I call the meeting to order this afternoon.

Today is Tuesday, February the 24th, 2026.

And uh committee meeting to order time at 1 p.m.

Okay.

May we stand for the pledge, please.

My plague is the United States of America.

Which it stands.

Indivisible with liberty and okay.

May I have a roll call, please?

Yes.

Here.

Chair Cunningham?

Here.

Member Dan Forth is absent.

Member Hewitt is absent.

Member Kyle's absent.

Ex official member Hart.

I am here.

And uh Member Hewitt was uh absent with prior notice.

Yeah, so thank you.

If there's an agenda to the gender.

Okay.

Any public comment?

Chair remarks.

We just want to go in prayer for our um Reverend Jesse Jackson, who I'm a part of that agency that I'm the president for Lake County out here from that.

So uh talks to the unregular.

And then we just want to uplift tomorrow's visitation.

Wednesday and Thursday is visitation.

Right, it's served, but it's private.

It's not open to the public.

So uh we sent uh we sent a proclamation, Chair Hyde and I from the county board, the county as a whole to the family.

And uh, and that we that's in a letter down.

So uh they appreciate that.

I know I know the family real well.

So okay, I just wanted that's the chair remarks on that.

Okay, happy to be back from being sick.

I was a sick person.

That pneumonia is no joke.

You have to watch it because it's tricky.

You think you're okay and you ain't okay.

So uh so much for that.

That's un any unfinished business.

No unfinished business.

New business.

I need a motion to for the consent agenda 8.1.

That's the that's the uh the minutes.

Motion by member campus.

Second, second by chair Hart, all in favor.

Aye, as having no nose.

Okay, regular agenda eight point two, and this is the fountain CEO Carter Development Group, Dr.

Adrian Carter.

He's remote.

He has a presentation and discussion on the belonging at work survey.

Okay, Dr.

Carter is on.

Hello, how you doing.

Dr.

Carter.

Yes, I'm here.

Just get into the mute button.

How are you doing?

Uh, Dr.

Cunningham, it's good to see you.

Oh, yes, it's good to see me too.

I heard you say that earlier.

Happy for you on today with us.

Well, thank you for having us.

Um, hello, and uh good afternoon to everyone.

Um, to to yourself, uh, to uh uh Ruth Ann, also to you, Lacey, um, and to Patrice.

Um, thank you for the opportunity to share, give you an update on how the work is coming along.

Everything is coming along well, and we uh the timing is very good.

We just finished the employee engagement organizational assessment.

And uh, you know, part of the process has been uh with working with Ruth Ann, who's been um an amazing counterpart in this work, has just uh fine-tuning things in way to make sure that um language is not politically charged, but still allows us to be effective in the work that we're doing, and I think that um collectively so far everyone has done an amazing job at making sure that the work is getting done.

I know that you have a copy of the presentation, and I can I don't know, will I be sharing on my screen or will you all be bringing it up?

Here we go.

And we are.

Thank you.

Awesome.

On the next slide, you'll see that the when I submitted this update, it was as of February 16th.

However, the survey closed on the 20th.

And as of the 20th, we have a 55% participation rate.

And in the survey, uh we sought to understand staff's perspective, their experiences related to the work, and that covered a series of topics or categories that we're gonna go through so that you all can see what that looks like.

We're the number of 55% is a good number.

We're over 50%.

It would uh it would be nice to see it slightly higher, yeah, especially at 60 or 65%.

And once we go through the data, which um, like I mentioned, we it just ended this past Friday, which means that we're just now going get into the analysis part, which we're actually gonna start reviewing it next week.

Um, I'm going to have a follow-up conversation with Ruth Ann about some next steps to see if we want to try and get the percentage up some more or if we're satisfied with what with where we are.

But that's where we are, and and this is a very good place to be at 55%.

On the next slide, you'll see where we talk about what the focus areas are.

And there are several of them.

So we looked at the areas of inclusion, and what I mean by these focus areas is that there are questions specific to these categories throughout the survey.

Uh I don't want to misspeak, but I know we had uh more than 50 questions on the survey, and probably a slightly a little bit more when you include all the demographic questions as well.

Those categories included inclusion.

We talked about, uh we asked staff about training, how do they feel about their skill development in the workplace?

What does communication look like?

Uh, clarity, what the messaging is in the communication, community engagement, um, how are they connecting with the community throughout the workplace?

And in the next slide, you'll see that the categories continue on to look at psychological safety, which is a matter of what communication and trust looks like in staff's ability to share openly and not feel that they're being uh that they're being penalized for sharing.

What does workplace well-being look like as well?

Um, what also uh their opportunities for advancement in the organization, how um whether they're programs, what does communication around advancement opportunities look like?

