simply the stuff that we buy.

So that's that's about two percent of the overall budget.

So in the budget book, I apologize.

This is probably not as large as I would like it to be, but uh essentially the things we kind of wanted to draw out here were you're going to see in the department, you're gonna see in the far right, you're gonna see a couple of columns there.

Department request budget and county administrator budget.

What the differences are there is the department request budget may not perfectly represent, but largely represents what the department has submitted.

And then the last column, county administrator represents the changes that were made as a result of conversations with the county administrator.

I just note that the the department request budget may not match exactly because as we were having conversations, there were some cases where after dialogue the department said it's okay to put that in my column.

It's okay to make that adjustment here.

So it may not be an exact copy, but it largely represents what the department submitted, and then the adjustments that were made are on the other side in the county administrator column.

Just as uh we noted earlier with the uh class budget.

So we see there when you get about halfway down, it says A5X, and remember A is for account personnel, and we see all see all those accounts there.

The level at which you're approving the budget is at that A5X personnel level or going down a little further, the A6X commodities level.

So essentially that's the account class level that we're talking about.

So I just wanted to remind everyone of that because I know uh people don't live with it every day like a lot of us in finance do, and uh it just is a helpful reminder.

So moving on uh to the alternate balancing scenario, uh taking the full allowable property tax growth of the 2.9 percent results in additional 2.6, almost 2.7 million.

So the recommendations that the county administrators put forward are some additional new program requests.

There are seven, and they are identified on the new program request page in the budget book.

I don't remember the page number, I'm sorry.

Uh, and then putting some additional dollars in contingency.

And then finally, I think that's it.

Opening the floor for questions.

Sure.

Thank you.

Not a question, just a comment.

Um, first that was Michael, that was a really excellent overview.

Thank you.

It was uh really easy to follow and understand.

Um, I just want to commend um uh county administrator and CFO and your team for having that idea to bring in all of the departments together to really hear about all of those new program requests.

I think that's so important.

We all have to think holistically, there's only so much money, and I think having um people hear all of the different ideas and then you know, giving some feedback, not a not a decision, but some feedback um to the county administrator on what they felt was a really important thing.

I I just think that's uh a tremendous ad.

Um so thank you for that.

And I also just have to give um kudos to uh County Administrator Sutton when she was CFO.

Um, you know, this was several years ago.

Uh she had said, you know what, instead of um budgeting for these positions that we likely will not fill, and then we end up with a huge sweep at the end that would uh fund capital.

Uh, why don't we just recognize that there are vacancies in there and that you're rarely at 100%?

And um essentially I would say right sizing that budget and then setting money aside for capital.

So I think your capital slide was very, very important.

I'm really happy to see that.

Um, so I I just wanted to point out those things.

I think it makes a really big difference in in how we've been budgeting over the last um seven years.

So thank you.

Well said, thank you, Chair.

I don't see any other questions.

We can proceed with the agenda items.

Chair Parry.

Thank you.

We'll now move to um items within the HCS committee.

So item the first item we'll have is 8.81, which is a joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the workforce development department.

Can I have a motion?

Motion by Vice Chair Altenburg, second by Vice Chair Cunningham.

And uh finance committee motion by member Clark, second by member Hewitt.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Yeah, we previously had those on the agenda.

We don't have them on here today.

I think he's going to do the baby.

Okay.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you.

Maybe we could have tomorrow.

It is hard.

Possible we can get those reprinted for tomorrow.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Nick Principale.

I'll just be providing a brief introduction for the departments.

Um for the workforce development budget.

This is found on page 296.

And the FY2026 recommended budget for workforce development totals 8,985,501.

The increase that you guys are likely noticing here is really just a change in methodology and how the department's budgeting.

Previously, we had uh shifted the methodology to appropriate doing an emergency appropriation during the year.

Um for consistency and continuity in operations.

We've decided to switch back to budgeting, uh including the we OA funds as part of their annual budget.

Um smaller one-time grants will continue to be appropriated as they're awarded throughout the year.

This level of funding will allow workforce to continue conducting job seekers with employment opportunities, supporting local employers, and coordinating programs that strengthen the county's workforce.

And I will hand it over to Jennifer.

Good morning, Jennifer Sereno, Director of Workforce Development.

And I'd like to introduce Patrick Nelson, our business and finance manager.

Patrick joined our team this time last year under the Skill Bridge internship program, and then was hired on as our manager.

Um, an overview of the budget you're looking at.

Um, not only is the increase due to a change in methodology, but we did receive an increase to our base funding, 24% increase to our base funding.

It's a formula grant through the U.S.

Department of Labor.

That increase is due to the state of Illinois received an increase in their funding, which then translated to us receiving an increase.

It's also that bitter suite with formula funding because that means our unemployment rate was trending higher than the um average unemployment rate in the nation.

Um, with the additional funding, it's allowing our department to move forward with some innovative ways to connect both job seeker readiness and employer engagement into a cohesive talent strategy.

Um, you talked about jobs here and how there's some retention.

That's all what we're experiencing in the labor force.

Um Lake County unemployment rate in August was 4.6, a little bit higher than it had been in the previous month.

So we're hovering at a very low rate, around 4% in Lake County.

Our labor force participation is just over 66%, which then causes it to be a more competitive labor market.

Um and so hiring it companies that are looking to hire are really finding themselves in positions where hiring they're needing to do additional training, additional onboarding, looking at some of the underrepresented populations and addressing some of those life events, child care, transportation, flexible work hours, even length of commute time to the job.

That's where workforce development comes in.

And that's what some of our strategies, all of our strategies address.

But this year in particular, we're using different strategies to address that so that what we're doing is establishing practices that are attainable and within reach, even if there is a reduction in some federal funding going forward.

Um paying attention to our budget.

I just want to point out a couple of line items because it's imperative in the way that we do our budgeting and what's presented here today.

Um if you look at some of the uh accounts, um, temp wages, that's our summer youth employment wages.

Computer supplies, those are participant laptops, 91,000 for participant laptops, miscellaneous commodities, participant assistance.

That's financial assistance for rent, um, transportation, not transportation, rent, auto repair, some child care assistance, transportation, account 72610 is participant transportation to help them get to and from employment as well as training.

Um, two six eight oh is our participant tuition.

That's where we pay for training and tuition while they're gaining skills and occupational vocational training.

That's over $2 million.

Other miscellaneous 79950, those are our employer training grants for on-the-job training, incumbent worker training, just over a million dollars.

Contract other 72870, those are paid internships.

Those are the wages for individuals through onboarding through an internship or learning new skills in a new type of job, over a million dollars.

And then temporary employment, 7280.

Those are community workers.

Those are individuals that have lived experience that are helping us expand job center on the move through community organizations out there.

In total, 56%, $5 million of our budget is going directly to participants, wages, tuition, or financial assistance to help them stay in employment or stay in training.

Calling your attention to our Skillbridge program.

You funded last year a coordinator.

We did hire a coordinator this past year.

We promoted an internal candidate, Cliff Smith to that role.

He is a veteran as well.

And also with the work of Patrick, who now oversees the Skillbridge program with Cliff and the work of Carl Carrar, who knows all the departments in the county.

We have expanded that Skillbridge program.

We've had four additional interns in this past year.

We have a total of three hires in the county.

We have a total of 12 interns for the entire program.

We've added the Veterans Assistance Commission.

We've added the Sheriff's Department to the Skillbridge program.

And we have seven interns scheduled to start in 2026 in various departments.

And then lastly, paying attention to our summer youth program.

172 youth were enrolled in the program this past summer.

We had over a thousand applications.

It's about a one-to-one ratio for everyone that we interviewed.

One gets enrolled in the program.

Serving 13 communities, serving 30 work sites.

We brought on five new work sites, including Highwood Library and the Hope Center.

And we do work with five county departments, clerk's office, treasurer's office, communications, the circuit courts, and public works.

Again, seeing the majority of the youth from the Waukegan, Zion, and North Chicago area to get them placed in their first job.

And the majority are 14 and 15 year old.

That wraps up our summary of our budget and knowing that again, 5 million going directly to our participant training so that they're successful in employment.

Thank you.

Questions from HCS committee?

Member ultimate.

Good morning.

Yeah, first of all, I want to say, you know, we've been so pleased with the workforce development program.

You're expanding every year.

It's been really incredible to see how the county is involved as well with all our departments.

You know, how there's a lot of cuts that could happen.

We don't know if they're gonna happen.

Um, do you have contingency plans or prioritization for certain things in your department based on I mean, what percentage of your budget is federally funded?

82%.

82%.

So I just wanted you to talk about that a little bit.

So we're fortunate.

All of the federal grants we have have been awarded.

Um, and Department of Labor has been dispersing funds, and there's not an extra delay in the disbursement of funds.

So we have access to our funds, and the grant that um is in this budget, the $8.5 million is included in that.

Um, and building out contingency plan, it has a lot to do with working with our partners throughout the community throughout Lake County, and looking at aspects that will be needed beyond we owe a beyond federal funding.

