Good morning, everyone.

I'd like to call um the Public Works and Transportation Committee to order today at 8 30 a.m.

on October 21st, 2025.

Calling to order the Lake County Board Financial Administrative Committee at 832.

Time flow.

Could you join us in the pledge, please?

I pledge to the flag of the United States of America.

And to publicly which it stands.

One nation under liberty and justice for all.

Can I get a roll call, please?

Yes.

Member Caskins?

Here.

Chair Clark.

Here.

Member Kewett.

Member Hunter.

Vice Chair Maine.

Member Roberts.

Yes.

Member Wasek.

Thank you.

FNA roll call.

Member Clark.

Here.

Chair Frank.

Here.

Member Hewitt.

Still here.

Member Maine.

Vice Chair Park.

Member Peterson.

Member Balenci.

All right.

All right.

Is there any addenda to the agenda?

There's not.

Are there any public comments today for items not on the agenda?

There's no public comment.

Under chairs remarks, I want to welcome everyone here today for our budget presentations.

And I did want to um give a uh reminder to members.

Apparently it's very tough to hear us on uh remotely.

So if we could make sure and speak more right into our microphones, um, I think that people would really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Uh yeah, I'm just gonna take the opportunity to share a couple of thoughts from uh yesterday's conversation.

So I want to thank the members of the FNA committee for a very long day of work.

And uh I want to go back to the item where we created uh some additional budgeting in the clerk of the court's office.

And um, you know, it was a long day and it was a long conversation, and I cut it off.

And my uh intent in cutting it off was to get us to move on because we had other business that we need to attend to yesterday and today, is not to say that anyone's remarks were invalid or inappropriate.

I wasn't trying to say that um, you know, that that the questions were without merit.

Member Roberts, member Volitzik, Chair Hart were all asking really good questions about how is it possible that we had revenue that was collected and unbudgeted for a long time and what was the plan?

Those were great questions.

They were important.

We needed that.

Um, but it was also clear to me that we weren't gonna really get solid answers at that point, and so that was why I needed to move on.

And so, Chair Hart, I was just mentioning that one of the reasons I I I cut off the conversation yesterday is because I did I didn't think we were getting to the bottom of the questions, which were valid and important.

So the action we took yesterday was directing the creation and the budgeting of the funds that had been previously collected and will be collected this year in that office.

And so we corrected uh a serious problem, which was that funds were unbudgeted.

And so going forward, we're gonna have that budgeted and and we'll have um the appropriate amount of oversight and transparency over that.

So thanks for indulging me uh in in uh further comments on that this morning.

All right.

Um finishes.

Okay, new business, our regular agenda.

And so should I present the budget again?

Or uh so item 8.26 budget.

Do we do a motion in a second?

It's just a presentation.

No, just a presentation.

We had it yesterday, and so um, if members would like, I know we can watch it on video or um or we could do a short overview.

Yes, sir.

There are there are members here who were not here yesterday at all.

So that's we think that's why we're thinking about doing just a short overview.

Yeah, we could have that.

Thank you.

I I think especially if I may relate it to the new program request.

It would be really important for everyone to be on the same page because I think we got off the page at times yesterday.

Sounds good.

Okay, good morning.

Uh Michael Wheeler, budget manager.

Good to see all of you again and welcome to those who weren't with us yesterday.

Uh I'll try to be brief and just kind of go over some of the highlights.

I guess the first thing I want to point out is just where we've been and where we are.

And the green, really the second green box in the lower right-hand corner is where we are.

You know, we've we the history is there was the county board policy guidance.

There is the there was uh what was put out by uh administration and finance in terms of the budget preparation guidelines through departments and agencies.

And moving through all of that, the recommended budget document is what you have before you today, whether that's you know hard copy or digital.

And this is these are the conversations with the deliberations in the blue box there, and then finally county board approval, which is currently scheduled for Thursday.

Oh, excuse me, Thursday.

No, that's tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 18th.

So just wanted to give a sense of where we've been and where we are and where we're planning to go.

Um next slide, just short, high, short and sweet highlights are you know, we're trying to be consistent with the strategic plan.

Uh, this is the first year that the compensation study uh increases are actually in department budgets.

Some of you may remember that last year, because of the timing of the approval of the compensation study, we kept those dollars largely in contingency and the general operating expense.

This is the first time that they're actually distributed in the department budgets.

So when you see some increases related to personnel and benefits, the labor costs, they might be more because this is the first year that that is actually in department budgets.

Um we did a review of positions as we were working with departments.

Uh there were new program requests were accepted, and I'll speak to that more on the next slide.

Uh, coming back specifically to what member Maine was commenting about just a moment ago.

We talked to departments about revenues, tried to kind of talk about whether the numbers should be high or lower, understanding the history.

We had those conversations.

And one of the highlights that's good this year is that the operating contribution to capital, the policies require that that should cover at the very least the facilities maintenance request, and it does that and then some and nearly covers all that's in the capital improvement fund, which we'll also talk about later today.

Um the new program request process.

This was something that I think was largely kind of the vision of the county administrator, which was kind of a collaborative peer review process.

This was the first year that uh, in addition to departments submitting NPRs based on the criteria that uh were laid out.

Uh, it's they came and met in a session just like this, but it was all department heads and/or department representatives, and basically presented their requests to their peers.

And then as part of that process, they answered questions from their peers, they uh had some dialogue, explain what the need was, what had changed, why they felt the new program request was important to their function, their operations.

And then departments were actually asked to provide feedback, recommendations, and those are all submitted to the county administrator.

Now, it's still the county administrator's final decision, obviously, and those are the NPRs that are recommended in the budget, and they fall into one or four categories.

You know, there are some that are funded and included in the half of the allowable uh tax increase, property tax increase.

The second is that they're recommended in scenario two.

I think that's on the agenda for discussion later today.

And then there are some that are listed as being considered for funding in the second quarter of fiscal year 26, and then there's some on the final page when you look in the NPR section that are not recommended at all.

So this was the first year we did that process, and I think you know it felt very good.

I think it was great to have departments be able to look around and see, okay, I'm asking for this, someone else is asking for that.

We have a pot of money, the pie is only so big, if you will.

We have to make some tough decisions.

So that was one of the highlights from this year.

Um moving on to kind of the budget approval.

One of the things that we want to make sure that people remember uh or know is that the budget approval is at the category level.

So you see there, particularly in the bottom half of that screenshot, you see A5X personnel.

You know, that will include accounts like regular salaries and wages, permanent part-time, overtime, holiday pay, number of other things.

You're not necessarily approving how much is going into overtime or how much is going into regular salaries and wages.

You're approving how all of that rolls up to the personnel level for a given department agency or fund.

Same thing for commodities.

You'll see office supplies, office equipment, you know, commodities speak to the stuff or the goods that we buy.

And so it's not the office supply budget, it's not the office equipment budget.

It is the commodities budget into which those roll up for a given department.

So we just wanted to remind you of all of that.

And something else that I wanted to point out is uh you probably see in the reports, the A in front of a lot of the account numbers.

Our system automatically generates that.

The A just simply stands for account.

So there's no, there's no secret there, right?

It's pretty straightforward.

Um moving beyond that, revenue budgeting, the highlights are finance department entered all property tax amounts.

Uh, and as you can see, it's consistent with the estimate that was prepared that was approved by the FNA committee in September, according to state statute.

The final distribution will occur after we have these budget hearings uh and a separate property tax ordinance for those who may recall from last year, those are approved when we get to the November committee meetings.

Uh interest that was determined by the treasurer's office, and in some cases with input from finance and all other revenues, your fees, your intergovernmental revenue, charges for services, miscellaneous revenue.

That can be things like copy charges, where that's applicable.

Those are all budgeted by the department.

Getting to expense budgeting, departments put in mostly non-labor expenses, the commodities, the goods that we buy, contractuals and professional services, that could be trips and training, that could be consultants, that could be other kinds of services and capital expenditures, whether that's furniture replacements, um, could be things related to computers or vehicles, all of that's put into capital.

And for the most part, uh, not everywhere and always, but for the most part, those are entered by uh departments.

Departments do enter some labor numbers, like overtime, special pay, sorry that that's in there twice, judges of election, those are all there uh based upon a specific department's operational needs.

When we get to uh other things the department did, as I mentioned earlier, we talked about positions, uh, they submitted new program requests, and they provide performance information for the performance metrics that are on uh some department and agency and fund pages.

There it goes.

And so uh on the expense side, we in finance kind of did a lot with personnel and benefits.

I want to thank Nick and V over here.

They did a lot of work with that to prepare that for all the departments.

Uh and as we have done in the past, vacation sick payouts for departing employees are not budgeted.

We expect that to be absorbed through the normal turnover that occurs in a department and vacancy savings, which we include every year, count for the fact that most departments are not 100% staffed throughout the entire fiscal year.

So we do a calculation uh of that kind of based on recent history, whether it's the current fiscal year, the last few fiscal years, and just a couple of things to note there.

One, they're budgeted at lower amounts for most departments, as we've seen hiring and employee retention kind of stabilize, and some departments will speak to why that is.

I think a couple yesterday actually spoke to that being as a result of uh some positive uh things coming out of the compensation study and the pay increases, and we net those out of the salaries and wages account and out of the benefits line items.

So and uh the salary and wage increase, just so that it's uh clear to all, there is a 3% increase as a lump sum for non-union employees.

And as you may recall from the board meeting last week, what was approved was a change to the budget policies or the finance policy speaking to budget was that there is a 1.75% increase to the wage table, kind of speaking to a recommendation coming out of the compensation study last year.

And individual employees can get between 1.75% and 4%, but a department will have a budget amount, making up a number, let's call it $60,000.

They can't exceed that lump sum amount.

So they can give, you know, if you have a star performer who just basically walks on water, that person might get 4%.

If you have someone who's not quite doing that, it can be somewhere in that range.

So it allows the department to really recognize those who are exceptional, but they have to stay within that budget.

Um, for employees who've been with the organization for less than six months, the most they can get is 1.75% based upon our HR policies.

And we also have included collective bargaining unit schedules.

So, you know, labor uh excuse me, union wage increases are factored in.

Uh our 26 benefits, I'll just say as quickly, IMRF went down slightly.

Uh the uh sheriff law enforcement pension went down slightly as well, which is great.

At the same time, we had health insurance go up across our HMO and PPO plans, about 7.4%.

So while it's great that we saw our IMRF and SLEP contributions go down, it helped to offset that, but we still had to eat, figure out a way to work into the budget, the health insurance increase.

Where does our money come from?

I think we've seen these graphs before.

I think it's actually was in the county administrator's presentation FA a few weeks back.

Uh property taxes, a little under about 28%.

Other taxes are 23%, and you can see the others on the pie chart.

Intergovernmental revenue is 14%.

That's you know what we get for state grants and federal grants and such, largely, or from other communities, like in a case of planning where they may have some revenue coming in, charges for services that we provide, 13%, transfers are 10%, miscellaneous, that's everything else.

And then there's a small amount there for licenses and permits and fines and forfeitures.

So, but you can see the where the majority of it comes from, and it's up about 3.5, almost 3.6% from the FY25 adopted budget.

Similarly, where does it go?

Uh, we've got a 2.2% increase, and as we've all known, personnel and benefits.

So that's going to be all of our labor costs, they constitute about 42% of our budget.

The next biggest piece are services and contracts, capitals right after that at 17%, debt services, 14%, and commodities is actually fairly small.

That's only about 2%.

So just to give you a sense categorically of where our uh the county's money goes.

And so in the budget book, something I want to point out here is you see all of these lines, and hopefully this is fairly legible to you.

If it's not, I apologize.

We talked uh earlier about personnel costs being or in commodities costs, that's the account class.

So, as in this case, you see regular salaries and wages, you see overtime and special pay, all those accounts at the top.

They all roll up into the personnel line item, and that is the number, that's the level at which uh you all are approving the budget.

We see on the far right, there are two columns.

There's the department request uh, and then there's the county administrator budget.

The department request budget for the most part presents what the department initially requested as part of their budget submission.

It may include some changes that when the department met with the county administrator.

Hey, I think you could do this with office supplies.

I think you could do this with trips and training.

Those tweaks are made.

So it's not going to be exactly what they put in, but it represents what departments are comfortable with having represented as their original budget submission.

And then the far right column, county administrator budget actually represents the adjustments that were made to be that are reflected in the book that sits before you now.

So you can see the difference between what they asked for and what um what was eventually decided upon as a recommendation.

So just wanted to point that out to you.

And then uh there'll be conversation about this later today.

The alternate budgeting scenario.

If you choose to take some portion or all of the fully allowable property tax growth, uh that's an additional 2.66 million recommendations that the county administrator has included are seven new additional, or excuse me, seven additional new program requests.

And those are also listed in the new program request section in the back.

I don't remember the page, I apologize.

And then some money for additional contingency.

So having said all that, I hope I didn't go too fast.

If there are any questions, let me know.

But I believe I'm at the end.

Many questions.

And thank you.

I'm always every year.

I mean, you take such complicated things and make it so that everyone can understand.

For I think all of us here and for the members of the public.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay.

Um, and for our agenda for public works, I'm going to take all the public four public works items together in one motion, and we'll have a discussion on all four.

So, item 8.1 is a joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for public works.

Item 8.26 budget for public works capital.

Item 8.

Is joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the special service area 13 tax exempt 2007A.

And item 8.4 P4 is joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for special service area 16 Lake Michigan water.

Can I get a motion in a second?

Motion by Wasick, second by Hunter.

Committee by member Bolittic, second by member Guevant.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Nick Principali.

I'm one of the budget analysts.

I'll just be providing brief introductions for each department's budget as they as they come up.

So with the public works budget, it you can find that on page 323.

The public works department is projecting a 4% increase in revenue for the upcoming fiscal year, which is just over 2.1 million.

This increase is driven by an increase in revenue from user charges and interest income.

Expenses, which are also expected to increase, reflect wage increases for both union and non-union employees, as well as rising operational costs, including chemical supplies, sign and safety supplies, software and online services, and biosolids management services.

The expense budget also reflects increased maintenance and repair costs for the for the department's lift stations, pumping stations, and related equipment.

One thing I'd also like to note is that this is the first year that there's a budgeted transfer from the public works operational fund into the public works capital fund.

Previously, that transfer has been performed as a separate county board action during the fiscal year.

And that transfer accounts for a 9.29 million dollar increase in the expenses in the public works operational fund.

Um, and you can see that on the revenue side going into the capital fund.

The department did not have any new program requests, and with that, I will hand it over to Austin.

Good morning, committee members.

Um Austin McFarland, uh public works director.

Uh with me this morning is Mike or Thornton, the uh finance uh manager.

Um I just want to thank uh Nick and Mike and the finance team for preparing this budget.

They do a fantastic job working with our department each year, and so I'm just grateful that we have them on our team.

Uh department uh continues to make significant strides and great improvement.

We have maintained our regulatory compliance both with drinking water and wastewater.

We continue to improve our infrastructure to ensure that our customers continue to receive um continued service.

We have maintained our safety program.

We've uh moved ahead and improved our SCADA and GIS functions so that staff in the field can have access, remote access to our facilities.

We are on track with our ARPA projects, and most all of those should be completed by mid-26.

We continue to work with all of our partners and municipalities to ensure that agreements are in place and moving forward.

We continue to look at new technology to make us smarter, better, and to create efficiency where possible.

And then we continue to be creative and strategic and look in tackling the unfunded mandates that we encounter on a regular basis.

The budget before you present, therefore, our plan as a department to continue to do this good work.

And so I'll pause there and take any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

And it's always so good to see.

I know the strides that we've made you've made in the last couple of years on making our water and sewer network more resilient.

These investments, these capital investments, and um the day-to-day investments from between water storage and uh cleaning the straw uh all of our sewage water and things is been really impressive.

So it's good to see this all budgeted in here.

Is there any questions?

Member Wasick.

What exactly you're doing?

So that is something that is at our east main plant.

There's some erosion there on uh against the property from that creek.

And so we're we'll be working with a consultant to take a look at that to see what sort of remediation can be done to improve not only the property, but um any adjustment that can be made to stabilize the grounds there by the creek.

So is erosion from the outflow?

Is that it's not an outflow, no, it's just from the creek itself eroding all the property line there, and and the the fence line is just damaged and caving in.

I think east main facility, the pump station, I believe it's right off of um 134.

Thank you.

Any other questions from EWT?

All right, all yours.

I have a question.

So underneath the goals, uh, Director McFarland, talk about launching the smart meter program.

It's not a new technology, it's been around for quite a while in some utilities.

We've never done this here before.

How many customers are we seeking to transition to smart meters?

Can you just sort of talk about what that looks like in terms of investment and does it provide us any headcount savings long term?

So, what a smart meet is the whole goal of the smart meter is to look at ways that we can improve currently with our meters, we're able to trap about 95, 90 percent 95% of our customer reading without having staff to go out and do actual reading.

The smart meters will be a little more improvement on that, where we can be able to detect um leaks, we'll be able to do automatic turnoffs and and some more functionality that will enable us to have those at our fingertips.

The plan going forward is to work with the consultants that do make these uh the vendors that make these products and do a pilot test within our system.

We want to make sure that it works before we do actual broad testing on our customers.

So we've had some strategic points in our system that we have we're planning to have these meters installed and allow ourselves the time to investigate it properly before we roll it out.

So the the reason for my question about the head count savings is because in theory, as it was described to me a long time ago, is that the the data from the smart meters is transmitted electronically instead of having to someone get out of the vehicle and go and read it.

See where you're going.

So we did that well, about maybe 10 years ago.

We we did have a meters department.

So that that we've already done.

Yes, so we've we have eliminated that meters department from the meters, right?

Thanks for the explanation.

It's just making them smarter.

Smarter love that.

Other questions from finance committee members.

Just checking on and make sure we don't have any hands up.

No hands.

All right.

All right, all in favor.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Finance, all in paper say aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot.

All right, on to division of transportation.

I'm going to take those all together in one motion.

Um, but we can discuss any of them.

Uh, item 8.5 is joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the division of transportation.

Item 8.p6 is joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the county bridge tax.

Item 8.7 is joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for matching tax.

Item 8.8 is joint committee action, approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the county motor fuel tax.

Item 8.9 is joint committee action, approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the county option motor fuel tax.

And item 8.10 is joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the RTA quarter percent sales tax for transportation and public safety.

Can I get a motion and a second motion by Roberts?

Second by Kasbin.

And it's committee motion by Hewitt, second by the World City.

All right.

The DOT budget can be found on page 148.

For FY 2026, the division of transportation has maintained a largely status quo budget for the special revenue funds managed by the department.

The motor fuel tax county option uh features an increase in projected interest income while the motor fuel tax uh county option fund includes a decrease in intergovernmental revenue.

All the special revenue funds managed by DO2 DOT, including the RTA quarter percent sales tax continue to support the county's transportation improvement plan while bridge and matching taxes fund essential infrastructure maintenance.

With that, I will hand it over to Shane.

Good morning, uh committee members.

Shane Schneider, DOT director and county engineer.

I have with me uh Mary Crane, DOT's director of finance and administration.

Um thank you for the time this morning to hear about our annual budget, and thank you to the budget team for assisting us again this year.

As Nick mentioned, we are presenting a status quo budget for 2026.

The annual budget provides the funding necessary to operate and maintain a safe and efficient transportation system across the 300 miles of county highways and 65 miles of bike path.

DOT's operating funds are largely from the county highway tax or fund 214, which is agenda item 8P5.

Uh we also pay for vehicle fuel and maintenance costs for all county departments from fund 214 and then seek reimbursement from each of the user departments throughout the year.

Umt's capital funds, which are uh items eight P6 through eight P10 on the agenda are tied to projects in the five-year transportation improvement program, which was adopted by the county board earlier this year.

I believe uh you should all have a handout of the projects for each of these fund sources.

Revenues are largely expected to stay flat across our capital accounts next year.