Also, we looked at readiness for change, which are questions that say when or as the organization develop initiatives to improve what the employee engagement and the employee experience looks like across the board.

Uh, would you support those type of initiatives?

And then we also just look at the overall work environment, uh, organizational culture as it relates to the workplace in its entirety.

Some of the questions that we'll see on the next slide shows us are just examples of the questions and what the data looks like.

And we now have a more updated version of this since February 20th, but at the time that we put this together, when we ask folks, for example, are uh the question Lake County values me as an employee, we can see that 24% strongly agreed, 35% somewhat agreed, but then we also look at 18% and another 18% who are in the disagreement category.

So when we look at that, that's around 36%.

Then we have another 4% that are saying don't know.

Now, when we begin to do our analysis, what we're going to do is uh work to understand what the trends are around these types of questions.

If 40%, and by the way, we look at don't know as a no, right?

If a person can't say I do feel valued definitively, then we just basically opt to look at that as they do not.

That means we're looking at around 40% of the organization who are saying that they don't feel valued as an employee.

When we get to the focus groups, that's when we'll be able to dive into those conversations with staff and say, hey, tell me more about what's making you not feel valued.

But we'll break this data down and make sense of it and then put that report together.

Another example of the questions is on the next slide would be that Lake County's stated values are reflected in our daily workplace culture.

And what you find there are 23% who currently agree or who agreed at the point time this was this was updated or uploaded, and then you have 40% or 41% who somewhat agree.

So that that gives us around 64% who are in agreement, but then that leaves another 36% who are not.

And what you find there is another conversation that we'll want to investigate more.

Um we'll want to investigate more when we get to the focus group part.

Because what this means is it's just really if they don't, then why?

And what would it look like for the values to be reflected?

And that may be something simple, or it may speak to something that is deeper in in context to the organization, and we'll explore that a little bit more.

I just want to take the time as as I'm before I go to the next part of the presentation.

And and uh Dr.

Cunningham, um, as the chair of this committee and the and the vice chair of the board, just thank you for the opportunity to continue to do this work.

Um, thank you for the opportunity to um for you, you know, considering how instrumental you are in championing these type of conversations and causes.

I just want to thank you for your leadership and and the opportunity for us to further the work through the next steps with the focus groups and the report and putting together a plan uh for Lake County, which um which I know that you'll also be instrumental in giving us your feedback along with this committee.

Thank you.

What is um in to further the process and and have the with these conversations around leadership and and the engagement in the workforce?

We have a training that will be taking place, I believe it's gonna be on April 10th.

Did I get that correct?

Uh 14th.

14th.

April 19th.

The 14th.

The 14th, okay.

It's the 14th.

And that's going to take place on uh uh with your government leaders.

And we want to talk about uh we're gonna specifically look around the topic of um psychological safety and what it means to be inclusive and to build trust in the work as government leaders.

And we're gonna explore some topics um across the board that's going to uh help leaders understand how to how to define inclusion and belonging, how to define psychological safety, uh what is the being and doing of psychological safety?

And that's on the next slide when we look at what's going to be in the agenda.

We'll we'll see that uh let me see if you go back one for me.

Oh, okay, you don't have that slide.

All right.

Uh well, we'll also look at identity and safety, communication in psychological safety and how uh practicing the LSM model, which is a framework that we'll also introduce um to the to your leaders there at the county.

We'll on the next slide you'll see the definition for uh for psychological safety for government leaders, which means to create a culture where employees, residents, and community stakeholders can participate in the notice that part is bold in the inclusive community building process.

Importantly, without fear of retaliation, embarrassment or political punishment.

So what does it mean to be holistic really in a mindset and an ethos that is toward inclusive community building?

We're gonna talk about those type of matters.

And when we talk about community inclusive community building on on the next slide, we define that as the ability to speak openly, to question decisions respectfully, um, to report concerns, to admit mistakes, uh, but to do that in a way that is not punitive, but is always toward solving, uh resolving and advancing the community that you all have for the folks that you all serve, whether that's in the workforce or in the community at large.

So that training will be taking place on the 14th.

And that's a brief overview of where we are so far in the project, and I'll open the floor if there are any questions for us to elaborate on any part of this.

Thank you.

And thank you so much for this.

This is uh really interesting.

And I'm um it'll be also really good to get sort of that information as you drill down into it when you're working in smaller teams.

Do you have a sense?

I mean, it's important that all of this information is anonymous.

Um, while at the same time, are you able to sort of discern what departments how they answered, or is it um did you not go down to that level of detail?

Let me bring up um a copy of the survey data here, which was just as recent of as if yesterday that we printed that information, or or just downloaded the document.

I'm opening up on my computer here.

And in the demographic area, I just want to check to see if we asked about departments, which I believe we did.

Work location, tenure.