It's that access to services, so job center on the move, and it's that connection to employers for hiring and making more decisions around who to hire so that you're able to look for a greater pool of candidates.

So it's working with our partners, including the College of Lake County, ROE, the high schools, community-based organizations, and then again, we have a very robust business outreach team that is leaning into employers to help make those decisions.

Okay.

And like right now, so you've got all these grants in place.

Like, do you have a timeline like of how do you have grants for sure until June?

Do you have you know do you could you talk about that?

Um, so our grants, the grant, our base funding is a two-year grant.

Okay.

Um, so this grant goes until 2027, June of 2027.

Um, we do have one year grants that's expire June 2026.

And then our CEGA, which is our state funding.

Um, we're in the second year of a three-year grant cycle.

Okay.

So it's all staggered, but yeah, but we do have funding through this grant through 2027.

And we've done some strategies, um, different business practices, and we'll be bringing them to committee in the near future, where we're contracting out and obligating funds so that we're extending those programs through 2027 and not doing transactions only.

Okay, terrific.

Now you've just made me feel a little bit better.

And I'm glad you're thinking that way, because I think we're all trying to think that way, you know, just to make sure we don't have some catastrophic thing happen all of a sudden because we're just unsure of the of the future.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Question from uh member Cunningham.

Uh I just want to thank Jennifer and her group.

I serves on Wickfors Board for saying.

Thank uh my child for pointing me there.

Because I serve on Wickforce board with the National Associate Counties.

And throughout the years, this workforce board have made the county look very, very good because what you doing.

See, don't nobody know what workforce does, you know.

Uh, if you're not on it, because I didn't know they did all that.

If you're not on that board.

And uh they just the programs that they come up with, they you know they that that they got uh it just tremendous and and uh his no ways money.

That's for sure, it's no ways money because it put it where, and it helped the younger people says helped the youth.

That's my thing, the youth, the program that we get every year, some youth program, and they all go to work because most of them is saying appearance, children that get those jobs 14 and and and uh over, but uh we should be proud uh workforce of what they doing for our county here.

Jennifer came through and just and just uh it just uh uh it just uh then we have training.

See, that's the thing.

She has she have a little bit of everything, you know.

And um, we never had that before.

We never had that before.

I seen it been here 23 years, and I never seen what I see now.

But I see now that what you're doing, and so that's why I always support it because it's worth what I had no question.

I have nothing to question about because I see it firsthand, first saying, Oh, and I want to do a supportive.

Thank you.

Okay, seeing no other comments or questions from HCS.

We'll move over to finance.

Yeah, I have one quick question, which is on reporting and performance outcomes for the grants.

I'm assuming all the federal grants have some sort of reporting that are required.

Is that the same for Skillbridge funding?

Are we demonstrating number of uh recruitments attempted, number of placements, number of hires, things like that?

I mean, I know that we benefit as an organization for the uh people that we're able to attract to to the county, but um as a funder, I'm certain that the federal government is looking for the outcomes for for the funding of the program generally.

Is that part of that funding as well?

We don't have to report back to Department of Defense on the outcomes.

Um, but we do work closely with the Department of Defense and ensuring that our information is pushed out there.

We've had over 60 individuals inquire about this program since its lifetime.

Um, so we do have that relationship with the naval base so that this information's pushed out.

We do keep internal metrics for Skillbridge to continue to increase the numbers, and we also do share with our colleagues throughout the country how they could integrate a Skill Bridge program in their county.

Great.

Thank you for that.

I think it's important that we keep that data because if they're not asking for it now, they may at some point.

So appreciate it.

Uh, any other questions from finance committee members seeing none?

I'm gonna take action on that one.

Yes.

We'll take action on this item.

So for item 8.H1, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passed from HCS.

Um, and just to be clear, I think we had a motion to approve from member Clark and a second from Member Hewitt.

Just wanted to confirm on this one.

Yes.

Okay.

Any other questions?

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Finance approves eight.

H1.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll now move on to item 8.H2, which is a joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for community development, which this part will be the HUD grants with the Director Eric Wagner and Dominic Strezzo.

Welcome, gentlemen.

This budget can be found on page 201.

The FY2026 recommended budget for the community development fund totals $5,161,405, which is an increase of 8% from the FY25 budget.

This allows the department to leverage more than three and a half million dollars in direct community support through housing infrastructure and neighborhood investment projects.

Overall, this is a stable budget that maintains the department's capacity to deliver critical community programs and continues to maximize the impact of available federal and local dollars.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Dominic.

Good morning, Eric Wagner, Planning Building and Development Director.

This morning joined with Dominic Streso, community development administrator.

Before Dominic begins his remarks this morning, I'd like to thank him and the staff of community development for their continued vital service to the Lake County community.

Every day, the CD team partners with social service agencies, identifies solutions to some of the most pressing challenges for residents, like housing, food, and access to supportive services and administers funding to accomplish the same.

This year marks a few notable highlights for community development.

First, CD is make has taken major strides with planning building and development and county administrators' office and advancing the regional conversation about affordable housing through the Lake County Housing Coalition's launch earlier this summer, and those meetings continue.

They've also partnered with PADS to facilitate the gradual transition from the current motel uh model uh towards fixed site shelter solutions, beginning with the family shelter on Lewis Avenue in Waukegan.

They've worked with county administrators' office to smoothly integrate the opioid settlement funds into the annual HCDC uh application round process and so doing.

They've reorganized the HCDC's application review committee structure.

And they've recently celebrated the successful close out of their locally managed emergency rental assistance or ER rate program, which is the largest scale rental assistance program using one-time funds in the history of Lake County.

These are only a few of the major accomplishments that Dominic and his team have posted up this year, and we anticipate more successes in fiscal year 26.

And with that, Dominic will begin.

Thanks, Eric.

Um, just sorry, really quickly, Dominic.

I think I've I've neglected to get a motion and a second on the for this item.

So motion by member Altenbrook, second by member Kasman.

Thank you.

FNA motion by member Clark, second by member Ballet.

Great.

We have been had some success in expanding the number of units in our housing pipeline.

A lot of that has been due to the allocation of one-time funds for the ARPA dollars allocated by this board.

Um we have projects in all phases.

We have projects in the leasing phase right now.

We have multiple projects under construction, and we're working through closing on the financial due diligence for a project that was recently awarded tax credits earlier this year.

Um all that being said, the total number of units in our pipeline is in the hundreds.

We know from the report's been done, the need is in the thousands.

So we do have a lot of eggs in the housing lake basket to really kind of change the framework from which we talk about the production of housing supply.

But until that happens, um community development will still stay focused on other opportunities to try to being creative to bring additional resources into the community.

Um Eric mentioned the pad shelter.

We were successful in uh procuring two million dollars from the state of Illinois to help support that.

Um additionally, we have to be thoughtful and creative in how we spend and invest the $5 million in our FY26 budget.

Um, those funds really do represent the vast majority of them are our entitlement programs, home, C DBG, and ESG.

The way we operationalize that money is through our annual application round.

That process has already begun.

Um we do really feel that that round application round is time-tested, and it's a fair and impactful way to pass through those dollars into the community for their intended purpose.

So that is really what that $5 million represents in our FY26 budget.

The numbers we used were based on last year's.

Obviously, there is no FY26 budget at the federal level.

So we, as we've done in every previous year, we used last year's numbers to project out into the next year.

And that's that's really it for our for our budget presentation.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um questions from the committee.

Um, I have a question.

Well, go member uh Cunningham and then member Alright.

Okay, sorry.

I don't have a question, I have a comment to the community development.

Uh to Eric and Dominique and the his staff.

What a great job they are done.

Uh what a great job they are done by allocating these funds to and they are fair by doing this, and they very well for those that don't know.

I serves on community development uh myself and and uh Altenburg, and I see what they do, and I help make these decisions that the funds.

And hey, they really, great job.

I mean, I don't see no different in it.

I don't see no different in communal development because I've been on it ever since the pen here.

So I don't see no different in it because uh you uh uh people's person, you know how to deal with your uh agency that put in you uh uh hey you just you just great and Eric, thank you for all your God, and I know you you just you just does uh a wonderful job.

As I have work with you, both of you.

I have work with you, I have talked with you.

So uh it's not easy on that committee because you know, it's his to me is easy, but those that come in, and I know a lot of our commissioner get called, you know, about they won't list for the agency, but Dominic does a great job uh accommodating him if they're eligible.

You got to be eligible.

If they we just don't give out money for just giving out money, county don't do it that way.

And that's what I tell constituent when they call me.

We just don't hand out money.

You got to you got to earn it and you got to have the uh you got to have the points.

I said we don't do it that way.

Well, some people think you just go hand it, but we don't county don't do it that way.

We do legal stuff, we don't do illegal stuff.

So uh and uh so we we we you're done a great job, and I don't see no different in it.

You're moving right alone, and I support it, always gonna support it because you're helping someone.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm finished.