Uh, we currently have 71 million dollars in federal funding program for various projects in the five-year transportation improvement program, and we're not aware of any impacts to those funds at this time.

Um DOT has no new program requests for fiscal year 26, and our head count will remain the same.

One of our primary objectives for next year will be to develop uh the update to our long-range transportation uh plan envision 2050.

And with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

I have to say I especially enjoy this part of your uh budget where it shows that I think it's important to point out that we have 75 miles more miles of bike paths over since 2022.

And I really I want to thank you and your staff and our board for really focusing on these non-motorized improvements and seeing it in um you know, seeing the difference that it is making and continues to make for the safety um and really well-being of our residents.

And also, you know, that having that county option motor fuel tax, I know we're discussing that too, really gives us a lot more flexibility, and it's important for this you know, these investments in our roads.

Um, and just uh just remind everybody to fill out the survey for envision 2050 to make sure that we are all putting our uh thoughts into the long range plan.

All right, is there any questions on yes, Vice Chairman?

Uh thank you.

And my question is on um page 260 269 with the RTA quarter percent sales tax, which um that is possibly what our our largest source of funds 46 million.

Yeah.

Um, I was just curious in the fund purpose.

Um kind of go part way down.

It's a little history and says the guideline for the purpose, the guideline for the transportation use over the short term is the Lake County Board endorsed plan for the blah blah blah.

Um, I was just wondering about the the use, the use of the phrase use over the short term and why it says use over the short term.

We've been using it this way for almost 20 years.

It sort of implies that something else is in mind.

I just wondered where that came from.

Um, from DOT's perspective, we haven't made any changes to that text.

So I think it's just carrying over year to year.

I don't know if the budget team has anything to add.

No, I would agree.

I think that's exactly it.

So that's language we can update for the final book, if it'd be for sure.

All right.

It just, you know, if if we have a commitment for that, short short term to me seems like a few a few years and and we with the our five-year plan, and they go out and we've got the 2040, the 2050.

You know, we're we're creating long-term plans.

So I'm I'm just concerned about the use.

Maybe that's a conversation for later.

Um at a PWT or something like that.

But um, I'm concerned about the use of that, the short-term use.

So the one sentence, the guideline for the transportation use over the short term is the penny board endorsed plan.

So is this plan?

Do we still use this plan or is this the original plan when they originally did the it was the original plan from I think it was 2008 or 2009?

It's largely been fully implemented.

So maybe we just take that out because that's been implemented and then leave the rest of the language, which shows the uses.

Well, because is this binding this language?

I guess this is would this language the intro be binding for the fund purpose?

No, this is language that obviously is just there for informational and educational purposes.

So it's our bad for not working with the department to make sure that it was accurate.

So we can change it so that it better reflects what the department wishes the fund purpose to be.

Uh and if I may, yeah, yeah.

And that was uh at that time, because there are options for how that money is used.

That was a board decision.

And so if our if this board is still committed to the use of the quarter percent um RTA sales tax, I think it would be better to not have the use, not have that phrase use over the short term.

Yep, okay.

But we will still keep the rest, maybe use for transportation, paratransit, and public safety purposes.

Because I think that's in the description of the tax fund.

All right.

Thank you for my line.

Any other questions?

I have a question.

So on the last topic that member main just raised, if you could just clarify, Mr.

Sutton, that that decision on how those funds are used.

Where does that lie?

Is that uh is that board finance policy?

Is it an ordinance?

Like, can we just clarify where that is?

Do you want to stick to it, Shane, or do you want me to um I I mean, my recollection is it's um it's within an ordinance that the county board passed at the time that the the uh RTA Sales Tax Act uh was passed by the general assembly, then the county board took action to state how they wanted to use those funds by ordinance.

Okay, thank you.

Questions from FNA members, member Bulitzing.

That's all um really great.

I had a question about the recycled materials used in new pavements.

Is that those percentages?

Is there a ceiling on that based on like available materials?

Is it 30 percent?

Yeah, it's kind of market-driven somewhat.

Um, there are specifications within the design of the pavement material.

Um if you have too much recycled content, then you have to heat it up to a temperature that actually can deteriorate the integrity of the of the pavement.

So there is kind of a max end, but a lot of it is market-driven.

How much can the contractor get in a given year recycle it and then put it into the new pavement?

So we're kind of at the sweet spot right now, right below 30%.

That's still a significant amount of pavement that's being recycled.

Yeah, that's that was great to see.

I was just curious.

Um, so thank you.

That makes sense.

Um, and then one more question.

I know this might seem like a policy thing, but I'm thinking about it truly as uh in terms of what we invest in um bike lanes and bike friendly shoulders.

The term bike friendly shoulders, I know we've talked about it.

I think your committee has talked about it and we've talked about it.

Is that still an industry term that you have to use?

And does it need to be used to obtain certain grants or funds?

Or can we be more what I would call accurate and like even just calling it a wider shoulder or a 10-foot shoulder, whatever it is?

Yeah, there's no uh requirement for for funding purposes to call it that.

We I think we originally started doing that just to let people know that there's another option out there, and it's mainly you know, for your hardcore bike enthusiasts that want to be on the on the pavement anyways.

And it's mainly, you know, for your hardcore bike enthusiasts that want to be on the on the pavement anyways.

So we're giving them a spacer, uh a safer space to ride.

But we have been referring to it more recently as just a wide, wider paved shoulder.

Okay.

You know, when you look at it compared to like a state route where it basically drops off at the white edge line to gravel, you know, we're giving them four or five additional feet to use.

Yeah, and it's valuable.

Don't get me wrong.

I I agree.

I just bike friendly, maybe not so much.

At least for a family.

Maybe for a team with a helmet on, but or with a you know, a whole group of people.

And that's who we see using it.

It's usually the packs of bike riders on the weekends.

Well, I'm sorry.

Oh, packs.

Oh, Pelletens.

Okay.

Thank you.

Spandex riders, people.

They like that.

Yeah, not arguing on that.

Yeah, and the main, did you have a comment also?

Oh, uh, I was gonna say the um bike maps often color code routes differently.

And so those bike-friendly ones um that the they will be c color coded differently, not necessarily that.

And I believe sorry, I didn't know if I could respond.

I I I was just I'll say my other point, that'll be and I was gonna I was gonna say I believe it was a resolution, not an ordinance, but I could be wrong on the previous on the previous stuff about the use of the I'm 85% sure.

We will find out.

Did you have another comment?

Member Was it?

Thanks for working 70 on moving our motorized and bike pass um in terms of the numbers, but I see that the the amount of material that's reused or amount of recycle material we used in new asphalt is is pretty flat.

Is there any way we could increase that?

Um it's just how do we move the needle on that?

I know it's more of a policy question, but I couldn't help but notice that.

So is that the number that's right around 28, 29?

Yeah, it's about 30 percent if you round up.

Yep.

So um member Belitzik asked uh a similar question.

So we're kind of at the point where that's about maxed out right now, just because of how much recycled content you can put into the material and still retain its integrity, and then the other part of that is just how much material is available in the marketplace uh in a given year that a contractor can recycle, but 30% is is about as high as we we can get.

Okay.

Yep.

All right.

Any other questions?

Okay, are you good?

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Finance, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motions are approved.

All right, maybe county administrators report.

All right, there's no executive session.

Any members' remarks from PWT?

All right.

Well, then I declare our committee adjourned.

And our next meeting is October 29th, 2025.

Thank you all this morning.

Thank you.

Hey, and so are we required to take a 10-minute break?

Um, yeah, we can't do PBC and E until it's posted time, which is 9 45.

So I would recommend that we take um the asterisk one, facilities and construction.

Let's do that and finance.

Okay.

And then if we still have time, we could do the capital and as well.

Okay.

So members members PBZ and E will begin at 9 45.

But since we're still in and we have a few minutes, we're gonna take some of the other finance items right now.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, Chair Clark.

Okay, so me up here.

18 8.

F eighteen on the finance committee agenda.

Is committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for facilities and construction?

Motion on this item.

Could you just say that number louder is eight dot F18?

Okay.

Committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget for facilities and construction.

Found on page 90.

Motion on this item by member Hewitt, second by member Peterson.

The FY2026 recommended budget for facilities and construction services totals 12,425,171 dollars, an increase of 347,028 or approximately 3% from the FY2025 adopted budget.

This change primarily reflects personnel and benefit adjustments following the countywide compensation study and have been partially offset by lower contractual and commodity costs with utilities and repair expenses remaining steady.

This is a stable operating budget that continues to support the department's preventative maintenance program and ensures the effective management of county facilities, energy systems, and construction projects.

And with that, I will hand it over to Carl.

Thank you, Nick.

Carl Carrard, Director of Facilities and Construction Services.

First off, thanks to both Mike and Nick and for helping them put together the budget.

Great working with two fine professionals and putting this all together.

So thank you for all the effort.

But it should be noted that the ROC is while it's moving into full operational capabilities and it will influence our future budgets.

So we're this next fiscal year for 2026.

Uh it that will be the one where we really are able to refine our operational impacts and those funding uh the funding requirements there.

And that will definitely influence our FY27 input input.

We do have some MPRs, uh so I can jump into that and provide as much detail as we can.

So if you go, I don't have a clear, I do have a quick.

Uh points at the point of sale.

The when we put this together all together, uh, that also included the jail and jury parking lots as well.

The controls there right now, they are not all that functional at all.

They break quite often.

And because it's older technology and we've been putting them together.

Uh so this would not only increase the ability of multiple different ways of paying credit card, debit card, online or with cash, but it'll also increase the security at the parking lots at the jail and the jury that down on the southern end of the campus here.

Uh the overall chart or cost of this would be $320,000.

That includes new equipment, new installation, new cards for staff.

And some of the alternatives we looked at was just focusing on security, which was the jail and parking lots only, uh staying status quo, doing nothing and keeping what we're doing, sustaining it.

And I believe, and uh perhaps uh county administrator Sutton can uh dive into I think the number is $75,000 was the number we have in there.

Uh we went back and got an updated quote from the contractor.

It's it's higher than $75,000 to just focus on the parking garage, the employee parking garage.

And uh we can talk about what that number is or kind of bat it around if you'd like.

So any questions you have on this one.

Ms.

Ryaton.

Yeah, if I may clarify, um, we had asked Carl to look into this earlier, and so I was going off an earlier quote that just addressed um flipping out the um machine downstairs that takes cash only right now.

That's actually very administratively burdensome in a world where most people actually leave the house with not a lot of cash.

And this is a small dollar amount of cash too when you have to pay for parking.

So um I originally went back to that same quote.

Um, and that's the funding that we had supplied.

It does turn out that um after further research that Carl and his team have been have done.

Um that original quote would not do the trick.

So that's where we are today.

How much revenue do we generate from the parking garage?

It is roughly I think $30,000 a year.

$30,000 a year.

Correct.

What why are we even charging for parking?

Yeah.

I mean, I it just seems that people come and then don't we give the jurors a voucher and now we're asking them to pay cash.

To me, it seems like like my village got rid of parking stickers, like getting $15 a car, it wasn't worth the administrative hassle.

We're looking at spending all of this money for $30,000.

I say make parking free makes everybody happy.

Please.

If I may, it's we we took that into consideration as an option.

And what we found is the public parking that is on the ground floor, the parking garage.

If we were to open it up and have it be free, quite literally would be filled with counselors and staff supporting the courts and the people who come in and park and not move.

So the public outreach that we're trying to hope for are the people coming in for a case or whatever else, they would be the ones not using it.

The um parking outside of our garage on Joaquin streets is paid parking too.

I just want to point that out as well.

Correct.

Yes.

Um, thank you.

Yeah, I I think it's an interesting point that member Maine brought up.

But as I'm thinking through it, we're talking about a one-time expense and then maybe $30,000.

Um, you know, uh over the years.

Um, what I'm trying to understand, you had this request of the what was it, $375,000 or something, and then we're three, right?

And then 320, yeah.

320, excuse me, and then 75.

So it seems sufficient to me.

Um if you just have that machine, right?

You just start with the machine, or do you have to have all of these other pieces to it?

Like, how did you get to three?

How did you get there?

Right.

I guess it's all this, but it seems like it's a pretty much a full modernization of uh the equipment that's down there.

This as you might imagine, these are 20-year-old pieces of equipment.

Uh so we did work pretty closely with EIT.

And having a 5G cellular network card in there actually makes it so much more secure for us uh as a county to control that data, or actually not have any control over the financial data that's used with credit cards and so on.

So really it's a it's a security manner for us to I guess reduce the risk for us to have to hang on to that financial data of not using credit cards.

That's why we use cash right now.

It's we we don't want to own the credit card data that comes in and out and having it on that 5G network as a third party managing the financial transactions that removes the county from that and it reduces the risk that we have of just having any of that financial data.

So that in order to do that, we need the fully updated system, not only at the pay station, but also at those controls, those control arms.

How many spots are in the garage total?

How much parking is in the garage?

Yeah, I should have had that handy.

I do not I can get that answer to you.

I don't have I think it's worth looking at the question of are there enough people who need to be here for work every day, attorneys, employees, et cetera, or you know, contractors, other people who are here because we're telling them to be here and public who needs to be here for court or other purposes, and looking at, you know, if we were to let's just say take member main suggestion and not invest in any parking controls and just designate top floor employees, second floor public or something like that.

You know, there's other those other approaches to it where you could try to segregate parking to ensure that there are spots available for the public who drives here and and needs to park here.

It it I I do I do think that it's a question we we should be thinking about some more.

Uh member Clark, Politic than Maine.

Thank you.

I think it is an interesting discussion.

I know when I first got on the board, people, people all these years have been complaining about the parking, about how they have to pay the cash, it's broken.

And and so I'm I'm really glad you look at this.

But I also think, but it is access to the spots and security.

And you know, at my school, we have permitted parking and they have rules about like two-hour parking.

So they have to spend a fortune on towing people, parking enforcement, people driving up and down to be like, have you been there two years and or two hours?

And then half the time we can't find spots.

So even if it's because it's open parking.

So having open parking, I think could have a lot of um cost too.

And really, we want to just make sure people have a spot.

And I would really worry that if we had no controls, either one, even if we tried to do like the two hour thing, we'd have to spend a lot of time enforcing that and towing people because having free open parking in Joaquin is not common.

So we'd have to spend a lot of enforcement there.

And we want to make sure it's available to people.

So I I think this makes a lot of sense.

I mean, people want to be as they tell me, look, I just want to be able to come in to court here or to here and pay my thing and then leave.

And I need to have parking to do that.

So I think having controlled parking does make sense.

It's not just about it's not like really about making money.

It's, you know, that is part of it, but it's mostly just making sure we have that for people, and it isn't too cost burdensome.

Um, because having to patrol and do these other ways, there's no magic way, right?

There's no magic way.

But I think this makes a lot of sense.

I think people like um, and I think we should modernize every do we should do the modernization so that it is like more secure and we can really control who's in our parking garages more.

And um, so I I think this is that makes sense.

Thanks.

Thanks.

No, I I'm I'm falling more in line with um just having free parking, particularly for people who come to visit people in the jail or to serve on a jury.

It doesn't make any sense to me, particularly for requesting cash.

So if we're gonna I I would prefer to find a solution that's more either tiered parking or these 20 spots are for jury duty.

However, we I mean, there is no, I agree, but there's no perfect way to enforce anything.

So even just the threat of a toe and designated spots, I think would go a long way.

I I don't think that that all of this, the the cost, the upkeep, the all of it is worth it in terms of of what it's doing for the county.

I just think we should provide free parking.

So to adjust a couple of comments or points that we're brought up, uh, Chair Frank, we we did do the research on this, and uh just a visual that I have when I go by the windows there of our parking deck, we do have enough parking for our employees since COVID and the flexible work time that people have been coming in.

That parking garage has not been packed uh in any day that I've really noticed.

So we have nested parking dedicated employee parking spaces on the second and third floor.

Uh the controls that we have in place right now are are effective that it does restrict the number of parking spaces on the the ground floor for the for the public that are coming in.

Uh there are, I think it's up to three hours where it is free for the public coming in.

If they come in, they're gonna pay a ticket or do whatever else or grab paperwork and they and they leave within that time frame.

It is free for them to come in and out, which that that is that free to the public.

Uh what we have seen is there have been some lack of a better way of kind of using the system for their benefit.

They'll they'll park there, they'll go out and just go around the clock, come back in and grab another ticket.

So they kind of are somewhat abusing that that free time frame.

Uh, there is dedicated jury parking space, and it's sort of lots on a further uh southern end here.

And that is for them, it's a dedicated space for the jurors.

And that's actually the spot where the the control arms really are not functional.

So, what this does is it provides us more control.

We can have through our secure systems, we can actually control the arms, open them and close them as we see fit and help the customers as they come in and out, or even a staff as you come out, and it actually provide more control for our county employees as they come in because the systems can be fully uh I guess modernized and more control for us to be able to operate them.

Can I follow up?

Right.

So I appreciate that, but now I'm just a little bit more confused because do we charge people cash to park?

Do we and so we do do that, but then we have hours where it's free for the public and we don't charge jurors.

Is that what I'm hearing?

We do not charge jurors.

Okay.

And for the public coming to use the employ the employee parking garage, the public parking garage for the first three hours it is free.

That part, I guess.

Okay, so we have some free parking.

We don't charge jurors.

We do charge what was the I thought you said the jury and jail visitor parking lot.

So that's where I got the jury from.

Correct.

But the jurors have spots already designated.

Yes, they have a dedicated parking lot for it.

Okay.

Well, I guess even for visitors to the jail.

I mean, for uh, yeah, I think jail visitation, they're on they're they're using they're either using on-street parking or using the parking garage.

Okay.

Thank you.

And thank you, Carl, for having already done some of these looking at different options, because I was thinking along the lines of Chair Frank.

But it sounds as if there's essentially free parking anyway.

It sounds as if there's room there now because of change of work patterns.

It sounds as if people know the workarounds that they could go move and grab another ticket.

So it's it seems to me that we're already there.

And that's why we collect 30,000 dollars a year.

So the R and I understand that there's could be other safety issues.

And we've talked a lot about safety, and everybody, every department in the counties about improving lives and safety.

So I I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole, but that's a ROI of 10 years.

Um, if we're getting 30,000, it it seems to me that it could be worth it to try it for six months and see what happens.

If there's open space there, if everybody around here already knows, well, you just go move your car um in and out.

Um they're already working the system.

So why don't we just get rid of people trying to work the system and let people get their work done?

That's that's my thought.

Uh I'm open as suggestion.

I would just say you get seasonality.

So if we were gonna try something, it would be I would think for 12 months, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Other comments or questions.

Sorry, I missed you.

I will remember to look left.

Not on the committee, but you know, I I have a little bit of concern.

The downtown area is becoming more residential.

Um maybe not today, but in the next few years, offices are um closing, people are buying out the offices, turning them into apartments, there's not enough parking on the street.

How will that affect people coming in using our parking area?

If it's free, they'll stay all day.

And then and and then take up space for people in the courts who need that.

Just a thought you might want to take that into consideration.

I just I anecdotally, I will say that the few times that I did have to come to the county building before I was a county board member.

I dreaded it.

I loathed it, particularly because of the parking situation.

Um, I don't think the paid parking does Joaquin any favors either.

So it might be worth a discussion with them.

I I don't know.

Um, but I I just I don't think that it's the juice is worth the squeeze here.

We're looking at 300,000 and $30,000 a year.

And I it just it every time I thought about coming to the county building, I thought I I don't really know where to park.

Um it's it's kind of it's a hassle.

And I think in in general, a lot of places are moving away from paid parking, a lot of um cities and villages.

So I think it'd be I think it'd be worth a trial period.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just a thought.

So if we just move forward with the say it's not gonna be 75,000, but maybe it's 85,000 or 90.

220.

So it went from 75,000 when it was first brought up to your office, and now it's 220.