Okay.

Question from member Altonberg.

Yeah, first of all, I just want to compliment your department.

Um we are so proud of the housing Lake County program.

Um I think it's been an incredible launch, and I'm hoping we're gonna develop some amazing partners throughout the county this year.

And you guys have put a lot of a lot of work into that.

So I really hope it pays off.

Um so I wanted to find out what percentage of your budget is federal.

This one's probably well over the budget you see here, probably well over 99% of that is the federal funding through HUD.

Yeah.

It's entirely HUD grants.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Okay.

I just wanted to hear it.

Um do we have concerns or certainly um we're paying attention uh like everyone else.

If there was no HUD dollars to come through in the budget, there would be no application round.

That's I mean, that's the simplest answer.

There's been conversation.

We've been here before.

Um, CDBG has been continuously funded since its implementation.

Um, these programs have been funded for decades now.

Um, so I'm confident the funding will come through.

The concerns that we're hearing right now are more around implementation and maybe changing some of the rules and the policies around the HUD grants, not necessarily the budgetary themselves.

I think uh there is in general bipartisan support for these programs for the most part.

Um, but we will watch um just for reference.

We didn't have our final HUD dollars amounts for program year 2025 until March of last year.

So even though things are looking a little grim now, but we're not that far from behind schedule from where we normally are.

So you probably won't find out about 2026 summit, I'm assuming until like March or April.

Um, your guess is uh, yeah.

I mean, I I don't suspect we'll hear before Thanksgiving, maybe around before the end of the calendar year, but even if it was, I mean, like I said, I mentioned we weren't until March last year, and we still were able to.

I mean, we were a little bit behind schedule.

We were able to get the funding out in time.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, any other concerns that you want to mention in terms of you know your programs or how you know the flow of everything.

Strictly in terms of the entitlement programs, not a ton.

The the impacts again are around our partners.

Um, I think the stuff we're hearing about with the uh C Lake County COC and the housing authority, I think they're getting impacted more around the implementation in their programs more than the C DBG Home and ESG.

Obviously, they're close partners of ours, so what impacts them impacts us.

Um, but just strictly from a budgetary purpose, um, just waiting for the numbers, I think.

Okay.

All right.

And again, thank you.

You guys, you make it look seamless.

This your department works so hard on all of the different areas that are critical.

Housing, food, you know, things that are vital to people.

So we want to definitely keep an eye on everything and make sure that uh humans are the priority in the coming year.

That's you know, I I worry about that a lot.

So thank you.

Seeing any more questions from the committee.

Just also um, I've been warned about our clock already.

So we are um requesting if um clearly we want to hear from all members, but if you have a specific question of the line item within the budget or itself, please um ask those.

We do need to keep this moving along.

If you have just comments about the the how well it's been done, I think we're we're very thankful for the committee uh for or sorry for the staff and for Michael and others to put this together so we can kind of put that to a side and focus on the committee questions as or the budget questions as we do need to move this along a little bit.

So I'll move it over to finance.

Thanks, Chair.

Administrator Sun.

I just wanted to um point out this is not directly in Dominic's budget, but the affordable housing program is funded at the same level as last year at $600,000.

Um, just wanted to make sure that you were aware that there was a new program request in fiscal year 25, increasing that from 300 to 600.

And we made the assumption that that would continue.

So what you see in his budget is $60,000 worth of administrative revenue because they'll be running that program.

Um, but while Dominic was still sitting here, uh, even though this is in GOE and you'll approve it later.

Um, I just wanted to bring that forward in case anyone had any questions for Dominic about the county funded affordable housing program.

I think you touched on this already, but just for clarity for those who are looking at the budget summary page, the significant modification for FY25, and it was significant, was largely a pass-through grant that we use to support investments in infrastructure through our nonprofit partners, correct?

Modified versus the 24 million for for 20 for the 25 budget.

That represents kind of the backlog of funding we have from prior program years, same uses, same eligible um just projects that haven't spent.

So our prior year C D BG home and ESG that through the carryover process.

I think that's where that big jump into the 24 million dollar comes from.

Okay, great.

Questions from finance members.

Seeing none.

All right.

We need to vote on this.

So all those in favor for item 8.4H2.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes HCS.

Uh eight dot H2.

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Eight dot h2 is approved.

Thank you.

We'll now move to 8.3, which is the joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget 2026 budget for video gaming.

All those uh can I have a motion, motion by Kasman, second by member can't motion by Bolitic, second by Maine.

This budget can be found on page 290.

The FY 2026 recommended budget for the video gaming revenue fund totals 1.2 million, an increase of 100,000 or 9% from FY2025.

The change reflects higher projected video gaming revenues just based on recent collection trends.

In accordance with the county policy, the first 825,000 of annual revenue is retained in this fund, and anything additional to that above that is allocated to the general fund.

Um this is a status quo budget that continues to support 211 information services and community awareness initiatives focused on gambling disorder prevention and treatment consistent with the county's video gaming revenue policy.

Um you'll also notice there was an amendment that was just passed out.

Um with the recent policy update increasing the gaming revenue that sits in this fund from 800,000 to 825,000.

That was not captured here in this budget.

You'll notice that account 79935 still reflects the 800,000 amount.

So we're just looking to make an amendment here.

So just to clarify, the handout that we've just been given is a proposed amendment of 25,000 in addition to the video gaming revenue fund.

Correct, to be in accordance with the updated policy.

Okay, thank you.

Dominic or sure.

So this budget reflects the the video gaming revenue policy that was approved in September of this year.

That 25,000 increase uh directly will go to support 211 information um referral cost that is implemented through the United Way.

Uh we operationalize the $800,000, $825,000, similarly to the HUD grants.

We have our annual application round that entities nonprofits are able to apply for.

That application round is open.

Um for reference.

Last year we made 14 sub awards, averaging around $55,000 uh per grantee.

And um this program's been around for a while now, and we can plan to continue the same way in program year 2026 as well.

So I do have one question.

Um, Dominic, just so I'm I'm clear by ordinance it's eight eight hundred and twenty-five thousand is what we are required to to put from our the revenues that we collect.

The policy, the policy says 825.

The first thing is requesting 1.2.

Budgeting 1.2 as like the projected revenue and the protected revenue, but but the the difference between the two can then be put into our operating funds.

I believe I believe that's how it works.

Okay.

There is a port, sorry, there is a portion that we get for administrative within the policy as well.

That's 40 the 47,500 that also comes to community development for program administration.

Okay.

Sorry, I didn't see it on 292.

Um, member Cunningham's question.

Yeah.

I'm concerned.

Uh you said 25.

This 25,000 will go to 211.

Did I hit it right?

Uh that's correct.

Okay.

No, I was in a I was in a meeting while the while elected official was speaking, you know, the Senate the state wrote myself.

And now this 211.

I know we passed that because it started from Steve Carson.

One brought it to this board, got it through.

But the state said they got it.

Nah, can somebody explain it to me?

Because they own an that they did it.

Uh uh 211.

One on one of the Senate is you know, down state, they were speaking on it saying that they passed it in uh I was sort of confused then, because I remember when we went round and around on this two one one, the Steve Carlson brought it here through with the United Way.

So who is the so there is they had to pass it to some I'm confused on it because weight of people's thinking that that's the state did it, not the county.

Chair Hurt, did you want to go?

If I may, and listen, so um Lake County, I think was the first in the state of Illinois.

I know, and so we do that, and then I think the state is um filling in some of the statewide areas.

I don't know if it's as robust as our program.

I know Kevin Hunter sits on the United Way board.

Um, so maybe I think I think Vice Chair Cunningham is bringing up a good point.

Are there dollars that the state would be putting towards um 211 that we have traditionally taken out of our budget?

I don't know the answer to that, but I think that's a good point for us to look into right because they own an instant uh uh I mean they they because I asked the question, I said, Well, our county started this back, I guess eight years ago when Steve Carson, because I remember when Steve Carson came to the board with it and you know presented it through the United Way.

And first I was literally about voting for it, and then he said once he they explained, you know, broke it down to me.

Now I'm listening at the state saying that they brought 211 to Illinois.

So I'm trying to see, and then I'm seeing here 25,000 going to 211.

Is that part of the state getting it?

I I'm just confused on this.

How this is working, how this is gonna go that we don't own it.

The state is owning it, the 211.

So uh I don't know.

Okay, go ahead.

If I might please I I mean I can't give the exact numbers, I don't know them off the top of my head, and I wasn't prepared for this.

You're right.

It started in Lake County.

Out of the 102 counties right now in the state, there's all but two.

Uh so the state has to fund a lot of those other smaller counties that are out there.

I know that we still uh United Way Lake County is different than United Way of the state of Illinois.

So I don't know the breakdown of all of how that money comes in without sitting in front of me, but it it is a partnership, member Cunningham between uh the various counties and the state.

But it's it's while it's heavily state funded now where it wasn't before because it started here, um it um it still relies on a lot of the money it had before in order to continue to do this, and it is one in Illinois is one of the only states that's almost 100% 211 by all by every county for what it's worth.

Okay, good question.

Thank you.

Any other questions from the committee?

Uh we have a question for member Hunter, but we'll start over here with okay.

Member Maine, go ahead.

Oh, yeah.

Over here.

Thank you.

Um, if I I was about the policy update, I I just need a reminder.

Was that um was that cap was that a dollar amount?

And was there room in subsequent years um matching CPI or anything like that, or it's a flat dollar amount that is in perpetuity until such time that it could be changed.

I'll defer to administrator if she recalls.

I think it was something we enacted in 24 for the 25 budget, and I think it was a a dollar amount that's in the policy, but of course we can adjust our policy.

But um also want to take the opportunity since you asked the question to point out we are as as uh Vice Chair Cunningham said, we are leaders in this space.

We are the only community in Lake County that's investing these revenue dollars in induction services and support for people recovering.

So if I could finish since I had the floor, okay.

So um I was just gonna say I'm fine with this for now, and at an outside time, not at this budget hearing.

Um we can talk about that because a change of policy is not appropriate right now.

I just wanted to finish.

Yep, that'd be that'd be for FA.

Uh did I have that correctly, Administrator Sutton?

It's it's $800,000 in the policy.

It's now $825,000, which is why we had to do the amendments, because unfortunately we created the budget document when it was still $800, and we neglected to go back and update it.

So from this um funds perspective, all we're doing is utilizing $825,000 and reducing the transfer to the general funds by $25,000, such that only an estimated amount of $375,000 will be swept and um taken over to the general funds to clarify.

And the reason for that, it is hard dollars.

Um the awards within the hard dollars are are flexible, but there was set asides for specific purposes, and one of those set asides was the software cost of the 211 system, which went up, which is why we came back to you and did that amendment to the the policy, but we can certainly bring it back again and and look at this again.

thousand will be swept and um taken over to the general fund to clarify and the reason for that it is hard dollars um the awards within the hard dollars are are flexible but there was set asides for specific purposes and one of those set asides was the software cost of the 211 system which went up which is why we came back to you and did that amendment to the the policy but we can certainly bring it back again and and look at this again any other questions from FA member hunter thanks chair um you had mentioned that you have the the grants you had 14 different grants that were subgrants do you have that listed who those were awarded to I don't I don't have but it is publicly available um and yes I I can provide that immediately after yep thank you seeing no further questions for the HCS committee all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion passes FA this is uh oh sorry yes we do we so we need to uh do this as an amendment correct we need to go ahead okay do that yeah sorry so uh it was Casman and who had made the motion that we approve okay so we need to make a motion on this amendment um a motion on the amendment to increase the funding by 25000 motion by chair cunningham second by member casbin all those in favor say aye aye any opposed the amendment passes and then vote as amended and now as amended all those in favor say aye aye amendment any opposed motion passes okay motion on the amendment by member velitic second by member clerk any other questions all in favor please say aye aye any opposed amendment is approved as amended any other questions all in favor please say aye aye any opposed eight dot h three is approved by finance thank you we'll now move on to item eight point h4 which is a joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the opioid opioid settlement fund welcome ashley watson motion by member cunningham second by member knees uh finance motion by member hewitt second by member peterson uh good morning ashley watson uh opioid coordinator for the county administrator's office hello so opioid will be found on page 254 all right I'll go ahead and pass it over you for comments and questions so the um opioid settlement budget is pretty straightforward uh as you will see there's costs for the personnel and benefits which is the opioid coordinator position to oversee the grants as well as um the uh research and development of how to use this funding um down by the contractuals is where you will see that there is some adjustments from the previous year um we are pretty um set with our um strategic planning that was produced by third horizon so there is no need for additional consulting fees at this time um there is a small amount allotted for uh software trips and training and a stipend for interviews with people with lived experience to have their input put into how we are spending these dollars and then the larger amount of the funding in the amount of 700 000 is an increase of 2000 from the previous year is our grant program we will be renewing our current grants for 5000 in the spring and then allotting uh an additional 200 000 for the fall for additional grants to uh exist in lake county to help us to combat the opioid epidemic and that's that's really it it's pretty straightforward any questions I just had just a clarification so in 2024 we received the first kind of tranche of our funds uh it actually it they've been coming since 2022 2022 okay and so how much of that roughly do we have at this at this point our current budget is about uh we have in our bank account about four million and we expect nine a little over nine at this point is what we're expected um we do still not have any answer from the Purdue pharma settlement which is supposed to be fairly large and may put us up closer to 10 but for right now we're expecting 9.2 million through what year roughly so it was originally um predicted that we would get the funds through 2038 based on the agreements and the allotment we have been receiving a lot more funding quicker than that I suspect that by 2030 we should have the bulk of the funding if not all of the funding again with the exception of Purdue Pharma in your goals to spend it by by then so we're hoping to do something that is intentional in the way that we're spending it and we want to make sure that it's also um strategic insofar as we're spending enough money that it's making an impact but also not running through the money um kind of recklessly we want to make sure that we are investing in programs that are making a difference and that are evidence based and so as of right now we are planning to continue to spend at about 7000 on grants annually um over the course of the next you know several years we have been able to outline this money for approximately 10 years at this rate um and so yeah it would take us just a little bit over 2030.

And we want to make sure that it's also strategic insofar as we're spending enough money that it's making an impact, but also not running through the money kind of recklessly.

We want to make sure that we are investing in programs that are making a difference and that are evidence-based.

And so as of right now, we are planning to continue to spend at about 700,000 on grants annually over the course of the next you know several years.

We have been able to outline this money for approximately 10 years at this rate.

And so yeah, it would take us just a little bit over 2030.

I would just encourage faster than then later, just given you know the situation and what you can do with the money.

So appreciate it.

Any questions from the committee?

None from HCS.

Any questions from Finance?

No.

All right.

Thank you so much.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

Finance.

All in favor say aye.

Any opposed?

8.84 is approved.

Thank you, actually.

Thank you, Ashley, for the great job you're doing.

All right.

Well, welcome Dr.

Kerner for item 8.8, which is a joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the regional office of education.

Can I have a motion?

Motion by Vice Chair Cunningham, second by member Kenisnik.

Finance motion by Vice Chair Parak, second by member Bletzik.

Welcome, Dr.

Kerner.

Uh good morning.

Uh thank you so much.

Uh a few things I just wanted to start off with before I go right into the budget is really wanted to thank my staff for all their hard work.

Uh we continue to do amazing things that help support our county schools.

Um we've made numerous improvements uh through our office, you know, on the financial side and some of our other procedures that have made uh leaps and bounds uh for our department and to help get more money back to schools.

Uh tomorrow, I think one of the the coolest things that you know it's gonna go on in Lake County is the Navigate Eight Lake Fair.

Um we have 6,000 students coming to the fairgrounds, over 140 plus businesses for career experiential learning.

So I highly encourage you to attend that if possible.

Um other things that have really helped support our school districts this past year um has been our countywide uh referral GPS, you know, for mental health and care navigation.

And we've had over 23,000 individuals use that this past year and helped uh pay for uh over 1,600 treatment sessions.

Um in my budget, you will notice uh this this year.

A lot of the the funding that comes forward is obviously for personnel uh for my department and a few minor things, and we have all the things with that we do every single year with the Health Life Safety visits.

You will notice an increase.

Uh I think a success is you know, my office currently is in Vernon Hills, and you know, a few years back, we did move everything into one location that was able to help me consolidate uh money, save money, and you know, ensure that every dollar that we utilize is maximized through my uh multiple budgets that I do have.

And we are you know getting the new facility that we'll move into in January, which we'll actually host in a national conference next week for over 150 people.

So you will notice an increase in the uh the rent that the county does provide for this upcoming fiscal year.

Thank you, Dr.

Kerner.

Do we want to quickly go through?

Yeah, to just provide a brief uh overview.

Um as Dr.

Carter mentioned, um really page number.

Yes, thank you.

Uh page 119.

Thanks for the reminder.

Um, as Dr.

Karner mentioned, the the increase that you're noticing is is primarily due to the building rental expense, as he mentioned.

Um, and then um personnel increases resulting from the compensation study.

Uh, but apart from this change, it is a stable budget.

So I'll turn it back over to Dr.

Carner.

You know, um, this this budget is very helpful, and I'm very grateful for what you do provide us.

I've tried to continue to ensure that we are trying to find different ways to fund.

So we're not, you know, and impacting the county funds.

Uh, you know, last year we did receive a 10 million dollar grant.

We applied for another 10 million dollar grant uh this past week, and we'll continue to find ways uh to help support our schools and not impact the county.

So I have a question.

Yes, member Altonberg.

Oh, so can you discuss um why you decided to move?

Uh more space.

Um we're going from about 18,000 square feet to 42,000 square feet.

And the uh the biggest other piece I'd say is turnkey and the ability to support more student programming and uh I'd say a world-class facility fully furnished that's turnkey for the school and the functions of our office to serve the county.