So the whole history is we had developed this project as an ARPA project last fall, and it evolved from the initial paperwork that Patrice had seen early summer last year, uh, to what it what it became as a $320,000 ARPA submission that was not funded.

And I think Patrice had some old older paperwork at her disposal when she she peeled that off.

Uh, so it's not just a pay station, it is the controls within the garage.

So 220,000 is the the estimate we have today.

Okay, thank you.

And then just a follow-up question.

The parking garage that CLC has, you know, just to the east.

Is that paid parking?

Do you know?

Is that free?

It's free.

Always free.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Member Clark.

Yeah, I mean, I can see, you know, if we want to do like a trial period.

I just, I mean, this would mean then, I guess like the jury wouldn't be like limited access to all of our garages.

And you know, I maybe it's just because me at my school, I it can be really difficult if there, you know, if you have to pay parking on the streets of Joaquin, then if everyone just parks in our garage, if we're the only free parking and people just now the jury parking, people are parking there because it's free, and then we have to tow them.

I just want to be maybe we try it as an experiment, but I just want to be mindful then we're gonna have to have all new policies, which is gonna cost a lot.

Like, you know, what are the policies gonna be in all these places?

And then are we gonna take away because right now I I believe it's controlled entry, maybe to like these garages.

So if it's just open, I mean it could be a lot of enforcement costs, a lot of patrolling.

It's a you know as I said, where I teach um it is it is a lot of and then we end up with no parking.

So if everyone shows up here and there's people parked in the garage all day, they're allowed to park in the garage all day.

So I don't I'm just worried this is going to have unintended consequences of everyone's going to look for the free parking of the county.

It's not like we have giant parking garage like they do at CLC.

I mean we have got so limited parking here.

And so I that's my concern is that be useful to know the number of spots.

Yeah administrator side member hunter.

Thank you.

I agree with the unintentional unintended consequences.

I think there's a lot of conversation here that's going and just listening how they've already Carl I don't want to say they has got this figured out of what parking is where and the employees here and there I I hate like heck to say it but no nothing forcing us to do this this year.

I'd certainly like to look at this in a deeper fashion and bring it up next year.

I know that Carl said that he had it as the ARPA thing but I think the unintentional consequences because I know if I lived on here and I know these apartments and condos that are being built over here that were old office buildings.

They're filling up and if it's going to be a snowy night I'm parking in that under at least in that garage so um I I just think that a lot more thought has to go in it other than you know just Carl looking at it.

I even contacting CLC and see if they've got an issue over there where they were they're having overnight parking that they they didn't expect to have that's all good point.

We do restrict parking in our surface lots and a garage and evening hours I mean we would still control and not well that allow overnight parking unless it's staff working here.

Well just a thought I've lived in Waukegan for I'm on I live in Waukegan for over 30 years and I do not have these issues that I'm hearing today happening in our downtown yes there's time to or you want to go to a specific location and there's no street parking maybe it's a busy time of the day for that business you drive around the block and you find another parking place.

It's not that I'm gonna drive all the way to the county parking lot and walk four blocks to get to where I want to go that's something that just doesn't happen.

So I've worked downtown here for 30 years and um if you have a business down here and you want to park in front of your business you can't because there's no parking you can drive around and you could drive around and you can drive around um the Waukegan parking lots are not free you have to pay for them right all the public parking so if I'm gonna have to drive around drive around and find a parking spot in the Waqegan parking lot and pay for it and I know I can go to the county during the day because I'm gonna go to work I might go to that county building I might park in your parking lot just a thought Ms.

Can I ask you to just explain the difference between the request and a recommendation amount so our we're talking about here the full recommendation or the full request from the department but the budget includes only 7500 correct yeah so just to be totally clear um what Carl is addressing is the jail parking lot as well as the juror parking lot which are um south of um this administrative tower originally the request was really focused in on the machine that accepts only cash and a request to turn that into a machine that accepts cash and credit card.

So um I appreciated everything that Carl was putting together but recognized that we were um you know this is a difficult conversation and really wanted to focus on an immediate need to just swap out the machine so that it could take credit cards because it really is a problem for our residents that are coming in right now and I wanted to do the quick fix.

I um didn't realize that the quote that I had been given last year was no longer able to be executed so it's my recommendation that when we get to CIP which is 8 F31 that we remove this and then um we will bring this back um we'll amend this out of the CIP budget and then we'll bring this back as a project that we can discuss um having really looked into all of the valid valid points that you've all brought up today.

Okay, I think we will uh take that under consideration when we get to that.

Um really good discussion.

Thank you.

Anything else you want to highlight on your facilities construction budget.

Uh do we go through the other MPRs or is that the only one?

Um you can certainly mention the ones that weren't funded.

So yes, you can go ahead and talk about those.

We do have a we had other submittals.

Uh one was a facilities admin assistant.

We have currently two part-time receptionists.

Uh be and we submitted this because there is with the turnover that happens with the part-timers who look for full-time work.

We quite often have gaps within either one of those two.

Uh so we have coverage in the morning and the afternoon.

Uh, it's currently we're in that situation right now where we have the part-timers actually doing the both morning and afternoon.

We're just extending her through that period of time.

Having a full-time admin assistant would not only provide us that continuity throughout the time, um, but it also would reduce the risk of losing that person to another department or agency as a full-time work and creating a gap, but we have to fill it with our maintenance staff, which has a much higher uh our hourly rate.

So that's that's that was that one moving forward.

Relatively small cost.

I think that was under the um.

I forget what it was called.

It's the if the higher the scenario two, I'm sorry.

So scenario two, that's the that was covered in that one.

Uh, we also have the landscape master plan phase two uh as another MPR, and that was to fund the second phase of this, which would look at not only the rest of the Libertyville campus, but all of our sites who put together it kind of consolidate the best practices and plans and moving forward on that.

Um that had a cost of 100,000, and that is also under that phase two.

And the one that uh is not that we have we submitted the two of them that we submitted that weren't picked up was one was a design manager.

We actually have a contracted design manager right now, and that is provided.

We'll talk about that more in a capital improvements plan when we get to that as far as the amount of designs we have undergoing right now and tracking those forward.

Uh that it actually shows a overall cost savings, but it's capital versus operational costs.

So it is uh two different things.

And the last one was a uh exercise area at the Libertyville campus, uh more of a community outreach sort of thing that would be an outdoor court with permanent exercise equipment on it that could be used by the public and by our staff.

Uh we have a spot on our campus at Liberty Hill campus that's right by the bike trail that could be utilized for that, but that wasn't picked up either.

That had a cost of 250,000 out of pocket.

So that was a higher cost that was not selected.

So that's all that I have, unless you have any questions on any of those.

Questions on the not recommended items.

Member Maine.

Yes, just before before our vote, so I can have clarity.

So county administrator Sutton said that since that's under CIP, that's 75,000.

Our vote does not include that, right?

Because there's a separate vote on the CIP.

So our vote would just be the um budget as presented, not including the CIP.

Is that correct?

I see a nodding head.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure.

That's accurate.

That's my understanding.

Okay.

Any other comments or questions for facilities construction?

Okay.

Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed item is approved.

Thank you.

So we're getting close to the posting time to start PBZ and E.

So we will take a five-minute break and we will start uh the joint meeting for PVZ and E at 946 in five minutes.

We are back.

And Chair Altenberg will call her committee to order.

Okay.

Good morning.

Welcome to planning building, zoning, and environment committee today, October 22nd, 2025.

I call this meeting to order.

I think we're gonna dispense with dispense with the Pledge of Allegiance since we did it earlier today.

Um, can I get a roll call, please?

Chair Altenberg.

Here.

Member Compos.

Member Frank?

Here.

Member Kenny Sick?

Here.

Vice Chair Peterson.

You're here.

Sarah, she's called your name.

Oh, no.

Linda.

Linda's like here.

Member Wasek.

I thought she said can use it.

Okay, thank you.

Um, do we have any addenda to the agenda?

No addenda to the agenda.

Is there any public comment?

Nope.

No public comment.

Thank you.

No chair's remarks today.

Do we have any unfinished business?

No unfinished business.

Okay, we're gonna move right into the regular agenda.

We're skipping 8.1.

We're going to 8.1.

Uh joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for planning, building zoning, and development.

And it's on page 110.

And could I get a motion, please?

Motion by member Wasick, second by member Schleck.

Finance motion by Member Hewitt, second by member Bolitick.

We want to welcome Director Wagner and Krista.

Welcome.

So as was mentioned, this budget can be found on page 110.

The planning, building and development department's budget for the upcoming fiscal year continues to focus on maintaining service delivery and supporting the their ongoing IGAs.

Revenue highlights include increases in building permit fee revenue, admin adjudication revenue, which are both based on projected activity trends.

Outside of the general personnel increases that we've seen as a result of the compensation study, uh another contributing factor to the increase in personnel and benefits here is the addition of one new position, a field inspector that was submitted as an MPR.

And with that, I will hand it over to Eric.

And on Zoom, we have Eric Stefan Operations Manager.

Before I begin my remarks, I'd like to thank them and the rest of the staff at PBD for their hard work in carrying out innovative planning and policy initiatives, performing work on behalf of our municipal clients in nearly a dozen Lake County communities, ensuring life and safety and new construction and site development, conducting code enforcement activities to help preserve our neighborhood's quality of life, and operating one of the most customer centric integrated permitting processes in the region.

All of the above being carried out with an eye towards maximum efficiency and excellence in our departmental operations.

In the fiscal year 26 budget, I have a few key points on our overall expense and revenue profile.

On the expense side, our position inventory will increase for the first time since 2019 from 33 FDEs to 34, if our proposed NPR is approved, and I'll talk a little bit about that shortly.

On the revenue side, total revenue from permitting and licenses is uh projected to be higher in uh 2026 compared to recent years, in particular, even with a potential softening in construction overall, which includes anything from residential projects to smaller non-residential projects.

Uh, we do project building permit revenues actually up to 1.8 million um in fiscal year 26, up from this year's budgeted 1.52 million based on several commercial solar projects that are moving through the permitting pipeline next year, as well as a couple of additional high value uh non-residential non-residential projects.

The solar project pipeline is becoming more crowded than we've previously seen and is anticipated to accelerate in the first half of 2026 to take advantage of federal tax credits that will start to level off uh beginning in July of next year uh based on the federal tax and spending bill that was passed this July.

We've already seen an unanticipated jump in building permit revenue this year, and we'll likely exceed our budgeted building permit revenue by over 200,000 by the end of the fiscal year coming in over 1.7 million in uh by year's end.

And this is also largely owing to the increased trend in commercial solar projects.

As Nick mentioned, uh, we're also seeing a steady increase in code enforcement cases, hence the collective budget increase of uh of $85,000 and filing fees and fines in our red tag and administrative adjudication programs.

Zooming out, uh our budget supports the important work that we do in PBD, some key highlights of which I'll now mention for the committee.

Some of our fiscal year 25 accomplishments include wrapping up phase two of our bird-friendly building design program, coordinating with CMAP and our consultants on launching the Lake County Housing Coalition, which work continues today, updating our building codes to the 2024 ICC series in order to continue to receive an anticipated class six rating and CRS, which saves unincorporated policy holders collectively around 150,000 a year on their flood insurance.

Also fully implementing our new streamlined UDO amendment process, which will ultimately save months of time on ordinance amendments going forward.

Looking forward to fiscal year 26, we plan to work to retain our class six CRS rating, which again provides those flood insurance benefits to our policyholders.

We plan to update the majority of our IGA contracts with the newly calculated hourly rate, and that work continues now.

We plan to coordinate with the county administrator's office and the land team departments in implementing any recommended improvements resulting from our current integrated permitting checkup.

We also plan to complete the housing coalition meeting series in February with the goal of developing a housing accelerator toolkit for our communities and other housing stakeholders in the region.

And finally, if approved by the board, we will recruit and train an additional inspector to round out our field team.

Um that we have presentation for.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So PBND has submitted an NPR for an additional field inspector position, and I'll spend the next few minutes covering some of the background of our request.

The department proposals proposes this position to address a persistent capacity gap and an increasing workload in our office.

The position would provide additional capacity to allow us to perform multiple types of inspection work in the areas of permitting and code enforcement that the department's obligated to perform in the unincorporated areas and within our IGA communities.

The position will help us improve our violation response time, improve our service to municipal clients with uninterrupted service, and free up more time for staff cross-training as we consistently face an increased workload in our in the field.

One is a significant backlog and closing out expired permits, which is caused by increased workload pressures combined with insufficient staff capacity.

Another factor is personnel changes that have resulted in a loss of seasoned staff with an additional knowledge and experience-based efficiency, mostly due to retirements.

So looking at the numbers, since 2021, the total number of inspections associated with administrative adjudication.

That's our fast track enforcement program has increased by an average of 20% yearly.

This translates to an increasing lag in response time in 2023.

The department's code enforcement case load of 454 cases yielded an average response time of five and a half days, as the caseload nearly doubled in 2024 to 922 cases.

The average response time also nearly doubled to over 10 days.

Absent an additional inspector in the field, this response time is only gonna get worse, creating additional risks to the public and eroding the public's confidence in our services.

An additional field team member that could serve in a hybrid capacity accomplishes a couple of outcomes.

First, it would enable the department to respond to nuisance complaints more quickly.

Second, the position would be adaptable between code enforcement and permanent inspections, and it would then enable us to complete uh more inspections per day in the field team by essentially spreading the workout between both groups.

And it would allow each inspection to actually be less rushed, improving quality control.

And finally adding the staff member would provide increased staff capacity to accommodate more time to cross-trained staff.

This track this cross-training is essential in supplementing staff's experience with new skills and and disciplines that they may not already not already possess.

And what that does is it helps them evolve from specialists to generalists, um, which increases their interchangeability in the field, and which in that of course increases our overall efficiency by being able to deploy inspectors throughout the day in different roles.

The position's total approximate salary in year one is $95,000 and a five-year total of just over 500,000.

Not funding the position would carry certain risks.

First, it could negatively impact our municipal contract performance given the increasing workload in all of our field work and the unincorporated areas and our uh IGA communities.

A second risk of not funding the position is staff burnout due to increased pressures from an ever increasing workload.

And finally, for residents, the potential for negative impacts increases if nuisance complaints and property compliance issues are not addressed quickly.

This slide highlights two specific uh performance metrics among them the many measurable effects on staff capacity.

If we see this new position, uh you'll see that in years one and two, we focus here on improving lag time for code enforcement inspections and also gaining capacity for inspector training, both of which are critical for maintaining efficient and quality work performance in the field.

So, as noted before, we plan to hire and train this position as a hybrid role, providing both uh services in our core area of code enforcement, but also functioning as a permit inspector as well upon sufficient cross-training.

The so the positional effectively share between the building officials office and the code enforcement office.

I'll conclude my remark remarks by pointing out that again, we've we've kept our uh head count level flat since 2019.

Um, so for the past six years, we've been working in increasing workload with the same people.

We've always striven to keep staffing as lean as possible.

Uh, and this request is unusual given our fiscal discipline over the years, but so are the sort of unprecedented levels of demand on field staff.

And so, in light of these challenging circumstances, we'd ask for your support in funding this NPR position.

That concludes my remarks.

Thank you.

Um, member Schlick.

Thank you, Chair.

And Eric, thank you uh for presenting your budget and and jumping off uh with the revenue increase.

Obviously, antennas were up because of some of our permit fee increase discussion earlier in the year.

So I'm happy to hear that that your projection of an increase there is based on more work going on and not fee increases.

So thank you for addressing that.

Um, as a somebody whose district deals with your office a lot because I have a lot of unincorporated area.

I I do see the need for this person.

Um, it seems that you and I have conversations almost on the regular about property maintenance issues and and certain other things, inspection issues.

So uh I I support this movement.

I just I'm curious as we move forward here, you know, as we look from like the revenue from the municipalities.

This is an area where this position could help increase that revenue.

So I would like to see somewhere, just down the line, not today, you know.

If there is like a by adding this position, how close to revenue neutral we get just by our fines and fees increasing our revenue from municipalities.

I don't think it's gonna be completely revenue neutral, but somewhere down the line, I like to see like how we can correlate some type of dollar figure to that one position.

Um other than that, um thank you.

Thank you for your budget.

It looks great.

Um, I don't really have any major questions.

So thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions from committee members?

Okay, we're gonna go to you guys.

Right, right.

Yeah, I think Kevin's got okay.

Linda's on my committee.

I'm gonna call Linda, and then we'll then you'll go to your committee and I'm an and then Kevin, you're on the list.

All right, Linda.

I have to say, and I'm sure um Eric will agree with me that building planning and zoning is more busier in district one than anywhere else in Lake County.

And I note your district two and uh Kevin Hunter's district.

Um I can't begin to tell you the time that they spend on the phone with me in and I'm sure with with you too, Adam.

So I totally am in favor of them having this additional person.

It's sorely needed.

So thank you.

Thank you, Member Peterson.

Yeah, member Velitzek.

Thank you.

Um agree, no-brainer on this position.

I'm glad it was approved.

I have a question about the unfunded request.

Um the uh where did it go?

Uh workspace improvement project, particularly as it relates to operational functionality and employee productivity.

Can you just give a brief description of what those improv and modifications were and how they would relate to productivity?

So it's um there were four areas of uh space in our within our office um that we occupy at central permit facility that we were looking to upgrade.

Um particular um we have a space um we we lovingly refer to it as the pit.

Um it was designed um back in the early 2000s um when under a different staffing model where inspectors would go out into the field, um, do their work in the field and then come back and sit down um at a table and and and and do all the data entry and things that they would need to do in the office.

And so there was there was this, it was a kind of group shared space for the inspectors to kind of come in and leave.

Um over time with improvements to technology.

Um, what we've seen is that those inspectors are staying in the field.

Um they don't need to come into the office anymore, they're equipped with iPads, everything can be done electronically.

Um so we we basically have this um space that's that's going on un underutilized, unused.

And so we were really looking to how do we uh make some improvements and some changes to that space to make it um uh more to to make it better utilized, and and then in in doing that, we can make some improvements to other areas um by shifting you know, storage, by shifting um, you know, work areas.

Uh it just kind of lifts everything up.

Okay, thank you.

That's helpful.

Can you um sorry to put you on the spot, but can you give an example of how uh that would increase say productivity is it in number of cases you can visit like the particularly in respect to the productivity?

There was another area um in our space where we have four staff who are basically sharing an open um their desks are all kind of connected with each other.

It's kind of hard to describe visually, you know.

Um, but there's very little separation.

Um it also happens to be in the uh middle of our work area, and so it's it's high traffic.

There's a lot of people coming in and out.

We have um uh file storage for our permits.

So people everybody in the department is kind of coming and going to this space, walking through the space.

Um and because the way it's set up, um, with it all being open, it sort of acts as like a water cooler area where we have people that are just uh walking by.

Oh, hey, how are you doing?

Um, or just coming in for questions, and then you know, the three other people sharing the space have to um they they get to listen to the conversation as well.

And so just some minor improvements in that area to sort of reconfigure the desks, put in some um spacers, not not quite cubicle dividers, but at least just some um physical separation so that people the people who are occupying that space can better focus on their work and not have to be distracted by um other conversations going on, other people walking through that area.

Okay, if you have the spacers in particular, that's gonna really bring the sort of ambient noise level down where you have four people on the phone with customers at the same time.

It becomes difficult to concentrate.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate that.

Okay.

Thank you.

I just have uh a few questions.

I was just wondering um for um your revenues.

I was just wondering, and this might be from what that 50,000 and transfers, where what's that?

What's that coming from?

Is that a question for you, Eric?

Let me pull that up here.

It's on it's on page 10.

So this is um a transfer in from CD for their admin expenses.

Okay.

I just because we've talked about fees and other things.

I just wanted a good sense of where that was coming in.

In particular, there's a portion of my budgeted to sort of that's perfect paid for by their fund, as well as uh one of our one of our staff members who does mapping work for them.

Okay.

Um and then um my next question is under performance information, you have the percentage of residential solar reviews.