Okay.

That's still in Vernon Hills.

Uh that's actually it's technically three miles east.

It'll be just on the east side of 94 and Conway Farms at the old uh Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

Any any questions?

I mean, can we do?

I'm just saying I'm a comment.

I'm gonna um Mike, I just want to say to you, you're doing a great job for our schools.

I'm in the schools.

Just about twice a month being the principal reading to the kids in my district.

And um it just has been a big different in it.

And the key is learning.

They uh really learning with the programs that you bring you to, and you've done a wonderful, wonderful job for Lake County schools.

So I just want to thank you for that.

And I'm always taking books to my to my middle school kids, and uh uh I have nothing but good stuff.

So keep it up, always support them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Always impressed by how much you do with with so little.

So thank you, Dr.

Kerner.

I don't think we have any more questions from the uh HCS, member Clark.

So for the um yeah, uh for the building rental.

So is I still you know, so the increase is for because is rent the rent is a lot more at the new place?

Is that what it is?

No, so I would say uh two things.

Yeah, rent is more, but the other piece is when we originally calculated the the original amount, which was 40,000, it was based on a square footage.

And that was based on the mandated square footage.

So for example, although the building is bigger, um when we had the calculation for Vernon Hills, we only made sure of the county funded positions.

Um that's what it came out to.

And so now that the building is bigger, the square footage does increase for those employees, and that was you know, for the increase in the rent, then I am so sorry, but I don't understand what you said.

So think of it like so yeah, sorry, I just think like if for example, let's say right now that um and we could get you the all the numbers too.

Let's pretend that like the offices that we have for these uh county uh funded employees, like you know, the general space, their offices, et cetera.

Let's say it was 3,000 square feet pretend.

Um in the new building, there the offices have increased, the actual public space has increased for the actual public.

So that square footage, while although in my old or my office in Vernon Hills might have been 3,000 feet, now it could be 8,000.

So that's what the increase would be for the rent.

So it's the rent because it's a bigger space.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's bigger space, more square footage for the actual mandated employees that are in my budget versus the space that they have now, yes.

Okay, so like our portion is more, so it's our portion of the square footage has increased for the portion.

Yeah.

Okay, okay.

And when are you gonna be is so for a whole year's rent?

Or uh yeah, yeah, that goes for the whole year.

I cover it through um my other funding that I do have.

Um one of the things like the question is if you're asking where we're gonna move in the goals to do January um from now, starting next week when we host our national conference.

We're doing other different professional development sessions for the county, like the state board of education is going to come in and host a school finance webinar.

We have another like AI technology for educators the following week.

So from basically October till January, we'll be doing intermittent professional development sessions for education, uh educators in Lake County, and then the goal is to move the office side public facing in January.

And you think this will be pretty stable then going forward?

Yes, the the goal is to stay here for forever.

And then okay.

I actually do have a question now that I've heard questions.

You you do?

Okay.

Um it just but once that you move into the new facility.

Since it's our our facility, will you still have rental expense then?

Well, it's not county owned, it is uh a lease.

Oh, it'll be oh, so it'll it'll still be owned by the the Lake Forest.

It'll be owned by yeah, not the oh okay.

I thought we were you're taking possession of it.

No, so it's only going to be rental.

Yeah.

I thought we were looking at purchasing it, weren't we?

We were.

We were uh unsuccessful.

Uh okay.

Okay.

I guess I missed that part.

All right.

Uh question by member Altenberg.

So the rent is increased, but you have it's not costing the county any more money because you have funds that will cover that increase of the lease.

Yes.

Um, so the the money that I have received from the county has been a a portion of a rent that is paid that I pay that I cover through other areas.

Um, so you know, technically the rent is increasing, but that is also increasing due to the mandated square footage increasing.

But um the county is not gonna expend more funds.

I will be the one who expend the funds.

Okay.

And the mandated square footage increased by who?

Uh it's for the county employees that are on my county budget.

Okay.

Like when we factor this in, yeah.

Okay, like when we factor this in, yeah, you know, I have I will have the school there too, but I don't you know require the county to you know pay rent for the school because they're it's they're not on the county budget, so that should be separate.

So we've made sure to include that only the county mandated services that are you know under school school code um that the county is um supposed to help assist with, like for true the truancy officer, you know, the positions in here we make sure that that rent and square footage is covered and I cover the other through other funds.

Okay, all right, thank you.

I mean one last uh piece I I think that should be just discussed too, not necessarily with this, but um I think there's a really just posit this positivity going on in Lake County right now with all the different uh collaboration that's going on.

You know, I mentioned Navigate 8 last week.

Uh that fair is becoming kind of like a statewide model, uh, you know, through the partnerships with Lake County Workforce Development, Lake County Partners.

Um, the things that we do with the health department who continue to do amazing things, you know, for our schools and even um one of the initiatives we have the state's attorney, but just know that we continue to find ways to partner with our own, you know, governmental services.

So I just wanted to mention that.

Yeah, I can just I just want to say Dr.

Carner has been incredibly creative with every program and the expansion of that office and really does things provide services that affect every school in our county, and we're really grateful at you know the new programs that have come out of this, and um you know you've really done an excellent job.

Thank you.

No further questions from the committee.

All those in favor say aye.

I oppose the motion passes.

Finance committee member of the I apologize, I I'm trying to follow the conversation or the the QA around the square footage.

Who who mandates your square footage?

Uh so when we came up with the rent, you know, like for the Vernon Hill space, for example, right?

Um, we had determined that you know, obviously the county shouldn't pay for the the whole lease that I had, correct?

So what we did was at the time, uh this is prior to county administrator Sutton, uh, when county administrator Gibson was here.

They looked at that building and said, here are the mandated, you know, functions that the county must provide.

A lot of it's in school code, the Illinois school code.

And so we took those individuals, only the county budget, the mandated functions that must occur.

Staff.

Yeah, staff, like you know, like for example, like you see in here, the licensure, health life safety, you know, finance, like um front desk, etc.

A truancy officer, and said, here's what the square footage is in the building.

They came up with a calculation, and that's how they got to the 40,000.

And then I said, okay, so I know I have that and everything else I paid for, you know, for like although we do all these other awesome things, like with professional development, our safe school, that shouldn't, you know, be on the county budget when I have other funding from other sources that pay, you know, for those square footage areas.

Okay, so the the number of services or the number of employees didn't increase.

It's that the building increased and our therefore our portion of that pie increased as did the cost.

And can you just sorry, one line?

Why the increased square footage?

The increased square footage uh will one allow like currently, like in our office, uh we only have a spot for like we host professional development, and one of the things was it's only holds 50 people tops.

Like the new place will allow us to hold uh triple that.

Um our student programming that we have, you know, for the safe school and the the base program has been great.

But you know, we've seen a need to continue to find different ways to serve different programs for students in Lake County that might need have needs, like for example, I put in their ALOP.

Um, that's more like an academic-based program that our districts could utilize.

So the space increase is more to help just serve the students better, you know, provide ways to educate uh students, more professional development and some of those services to ensure that they can then reduce that you know responsibility locally and things.

And are those needs for increased square footage related to the services that the county is mandated to provide?

So the increased square footage for the mandated services that the county would provide increased just because the building was bigger, yeah.

The those requirements that sound wonderful are related to the services that the county is mandated to provide.

I'd say I would say it's both.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Eight dot H5 is approved.

Thank you.

All of these together.

Yes.

Yeah.

I don't think he's being able to do that.

We can just all four of these.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm just saying whether the vote can be one.

I don't think it's a good one.

No, you guys.

We can't vote on these together.

I think we can take them all together.

I think we can we take them all again.

Yep.

Interface.

Okay.

Welcome, Angela.

Chris.

Um we're gonna start with 8.86.

And can I do I first need to make a motion to take all motion?

You can do a motion altogether.

Okay.

So I'm gonna take we're gonna have a motion to take items 8.86 through 8.89 together is one vote.

Can I have a motion?

Motion by member Cunningham, second by member Altonburg.

Motion on those four items by Member Clark, second by member Hewitt.

Morning.

Good morning, so the first item is the joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the health departments.

We have director, uh executive director uh Hoff and Angela joining as well.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks.

And this budget can be found on page 157.

So similar to the overall county process, the health department starts their budget process in the spring.

The health department coordinates with their directors to meet with the manager of each program, which there are approximately 50 or more programs with over 80 different grants.

Programmatic priorities are established for the year and serve as a basis for the health department's budget.

The Board of Health and Governing Council approved the health department's FY2026 budget at their August meeting and funding and expenses appropriating in the health department's funds must be spent on health fund business.

The TB board is responsible for approving the TB clinic budget.

I will hand it over to Chris.

Excellent.

Thanks, Nick.

Uh, thanks for the opportunity to present our 2026 budget.

This is obviously my first time presenting the budget to you, and I'm pleased to uh share with you our priorities for the coming year.