And that's a percent.

I just wonder what that end value is.

That's a one to two day turnaround.

No, no, no, no.

How many were you?

Oh, I see.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Like 100% of one, a hundred percent of 10.

What is that trend going on over time in terms of number of reviews that have been done?

So um, thank you for that question.

So uh looking back between 22, 23 and fiscal year 24, we were averaging about 150 um solar resident residential solar projects.

Um we're slightly behind this year.

Um, we've done 97 year to date.

So if you would prorate that, it would about um I think 10, you know, slightly less.

It was 10 per month versus 13 per month.

I just think it'd be helpful to have, you know, what your um right, what your denominator is there.

So we can see how that changes over time.

The the reason why we have that metric in place is to help us um sort of gauge how we're doing with respect to maintaining our sole smart gold status.

Right.

I I understand that, but I think you can see that for us to see trends up and possibly down is important for us to see where things are happening and to see that there are quite a number of them that are occurring.

So that's great.

And I will say I will I will add that the um December 31st marks the end of some of those um benefits, some of those subsidies for residential source.

So we might see actually a little bit of a softening in that area in fiscal year 26, depending on you know how aggressively homeowners decide they want to continue to try to pursue alternative energy.

Great.

Okay, great.

Um, and then my final point uh uh won't necessarily be surprising, is a little contrarian, and that is as you know, I have over the years been asking about those IGAs that we keep adding IGAs, and I'm like, how can we keep adding IGAs?

What's happening with the workload?

And you're right, you have managed these things really well.

And uh to me, it's like the chickens have come home to roost, like you kept managing and managing and member Schlick's question of you know, what is the net here?

Um, I've been asking, and I'm glad to see that the goal is looking at the cost of those IGAs.

I think some of them we were not covering our costs, and we're and I hope there's also an administrative fee.

So if we didn't have those IGAs, would you need somebody else?

We could, you know, an alternative to the NPR position.

Right.

You know, would be the sort of drastic step of slowly shedding our IGAs.

The the challenge with that um idea is that our department's sort of efficiency model is predicated upon a balance between unincorporated work and municipal work that sort of gets to the the other metric that we have there, the the vehicle miles per inspection.

That's a um productivity measure that um essentially assesses the amount of the sort of idle time spent in the car between inspections, and by having these strategically located municipalities in close proximity to our unincorporated work, um, that actually helps us reduce the so-called idle time spent driving and allows for more time inspecting.

And so uh consequently, we have you know, when you look at the um the unit labor costs for inspection work in the municipalities, which is um with our new uh with our new rate built built into the IGA renewals, gonna keep our costs um at essentially meet our costs along with the revenue that we get for the work in the unincorporated area that actually you know having those municipal contracts actually helps us stay ahead of the game.

But I'm I'm just gonna point, it's not up there, but you did have in your slide of one of the reasons you needed this person was because of the IGAs.

So it's saving you, but it's costing you at the same time.

And and I just feel that um it, you know, it I feel like if I push to say, hey, you're saying I need somebody because of the IGAs, but then you're like, oh, but really, if you look at this metric, the IGAs are making us more efficient.

And I'm trying to wrap my head around it is both costing you people and time and money, and at the same time, it's making you more efficient.

That that seems a little difficult for me to pull those together, and I just um I just wonder um when you look at these IGAs, um, there's certainly increase in labor costs.

And I think I I've brought up before that I think a lot of them were static and they did not have an escalator clause in them, such as when we give, you know, there are five-year contract, and over those five years, we are giving our employees raises and benefit changes, and that was not being captured in those because that was frozen at those prices, and our prices have gone up here.

So from a budget, it is policy, but from a budget point of view, I think we need to capture that.

That needs to be that these IGAs are covering their cost, are covering our costs, and that just as that $50,000 is uh covering some of your admin time and other things, there is also time spent reviewing these, time spent managing these.

There are other external costs that are not captured necessarily, and maybe they're in the IGA and I haven't read it carefully, that are not captured in the simple um cost per hour of um of that person's work.

So, do you envision any or all of those things changing in as you review the IGAs?

So we have uh the the hourly rate that we calculate and work with finance to calculate to cover to essentially assess both the direct cost of the inspector, any plan review associated with that, and administrative costs as well as as indirect that when we conduct that analysis, we are essentially uh looking for the number that's gonna fully cover our costs of providing the service to that municipality, and as time goes by, um, you know, we continue to re-evaluate that rate uh pursuant to your recommendation at committee three years ago.

We are doing that that updated rate analysis every year with finance.

And so the idea is to continue to keep pace with that gradually increasing rate.

I will point out that it's something that um we're we're proud of because we actually are the I'll call it the cheapest game in town.

We we outperform the private sector in providing service at a lower cost, and so that's why we are the um we are really seen as a uh a great partner for our municipal clients.

May I ask a clarification?

Yes, yes, thank you.

Um so when you said you're looking each year, does that mean they're not mutually exclusive?

Does that mean each year, hey, here's a new IGA?

Because they usually run for a couple years, right?

They do.

Yeah, okay.

And so it's a little bit of a lag in there, but not a gigantic.

Yeah.

But so maybe you're jumping at you can read my mind.

Um that hey, the cost if I have a contract, an IGA in 2026 is X, and if I do it in 2027, it's X plus 0.2% of X.

All right.

So you've built in that.

But in those multi-year contracts, is there any escalator in those?

So that as people get everything I said, I won't repeat myself.

Not in the older contracts, but that's something that we're looking at in the new wave of renewals that we're going to be executing.

I strongly encourage that because I think otherwise, you know, we had caught questions before about subsidy.

This is this is a contract, and we should have, especially if they're multi-year, two-year-old I'm not worrying about, but three, four, five years, we need to be capturing our costs.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So I I understand and appreciate the value of these partnerships and the coverage area as you've described it.

I I don't have a concern about that.

But um just as we've asked similar questions for other IGAs for the sheriff's department and others, we want to make sure we're capturing the revenue appropriately and we're pricing our services appropriately.

So I do agree with you, Member Main.

I think that's an important thing we need to keep in mind on these contracts going forward.

Chair Hart.

Okay.

Okay, can those okay.

Thank you, Chair.

Um I'd say thank you, Eric, for answering my question that you emailed you last night and you took the time to answer the question regarding the building permits and then the discrepancy between going from 15 1.5 million to 1.8 in the budget.

Um that had nothing to do with the increase of the B.

So um glad the projection doesn't have anything to do with uh assuming that we're going to raise the uh building fee um permits.

My question is regarding is on 112.

Um, I believe charges for services.

So it's going to be four down from intergovernmental uh street vacation fees uh for planning.

I just noticed um just wanted some clarification on um in 2022 we've seen one uh uh 1200 and then another 1200 and then 5100, and then we're budgeting in 252,500, but we realized four um uh four thousand, and then we're gonna budget the same.

So I'm guessing we're projecting less than what we received, and the trend is slowly going down.

Are why why why I guess it seems as though we are under budget, we are under projecting and under budgeting uh based on trend for the projected that we've seen for the last two years.

So these are fees that we um take in when we have an uh a property uh resident, property owner that is seeking to vacate their right of way that's adjacent to their property.

Um we have a general idea of how many we can anticipate based on the number of like early assistance requests we get.

Um that said, I would say the where we were taking in the the 4,000 or whatever it was.

Um it just happened that we had more more applications that were ready to move forward.

Um it's a it's a tricky balance because um, you know, we can kind of like I said, we we try and gauge and predict how many that we could have come in, but um there's a lot of factors that will influence um an application from actually moving forward.

Sure.

Um, the residents' ability, property owners' ability to pay the application fee, their ability to pay their property taxes in full by the time the the um application is is presented to the county board, um neighbor involvement, other local governmental um entities involvement.

So there's there's a a myriad of factors that can influence the timing of those applications.

It's just really um it can be a moving target sometimes.

We do our best to predict what we're understanding.

You don't have a crystal ball, you just be so just wanted to clarify that particular category.

Just wanted some clarification on that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Member Hunter.

Thanks, Chair.

Um qualify this out of the 38,000 people each of us represent, 20,000 are unincorporated in my district.

Uh that's obviously roughly half.

So I'm on the phone with these two every week for something or another, and maybe multiple times.

We have so many phone conversations.

I noticed though that the county administrator, they you guys approved this expenditure.

And we've spent a lot of time talking about it.

So I I we changed I thought we were talking about the items that weren't approved.

I and but anyway, uh, not only do I wholeheartedly support the one, I think you should have two more.

Um, because because it's complaint-based.

Make an amendment.

I'll tell you what, I've had to throttle back on some of the complaints because but they just don't have time.

And and and I mean, we all drive by and see things and try to capture the address and give it to these, and then finally the you end up with a conversation with Eric saying, I need you to take a look at this.

You know how much we're doing right now.

And and and that's hard to hear because it'll bring up, guess what?

I will uh please bring this up when we get to budget time because this is important.

Um it uh I wholeheartedly support it.

I I just didn't know why we were spending so much conversation on it because the county administration already approved this, uh, short of the committee's approval.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else have any other comments?

Um, yeah, I'm oh member Wasick.

Sure.

Uh sure.

Okay.

So Eric, I according to your schedule, we're we're going to be culminating our housing coalition work in February, correct?

The meeting series, yes.

But the work, the work will continue.

Okay, so maybe I missed it, but um shouldn't there be a line item for implementation of what we're doing there, or was it baked in the 2025 budget?

So the um the program that we've initiated um for the housing coalition this meeting series that is uh it does involve a cost, and that's a cost of uh that's essentially provided by the consultant, which is paid for by a um by a private grant.

Oh, that's right in total.

Sorry.

Um, and we're absorbing the rest of the work within our existing team, which of course is one of the things that we're tasked to do as part of this the county board strategic plan to essentially both impanel this process, but also to work to to work towards increasing the supply of affordable housing within Lake County.

And so that's some that's a project and program that's very dear to us and one that we're spending time on.

But just for clarification, we've already budgeted for our out of pocket on this that the grant doesn't cover.

Correct.

Okay, good.

Thanks.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Oh, member of Litzik.

I have a quick question.

I was operating under an assumption that might be wrong.

Um is the workspace improvement project for for their department.

Um, would it be a part of a capital funding list?

Okay, yes, thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions, comments?

Just want to make sure.

I just want to say, um, I I wholeheartedly agree that sounds like we need another inspector, and there's there's a lot a lot of work to do.

And I think that you've been very efficient and diligent and how you manage all your work.

You know, I I don't think you guys ask for a lot of um new FTEs.

So I you know, I think when you do, we know that it's it's it's a real need.

Um and I think you know, your department, Eric has been stellar, you know.

We're just really really pleased.

We you you guys handle a lot of different things, and we we know how much effort you're putting in.

The housing lake is amazing, and I have so many high hopes that uh we are gonna be able to develop a lot of municipal partnerships from this whole program that's happening.

Um I think we can and I think the budget looks really good.

So thank you.

Um let's do a vote uh from the PBZ and E committee.

All in favor.

Aye.

Okay.

Comments or questions, you know, hands up all in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

That is eight point B one is approved.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay, we're gonna go to 8B2 joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for stormwater management, and we'll take at the same time eight v3 joint committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for Lake County Regional Stormwater Management Projects Funds.

Welcome music.

I don't know why, so I got one of those doctors.

Okay.

Oh, thank you.

I need a motion.

Motion by member slick, schlick, second by member compos.

We welcome Kurt Wolford and team.

Um happy to have you.

Yes, Director Wolford says, I'm not gonna walk up the way everybody else does.

I'm gonna talk to my own tunes.

Thank you.

Okay.

Oh, and we're on page 187 for anybody who's wondering.

Okay.

All right.

Well, good morning.

Chair Altenberg, Chair Frank, and committee members.

Uh, we are excited to be here to share our successes and our accomplishments and what we are working on in our budget.

And I'll just pass it over to Nick to introduce us.

Thanks, Kurt.

So the FY 2026 recommended budget for stormwater management reflects a 63% decrease in total revenue, uh, which is primarily due to lower property tax allocation.

And as Patrice says mentioned before, this is just um based on a fund balance analysis that is done.

But outside of the property taxes, revenues have increased just slightly and remain fairly consistent with higher stormwater permit fee revenue tied to continue development activity.

On the expense side, commodity costs have risen slightly just to support operational needs, while contractual services have decreased uh due to adjustments in consultant and engineering expenses.

Consultant consultant costs have been realigned with prior year actuals and engineering services for state funded projects will now be budgeted as emergency appropriations and managed through the carryover process.

I'd also just like to note that as part of the 12-month vacant position analysis that we that we do during the budget process.

There were uh two full-time positions and one part-time positions that were removed from this budget.

And with that, I will turn it back over to Kurt.

Thank you, Nick.

And I do want to thank the rest of the finance team.

Uh Gina.

Gina's been great to work with.

Um Mike Wheeler uh and James.

And thank you for your assistance throughout the budget.

And then also from HR, I'd like to thank um Darcy Adcock, Jesse, and Crystal Adams for assistance with an item that I'm gonna request in a second.

But uh with me today, we've got uh Deanna Silber, water resource professional, who this month is celebrating 10 years with SMC.

So I I let her sit up here today.

Uh we also have Mike Priscilla, our watershed uh planning supervisor, and then Brian Frank, our chief engineers in the back on call, and then Christine in the back, our executive assistant.

Uh, we did lose um all of our admin staff in 2024.

They all retired within two months, and we didn't have admin staff, which was a crisis, and uh we hired Christine, we focused on our admin staff, and we were not able to focus on our capital improvement project managers.

So those two positions um were not advertised, we're not um recruited because we were focusing on our admin staff, and I saw there was a budget policy change to uh retain positions if they were advertised in the last 12 months.

The capital improvement program managers, they were advertised two years ago.

Um I'm not asking, I'm not requesting that those positions be re-added back, but I have a different ask, and I'll get to that.

Um, information I want to mention about our revenues.

Um the wetlands in Lake County, they have j jurisdictions, and the federal government has reduced and continue to further reduce their jurisdiction of the waters of the United States, which are under federal jurisdiction.

And I think everyone here knows how important wetlands are to Lake County and the region.

And because of that jurisdictional change, more wetlands are under our local SMC jurisdiction.

So that has dramatically increased our workload, and it's also dramatically increased our revenue because we operate the wetland restoration fund where um infrastructure any development impacts that impact wetlands, and you can impact wetlands, but you need to mitigate that.

And uh mitigation banks are not out there, so the option to just pay us a check is the option.

And uh Deanna keeps track of that.

So do you have our wetland restoration fund balances?

And they're higher than we've ever seen.

So what do we got?

Just round numbers.

So two days we collected four million dollars, and of that amount, uh 1.7 million is dispersed.

And $350,000 is encumbered, and uh non-encumbered balance is $1.8 million.

Okay, thank you, Deanna.

Uh another uh revenue source that we have been receiving is for the DCO program for all of our infrastructure projects.

Uh last year we concluded the first round of 30 million dollars for 12 projects, and then we also received a second grant for 30 million dollars for 16 projects, and uh we have started that, and we anticipate the round two projects will finish uh substantially next year.

Um part of the capital program with the DCO projects, and in accordance with our policies, we work with local sponsors to put these projects in.

So they will be responsible for long-term ownership and maintenance.

And we also have in our policies where our local sponsors, whether they're municipalities or townships, they pay us a project expense match.

And this project expense match is to go to our capital program needs for administration, engineering services, and so those revenues have also been coming in rather large.

So I'd ask Diana what is our project expense match received for this fiscal year 2025 to date.

Uh we received as of yesterday 2.2 million dollars, close to 2.2 million dollars, and we expect the additional 270,000 dollars to come to the end by the end of the year.

That's the only expected uh revenue project banks revenue for this year.

Thank you, Deanna.

So then with these revenues coming in, and I'll add since I know I heard uh some discussion on permit fees and all that, we've reviewed our permit fees, and we've determined at this time there's no need to increase them.

We're gonna hold the line with our permit fees at this time, but we do review them annually, and uh no changes are needed for our permit fees.

Uh the grants that we have received through FEMA, through DCO, through IDNR, through HUD.

Uh, we have not heard of any of them being pulled or paused.

And actually, we have some extensions that we received.

So uh no no red flags yet for the uh the grants out there.

So we anticipate this to continue, and the staff have been doing an amazing job working on all these, and we have a lot of great partners externally that we work with as well.

Um so now I'd like to just point out a few items that are the key differences between the uh county administrator budget and the SMC approved budget that was approved on June.

June.

And uh half the people in this room are on SMC.

Uh thank you for your approval of that budget.

So I'd like to point out the differences between the county administrator budget and the SMC approved budget.

Um because we're receiving all these revenues, um I think I'm finally learning how the budget policies work, and it takes me a long time because I'm a slow learner, but uh the levy of one million dollars that was approved by this board.

Um, you know, our salaries are two million dollars just for our staff.

So a one million dollar levy is only gonna pay for half of our staff.

But now what I figured out is I think the revenues that we're receiving, since we're receiving a large amount of revenue, we don't need as much levy.

So that sounds great.

Um, but those monies that are coming in from municipalities and townships, those are for our projects and for our future projects.

And so we've worked with the finance team, and we've created or we've expanded another fund.

So this is the first time on the agenda you're gonna see this other action item following up.

And so we're gonna try to get all this funding that is not property tax into this other bucket, and then the budget policies won't pinch us on our levy.

I might not be explaining that correctly, but that's that's what I'm I'm looking at.

We can just add a couple comments here.

I have one too, but go ahead, Chair.

No, go ahead.

Um I'm I'm really encouraged to hear that uh, you know, collaboration because um when you know we have you essentially function as a you know semi uh autonomous independent uh agency, just like uh similarly health department does.

And so I think that's uh important progress.

I appreciate you calling that out, Chair Hart.

Thank you.

So you said Senate min me think, so thank you.

Um you've got and then looking in your budget book, right?

Page 189, you've got your revenue for municipalities, it's uh zero for 22, 23, 24.

We've got a year to date recognized 28503.

Do the municipalities how we're covering salary, right?

For SMC and municipalities serve on the stormwater management commission.

Do can you help me understand why municipalities don't also contribute, or if they do, it's captured somewhere there in terms of salaries and expenses for stormwater because certainly much of the work that's getting done is done in the municipalities.

Um I think the answer is because the state statute that requires the county board to create SMC also requires the county board to levy up to 0.2% or 0.02% of the equalized assessed value for the county.

So the statute says you're required to do that.

Okay, and it's silent on municipalities giving money to stormwater management.

Uh it's not silent, but it does say that um intergovernmental agreements are encouraged, so that's how we get a lot of our work done.

But nothing in the statute says municipalities need to um provide for our annual budget.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, so the uh SMC approved budget.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Do you have a question?

Yes.

Uh just seeing some clarification.

So on page 233, I know we're getting to this.

Uh has 65 million dollar balance in it.

It seems like that's a capital.

Is that another action item?

Or are we doing both?

I'm just okay.

Is that like another capital fund that we have to segregate?

I'm just wondering why it's a separate.

I don't think it's a separate, it's going to be the one and only.

Okay.

But it's not directly part of your capital budget.

It is.

Oh, it is.

Okay.

It is, but since we've had everything jumbled in our operational budget, that's been causing problems with these carryover processes, the levy.

Um, I need the funds that the municipalities paid us to do these projects, not to offset the county's budget.

Okay, I'm I'm still a little bit confused here.

So why is the the regional fund separate from your say a capital line item in your budget?

Okay, yeah.

There's the let me say it this way then.

The new fund, the 743, is going to be for non-property tax, non-operational.

So we do have some work that we do, like the watershed management board, the stormwater infrastructure repair fund, the piloting of these maintenance projects.

These are internal to our operations.

But when we receive an appropriation for 125 million dollars from the state, and we receive um 20 million dollars from FEMA, these are all pass-throughs, and we need those to kind of reside in a different account.

They're just so large.