Again, I'm Chris Hoff, I'm the executive director of the Health Department and Community Health Center.

Um Health Department really works to take care of our residents anywhere they live in the county for any number of things.

Uh HealthFirm's goal is to provide safe, healthy communities for everyone that lives, works, and plays here in Lake County.

And I think the staff has done a tremendous job doing that over the course of the year.

Uh we provide service at really two key levels.

One is a direct service provider, right?

So we provide direct hands-on care to individuals to help them lead healthier lives.

We also work at the policy systems and environmental level, really trying to change the policy systems and environments that people live in to help make sure that they're healthy and promote good health for all.

Um, since I started in March, we've seen tremendous impacts to the public health and health care landscape.

Um, the federal government has taken a number of actions that reduce our ability to take care of residents as we have traditionally done.

And I think that's an important context to our budget this year and into the future.

Um in March, we were notified that many of our federal grants were being terminated effective immediately.

No time to ramp down, no time to ramp up work, transition.

Um the federal government canceled about 11 billion dollars uh to public health agencies across the country, including some that we hold here.

Thankfully, that's been held up uh in court um by a lawsuit by the state of Illinois along with over 20 other states.

Um but the threat of those changes kind of looms out there for a number of the programs that are supported by federal dollars and have been over the years.

Uh one big beautiful bill imposes a number of changes on the healthcare landscape, um, restricts and limits the ability for people to access Medicaid, um, reduces subsidies for people who are on marketplace uh healthcare plans, which means that fewer Lake County residents will have access to Medicaid or other healthcare marketplace plans in the future.

Uh that's a concern for us.

Um, certainly our budget takes those into account, but we expect more of those changes to come out in the 2027 budget planning.

Um, despite the challenges, we had a number of successes this year that I think are important as we look at the 26 budget.

Um, one is that we received a number of quality awards for the community health center work, um, one around improving health goals, health improvement goals for clients uh around heart health and diabetes, so really getting better outcomes for our patients that come to the community health center.

Um, we received awards around our preventive services, uh, reaching national goals for health screenings, trying to prevent and keep costs lower by screening for things early and treating people before we get to more acute situations, uh, and recognition for our health uh IT infrastructure that really brings healthcare into the health brings more IT infrastructure into the healthcare experience, like you would at any other provider.

Uh we've been recognized nationally for our work in those areas.

Um, our family case management program transitioned to something called Better Birth Outcomes that really enables one-to-one uh support for pregnant and parenting families uh to make sure that infants and families get off on the right foot and that we lower infant uh and maternal morbidity and mortality across Lake County, and that's a really important goal for us.

Um we also continue to see a record number of calls to our behavioral health crisis hotlines.

Uh this year we had over 11,000 calls.

Uh August was our busiest month on record, um, and we've done this for numbers of years.

Um so we continue to see increases in the demand for those services.

Uh and so our budget really reflects our priority trying to enhance those services for our residents, uh, making sure that they connect to the care that they need at the time that they need it.

Um the budget, uh, as Nick mentioned was approved and recommended by the Board of Health, uh, appointed by you to oversee health care operations.

Um, presented that budget to them and the governing council.

We've tried to maintain the highest level of quality care possible despite the federal changes.

Uh, we owe it to the 32,000 plus patients a year we see uh to make sure that we provide high quality care as their medical home.

Um every year we do go through the budget top to bottom, um look at every program, look at every vacant position, um, really try to reduce expenses where we can in commodities and contractuals to make sure that we have the people and things that we need to provide that care.

Um we fully leverage the property tax support that we do receive through competitive federal grants, fees for service, uh insurance billing, any other revenue that we can capture.

So the health department is supported by property tax, but that's only a small portion of the overall budget for the health department.

Uh the 26 budget you'll see reflects an overall increase from 25, primarily as an increase in the salaries and benefits due to the compensation study that were applied in early FY25.

Um, helps us to address the ongoing challenge of recruiting and retaining primary care providers, physicians, nurses, advanced practice nurses, dentists, um, all of those folks that provide the care that enables us to take care of our residents.

Um it reflects increasing technology costs.

We see more of our health care IT services being delivered through subscriptions rather than owning that infrastructure, just like at home, you see Netflix, you see Apple, you see all those things increasing.

It's the same for our medical medical records, data infrastructure, data exchange, all of those things are increasing.

Um we've worked to balance any of those increases with reductions in commodities and contractuals uh to meet the targets that were identified uh that Mike talked about early on.

Uh we've also eliminated programs that we don't think are necessary any longer.

Uh we also partnered this year with Comed on an energy efficiency program to reduce lighting and some of the HVAC controls uh that will help us to decrease costs in the long term and help us meet sustainability goals.

So again, trying to reduce costs where we can in the future.

Uh in the upcoming budget year, three kind of features that you should expect to see.

One is we're reopening our substance use withdrawal management unit that uh closed in 2020 during COVID.

Uh, we're bringing that back online to provide uh inpatient withdrawal management for people suffering from substance use disorder.

Um, that's an important uh opportunity for us to meet a community need that is a big need for people who are uninsured or underinsured in Lake County.

Uh so that'll enable us to help more people and get people out of emergency rooms and police custody that need to get into treatment and back on track.

Uh we're continuing to pursue value-based care contracts with insurance companies that will enable us to generate additional revenue based on the high quality care we provide.

Um, I referenced the quality care awards that we were receiving earlier this year that sets us up for better negotiation with those insurance companies on value-based care to get some of the cost savings that we're uh finding and getting for those patients and the companies.

Um we're investing in changes to our environmental health record system that will enable better customer service for our clients and the community, including the over 3,000 food establishments that we inspect and regulate every year.

Um, so I want to thank and acknowledge Angela Cooper, Sam Johnson, Gene Haig, Erica Mason, Toby Carg, Michael Staling, a whole bunch of people that work really hard to put this budget together.

Um the executive team of the health department and county finance uh as well for helping us to build a budget for a nearly 100 million dollar organization that reflects a lot of important care and opportunities for our residents.

So thank you for supporting our work and look forward to questions.

Thank you, Chris, for that.

I just had a couple quick questions and then I'll turn it over to the committee.

So for the um the big change in the intergovernmental, looks like we had 57 million for this year, expecting 53.

Is that primarily based on the expectation that we might have a decrease in federal grants?

Um, so some of that will reflect as we do budget carryovers with our grant spending.

So at this point, we don't have a lot of reductions in the grants, but again, in the budgeting process, we'll do a carryover of all the remaining grants we're in last year's budget.

And so that will be increased at that point.

So we we could see that number potentially go up a little bit.

Yes.

Okay.

Um, and then in terms of the charge for charges for services, I see it's an increase.

So that was what you were saying, Chris, before that we think that with the contract with the insurance companies and value-based care that we can actually charge more.

Uh, along with our self-pay clients, we see more people without insurance who are on a sliding fee scale, who then are paying a little bit more for their health care out of pocket because they don't have Medicaid or an insurance plan.

So this assumes we'll see some increase in the number of people who are uninsured uh and are self-paying for that care.

Okay.

Um I think that was my only question.

Uh commit questions from the committee.

I have a few.

I'm gonna take advantage of the opportunity to have you here.

I'm sorry, I'm not at HCS very often.

So um thank you for the great work.

Um HR1 essentially cuts a trillion dollars from Medicaid provider supports nationally over a decade.

Uh, and the rural health transformation funds uh attempt to offset some of those cuts by putting 5% of that amount into one-time grants for systems transformation.

We're not a rural county.

I'm just curious.

Has the health department looked at all or had conversations with the state about trying to seek some of those funds to improve data collection analytics systems?

Is that something that we're looking at at all?

Looking at it, uh we had a conversation last week down in Springfield with um the IDPH staff lead for that.

Um, their application is due to the feds in two weeks, I think.

Uh so they're proposing a number of projects.

We haven't had the opportunity to give input on what we would like to see.

Um, they gave us like two minutes to say would we like those things or not?

Some of it, as you alluded to is for rural counties.

Um, it's not clear the designation they're applying to that, if that's based on the census codes or if that's based on do you have rural areas?

So I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get some of those funds.

Uh IDPH did say that they're expecting to put some of that money into local public health transformation, um, but didn't commit to a dollar amount or anything.

So I'm hopeful that those dollars might be available to us.

It's promising those funds are there.

It's um it is sort of a balancing act for that HR one, but it's not enough money to make up for everything we could see in the future.

Great.

Thank you for the response on that comments or questions.

Member Clark.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation.

Um, I had a question about the um, I know I saw there's a decrease in benefits.

And is that because of people's choices of plans?

I was trying to see in the budget part, and I just this it's like 750,000.

Does it seem like a substantial?

Is that just because of like people chose different places on you thought, or is it a cut in benefits?

That's so um again, that calculation comes with the help of the budget team.

And I think it's just um, you know, as we see younger people coming on, they're covered under their parents' insurance until age 26.

So a lot of them take that opt-out premium and don't take all the benefits available to them.