They they just it's always it's just more of a bookkeeping uh mechanism.

Um, I'd say it's a little more than that.

It's bookkeeping, but it's also um you know, ensuring that what's happened in the past, it's just we need to make sure that these funds that we're receiving are being used appropriately for their intended uses.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so uh I do have some more things to say.

Um the differences between the SMC approved budget, and I guess let me look at page 190 in the budget book.

The engineering services line item 71170, the commission approved a number of 2.6 million dollars, and then the recommended amount is zero.

So we think that that's okay as long as that funding will reside in this other 743 account, the the capital account.

So that's a change from the commission approved budget.

And if we look down the line for all the line items, everything is in line.

So no objections or any concerns from my point of view with any of the items besides ensuring that those funds are utilized appropriately.

And then the other item I wanted to mention is the salaries and wages.

And there's a sheet in the budget book that I'd like to look at.

It's give me a second.

If you go to if you go to page 34, please.

Correct.

The FY26 personnel count by department.

And we've we've been faced with a tremendous amount of work, and we've been knocking out that work.

Staff's doing an amazing job.

We've been able to hire consultants to leverage to be able to do this.

That's why we need these engineering funds so we can continue this work.

Um, but staff's doing an excellent job.

They're punching above their weight, like two levels, and we're going to continue to do that.

And like I said, we had some retirements from the admin staff.

I had to focus on that.

I didn't have the uh bandwidth to look for the capital improvement program managers.

So, yes, um, the stormwater management commission out of the entire organization, I think we're losing the most staff.

Uh, two full-time positions, one full one part-time position, and on page 35, that page gives you a little bit of detail, and there's the two full-time capital improvement program managers and one part-time accounting specialist.

Um, that part-time accounting specialist was advertised in December last year, so I think that is within the window of the amended budget policies to retain that position, but I'm recommending to remove that position with a caveat.

Um the other request is that the two capital improvement program managers, I'm also okay losing those two.

So I'm not asking for any change in head count on our budget book.

So we're going from 22 positions, 22 full-time, two part-time, to 20 full-time and one part-time.

What I'm requesting is an amendment to the regular salaries and wages 5110 to put the funding that was in those positions back into the 5x category so I can use those funds to accomplish our staffing re-org that we've been working on for years.

And um, I've vetted this through HR and Nick.

Nick uh just needs to know some information too.

Um, but I think we're there.

We've looked at scenarios, and Nick has these two scenarios, and it all depends if I can get the funds from these vacant positions.

So it's okay, we'll lose two and a half positions, but can I utilize that funding and put that back into our fund, put that back into our salaries so I can accomplish our staffing reorg because staff is definitely doing a lot more than we were five years ago, and we're managing a lot of consultants, and we have a lot more work to do.

Uh, but they're doing a great job, and I think uh I need to just bring our organization to what they're doing today, and that's what the staffing reorg would accomplish.

Um that was a major item.

The other request is just that I guess we didn't get our goals in the book.

So if we want to add goals, that's fine.

But I just want to point out that um the comprehensive stormwater management plan in the county strategic plan.

We are targeting to have that finished by the end of this year.

Um, it's gonna stretch out a few more months.

So we're looking at first quarter, second quarter to finish up that comprehensive stormwater management plan.

Um the plan will include the future development of this maintenance program.

So, what is our future of maintenance and how broad is that, and what roles are we going to play and what funding is needed for that and what resource they're in it?

But we're not there yet, that'll be in the comp plan.

Um the other item I want to mention is we are looking at efficiencies by using technology enhancements for electronic plan reviews for our uh regulatory staff.

So Brian reviews lots and lots of permits and our regulatory staff do, and we already gotten rid of paper, we're all digital, but then the ability to use digital tools to mark up plans and communicate and streamline the process.

We're looking at enhancements to make that even faster for applicants and um more friendly for our permit reviewers and the applicants that come in.

And then the other item I just want to end on is that uh Mike had applied for a grant through the three nine IEPA 319 program and also a new program that is new to us, a 604B program to receive additional grant funds to initiate the Fox River watershed-based plan.

And this is a this is the entire Fox River in Lake County.

We've also met and discussed this with McHenry County.

Most of the Fox Rivers is in McHenry County, and watersheds don't follow political boundaries.

So we want to look at this holistically.

So we're gonna be working with McHenry County.

We're excited about that, and we're excited that hopefully we get this grant to do this this work.

Uh and with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Do you have a question?

Member Campos.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, couple questions uh regarding those two positions.

Um maybe this is for Patrice.

Um, how many days in advance does an employee need to give uh in order to retire?

I know for our pension fund, we require 60 to 90 days.

Um I don't know off the top of my head, but I will find out uh if you want to move on and I'll I'll hopefully be able to answer the question very shortly.

Okay, I appreciate it.

Yeah, and then my second question for follow-up regarding once when I have that answer um regarding these two positions.

You you you mentioned that they weren't advertised for 12 months.

Is there a requirement that it needs to be advertised for 12 months in order to be included in the budget or within 12 months of the budget?

If I can get clarity on that so um the policy originally said that if the position was vacant for 12 months, it would be automatically eliminated.

And then because we did have so many departments that had proven efforts of um, you know, giving offers and just having them not accepted or whatever the you know, there was valid efforts there.

So we came back to the finance committee and amended the policy to state that as long as there was um recruitment activity, then they wouldn't be eliminated.

Okay.

Now, once when I have so thank thank you for that.

And in this particular instance, it just wasn't advertised.

It was advertised within the last 24 months.

Okay.

It was not advertised in the last 12 months because of the admin staff exodus from SMC, and I needed to manage that.

Okay.

All right, once when I have the answer to the my first question, I'll go ahead and continue my comments.

Okay, member slick.

Thanks, Chair.

I got just a couple items here.

I'll address the big ask first.

I I'm certainly sympathetic to you know the wanting to pay your staff more for you know more work, more money.

I get that.

I'm a little hesitant with just giving that dollar amount without seeing what reorganization plan was in place, how that would be administered, and you know, would we worry about some type of classification increase or a new classification of employee and compensation?

I'd really like to see that plan before I would be all right approving any type of fund increases.

Um, but I'm certainly sympathetic and I'd I'd love to see how it would work out, but I don't know that that can be done here in this budget cycle right now.

I think we can maybe amend it, modify it down the road.

And then the only other thing is I know this was discussed on the fund balance page.

Um, I know that's from 24, and I get why we can't increase it.

If we could just see maybe a trend somewhere along the line of what fund balance is done over the last two or three budget cycles, just so we can see if there's that spend down, it would help kind of and I I just in the future budget, we don't got to do it today.

I trust staff that the fund balance is being spent down appropriately and why we're limiting the levy, but just something for next time.

So, and I'll continue to ponder that staff increase.

If I may go ahead, go ahead, Kurt.

I'll just say um as the executive director for the stormwater management commission, it is my uh request that we fund this to accomplish our reorg.

The human resources department has signed off and waived this or vetted it.

Um I understand your comment.

And I guess if the decision is to not add anything, then I'm gonna be um asking to comply with your budget policies and put the part-time position back in because I did advertise that, but I don't want that.

Okay, well, what Paul and I oh we just wanted to clarify though.

When you're saying you want to take those two positions and put them back in this fund, are you saying you want to use that sp those specific dollar amounts for other people's salaries to increase other people's salaries or uh yeah?

So the the two CIP managers and let's put dollars on these, they're um through the compensation study, they were determined to be a level 10, and that's about 100,000 a year.

And um an engineer is not gonna manage multi-million dollar capital programs for 100,000.

But if we take both of those two capital improvement program managers and we merge them and consolidate them and turn them into a director of capital improvement and maintenance, because maintenance is now picking up with the dissolution of the drainage districts.

We're doing more work there.

We are um needing some additional people, and I'm requesting a director of capital improvement programs and maintenance to be created from the consolidation of these two capital improvement program managers, and I'm going to promote somebody into that position from our existing organization.

So, did you turn up anything into Patrice along these lines that's written out of what you what your proposal is to do?

Uh Nick, that was part of our budget submittal, I believe.

I never received a vetted uh reorg um by HR as part of the budget submission.

Um, it's been an ongoing work in progress um that I don't have currently.

Okay.

Right.

And I think that the questions that Chair Aldermer was asking some that I have as well, which is just some clarity around hey, that you you said reorg or staffing plan, which I think you know, we want to support it, but oftentimes if you're talking about an existing position that gets upgraded to something else that works through the HR process and then comes to the FNA committee if required to.

Um, but you know, you're talking about essentially adding a new position.

I understand you've identified a source because you're like, hey, I'm shedding these two.

Um, but I think that's you know, that similarly, uh adding any position has to come through the through the whole uh budget process.

So I think we just want to make sure we understood what the goal is for for the use of those funds.

Vice Chair Parak and then Chair Hart.

Yes.

I think you helped clarify, Chair.

I just wanted to, I wasn't seeing this in the new program request.

This head count.

I'm just confused.

Like, are you do we is is your but do we need to discuss this or not?

I guess that's the part I'm confused on.

Do do is this a new program requirements?

It's not if I if I may, yeah, at the commission meeting and county administrator representatives were there.

We had that discussion, and the um plan was to maintain budget neutral head count neutral, and then we would not need to submit it as a new program request.

So that was discussed at the SMC meeting, and so those are the limits that I was given, and I'm always reminded of those limits from the chairman of the SMC.

So what I'm presenting and proposing is a budget neutral and a head count reduction, and that's was decided at the commission meaning that a new program request would not be required.

Apologize, member Peterson, I skipped over you.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Did you have a follow-up?

Well, I just I'm just I guess my question, if it's budget neutral and we're reducing head count, what is the what is it that we're asking or needing to vote on exactly other than his budget overall, which he's saying is neutral.

I'm just trying to clarify what we're I'm just trying to clarify what we're what we're needing to agree to because he's reducing the said count and he's maintaining budget neutral.

So if he's just changing his position, isn't that something we'll just go through normal channels of HR and we'd approve an FA?

So my understanding is, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is that the budget recommendation does not include funding for a new position.

It's just based on the reduction in head count.

And he's saying he needs an additional position because there's more responsibilities coming off of these two positions that are being eliminated.

And so that's not really reflected in here.

Okay.

It's I I need a new position, but I have people doing the work right now.

And they're doing work multiple levels above them.

So it's putting the people in the right spot for what they're doing.

So do we need to approve anything?

If he's shifting people, he's he's gonna promote somebody.

Does that need to be under our approval or can he just do that?

Right.

So that goes back to my original point.

Could that be accomplished by upgrading those two existing positions to a different level?

Or are you saying you need to hire someone else?

There will there will not be any hiring through this.

It'll just be a re-org.

Okay.

Chair Hart and then member Maine.

Thank you.

And I we can talk later about drainage districts and whether or not that actually has more work for you.

Because I I think I would argue that it doesn't.

Um I I guess I feel like, you know, oftentimes in the board meeting, we say, well, I feel like we're doing committee work on the board floor.

You know, I think an extensive amount of time was spent.

I personally am a little leery of us trying to um figure all of this out.

If if we need to come back to this at a later time, or I guess I'd be interested in hearing from Patrice and Michael on their thoughts about why they did it, you know, why they put set it up this way from my perspective, if she's willing.

Um the re-org finality or the the final re-org has never been presented to me.

Um, so you know, I I do have some work to do to kind of figure out whether or not that should have been brought forward.

Um we do ask for reorganizations as part of the budget process and generally want to talk about those very early on in the process so that we can actually build um the re-org in if it's um you know budget neutral or even if it needs to be kind of tweaked a little bit.

So um I guess my recommendation at this point uh with regard to the personnel is that we get the final blessing from both the human resources and the budget team, and then that gets submitted to the county administrator, which is what our normal process is, and then we'll come back to you even before the FNA committee next week with um a final answer on whether or not there is if whether it is truly budget neutral.

Great.

I do have a a couple of other answers, if I may.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, go ahead.

So to member Campos's question, um, the county policy actually says that retiring employees should be directed to human resources six months prior to their expected date of retirement.

Um we don't require that, it's just a should.

And from an IMRF perspective, it generally is best that they give eight weeks notice so that there's no interruption in their pension payments upon retirement.

So informally, it's six months from a county policy perspective and from a pension perspective administratively, it's about two months.

And then if I can answer or address one other point, um I I do want to recognize the work that Stormwater, uh, you know, Kurt has alluded to this.

He is working with our finance department.

Um we really do want to make sure that he has access to the funds um at for their specific purpose.

And so he is working very closely with the finance department to ensure that we're putting the money in the right places.

Um, if it is capital related money, we don't want that in in the operating budget.

So um they are working diligently to try and make sure that we have an operating budget for stormwater and then all of this stuff that is related to capital, which I would like to flesh out more because I'd like to know whether the reorg has any aspect of the capital and should be included in those funds.

So I do have some questions, and I think that we'll be ready to come back to you with some possible um transfers of funding because we may have put some stuff into their property tax funds that we believe needs to be in a different fund.

So we will have an opportunity to um have the uh a deeper conversation to true up what we've already seen in like the retrospective perspective and then um try to get the the future perspective much cleaner so that we don't have this confusion.

I will say that there is a very significant fund balance right now in the stormwater fund, but I do suspect that it is inflated because there's potentially some PEM revenue that may not really belong.

Uh what does PEM stand for again?

Project expense match.

Thank you.

There's some revenue that's related to those DCEO projects that perhaps should not be in that operating fund.

Likewise, there is some work that is being done by his employees that maybe should be you know absorbed by some of those funds.

So there is a lot to work through here, and we've got the right people working on it.

We're just not ready right now.

Great.

Thank you for highlighting that.

And I also want to say thank you for the collaboration.

I think the the partnership with the administration team, finance, and HR continues to strengthen.

And I think that's uh a good thing for all of us in terms of budgeting process.

I saw a couple of hands over here.

Member Maine was it, member of Let's Tech Do you have a question too?

No, okay.

Member Maine.

Um thank you.

So my question has changed a bit because of uh county administrator Sutton's um suggestion here, and so my first question is to her.

Is there enough clarity in these existing budgets and where money is that we can be confident voting on them today?

I guess I'll just put stop voting on them today.

I mean, it sounds like there's money here, there's money here, there needs to be more clarity.

Um is there enough clarity outside of the um re-org?

Is there enough clarity in where the monies are in funds and line items here that we can vote with confidence on this?

Because let's say nothing came back next week.

I feel confident.

Uh oops, thank you.

I I do feel confident there was the 2.6 million dollars that the department request had in it in engineering services.

You can see that on line A71170 on 190.

Um, Kurt mentioned that at the in his opening comments.

Um I don't know for sure that he agrees that that needs to be taken out.

I would like to emergency appropriate that though in fiscal year 25 for its immediate use, because if we include that in the fiscal year 26 budget, then we'll have to find offsetting revenue for it.

And I believe that they've already received the revenue.

So these are unfortunately are the things that I've asked the finance team to really look into.

Uh, the remainder of the budget though, aside from that, you know, large spike there, I do feel confident is consistent with their annual operating budget.

So may I continue?

Yeah, so process-wise, what I'm hearing is yes, vote for this, but next week, again, outside of reorg, but next week, hey, we're gonna take this out and make it uh 2025 emergency appropriation.

So we would be voting with the intent to modify what we voted on today next week.

If I may I'm okay with the I think what Patrice is saying.

That's that's not my question.

Uh that's not my question.

I'm asking process-wise with her.

That is correct.

Okay, that seems a little unusual.

And and we had a long discussion yesterday, a very long discussion yesterday about monies being in 2025 or 2026.

So my question then is what why would we why would we do it that way?

Why why would we vote for something today, knowing next week you're gonna come change it?

We are not changing the fiscal year 26 budgets next week at the FA committee.

What we would be doing is asking you to appropriate revenue in fiscal year 25 that was received in 25.

But is listed here in the department request budget, but it was zeroed out.

Okay and the county administrator.

Okay, all right, thank you.

That that helps.

Um spending it twice.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

That's that was my concern.

Um, you know, we did talk about this um repeatedly and extensively at SMC.

So from budget-wise, I can understand and support that we will have a look at that reorganization um next week before we get something final, because I think all you need to do is look at on page 187, the FY 2025 modified budget, we're intergovernmental, the adopted budget was just under 87,000, and the modified budget was over 26 million dollars.

So everybody here has probably been to ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings on dozens of projects that are are going on, and we have all these literally tens of millions of dollars of more projects going on, and the um the staff has has been the same, and and uh I am concerned that if those two were kept in those two positions that were removed following policy that they hadn't been advertised, so that I understand in a small agency, you can only go out and manage so many hires at a time.

I think any ever everybody here who's been in a business or something like that, you can only manage so many job searches at a time.

And if you don't have admin, how can you manage those next ones?

So I I think in this case there was a really valid, really valid reason for that.

And we've seen here at the county with um technical expertise and SMC relies on that.

You're you're not gonna get an engineer for a hundred thousand dollars.

It's not, you know, they start out of college at way more than that, and they can go private.

So um I'm um I'm concerned about our the ability of SMC to keep using effectively the monies that we have been that we've been promised by the state to get those projects on the ground because if they stop getting on the ground in a timely fashion, then those monies are gonna go away.

And the reputation, the great reputation is damaged.

And part of the reason we got all those monies again, look at that column, is because things got done.

Yeah, member main, I just want to say I think there's a lot of us here who are in agreement with the fact that we we really need to ensure that we have the appropriate level of professionals supporting the work that um in partnership with our legislature, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make some of these investments that continue.

And uh, I think there's a commitment from all of us to to look at that and to support that staffing when we have appropriate information about the funding sources and where they're allocated between operations and capital.

Uh, some of the questions that County Administrator mentioned.

So I think we will revisit that when we get that information.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, do you have another question?

Member Compost.

No, I just wanted to continue my comments from so I'm not sure.

I understand the thinking outside of the box.

Hey, we're gonna be losing these two people, we can move money around this.

This is uh an opportunity to um uh to do something.

I I commend you for thinking outside the box, but in absence of a formal reorganization plan, right?

I wouldn't feel comfortable not, you know, not voting on this.

Um I would vote on it as is.

We're going off policy.

Um you're gonna lose those two people.

I would rather see those two people come back.

Um in a perfect world, increase the the wage for for the engineer.

Um, but I'm not I'm I'm not that has to go through the proper channels.

Um, I think you have to go back to F and A and go through committee.

Um, but I think in 2026, I think we're gonna have to uh I wouldn't feel good not voting on as is the way it was presented to us since it's gone through its proper uh through the proper process.

So any other questions?

Any other I think the plan is to vote on it as is and we're able, we have time and we're able to he made an ask.

He made an ask.

The ask is uh my request would be to reduce our head count by two full-time positions and one part-time position, but then to use those funds to accomplish our re-org that I submitted to finance already.

Okay, and I've talked to HR about.

And if the um ultimate decision is gonna be no to everything, I guess I would request a conditional approval to reinstate the part-time position in compliance with your budget policies.

Okay.

So as I see here in our budget, we're the recommended budget is does include that recommendation that for the reduction of the two and the one part-time.

And I think I heard the administrator say that um working through the process with HR and finance department, we're gonna get some additional details about what that staffing re looks like, and and we'll have the opportunity to make a decision about going forward on that.

But I feel like um those two departments don't think they're ready to sign off on that yet.

And for our process, I think we want to make sure that they have all their questions answered before we go forward.

That's my perspective.

Is anybody from HR here?

Yeah, I'm speaking to Darcy.

Um, Crystal Adams ran these positions through the safe report.

Yep.

Uh HR has confirmed that they did send the grade recommendations over to budget on October 15th.

So that's where it's at.

Okay.

So we'll wait for your recommendation on that.

Member May.

And this is uh specific.

I'm hearing um exec executive director Wolford say that that one halftime position did meet our requirement to not essentially be swept out and yet it is still being swept out.

Is can I have c that's what I'm hearing?

You say, can I have clarity on then did it in fact meet our requirements is being advertised?

Yes, no, and I guess if yes, then why are we sweeping it?

I'll I'll jump in.

It's it was to be swept and the finance staff prepared the budget in compliance with the budget policies, but then the budget policies were just amended recently.

So that recent amendment now gave us a a w a foot foothold in that.

Okay.

So could you please clarify what head count did the commission put forward in your budget?

If you could just clarify that for me, please.

What was the head count in terms of full-time equivalence as well as part-time that you believe that the stormwater management commission put forward?

Is it 20 or 22?

And is it one or zero?

The stormwater management commission did not focus on that.

Can you tell me how many dollars was it this one nine seven one nine thirteen?

Um or was it a lower number because you didn't have the three percent in there?

I'm not sure about that.

All I was given was you need to maintain budget neutral and head count neutral.

Those are the guiding limits that I was given from the commission.

Yeah, I understand.

So I as I said, Director Wolf, I I think a lot of us, especially those of us who serve on your board are interested in supporting the goals, but it's hard for us to vote on an amendment when our team that puts our budget together doesn't have all the pieces of the information at this point.

So that that's where I'm at.

I don't I don't know if members are interested in doing an amendment.

I don't think so at this point, but I I know that we're committed in revisiting it.

So we will.

Member Clark, did you have a comment?

Oh, comment.

Is that I mean yes, it sounds like we're gonna look through trees, we're gonna look at it, but to follow the proper process.

That's what I'd like to do.

So we'll get the process and then we can see what happens.

But I I do not feel comfortable changing it right now.

Yeah, I think a lot of effort was put into getting to this point.

We all support your goals.

I I feel everybody here, we know you're doing a fantastic job.

We've been so fortunate to get all these millions of dollars from the state to do these incredible flood uh projects, you know, reducing flooding all over the county.

You you guys have worked so hard.

We've we've been blessed with all this extra money.

We are gonna do our level best.

I know Patrice is gonna do her level best to work with you and try to get your reorg to where we're all comfortable voting for it.

I I feel that way.

Um, I feel if we vote for this today, they put a lot of effort into where we're at now.

Um, it's not in stone that we're not gonna make these changes.

And I think you have to have I have faith in everybody here.

We we're all so happy with SMC, and we know you're doing your best to uh do right by your people, and we want to do right by your staff.

We do.

So I think we should vote on this today.

You'll have a budget, and then we're gonna work this week very hard to try to sort through things with you.

Our finance people will work with you and and see if we can bring something to FNA to make some kind of amendment next week.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

But you have some right questions regarding the process.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

So we are gonna take eight dot B2 and eight dot B3 together in one vote.

Okay.

Okay, all in favor for aye.

Okay, thank you.

Finance, all in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed, those two items are approved.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank all of you.

Okay, do we have a county administrators report?

No county administrators report.

Do we have executive session?

No executive session.

Any member remarks?

Okay.

All right, we are adjourning the PBZ and E meeting until October 29th.

Thank you.

All right, like to call to order the technology committee.

Um, at I don't know, 1135 a.m.

on October 21st, 2025.

I'm gonna dispense with the pledge.

Hello, everyone.

Oh, all right.

I'm gonna dispense with the pledge.

Could we have a roll call, please?

Member Altenberg?

Here, question Casmin?

Chair Clark.

Here, member Dan Ford, Member Frank?

Here, member Peterson.

Member Roberts.

Terrific.

Thank you all for being here.

And we're good with you.

Um, is there any public comment?

There is that.

All right, chairs remarks.

I'm uh excited to see everyone here today.

And uh that's it.

We have no unfinished business.

Our new business is the um item 8.1, which is committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for enterprise information technology.

Can I get a motion in a second, please?

Motion by Dan Forth, second by Altonberg.

What's it second by Peterson?

Terrific.

All right, CIO Blanding.

We see you are uh visiting us remotely using technology.

I am good morning, Chris Blanning CIO.

I appreciate the ability to return attend remotely.

I'm at an annual CIO conference.

I attend most years, and it just fell on this week.

So we're in good hands.

We have Terry Kath, uh deputy IT director, um representing in person.

So thanks, Terry.

I guess I'll turn it over to Nick at this point.

You're gonna start us off, Nick.

Thanks, Chris.

Just a brief uh introduction.

So the uh this budget can be found on page 86.

The FY 2026 recommended budget for enterprise IT totals 17,996,08 dollars, which is a decrease of 540,167 or approximately three percent from FY 2025.

This change is primarily driven by a reduction in contractual spending within account 71125 staff augmentation following the completion of temporary support engagements tied to major technology efforts, including enterprise system implementations and enhanced cybersecurity controls.

With those engagements complete, the FY2026 budget returns to a more typical operating level and other contractual commodity and capital accounts remain stable.

With that, I'll hand it back over to Chris.

Thank you.

Thanks, Nick.

So uh just clearly uh want to thank everybody involved, Nick, Mike Wheeler, uh, but specifically in IT, Terry Kath and Heidi Hernandez seems they've lived and breathed budgeting for the past several months, like a lot of people have.

But thank you to everybody to help push putting it together.

I'd also like to thank the county administrator's office, Patrice Sutton, and you, the county board for your continued support of technology at Lake County.

So this budget allows us to focus on sustaining our operations, um, focusing on excellence, which we do every day, and supporting our recent cybersecurity and infrastructure modernization we put in uh over the past few years.

So a lot of our budget is software and applications line item, which goes to uh continued support of those operations and initiatives.

Um good news.

Our our our budget for personnel, we um started the year with a six percent vacancy rate, but we've been diligent on filling positions and we actually achieved 100% uh fill rate uh in February.

So that's good news.

We're retaining folks, keeping them excited, working and keeping them busy.

So that uh and other than that, our head count remains uh equivalent to last year's.

Um so, anyways, I just wanted to give a high level.

Um, thank the team for all they do every day and uh glad to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Anything do you want to add anything to our you're good?

Um I just had a question about the ERP system.

Is where when we look at budgeting, I was looking, I know software and online services went up a lot, but budgeted.

Is that where the ERP system is going to live?

Is in this budget, or do you know, or um, for our online software for workday?

Yeah, I'll give my high level, and I'm sure Patrice Sutton will correct me if wrong.

Uh, we ARPA funded that.

Um, and I believe that's multiple years, Patrice.

Yep.

Through 2026, um, you're not gonna see it in the EIT budget, but then subsequently it will be in this budget.

Yes, that's correct.

That'll be interesting.

I think when that happens, we can hopefully look at the the our uh legacy systems and those costs and look at the new systems, and I think it'll be really interesting to see the difference.

Um, and so the okay, so that's not why that was increased.

That's okay.

That was my question about that.

And I noticed we have got a lot more servers.

Is that when we look at the increase in servers, is this cloud servers or is this like it says that you know there's 491 servers versus last year there's only 352?

Um I just was wondering are we are these cloud servers or are they actual just like hardware servers?

Yeah, we're moving to cloud, but you hear about the stuff with Amazon going on with their web service.

So we heard that here at this conference.

It affected things.

Um so it is we have a virtual server environment.

So it I've kind of talked about it's like this big warehouse, and then you divide it up virtually with different apartments.

Um that number ebbs and flows.

Uh, we have been reducing our our on-prem physical servers and moving them to that environment as well as to cloud.

So it's probably a combination of all.

Okay, so that's like a combination of.

Yeah, I just was interested to know if we were increasing more in hardware.

So it's more not with the hardware more with cloud.

And I'm sure we'll have a conversation, yeah, about how to back up the cloud at some point.

Yeah, we will.

Absolutely.

Good for that.

So we're talking about that a lot at the conference right now.

We are.

I have a related question.

Uh sale blending.

You know, as it uh aligns with our sustainability goals, is there any sort of a metric out there that says, hey, for every terabyte of data you take off of a physical server and put it in the cloud, the carbon footprint, the water usage is X.

Is there is there anything like that out there?

And can we start to measure what our uh sustainability impact is for transitioning data to more to the cloud?

Because obviously there's some convenience and security reasons for it, but there's also an impact that that I think we need to be thinking about and measuring.

Yes, absolutely.

I I believe you had mentioned that one point in the past brought something similar up.

And uh we did some research at that point to kind of to look into it.

Um, I don't have that data right here.

I apologize, but we will we can bring that.

I'll tell you in general, what we learned is what they're gonna say is they can do things at scale.

Um, and so it is a good uh effort to get it off of our prem.

I understand your point that we're just taking it from our prime and putting it somewhere, but are we doing it, you know, in a sustainable manner?

And from the initial research, yeah, everything they're doing is at scale and with efficiency.

So it would be better there.

But I'm glad to follow up with further information, Chair.

Yeah, I appreciate the response.

I just think if there isn't a metric, then then we want to think about it uh from uh you know, energy usage and other standpoint.

And I understand that that's what the industry is gonna say, but uh I'd like us to just understand is there a measurement that we can use?

Can't can we just understand what it is?

Uh because it it's likely that we're gonna continue to trend this direction.

And again, aligning with our sustainability goals, the first step is measuring so we understand our impact for any of our policies and infrastructure.

Thank you.

And I think from sustainability, looking forward, I mean, as we move toward more AI environments and stuff too.

We are absolutely recycle out our our machines when they're end of life um we did look into PCs for people specifically um there was a challenge I believe with the term donation I think and one of the county policies or something so um we didn't go that route absolutely yeah because I thought we had the discussion in that it maybe was possible but maybe I'm imagining this from another that it we're gonna look it's to see if it was because I understand we can't donate things but even for the small amount we get for recycling if there was a way to look at instead of just um you know looking at doing some kind of thing and I I thought we had discussed that it was possible but it does merit further conversation I'm not sure if maybe we could merit further conversation.

Yeah nobody said no you can't do this it would it needed further conversation so we'll hopefully we can do further conversation on that thank you anyone from tech yeah I had one oh sorry go ahead go ahead I wanted to follow up on your server question Terry uh reminded me that it it's a kind of a high uh a good point when we have this virtual server environment we did add servers because we um health and the courts are now housing theirs into that unit that we have whereas perhaps you remember when we talked about this uh as a technology improvement program we they had their own units and when those went end of life they were going to consolidate into our one big unit for efficiency so that represents that and is a good story I believe.

That is that's a really good sign of collaboration.

I'm glad that we can get those efficiencies and working together on the technology.

So that's really good to hear.

All right any questions from the technology committee comments questions.

All right well thank you very much all right so all in favor aye any opposed motion carries all in favor.

Thank you.

Aye opposed 8 T1 is approved thank you Chris and thank you Terry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right and so there's no county administrators report no executive session any members' remarks I just will mention I think we're the shortest we're the most efficient committee here and I declare this meeting adjourned.

Our next meeting is October 31st see you all then thank you all for thank you FNA is going to continue with the county clerk that's 8.f24 yes go ahead I believe that we do need to start with the things that we did not complete yesterday but is that correct?

So the there was a time that was specified yesterday or 10 minutes after the technology committee for the reconvening of the remaining items of the day one agenda.

So and it it it you have to start that meeting reconvene that meeting 10 minutes after the conclusion of the technology and then you can get back to the day two agenda so we have to separate okay so in 10 minutes we we had announced that we would get back to the items that are carried over from yesterday probably fit the clerk in in 10 minutes maybe and then you can get it well I'm not I'm not gonna hold you to 10 minutes clerk vega but I think based on what you said we could probably go ahead with something at this point now.

Please is that what you're saying what are you saying if you can go ahead with something else and then do day one 10 minutes after okay so we can do the clerk right now.

No that's fine.

I I want to make sure that we're aligned with what we said we would do.

Okay.

Yes you're up great eight dot F24 committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the county clerk eight dot f25 committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget for the GIS automation fee eight dot f2 six committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget for the recorder automation fee and eight dot f2 seven committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget for vital records automation motion on these items by member Clark second by Vice Chair Park.

All right oh good morning uh the county clerk's budget can be found on page 81 so the budget includes a projected increase in documents to be recorded which is 150 or sorry which is 4500 increase in fees it should also be noted that the gubernational and midterm elections will occur at FY26.

So the budgets for election related expenses such as judges for elections and operational supplies and postage have been increased to reflect the anticipated additional needs.

In addition, two positions that were formally budgeted in the recorder automation fund are now budgeted under the county uh clerk's general budget for FI26.

Uh the county clerk also submitted an NPR for a V VSG 2.0 certified voting tabulation system upgrade that was not recommended.

I will now turn it over to the county clerk Vega and Cynthia for further comments and questions.

Good morning.

It is my plan to be done hopefully in less than 10 minutes.

The NPR that was submitted, I just want to point out that while it was not recommended for this session, it is um up for consideration in quarter two of fiscal year 2026.

And one of the reasons we decided to that I agreed with moving that forward forward to at that point is because we're still waiting for state certification for the new tabulation system.

Um the election assistance commission has released their 2.0 standards with which increases security uh security mechanisms on the extra hardware.

Uh it also increases the ability of disabled people to use election equipment at the at the polling sites.

Um so we did submit that NPR, but given the time constraints and given that the state board has not certified that system quite yet, we are pushing that to March of 2026.

I just want to make a quick note that um we had a really good year for the clerk's office, and we'll continue to you know modernize our our efforts here.

But in April 2025, we moved to a vote anywhere model where any voter on election day can vote at any site within election on election day.

15% of voters who voted on election day opted to use their non near their non-neighborhood polling sites.

Um another quick point is that vital records has exceeded the total number of records request um this year so far, higher than fiscal year 22, higher than 23, and uh higher than 24, mainly because of the real ID requirement that went into effect in May uh of this year.

And we did complete what's ongoing um phase one of our one platform solution for land records, and we hope that phase two is completed in fiscal year 2026.

Um at that point, I one other note is while on the summary sheet of our budget, we do see an increase again.

I want to reiterate of an increase in headcount.

Those positions were originally in recorder automation.

We've been moving them to get into compliant with with this with the law, but we have also organically through attrition, um, have eliminated positions that I feel that are no longer required by the clerk's office.

So when I started, we had I think about 54 staff, and we're now actually to about uh I believe 50, 50 to 51 actual staff members.

With that, I'll turn it over to questions.

Thank you, Clerk Vega.

Um, I want to avoid excessive specifying, but I want to say I'm really proud of the work you have done to instill confidence of the public in the election systems in Lake County, the transparency that you bring to uh the effort and um your team does an excellent job.

And I really am really also happy to see you uh engaging in public education and community awareness.

Uh you you do a terrific job, and I think instilling confidence in our elections is a is a core function, and you've done a great job.

Um, so appreciate all your partnership and leadership that you have brought to the office.

Questions from members.

Vice chair.

Yes, um, so just to confirm the the um NPR request would be for the the certified voting tabulation system upgrade.

That is correct.4 million.

Correct.

So I I think I'm gonna know the answer, but I'll ask is it possible to consider alternative financing arrangements like leasing it or in payment installation over time?

Just considering it's 2.4, it is I think the largest item we have.

Just I you uh vice chair um perec, uh you opened the door, so I'm gonna I'm gonna step into it.

Okay.

Um I generally I agree from what I heard in in the uh ongoing budget hearings, I agree with Ann Main's premise about how how our NPRs uh how we approach NPRs.

This is technically, in my opinion, not a new program.

It is a replacement of our tabulation system, a replacement of our ADA ballot marking equipment.

Um the ongoing cost that we would be paying into it is literally a replacement of our current ongoing cost.

It simply requires an upfront capital investment in the procurement of the actual hardware.

Um we could look at alternate um you know financing options, however, long term in terms of you're talking about a lease.

I think long term the county will be end up paying more for the system than if we were to simply if the county allocated the capital funds for this.

And hopefully that answered your question, and hopefully I didn't step too much too deep into the essentially we have to replace this equipment, but we have an upfront cost of 2.4 million.

Correct.

My question was just could we look to pay that over time?

And the answer is possibly, but you'll end at least is always gonna cost more, but you don't have to pay as much in any given year.

And yeah.

So okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Member Clark, then member Altamark.

Thanks.

I had a question about um well, a couple questions.

One about long-term storage.

When we're looking at like storage of vital records, this is one of my things I always talk about is how we are doing them so that like they're not on the cloud or like do are we keeping paper records?

Are we keeping them just to make sure that vital records are really protected from cyber attacks or even just burning up?

So certain certain records we have to physically keep you know, for in perpetuity.

Um other records we can destroy, but we do, you know, scan and index them.

Um we have worked really hard to we have all of part of the one platform solution for land and vital records includes you know, index, you know, scanning all of our records, including the ones on microfilm, so we have a digital record.

Um it's actually much easier for our staff to retrieve those records um if somebody comes in asking for a specific record that we can then certify.

Um but we I mean, again, it really depends on the record and in the applicable statutes.

I know uh Chief Deputy, do you have anything to add on on this?

I'll just add that vital records.

There is a state um piece to it where all of those records are also held with the state.

So they're like in two spots, yes, which is good in the other records.

Yep.

And when I knew about through this new system, could you could we just hear a little bit?

Is this this is gonna make it easier for people to get vital records and land records?

Is it like gonna be like an more online process?

Just I know it's in the budget for the like it's been going on.

It has been.

And those that was funded by ARPA funds.

Um, we as Clerk mentioned, we are um in the middle of phase one.

So our former vendor or kind of current now, um, we were using COT systems.

The vendor now is um NUMO, formerly GovOS.

So that is um the land records piece.

So just as you would search prior, you'd go online or ask us to search.

That's just a new system we're using.

The second piece of it will be that same company coming in and making an online platform for the vital records piece.

Currently, Vital Records is a homegrown system.

So they do not have, they're not converting, they're really building a system.

So I hope that helps out.

That actually does help.

That's what I was hoping to hear.

So it'll be an improved interface, probably.

So I'll I will add that the online searching is from home for people.

There's no longer a sign-in, there's no longer a fee to go do that.

So it does offer people far more access in eventually.

I will say that the public records is uh, you know, chief deputy is mentioning uh we used to have subscriber-based uh um you know mechanism to search public records.

So with the new system, it's truly public records.

You can search on them for the vital records component, though.

Uh, right now, if people wanted to order vital records online, they have to go through a third party.

This platform will do the online ordering, the payment processing within the one within the one platform instead of having a fragmented approach that will also release not as quick either.

I mean, you're still you we still have to vet the request, but it can all all happen uh within this platform.

That's good, yeah.

And I'm sure there'll be savings from the old platform.

So maybe at some point you guys you can come to technology and let us know how this new is going because it's it'll be interesting to see what it's replacing, what savings we're having, and also really like going back to Jared Frank about the sustainability of these new systems versus the time and the hardware and stuff of the old systems.

And I think that's something we'd really like to like we it's nice to see the new systems, but we'd love to see the the change that it is brought.

And as a reminder, um, once phase two is live, the idea is to merge the staff from vital records and recording one floor, one, you know, so it's all centralized, and then we can also have those discussions about what is the right, you know, operational footprint for that for that uh for that department.

And I just really fast wanted to say again, I I though the one but being able to vote anywhere is I I mean, so many people chose that on election day, and I don't even it just shows how many people sometimes also don't know where to go on election day.

So I think that was so I the input I had was great.

And when I told people about all the paper that was saved and all these clinical savings, I don't know if you've already made like a graphic for social media or stuff, but that really I think speaks so it's great for you know voter access.

And and I do hear many people who might worry about our elections, and they always say, but not here in Lake County.

And I'm like, that's right, because we don't have to worry because of the great work you're doing and and also the education part.

So thank you.

Member Altamar.

Well, Member Clark covered some things I was gonna say, but that's okay.

Um I just want to compliment you on your modernization of so many different things in that office.

It's really been a benefit.

Um what is the percentage?

Maybe you know this of uh mail-in ballots.

So it depends on the election.

Um we have on our permanent vote by mail list, we have um roughly a little bit over 60,000 individuals.

Most of those individuals opted in to receive a ballot automatically for general elections.