That's what I was wondering.

So it isn't that we change benefits for the health department, it's just you know choices or as we get different employees, they that wouldn't lead to some savings.

So that's good to see.

And my other question was under um the count, the payroll contingency account, it says that it's requested a less six million dollars decrease in that, but then I can't figure out if that was included or not.

Um that's on line A51135.

Yeah, I think I can answer that one.

So when the health department submits their budget to us, they include a vacancy savings amount that they put in the payroll contingency account.

We take and move it to a different account into the five one one oh and other accounts for HLD.

So it is still built in there, it's just sitting in a different account.

You just can't see it because we budget vacancy savings differently, but historically they've given it to us in that account, and then we we move it.

Okay.

So it is still it is still in there.

That is still a contingency, especially with I I'm concerned with potential federal cuts that it's my, I just want to make sure the contingency was still there.

Yes.

Okay.

Good.

All right.

Fair.

I was just gonna clarify that the health department is the only department that does um budgeting differently than the way Mike described it.

They do their own personnel and they're allowed to enter it in themselves.

So that's why it's inconsistently done.

Um, and when we move to the county administrators column, then we make it standardized with the way that we do all of the rest of the departments.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Gerard.

Sorry.

I just want to understand why that is.

It is that is that sort of a state mandated way that health departments or FQHCs have to do it, or is the is there potential for the health department moving forward to um kind of follow in the format that we use here in Lake County government.

I'll let Angela start and then I'll jump in.

So um, I I think past history has allowed us to do that.

Some of that is based upon the timing of the board of health.

So we have to present our budget to the board of health and um earlier than we come here to the um county board budget, and then we present a full encompassing uh budget to them of our overall operations.

We've also got a number of revenue generating positions as healthcare providers that we build into the revenue assumptions too.

And so trying to manage the vacancies on those in such a way that we don't want to eliminate a physician position if we think we will be able to recruit one at some point.

And so the policy application is a little bit different as I understand it.

But I think in general, the how we budget contingency is similar.

The percentage of the assumption that we make, the fact that it goes into a contingency pool, that it's held back from the budget, all of those things are the same as other departments.

Okay, I'm just um, if I may, just real quick, and I don't need to get too much in the weeds, but whenever we're sort of taking information from a department, if you will, right, and then sort of making a transfer so it fits within our budgeting process.

I I feel like there might be chances where there could be errors.

Whereas if we because we also budget for vacancies, and I think Mike Wheeler presented at the very beginning, hey, we recognize that there's we're still recruiting, and so we don't take those dollars back.

Um, it just feels like having um greater alignment wherever we can would be better for the entire process and hopefully still fits within the needs of the Lake County Health Department and the Board of Health.

So thanks.

Thank you.

You mentioned the fee schedule, which is you said sliding fee schedule for those without insurance or seeking care from our providers.

Is that something that's set and established and adjusted each year by your team?

Is it the fee schedule approved by the Board of Health?

What's the process for that?

Yeah, it's adjusted every year and approved by the governing council and board of health.

That's a requirement of our um community health center status is to review and approve those changes and make sure that they reflect market costs and ability to pay.

Anything you want to add?

Yeah, and our our sliding fee schedule is looked at yearly too, based upon um poverty levels and adjusted accordingly.

And is the is the procedure and the preventative uh nature and outcome of the of the care considered in that fee schedule also?

Like you don't want to discourage somebody from addressing, you know, an abscess or something, a dental emergency, right?

If they don't have ability to pay at the same time, we do have to be mindful of covering our costs.

Are those things all considered in that process?

So we have an additional layer as well that somebody based upon extenuating circumstances can request um the sliding fee be adjusted down to very, very minimal, if not zero.

Okay.

Governing council also includes at least 50% of the governing council for the community health center is clients, consumers of the health center.

So they have the opportunity to weigh in on the patient experience to say this is reasonable, this is not.

Uh, it's part of why it's presented to that group too, is for patient input.

Thank you for the explanation.

Other comments or questions.

I remember I just had one more little question.

Um, I know we've been having like from for several years challenges with recruiting and maintaining staff.

So are we right now at 844?

Is that current?

I mean, that's budget for this year.

I just do we do we realistically think we'll be able to add more staff than we have.

Um I don't understand we're gonna add above that number.

That is the total budgeted amount.

Um, but we have a smaller number with based on the vacancy savings.

We assume that some of those will not be filled immediately.

Yeah, I because I was just looking at we have 844 budget for this year and the next year we're going up by two.

I mean, it's not that much.

Oh, gotcha.

Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of that um any additional increases are related to grant funds.

Okay.

So additional grant funds that we receive that we had to hire to meet those requirements of the grant.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Member Maine.

Yeah, I was gonna say that um the health department relies on their grants for any um any staffing changes.

So I I was just I was gonna say that.

I was also gonna say that um obviously it's a huge department.

And in terms of um hiring, um they're always hiring, and there's there's uh pretty fluid, if you will, um, movement of people in like nursing and other positions who work for the health department, and then their family situation changes, and then they go work for a different agency for fewer hours or more hours as they need.

And then like 18 months later, they come back to the health department.

So there's a lot of movement of people coming in and out of positions, and we have been able um to get some more of the um at the nurse practitioner level.

It's it's very hard.

It's a very, very competitive market.

I know this board is used to saying, hey, you know, tech and engineering and looking at that, but I can um assure all of you that filling people in the health professions, especially those such as nurse practitioner or really many levels, is very, very difficult.

It's a very competitive market out there.

And um, especially after COVID, lots and lots of people are retiring.

They're burned out from health care, they're burned out from the hours they put in.

Um in general, how uh healthcare providers are treated.

I'm not saying our agency, I'm just saying across the board.

If you read um articles about that, they're they're very burned out.

So um a lot of people have um have options of of what to do.

And as I said before, they move about a lot because it's such a tight market that they can look for a job position that better fits their family's situation and their needs at that time and look for things that are more flexible.

I think member Campbell's no, we're good.

All right.

Um we're taking votes all together at once, right?

So we can just move on to the next item.

Item 8.

Uh H7 is a joint committee action.

I think you could vote on all four.

Do you have any?

We did the whole department, do we not?

No, we haven't done the TB.

Yeah.

Are we are we gonna go through each each one in specific?

I assume we would.

I think that's what we were gonna do, and then vote.

That's your call.

We we oh no, I took, I know we took one vote, but did we want to talk about anything specifically within the TB or special service area?

Do we have to?

Why don't we ask the executive director if there's anything we need to hear about, any updates or changes to those three items instead of hearing the whole presentation?

I'd be happy just to add for the TB fund.

I think it's always a question of what do we still need this fund?

Do is tuberculosis still an issue?

Uh the answer is yes.

In 2024, we treated 18 active tuberculosis cases in Lake County.

Uh, the very first week I was here in March of this year.

Some of you may remember we had a an individual associated with the high school in Waukegan diagnosed with infectious tuberculosis who had been in the school for several months prior to his diagnosis.

Um that required a huge response uh from our staff testing and follow-up with about 166 people uh immediately to test for signs of disease.

So just um provide that context that this is still an issue that we deal with, uh, important given the size of our community and uh there's work going on every day to control the spread of diseases like tuberculosis in Lake County.

Well, uh member cutting in.

Yeah, I just want to comment to Chris about being new at the health department.

You are doing a great job.

Thank you.

I served on the government council, been there 23 years.

And uh Chris, you come right in with boots on the ground, getting things on and hiring new staff, and that's a great thing.

I'm listening at people's accent question about us saying uh it ain't only the health department, it's all intense having a problem hiring nurses and different things.

So, and I serve on a personnel uh uh uh firsthand see the doctors, everybody come in to get hired at the health department um firsthand going over the application and passing it on to the government council.

So uh we are getting nice great we're getting more.

We one time we was getting a lot of more um practitioners there, and they stay in a lot of them.

We want to when the time they actually stay.

So uh we are lucky to have a health department like that.

We are lucky to have that we're done a great job.

We had an open house last month, I think it was all the health departments, Round Lake, Holland Park, or Libertyville, uh Zion, and the two here, and uh the one in Wacheegan.

Uh showing what we do.

So Chris, I just want to thank you for not running when you came instead of thank you.

I want to staff too.

Thank you.

And I'm always gonna support the health department because it does a lot for my area.

It does a lot for my area, and we're moving them on that uh that the ones that uh no show, we go big on and pull someone else off of the list of the waiting list.

So you're doing a great job there, so keep it up.

Thank you.

Um do we need to or do I have to go to HCS or can we Yeah, we have some other questions though too.

Go ahead.

Okay.

No, just yeah.

Yeah, I don't have so much of a question as uh just wanted to voice something because um wanna agree with the mayor Ross, and I'll be and I'll be brief.

Um prior to me being on the board, um I was in I was in the Navy.

And so in 2020, obviously we had the we had the COVID.

Um and this was before your your tenure as um.

But I just want to say thank you for all that the health department does.

The budget looks good.

Um, you know, it's it's it's cut and dry.

Um there's very little changes, and it's amazing how much you're able to do with the allotted uh budget that you that you're given.

And that I think you already know this, but the health department is so uniquely and intimately a part of Lake County.

Um you see that regarding uh the responses tuberculosis uh with with COVID.

Um when people are in panic when those things happen, the health department was there to instill uh secure uh confidence in the government.

And so and that's very crucial because we can't do what we do every day if there's no confidence.

So I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for that.

Sure, that was staffer here, too.

Thanks.

Member Clark?

Yeah.

Um, so I had a question about the tuberculosis clinic budget.

I noticed this year it's gone up a lot, and so the it goes up to one million dollars.

And so, you know, it's a 63.

Well, it's a lot.

It has 385,000 more.

Is that because there's more people with tuberculosis?

Because it's I mean, is that part of the reason it's gone up so much?

So some of that's in reference to um personnel.

We're fully staffed at the TB clinic.

Um, and we're not we're not experiencing some of the vacancies that we have done in prior years.

Okay.

So it's not so the change is just that now the there's eight staff members, so everybody's there.

So it's and it comes from like tax fund.

Is it the same?

Like this, the variance.

So it's okay.

So it's just an increase because they maybe these were budgeted before these positions, they just weren't filled.

And so this year they're filled, and that's why it's gone up so much.

Yeah, I would just add, excuse me.

I would just add that yes, they have vacancies that are filled, and because they've been pretty steady with being filled, their vacancy savings number we adjusted down in FY26.

So not as much.

I think actually we don't even have vacancy savings in place for them because they're fully staffed and they've been able to keep that constant.

So you're going to see an increase, not only because they're completely filled because of what we talked about earlier with the uh the comp state compensation study adjustments in there, but also because there's not the vacancy savings reduction in the same way because they've been fully staffed for so long.

It it just it made sense to look at the recent history, and that's and we made that adjustment accordingly.

So that's why you're seeing a lot of that in the personnel and in the benefits costs.

Yeah, I mean, it's gonna from I mean, I'm all for it, but it's gone up substantially since 2024.

I mean, from 347,000 to a million and two.

So I was just so it's really just staffing is happening.

Okay.

I mean, I'm all for funding this.

I just I'm just curious as to why it went up so much.

So get to know you're fully staffed.

And uh glad to know that we're finding, you know, good for helping to prevent because treated administration.

I did just want to clarify that the line you're looking at is the property tax.

They do not actually get to determine the amount of property tax that's done based on a fund balance analysis.

So um just looking at the history of how their revenue and expenses have be uh performed in the last several years.

Um there was a deficit, you know, uh an amount less than the 29% fund balance policy.

So um again, the health department doesn't actually get to determine their property tax.

They ask for an amount, but um it's it's determined based on a fund balance analysis.

So uh just wanted to clarify that it's uh uh somewhat indirectly related to staffing.

Um, but it was really a fund balance analysis and an adjustment.

But does that mean it's just that the money's coming from a different place?

So maybe the overall change hasn't happened much, it's just that it's funded differently.

Yeah, I would look at the expense side to really see how um the operations have changed.

Yeah, because that hasn't gone up right as much 13,000.

Still an increase increase, but okay.

Yes.

So hi Chris.

Um first I just want to say you've done an incredible job since you joined us and you ramped up really quickly, and we appreciate that.

Um so I'm just wondering for your grants for 2026 so far, so good.

Have we had any uh type of notifications that we need to worry about?

We've had a lot of notifications that are concerning.

They reference the 11 billion dollar termination the Fed's made.

Thankfully, those are still held up in court.

Yeah.

Um right now our grants have come in about where we expected them for the state fiscal year that started July 1 and runs through the middle of next year.

There could be changes next year that we're you know very worried about.

Um, but we don't have any definitive information.

So if if those things go forward that affect people's health insurance, we are expecting a large rise in clientele coming to the health department, is what I imagine.

Yeah, potentially.

I mean, for people who don't have insurance, there are very few options in Lake County other than an emergency room, uh ourselves, Erie and Phoenix.

Um, but there's 700,000 plus residents in Lake County.

We are estimating about 25,000 could lose health insurance based on the federal administration changes.

Uh and that's a big number that you know are going to be seeking care at other places.

So you may be coming back to us and saying, you know, your numbers are going up and you may need some additional support from us.

It's possible.

I mean, we're certainly gonna be looking at that every month to see what those changes look like.

We've already seen a slight shift in the payer mix from people with insurance to those without.

Um, we'll try to manage that as best we possibly can.

But at some point, yeah, it'll be back to service, you know, changes in service levels, reductions in services, changes in grants.

Um, there's potential for a lot of change over the next year.

Okay, thank you very much.

Any other comments, questions on the other items?

Seeing none.

But I'm sorry, are we doing all the items?

Or yeah.

Yeah.

We can ask questions then.

Anything.

Okay, because I was gonna ask questions on the solid waste management tax.

Um, which is on 275.

I just had a question.

I just want to make sure.

So is the miscellaneous, is this money from like the landfill fees?

The dumb and so we still have landfill.

I mean, because I know I've always heard that that money might end and it's used for inspections.

So I was looking at the, you know, it looks like it's going down, and I assume that's because the um the revenues are going down maybe because of the landfill fees.

Um, we're not having that to Mike or Nick.

Yeah, if if you look at the the numbers that are in the year-to-day column reflect September actuals, and it appears.

So we're basically looking at the trend with revenue, and yes, they seem to be going down.

And what we try to do in this fund is budget what because they it's received here and then it's transferred to the health department for landfill inspections.

I'm gonna make sure I don't speak out of turn here.

Um, and so we match up with what they have budgeted for revenue based upon the current trending.

So, yeah, I think what you're saying is correct.

And I mean, eventually we aren't gonna have landfill fees.

I because we're the landfills will be full in Lake County.

So and that might be a question for another day.

I just have Mike Adams here.

Yeah.

So that when the land bills do close, yeah, that'll be used to help monitor.

Okay, good.

Actually, that's what I was wondering.

Okay, great.

Because yeah, looking at this going down, I'm like, I don't know how much longer this is gonna be around this revenue.

Ms.

Hairton.

So we did provide the fund balances for all of these funds.

And if you look on page 407 solid waste management, the balance is well over $2 million because we do um save it for the time when there is no longer any revenue coming in because Mike and his staff will still have to do what they have to do.

They still have to do the inspections and everything.

So it's not ever anticipated that we're gonna spend as much revenues as we're coming in, unless it continues to dwindle.

Um, but there is a fairly um fairly large fund balance set aside for this very purpose.

Is that why there's less is maybe more money is going in the fund balance for the future?

Exactly.

Okay, good.

Okay, thank you.

Ms.

Try Sutton, since you called it out, it does indicate fund balance as of last year at this date.

Do we have updates on those?

Is when how often are those calculated and provided?

Once a year.

So that is why.

So fiscal year 25, we can estimate, but usually by the time that we generate this spreadsheet and then we hand it out to you.

It's it's different by the time we come to these um meetings.

So we didn't actually um calculate it, but we can certainly do that if there's a fund that you're interested in.

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

Other comments or questions?

Member can plus have one?

Okay, do you have just one last one?

Thank you, uh director.

Um, I have a quick question regarding the uh the manpower here, the full-time and the part-time.

Um I know you're allotted your budgeting for eight, four hundred eight hundred and forty-six positions as well as eighty-two.

How much of those are vacancies?

Um at the time that we did the budget, there was I believe 33 positions that were vacant.

In full time or both full time and part-time.

Um, I believe that was in total.

In total?

Okay.

So we don't know the breakdown of full-time and part-time.

Most of them are in full time.

We're very minimal and in part-time.

Okay.

Well, I mean, if if it was part if it was, would we be able to know that?

Because it would be good to know what's the makeup of full-time and part-time, those vacancies.

Right.

I believe if we can send that to you.

Okay.

And that's my only question, sorry.

All right.

I think we're ready to vote.

I just want to clarify.

We're we're we're finished discussing the special service area as well as solid waste management.

Any other questions for the health department at this time?

Okay.

All right.

We'll take a vote on items eight point eight H5 through eight point H9.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Passas HCS.

Uh eight dot eight six seven eight.

Oh, sorry.

Five five was RE.

Yes.

Okay.

Uh I think we already have a motion.

Any other comments or questions?

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Those items are approved.

Uh, just for everyone's awareness, we are as posted going to take a 10-minute break between the two committees after HCS adjourns.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Are you adjourning?

Oh, uh, so yes, we will.

Do we have any county administrative reports?

No county administrators report.

Need for executive session?

No need for executive session.

I assume we'll not have any members' remarks.

It's uh if a lot more.

Or do we have a member comment?

No.

Okay.

Uh item 12 is we will adjourn until October 28th.

Thank you.

Okay.

And uh FA will be back here with the LNJ committee at 1047.

Thank you.