So it really fluctuates for consolidated elections that is uh a base of about 40 odd thousand uh registered voters.

But we're gonna see an increase over time.

So would you say now are there more than like 20% of the people using mail and ballots, or is it less than that?

Or I would say probably.

So for example, the November 2024 uh election.

Actually, let me fast forward to April 25.

We sent out, if I remember correctly, about 80,000 vote by mail ballots for the April consolidated election.

About those came back.

Okay, so the stats you're looking for really it it's the first that is how many we're sending, and then two, how many are actually coming back?

And that gap is much larger when you're talking about a consolidated versus a uh a general election.

Okay, yeah, no, it's it's really gaining popularity.

And I think and I also love the fact uh the early voting, I think uh so many people do the early voting now, and I think that's just growing, and I think that's made convenience in our county that much better.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else on these four items?

Any other comments or questions?

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Clerk items are approved.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, members, I think what we're gonna try and do is the treasurer's office and the chief county assessment office, and then we will break for a brief lunch and then we'll resume.

I think that's the plan.

Member May.

We we have more to do.

Okay, but I'm just trying to schedule a lunch break in it.

Yep.

Yep.

So we'll we're gonna do those two offices right now.

Treasurer is 8.28 and 8.f29.

Committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for the treasurer and committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for tax sale automation.

Motion on these items by member Clark, second by Vice Chair Pract.

After hello, good afternoon now.

How is everyone?

All right, so the treasurer's budget can be found on page 140.

So the penalty penalty and interest cost on collect and tax sell redemption, PI and cost budget have been adjusted to align with prior year revenues and current activity with the 80 um with 800,000 and 25,000 increase respectively.

Lower interest rates are expected for FY26.

So interest revenue decreased by 500,000.

Um, as previously mentioned in the county administration's budget, the tax bill production postage and printing budget for the treasurer's office has been right sized and moved out of the county administrator's office and into the treasurer's office for FY26.

The treasurer will also be hosting Chris uh Crystal Wright interns next year.

Um they submitted in two NPRs that were not recommended, the scanning project and a tax sell analyst position.

I'll now turn it over to the deputy treasurer, Stefan Gray.

Thank you, V.

So thank you first and foremost, V and uh Mike on team for all the hard work they do to put this all together.

Um I don't have anything to add.

Uh, like V mentioned, our two biggest changes are the printing services.

Um that was previously being billed to the mail room.

Um, it's one of our biggest expenditures of the year.

Uh it caused a lot of um back and forth and administrative headache.

So this will be a lot smoother going forward to have that in our own budget.

So we appreciate that recommendation from uh administrator Sutton.

Um, and then uh the other change would be um the uh interns that we're budgeting for for the upcoming year.

Okay, thank you, Deputy Treasure Gray.

Um underneath goals on um page 140.

The department you indicate uh that the treasurer has a goal of a escrow transparency tag, which would be something that's visible if you log in to look at your your tax bill essentially.

Is there any privacy concern about that?

Like I'm just curious like has this been done other places and is this something you're modeling from from another county?

Uh sure.

So it's uh it's a feature that our vendor has had in place for some time um that we weren't able to take advantage of um because of various other hiccups that the report caused.

Uh so we attempted to to get it going this year um and we weren't able to do so because some of those hiccups still persisted.

Um so really it's just um you know, most things in relationship to these parcels or public record, um, the tax record, the payment history.

Um I don't see any issue, but I can certainly double check and make sure before we go live with it next year that there are no privacy concerns.

I'll make a note of that.

Okay, thank you.

Questions, member Clark.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I was see also that you're um exploring incorporating AI for ease of access.

Is that budgeted in here?

Is it like is it like in addition to what we have for like county enterprise like you know, software, or is it something like you're gonna write or so?

No, there's just several things that some vendors that we currently work with offer that we think would you know make make things a little bit easier.

So it's nothing nothing concrete, nothing that would be an additional cost.

Um so uh for now for now just planning.

Okay, planning and seeing what we could potentially do.

And it would follow, of course, our AI policy right there for the thing.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Chair Hart.

I'm just gonna be real quick, see if you haven't been um very helpful for me in getting some data, sort of short um short time requests.

And I just want to say thank you for all of your help with that.

Of course.

Vice Chair Parker.

Yeah, just even had a quick so is the is taxes the investment revenue.

Oh, so we're in in the increase in taxes by 825,000.

That's all of our county cash.

The treasurer holds all of our cash.

Okay.

So the interest on the um property tax comes over in a different line item.

Go ahead, Steven.

I'm sorry.

Oh no, that's okay.

Uh so yeah, so there's two uh so the interest that we so there's several different ways to explain on the collector side, uh the penalty cost and interest um uh is essentially the fees associated with delinquent property taxes.

Okay, and then there's another line item for interest that comes over based on um money that we're able to uh make on the property tax revenue while it's while it's sitting idle and our accounts waiting to be distributed.

So is that is that what A41X is, both of those?

A41X.

Just it's just taxes.

No.

The first line in the financial summary.

He's looking at 41130 and 41150, Steven.

Those first two on page on page uh 142.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Member Clark.

So I had a question, and you're looking at the interest.

So the interest in A48010.

I see that the departmental budget request was 30, three 3 million five hundred thousand, and then budget is four million five hundred thousand.

Is this where because interest rates are going up?

Is this the interest on accounts?

Uh so that this would be yeah, interest rates projecting to go go down.

So interest revenue will will decrease in fiscal year 2026.

So we're trying to prepare for this.

There's like a big difference there between the budgeted and the requested amount of a million dollars.

If I may.

If I may, the um in the cases where the department is understandably conservative.

Um, we ensure that they can document what they were recommending in terms of revenue, and then the county administrator when we believe that perhaps uh a larger number of revenue would be reasonable.

Um, we ensure that we put it in the county administrators column so that the elected official would not be held accountable if we miss the mark.

Um, but I do feel like the higher number is reasonable given where we're at, despite the fact that um interest rates are declining.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at rear to date, it's almost five million, and I don't think I'm going down.

And I don't know, the way things are looking, who knows if they'll go down?

All right, right.

Thank you.

Yeah, and our our CFO has a lot of background and experience and expertise in this in this space in terms of revenue forecasting, right?

Yeah.

Other comments or questions.

Thank you.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

8.f28 and 8.f29 are approved.

Thank you.

Thank you.

8.f30 is committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget for the chief county assessment office.

Motion by member Clark, second by member Hewitt.

All right.

So the Chief County Assessors budget can be found on page 52.

Outside of an adjustment to salary reimbursement reflect budgeted salary increases, revenues from the C CAL are projected to remain flat.

Publications and legal notices have been reduced to reflect expected assessments per DM fees are budgeted to align with current activity and prior year actuals.

Overtime has been increased to handle anticipated assessment needs.

Sorry, one Criscal Ray intern during the summer.

And now I will pass it over to our chief assessor, Bob Glucker.

Good morning or good afternoon.

Bob Glukert here, Chief County Assessment Officer for Lake.

I really don't have anything to add to it to for it today.

I don't have any um I don't have any positions that have been empty for 12 months that need to be eliminated.

We don't have any cars to talk about.

I don't have any new uh software that I need to buy.

Um I think we run a lean clean operating machine down there on the seventh floor, and we'll continue to do that for tax year or budget year 2022.

So your head count remains at 29.

Yes.

Uh what's what's your retention in your office look like?

Are you able to keep it?

We are in much better position thanks to the um uh uh comp thank you, the compensation study, which um leveled those um numbers out for me.

You know, um I have more than enough applicants when I have a job that's empty now, which is terrific.

Great.

Thank you, member Maine.

Thank you.

Uh I have a question about the goal because it's here in the budget.

I was just wondering what review of open space evaluation means.

So the the property tax, it's something that I'll bring to committee down the road.

Okay, but essentially the property tax code gives us the ability to turn around and put a value per market.

It's a sub rate market basically on open space process properties.

An open space is defined as any property that's 10 acres or greater.

It can be multiple pins, um, so they as long as they're contiguous.

So, regardless of what the value is across the county, uh, from a market standpoint, the law says that the chief county assessment offers can set that value, and it's kind of at a sub rate.

Right now it's four thousand dollars uh a market uh in market per acre.

That's quite a deal.

Um it's been like that for years and years and years, and it's time to reevaluate, but this is a big issue in terms of it affects golf courses, it affects uh people with large tracts of land that need to be revalued.

So I've been putting together a formulation that I can support that new value moving moving forward.

Open space, just one other piece on that.

Open space, for example, if you have a piece on Rand Road, for example, that was 20 acres and they've suddenly developed it in, they've taken it out of open space and they develop it.

They're responsible for three years worth of prior real estate taxes, not going back on the open space, but at full market value.

So open space is something that I'd like to address while I'm still here.

It's a it's a kind of a touchy one.

I'll I'll throw my name on it and see how it goes.

Right.

Yeah, I like to follow up and um just also add that that would also impact one way or that would also impact the forest preserve.

No, because the forest preserve is tax exempt.

Uh except when they have grants and other agreements with the government, the um a lot of times there's in lieu of and they look at the valuation of that land as open space.

So they are they are dependent, or it does influence their budget, and when they go out for IGAs of the value of that land.

So I would just then suggest that you might want to reach out to them and have a better understanding of how value of open space impacts their budget.

We'll do Peters.

So is that 10 acres of vacant land?

Or if you have 10 acres and you have a home on it.

It can be 10 acres with a home on it, but there's a portion of that land that needs to be carved out for the home site itself.

So if your acreage is 10, but I've carved out an acre and a half for the home site.

There isn't enough acreage left.

There must be a minimum of 10 in that open space.

Okay, thank you.

Other comments or questions.

All right.

Well, we look forward to further updates on that.

I think that's an interesting topic.

I appreciate the conversation.

I see no other questions for you.

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

8.f30 is approved.

Thank you.

So members, I think we can do lunch in 25 minutes today.

30?

25.

25.

All right.

So we're at 12.

We'll be back here at 1235.

Yeah.

Members, it is 1235.

We are reconvening agenda items that were posted from day one of our joint budget hearings.

You're following agenda items.

We're going to go to 8.F10.

That's committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget for FICA.

Motion to approve on this item by member Bolitzik, second by member Hewitt.

Yeah.

Generally, this is just the budget that we have for how we transfer expenses to take care of the FICA fund.

It is increased slightly based upon the wage increase.

And glad to take any questions.

Any questions?

Both this fund and the next fund are actually just calculated based on the personnel numbers.

So and then the property tax revenue is you know figured out accordingly to those expenses.

And these are funds that are maintained managed by the finance department.

Yes.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

F 8.f10 is approved.

8.f11 is committee action approving the recommended fiscal year budget for IMRF.

Motion to approve by member Clark, second by member Hewitt.

Same explanation as the other one.

So happy to answer any questions.

There was a slight decrease in both the IMRF and the sworn amounts.

So this amount did go down comparatively to last year.

And the decreases based on like what's what's the what's the indicating factor on the on a decrease on the revenue?

On the revenue, um, it's really a property tax amount that meets the fund balance policy.

So we do only have to keep a fund balance of 12% in these funds because they are so reliable.

The only revenue stream is the property tax, which we historically get, um, and it's very stable, so it's just matched to the policy, the fund balance policy.

Got it.

Any other questions?

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

8.f11 is approved.

Next items will take together 8.f12, F13, F14, and 815.

Committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for 2015 a debt service fund for 2018 general obligation bonds debt service fund for 2019 general obligation refunding bonds debt service fund and for the 2022 general obligation bonds fund.

Motion on these four items by member Clark, second by member main comments or questions.

Only comment that I have is that these are just our debt service and they're budgeted based upon the debt service schedule.

And the revenue is a transfer.

All of our um general obligation bonds are alternate revenue source, so we do not use property tax for them.

Um the revenue stream is sales tax, county sales tax, and so that is why you're seeing the revenue as a transfer in from the general fund.

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed, those four items are approved.

8.f16 and 8.f17.

Committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for special service area 12, woods of Ivanhoe, and committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for special service area 17, Ivanhoe estates.

Motion on these items by Vice Chair Parak, second by member Hewitt.

Only comment I have here is these are based upon the assessments that are agreed to by the HOAs, and that those are the amounts on the revenue side and the expense side that are reflected here.

See no member main.

I I was just wondering, so that late initial oh I was just wondering about the line that was left in that item for one.

But you can get it to me later.

No, no delay needed that.

Okay.

We will do.

Thank you.

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed?

8.16 and 17 are approved.

So now we're going to go back to the items that are posted for action for today.

And there is a move in concert.

Well, we could go back and do the finance plan.

That was on yesterday's agenda, but it was also on today's agenda.

Um that was the original plan this morning to go from facilities to finance.

Okay.

So we did facilities.

So we're on 8.F19 committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for finance.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Parek, second by member Clark.

Hello.

Finances budget can be found on page 95.

So outside of standard budgeted wage increases for Mayor and Cola.

Finances budget also includes funding for the grant coordinator NPR.

And with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to our CEO Regina, our CFO.

I'm sorry, Regina.

Good afternoon, Regina Tuzak, Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Chair Frank and members of the committee to present the finance budget to you.

I want to thank the members of the budget team, Michael, V and Nick, who are all part of the finance staff, and their head count is included in the numbers herein.

And I certainly want to also thank the county administrator Sutton for her leadership, deep thought and oversight of the budget team putting this big budget puzzle together and coming up with the product that we have in front of you.

So I am very excited and appreciate the new program request that is included in the draft budget for grant coordinator.

This position is going to serve many purposes.

Yeah, if you could bring up the slides, that would be awesome.

Great.

Okay, so grant coordinator for the finance department.

I do want to remind everybody that the single audit, which we filed in August, shows that we had 77 million of federal grant expenditures and about 9 million of state expenditures.

So that's a that's a pretty hefty number.

If we can go through the slides here.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Maybe what am I?

Okay, I think it's working now, right?

Should be just this one here.

That's what I was that's what I was doing.

Okay.

I think give it a second or two.

All right.

And whatever you do is don't hold it down.

Okay.

Great.

So a description of this grant coordinator.

Uh, there's a lot of services that the grant coordinator is going to provide to uh the finance department.

I say the finance department, but really the services are gonna be for uh the the county as a whole.

They're gonna assist with grant writing, um, assist with applications as needed, um, conduct compliance and reporting, certainly help with our countywide annual report, which we call the single audit, uh, provide some training and then uh assist with some internal audits of grant programs.

Gina, can I ask you to just go back to the last one and your point about all departments?

So is there any limitation on it?

Because I can see this person quickly becoming in high demand across the county, right?

So the I mean, are we including the health department and SMC and the sheriff's office?

Are we are we there to support everybody with this position?

We we are there to support everybody.

Um the intention is that the staff within the department level certainly has uh a lot of expertise with going after uh obtaining grants, doing whatever they can to, of course, reduce the reliance on property tax revenues.

So at this time it's estimated that all that staff will stay in place, and that that this coordinator is gonna kind of work with those um individuals and the departments at a kind of a centralized level to to really assist them.

Um they would not be a substitute for the expertise that is already in place at the departments.

Um so as I just as I just mentioned, the the departments they do a lot of great work to um go after grants and reduce the reliance on property tax funds.

They're great with with program content, um, but sometimes they're a little bit less familiar with compliance and all the reporting requirements.

We have had audit findings in this area, and whenever there's an audit finding, of course, it puts all of Lake County um at risk because that that uh compliance issue, that audit issue is gonna go into the consolidated audit report on the county as a whole.

Um, and sometimes the grant reporting requirements can be complicated.

Um, they can be overwhelming, especially if you're talking financial information in some type of in some type of reporting mechanism back to the grantor.

Um, currently there is not a centralized countywide grant training or support for departments.

Um, and with the structure that we have right now, when the audit readiness is put together, a lot of times the accounting staff are kind of chasing information, trying to get everything that they can in the best way possible, reaching out to departments to get it all put together for uh the audit purposes and for reporting.

And sometimes those efforts um are too late, or something isn't identified until until after the fact.

So this grant coordinator uh is estimated would start on on February 1st.

And we've already got the six month goals up there.

They would have two countywide training education events, they would have department grant meetings.

Um, we would certainly hope that within six months, we would have no audit related findings for the fiscal year 2025 audit.

That that of course is a goal.

Um, and then the 12-month goal, we had four trainings and five departmental uh grant meetings uh andor compliance check.

So we've already got a nice workbook prepared for this coordinator to hit the ground running with an expected start date of February one.

Alternatives, if we do nothing, well, we just continue as we are.

There's no centralized management of this grant process.

Um, there wouldn't be an expert in the accounting group that can assist departments as needed with respect to grant reporting, compliance.

Um I think one of the unknowns, of course, and uh Chair Frank brought up the it would be great if we have a lot of departments that are seeking our services, but I think there's also resistance, there's probably going to be some resistance that we know what we're doing, we've done this for a while, we're good.

So I think it's gonna be a give and take.

Some that will welcome our assistance and some that um maybe a little bit hesitant to change and a little bit hesitant to have somebody um you know poking under the covers a little bit.

And just a summary of the performance metrics on what we are expecting with this coordinator position.

So hopefully that's a good summary of what the grant coordinator will be providing to the finance department with this new program request.

Thank you.

I really appreciate this being brought forward.

I see it has been approved.

Uh I perhaps you touched on it, but I don't know that I saw it.

If there are errors in that compliance, right, that we can't fit after the fact, right?

If grants are being written and something has gone wrong, the onus falls on the county to then um we have to pay that money back, right?

So that money's got to come from somewhere if I understand that correctly.

Is that is that right?

If if the grant compliance isn't done correctly, that that is that is kind of a scenario that is possible.

That if the if the grant reporting isn't accurate, and if for some reason there are offsetting revenues that haven't been recognized with the compliance, it is possible that there would be funds that would have to be paid back.

That is that is possible.

Okay, thank you.

I I fully support it.

I think it's a great idea.

Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, I I I do too.

I think that I've heard from many departments sort of like off-handedly, yeah, we're a little nervous to apply for grants because of worrying about not complying, and just because they don't know how to do it.

And so I think even just having these training programs, I mean, that could exponentially add to more grants being applied for and doing so.

I'm I feel like this is really effective use of dollars.

And I'm I'm really excited.

I my only concern is kind of what Jared Frank said is they might be too much in demand.

So, but looking at your slides, I see that they'll be more over they're not gonna just do grants for people, correct?

They're going to more oversee it, give training and like support more.

That's that's correct.

This position is not intended to be somebody who is applying for grants by his or herself, more support to those that are completing the applications, especially with financial information that might be needed as part of the application process.

Oh, terrific.

Thank you.

Okay, so um that is the new program request with regards to the rest of the budget.

Uh very simple.

So of our 2.9 million of estimated expenses, 97% is personnel and benefits.

Finance is really all people and services.

And that is reflected in the budget.

I think of the remaining 3%.

We have um about a quarter for training.

Our staff, especially in the finance area, we need to make sure that we're up on all of the latest changes and the accounting standards and reporting requirements.

Our staff has spent a significant amount of time this year with the workday implementation project and the training that we would we'd hope to accomplish.

Uh haven't we haven't been able to get as much in as we'd like.

And so we do have a nice budget for next year, and hoping that our staff can utilize that to refresh their skills and um do whatever they can to uh make up for any any trading that was not able to be received in this year with the with the workday project.

So that concludes my prepared remarks, but I'm happy to take any other questions that you might have.

I just want to take the opportunity to thank you and your team and the entire department for all the work that went into preparing our budget this year.

Thank you.

And again, once again, thank you very much.

Char This might be the wrong department.

Inspector General, we had talked for years about trying to find someone we've often tried.

I just not sure what that would be.

It was at the end of yesterday.

It is under county administration, but it is an independent um division because it has to have that independence.

Um, but we did present it at the end of yesterday's session under county administration.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

No other comments.

Uh 8.f19.

All in favor, please say aye.

Any opposed item is approved.

Um, unless we are missing something, I think all we have left is to revisit the NPRs and carry over discussion item from yesterday.

I am missing something.

Capital improvement.

Thank you.

F 31.

Thank you.

8.f31.

For the right agenda as expired.

There it is.

Committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for capital projects, the capital improvement program.

Motion to approve by member Clark, second by member Hewitt.

Good afternoon.

You can find the budget for the capital improvement program starting on page 302.

I will note another page while you turn.

If you want to see a detailed summary of projects, that is on page 304.

And you can see the projects by category.

So yes.

304.

There are two 302s.

Yeah, we we caught it after delivery.

So you can blame that.

Like a lot of other things, you can blame that one on me.

So I'm sorry.

Um, so if you go to page 304, the one that is numbered 304, um, there is the listing of projects.

Uh so you can see the facility maintenance projects at the top, and I believe Director Carr is here to speak to those.

Technology capital projects are down below, and uh CIO blending is online prepared to speak to those, and then there's some other projects.

One of the things I wanted to note to just echo from the opening presentation is that the budget poly the finance policies that speak to budget preparation talk about that being the facility maintenance being covered by the amount of the transfer.

So the amount of our transfers, you can see if you look at the bottom uh of page 304, the annual operating contribution to capital is 7.1 million.

Uh the total of recommended funding is 7.8 million with 678,000 coming out of fund balance.

So while there is a little coming out of fund balance, what's great is it's almost the entirety of it is covered by the transfer.

So thankfully we were able to budget and get to that point.

I will pause there in case there are any questions or in case the county administrator has any comments.

I appreciate you pointing out the fund balance and the funding sources here.

And uh this complete list has really detailed, and I think we're familiar with all of these.

Vice Chair.

Yeah, I just had a question.

You recall earlier, I had brought up the the potential uh clerk Vega had put in 2.4 million for new program for the election equipment.

Could we consider that capital in a way?

It would it would come out of this funds, it would come out of this fund, but it couldn't.

So it would come out of this fund, but it would still be.

So why isn't it listed here?

I guess.

It's it was not recommended.

We are going to wait until it gets certified for you by the state.

And then once it for sure is certified, then we would bring it forward as an emergency appropriation.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

And to follow up on that question, the funding source for that when you recommend it, if you did, would be from uh an allocation from the capital fund.

Yes.

Okay.

It would also come out of that fund balance.

Remember me.

Yeah.

That was one of my questions.

Um, and so what is the current fund balance of the CIP?

And do we have a policy on CIP fund balance?

Um so if you look on page 407 in the middle of the page, long-term capital currently has a balance of 44 million, 423096 at the end of fiscal year 24.

I'm sorry, I had to get to that page.

Could you say 407?

I'm up at the top.

Um there's a line called long-term capital.

I went to 307 instead.

So 407, page 407, and then we're up at the top in the box that's called property tax funds.

And under committed funds, the first line item is long-term capital.

Got it with a balance of 40 point four.

So again, keep in mind that we were hoping to be able to cash fund the multi-use building, which is why we've been um trying to build this up.

But obviously, um, given the design, the staging of that project, we still feel confident um that obviously when we're making these proactive transfers uh from the operating budget that we would still be able to handle the um voting machine should it come to fruition.

So that's the first part.

And then my second question was do we then or because of the nature of how the monies are used, do we have a a fund balance policy for this?

Sorry on the CIP.

It there's a policy on how it can be used.

It can only be used on one-time projects and not on ongoing operational items.

Um page 366 is our fund balance reserve policy, and specifically um section 5.5 um states how they can be used, economic downturn, emergency unanticipated expenditure requirements, response and recovery from a pandemic liability claims in excess of the risk reserves, and um someplace else it says that it can only be used.

So if I may, that's the use.

I'm less concerned about the use.

It is the policy as to how much okay we can have in that because a lot of times, you know, a fund it'll say, hey, 30% of yearly operating or something like this with CIP, it's not operating that.

How much money can we accumulate or how far down would we spend the CIP?

I I do fully understand and appreciate the question.

We could do it later.

But I'm not sure it fully applies to CIP because that was my question.

That's what I said.

You know, all our our policy guidance in here is at 29% in average for operating funds.

Yes.

Because of our we have, you know, we have operating expenses and our CIP spend goes up and down.

And that's what I said.

I said perhaps it doesn't apply because it's CIP and not operating, but still, it seems to me, doesn't have to be now that we should have a sense like how big would you allow the CIP budget to get?

So that could be a conversation for another time, not now.

I'm fine with that, but it seems to me that we should have that conversation.

How much would we ever hold in that fund?

We can do that later, not part of now.

Thank you.

Chair Frank, can I get the part please?

That just brings up a question for me.

Is that right now we we have the CIP it um dipping in at $678,000, right?

That's the as stated in the current plan.

That's the total list of right, based on the total list, we would dip into it.

But we could dip in another 2.4 million potentially and pay for the equipment without necessarily having to put it to allow to fund other new program requests.

Right.

Well so the fund balance is 44 that that the total CIP is the 600 something right.

Right.

So but you could take out another 2.4 million potentially out of that 44 million and pay for the the equipment and not necessarily have an increase in property tax or or eliminate other new funding requests.

I think that's the what the administrator said the plan is yes.

Oh yeah.

No but I'm saying you could we could fund that and other things potentially that's what she said.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah and and we do um come to you with this capital plan it it sounds like we need to do it again very soon.

We'll do that.

Thank you.

We I mean obviously what we're trying to get to is not allowing you to approve the design of anything unless we can fully fund it or know how we're going to fully you know fund it, whether it has to be debt service or whatever.

So um director Carrar has presented that in the past and um we will gladly revisit it and refresh it based on um this budget cycle thank you Shahar it's fine.

Anything else on CIP the section I was looking for was 5.9 which does state in the fund balance policy that um it could only be used for future capital and technology projects or other one time expenditures.

So the voting machine does um apply to the use that's um outlined in the fund balance policy.

The parking controls is that for now or are we doing that at a different committee meeting because it was a bigger discussion and does it need to be taken out right now then or what are we doing?

So the administrator's recommended budget has it at 7500 and that is for which piece because I think because it doesn't meet what is even required with the new with the new quote right so shouldn't we just take it out if we're going to talk about it another time yeah no I would recommend removing the parking garage controls on page 304 to reduce the amount under facility maintenance and enhancements and we will come back um with that after it's been fully baked did you want to make that motion I'll make that motion motion by member Bolitsikond by member main further comments questions discussion on that item okay motion to remove the 7500 under parking controls uh to have a future discussion after estimates and other pieces are revisited all in favor please say aye any opposed the motion is approved any further comments or questions on the CIP all in favor on the CIP as amended say aye aye any opposed item is approved have we hit all the items except for NPRs and budget scenarios.

Yeah we have yes we are on eight point F32 right okay so this is discussion not an action item um I want to just set the stage for the discussion here we had a few items that we carried over from yesterday um specifically I think we approved several of the budgets as recommended and said we would we would consider further action there was consensus from L and J on some of the um PRs from the state's attorney um but but no action and I want to remind members that FNA is scheduled to meet next Thursday October 30th and so I think what we want to do now is make recommendations to uh prepare amendments so that we don't have to do an amendment right now but we want to talk about any changes we want to make in terms of additional spending and what those funding impacts might be and so that uh we're giving county administration time to prepare that and revisit uh next Thursday does that align with your expectations great may I um give a little bit of a background so um I I think you've seen some of the presentations that we did this year that was what they needed to prepare to present to their peers and we've described that um process by which they all voted we did have um each of the departments had to designate somebody that could commit to sitting there all day long.

So as long as the department had someone that sat there through all of the uh presentations, they were able to vote.

And so there were 13 submissions.

And by voting, what we mean is that you can see that we received a lot of newer program requests.

And what we asked each of the voters to do is if they only had $2 million, which ones would they include in the $2 million?

So there wasn't really a ranking or anything.

It was more what would you include?

Um they were given the same criteria that we put out and that helped the county administrator to decide which ones should be funded.

There has to be an alignment with the strategic plan and ability to execute within the fiscal year and actually hit the key performance indicators.

You can see for the ones that we did flip all the way through all those slides, they did have to commit to actual goals that we'd be able to measure to make sure that they were having the intended impact.

Um we asked them to consider the highest level of need or um status of mandatory versus want or discretionary.

Uh we asked uh about viable alternatives.

If there is another way to actually execute the program, you know, what is that other viable alternative?

And then what is the risk to Lake County?

So these are all the things that um they're asked to consider before they even put them through, as well as what uh the team was asked to kind of um submit.

So we did have them outline the issue and the problem.

We did have them submit viable budgets, and we did ask for them to present not just one year, but also a five-year outlook because it's absolutely critical to the point that member Maine has raised.

Um, you know, it's much easier to fit in the ones that are just one-time expenses, but you can't just choose things that have a five-year impact without building that into our long-term plan.

Um, and then as I mentioned, they had to establish KPIs because we do want to be able to follow up with them over a one to three year period and make sure that it actually was uh a viable new program request.

So um I'm happy to go through how and why uh each NPR ended up in each section on this thing, but I can tell you that um part of the reason why I wanted to do that collaborative peer group was because this is a really hard exercise, and I wanted everyone to hear the amazing work that all of these departments are doing and how they want to expand their services and operations and um you know experience the the difficulty in prioritizing these and and figuring it out.

So um they did share in that pain.

I do want to share with you that a majority of the ones that were funded received more than 10 of the votes.

Um so the range for the recommended ones went from two all the way up to 11.

So out of 13 votes, the most that any of in all honesty, there was one that was negative, and so everyone voted for that because then they got 2 million 51,000 instead of two million.

So unfortunately, we weren't able to fund that one because the funding source currently that was offsetting it is actually capital and it would have become a general fund funded position.

Um, but that being said, I just wanted to share with you that as the county administrator, what I take into account is the fact that people are very expensive and have a very growing impact on our budget on an ongoing basis.

So it's important to limit the number of people that we grow on an annual basis to what we can sustainably afford based on what we're seeing in terms of our revenue growth.

So as you contemplate what you've heard over the last day and a half, I do encourage you to understand that if we add more people in, I will likely change my recommendations and probably have to um you know take some other people out because we really don't want to continually add too many people or else it's just not sustainable long term.

Thank you.

That's all I want to do.

I really want to commend you for that uh change in process and thank you for reminding us about it.

Um, during these meetings, you're the one who takes the slings and arrows for things that people say they need and and and and and they do uh, but it's about prioritization.

And I think bringing other members of your leadership team into the process is a really smart innovation.

So uh really uh thank you for reminding us about that.

Members, what I'd like to do is if you have something specific from that list that you want to revisit, then we could talk about it.

But we also have a state's attorney here, and I know that there were a lot of unanswered questions about some of the requests that their office made yesterday.

So I would like to have a chance to dig into that and get some clarity on what that request is, so we can make some decisions about what we want to recommend.

If that's okay, we can proceed with that, unless there's other items that members need to dig into as well.

Member Casm's quick question about process.

Um Patrice, so when people um after people voted, were the all the individuals involved and all the departments involved able to see the results of the voting or no.

Okay.

No, we did have some departments that chose not to participate just because they didn't feel like that was a good idea to, you know, um share their allegiances to certain departments.

And so we did keep it anonymous this year.

We did not share how departments voted, nor did I share the number of votes that they received because I did hold and they knew this.

I did hold ultimate discretion at the end.

Um, you know, to put whatever I felt was uh in most alignment with our NPR NPR goals forward.

So I I didn't want to share the results and um open myself to that scrutiny because I I did feel like this is ultimately my responsibility, and I will defend uh what we ended up putting forward.

Okay.

Member of Litzik.

Thanks.

As we discuss, it will help me to know uh how I think about this.

Can you tell me in the the section considered for the second quarter 2026?

How will that be budgeted?

I don't know.

Yeah, it it does put us in a conundrum.

Um a lot of those were grant funded scenarios.

And so my conundrum is that by policy, our policy states that when a grant goes away, the operations cease and the people that were a part of that policy would go away.

So normally that is what would happen.

And I just wanted to have another touch point with the county board um before that was about to happen.

Uh, based on the timing that I thought was the case at the last moment when I had met with um each of these departments.

I thought that the second quarter of the spring, the second quarter of 26 would be sufficient.

And then I would need to hear from the county board whether they wanted to try and fit this in.

Um it it's very important for you to understand that for all of these that were previously grant funded.

If we are going to work them into the operational budget, I do need to cut something else on the expense side, or we have to find additional revenue.

We do have a contingency that is above the policy at this time, so we can reduce the contingency down to the policy allowed amount.

Um, but I wanted to at least leave that with a sufficient buffer given the uncertainty that we're heading into with the economy as well as um tariffs and federal the instability of federal funding right now.

So I was trying to keep the contingency a little bit higher than the minimum of the range.

Um, but those would be the funding sources that we would tap into uh if you were to decide that some of those things should be funded.

Okay, thank you.

Remain.

Thank you for that great explanation.

I I just want to throw a general cautionary thought out there is that it is likely that other um looking at big departments such as the health department may lose other grants and people associated with that.

So if we make these decisions now, it could preclude two things.

One, it could preclude other um changes in the future, and also importantly, it then sets the stage for saying, Hey, you've changed the policy, you change the policy for them, health and safety.

We're also about health and safety, change the policy for us.

So that makes me just in general cautious about, especially at this time, doing some essentially one-off changes of our policy.

Thank you.

Okay, so if it's okay with members, I'd like to ask the state's attorney uh to come up and add some clarity to the questions that we had from yesterday, so we understand the nature of the requests and the uh exact impact.

Because admittedly, I didn't quite understand the dollar numbers myself yesterday.

We are making, we are officially asking for uh one year funding.

I thought Chair Frank made a good point yesterday when he commented about that it's very hard to assume that we are going to be reimbursed, make these assumptions about Springfield.

Uh today, I've been working uh to see what we can learn about Springfield.

We will keep working on that.

Um, I think I don't I don't think there would ever be an issue with a reimbursement, but I don't think you should bank on it, right?

But reserves are, you know, reserves are uh are still something to think about in that context.

Um we are asking for the full year of funding.

We did pair it down.

Uh we did pair it down a little bit more even from even from uh our NPR request.

We did submit a one-year budget to Administrator Sutton and to everyone else.

That's even been pared down uh more.

Um, and so the final request is for one year for one year of funding, uh, which comes out to the 1.8 million dollar uh 1.877 uh number.

We think that that we think that that amount, that's the one year number.

So um I think there may have been a request for the five months.

I don't think we should assume at this point that there will be the Springfield budgeting.

Um, and here's what I would propose.

And I will not belabor this.

I've heard this board and this committee, many members talk about being the leader in a lot of topics.

Digital, technology, environmental.

I've heard a lot about being the leader in those areas.

That sort of flows off of many of your speeches.

It's good.

I agree with it.

We should commit ourselves, as we have done in our strategic plan to being a leader in prevention.

What I would propose is that the similar to how I believe administrator Sutton referred to having a fund that is always planned out for your future projects.

I'm not going to propose a fund, by the way.

Um, having a plan that is you the amount of planning and detail that I hear about when it comes to capital improvement is something that we have to commit to safety.

I believe, we all believe the state's attorney's office believes that when we prevent crime, we save dollars.

I think your staff should analyze that proposition.

I think if your staff, and I'm not, but this is there's no edge here.

If your staff is not uh is not sure when I send in a report that says, look, the John Hopkins University says we save money.

Oh, look, uh, the Department of Justice says you save the two million dollars for every homicide.

That's the estimate.

Or 700,000 for every non-fatal shooting.

Um, we think it's an average of 127,000 per murderer just being confined in the jail.

I hear fantastic questions from this group about how we save money in our jail.

Assign a staffer to it.

Assign a staffer to analyze the cost savings that come to taxpayers.

Assign your staff to analyze that the same way you analyze capital improvement plans.

Your detailed planning for capital projects is to be deeply commended.

And it should apply to safety projects as well.

My proposal, my proposal.

Yeah, go ahead.

That's my proposal.

Okay, it's an excellent point.

And and you made a point about uh cost savings in other areas, right?

And and I think that's a valid point as well.

When you reduce violence, you really use hospitalizations, you reduce, you know, incarceration dispatches from emergency service, all those things are costing.

Or coroner pet corn.

I think it's a great idea to try and quantify that.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

What I want to focus in on is the state budget piece.

Because the email you sent to us indicates that it was in the state budget, which was signed, approved by the General Assembly and signed into law.

And it's just one of these things where it's not funded or not dispersed yet.

What department, what agency is that with?

I believe it's with the Department of Human Services.

Department of Human Services.

Okay.

And if it were dispersed today, the entire, what is it, 1.5 from the state or come today?

Yes.

Would that be a full year funding?

No.

No.

No, it would cover, we're not allowed to, we're not even allowed to save the money.

I I don't know.

I don't know how they, I don't know how government budgets work in Iceland.

In Illinois, we are not allowed to bank that money and plan on it later.

We don't have a safety improvement fund.

That money, it has to be spent by June 30th.

If it's not spent, it's not spent.

So I could never fund with um unless until we got a dedicated taxing stream.00% of whatever, whether it's ammunition or casinos, until we had a permanent funding stream like that, we will never be able to strategically plan in this space based on legislative money because it ends on June 30th.

By the way, Chair, I don't have it on October 22nd.

How do I hire people or fund people and say I've got you till June 30th?

So I'm only commenting, I'm only commenting that I could not.

That's why your the original NPR asked from us for year one was half of a year.

If anyone's confused about like what is he really asking for, if the NPR had been funded, it would have been at one half of the 1.8 million.

Okay, we actually cut two positions.

So what I'm saying is when we made the original year one request, it was for six six months.

I wish I had a visual depiction for you.

It's for six months on the other end of June 30th.

That's when I needed your money, because the state legislature will only let me spend until June 30th.

Now I need more county money because I don't have any money until October 22nd.

And I don't think we, and I don't feel like waiting until January 1st, now until June 30th, I would still need six months of your funding.

I would need six months of your funding no matter what.

Now, respectful respectful to the county administrative process, even that six months was not funded.

But it is difficult for me to sit here and think about vacancy savings, reserve policies, and deep planning on capital improvement and not make that point to y'all.

It's very hard for me not to do that, Chair.

I appreciate it.

So it's a good point.

Um I'm really supportive of the program, the goals, and the outcomes.

Absolutely.

But to sit here at this point in our budget process and say we're gonna all of a sudden fully fund G VPI at almost two million dollars, whereas we haven't fully vetted that as something that we're going to fully fund as a county in the past, it's it's a big leap for us to make in our budget process.

And I understand there was the conversation with L and J members yesterday, but I think it needs that's a bigger conversation.

And my focus and my interest, and I'll hear from members in a minute, uh, would be to make sure that the program is not disrupted.

So I'm I'm interested in the six-month piece.

I think it would be really difficult for us to do more than that.

And it's already gonna be a challenge for us to manage it.

But I that's that's where that's where I'm at.

I'd like to hear from members uh their thoughts on the request.

Member Peters.

So if we do the six months, are you gonna have to eliminate any programs?

I'd like to better understand if this is a six-month stop gap, and then you feel confident that you're gonna be able to find other funding in the future, or are you asking for this to become county funded?

We would ask this to be county funded with the caveat, and just so all the members understand, we and Chair don't mean a quibble.

We did, I mean, we have presented all of this.

It's we're not presenting this between the Tuesday and a Wednesday.

We did present this at the NPR process that the administrator described, and it has been vetted since that July process.

So this is not a last minute thing.

Uh, that full NPR process describes a half year this year with the assumption that we had the legislative money, and then a phase down regarding the peacemakers, uh, with the hope that we would have other funding streams.

There's all types of great discussions in in Springfield.

So uh administrator Sutton, to answer your question, because of the way the Springfield funding has played out, so everybody understands the ask was from June 30th to December of 2026 because I have no legislative funding.