Even the work location might be helpful.

And as did we go out to the health department with this, or we did not, right?

Because maybe they do their own.

We did not.

At first, the the conversation was to include them, but they've done their own and uh we didn't want to have fatigue.

Right.

Yeah, there's no reason to ask twice.

Okay.

Yeah, thank you.

I think even location is helpful and probably adds to the anonymity.

You know, like you go down to department, and then that gets a little dicey for people, right?

But if you've got location, there's so many departments that work in Waukegan, and then you know, multiple departments out in Libertyville.

So if you even have that, but if it's not separated out, I just think that would be interesting, right?

Um, to get an understanding of maybe where concerns are and where we can perhaps do um, you know, more support, right?

For um maybe training of managers, things like that.

We're depth, we we will um we will disaggregate the information and um and then make recommendations around that.

I'm looking trying to peruse the document to see if uh we ask specifically where the departments are.

Um, but but we have a lot of questions that ask individuals about what is the work climate within their department.

I just want to double check to see if we ask for specific locations.

Yeah.

But to your point, nonetheless, as a group.

It's okay.

I don't want to if that's not part of your presentation, that's fine.

But it sounds like you guys have have asked that question.

You'll be diving into that a little bit more to get a sense.

Like I'm sure just like with any organization, certain sectors have uh, you know, a certain type of culture or whatever, than others, you know, and sometimes it can even come down to the type of work that they do can play a part in that.

So um anyway, I just thought that would be interesting.

And then I just had a follow-up, Chair.

Uh I thought it was, and it's not a huge difference, right?

It's only four percent.

One is, you know, do they care about me as an employee?

And I would agree with you, the I don't know, that's kind of a no.

Um, so that was at 40%.

And then does our company really or the our workplace really reflect our values and our culture?

That was interesting that the no was 36%.

So they're like, okay, we've got these, you know, we have values about who we are.

Um, and again, it's only four percent.

Uh, but it's interesting that those aren't, you know, one is better than the other, I guess.

Well, well, to your point, but at this juncture, when you look at that data, if it's if someone is definitive and saying they somewhat disagree versus strongly agree.

I'm sorry, versus strongly disagree and don't know at those points.

It's a right, those are folks who are disagreeing because they're not in the affirmative.

And when you look at it that way, it allows us to just um when we look at it from a solution standpoint is how can we definitively what needs to happen within the organization for us to definitively move folks from feel from not feeling valued to feeling valued.

And I think when we look at it in a very just straight down the middle, is either it's a black or white issue, it's yes or no.

You know, we don't have to debate the a gray area.

And um what we did in this particular survey, which is a format my firm has moved to is to that don't know section, because we wanted to remove the gray.

We didn't want to either agree nor disagree.

I kind of sort of do a kind of sort of don't, you know how you feel.

And we wanted folks to be more definitive about that.

So this is very good feedback.

Uh that would that allows us to move a plan forward with recommendations on how we can move people from one side of it uh from being definitively or second guess in the area to being definitively agree.

Got it.

Thank you.

Can I have a follow-up question, Chair?

Yes, real quick.

Okay.

Oh sorry.

And I just wanted to elaborate on one thing regarding the departments, and one of the things we asked about, which I which I think you all will find interesting, was about work location, whether they're hybrid working from home, um, and what those experiences are for those who have to come in two to three times a week or remote work remotely 100% of the time to those who are in the office.

So that's another uh cross section of us being able to assess what the culture is perceived uh versus based on where folks are working within the organization.

Got it.

Thank you.

And then when you the first part about caring about me as an employee, uh will you be sort of drilling down into sort of what that looks like, right?

Because there could be certain people who are like, well, they don't care about me as an employee because you know, I don't make enough money, right?

I should be getting paid more.

They don't care about me as an employee because I should have the ability for a hybrid workplace.

And you know, my manager has just said no.

So are you kind of will you be able to differentiate into that?

Yes, very good question.

Because what we're able to do is we're going to have to cross tabulate information.

If they answered no to that question, for example, feeling valued, let's say they disagree.

Well, we can cross-tabulate to see uh what else they disagree with.

Do they disagree with their work location with their compensation and see if that tracks along those lines?

So absolutely.

Um, and then we'll also be able to break that down by um different groups of people within the organization to see how those tracks and trends.

So you will get a lot of information, but what we want to do though is not overwhelming you with information.

It's most importantly, I think our role is to make sense of the information for you so that we can talk about how uh to move forward from a solution standpoint.

But yes, you will have those cross-tabulations that we can look at.

Great.

Thank you.

Well, this is really great work.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Dr.

Cotton.

Uh uh went through quite a few of my words.

Sorry.

That's okay.

That's okay.

I got the answer.

So then I got a straight answer, and I like what I got.

And um my concern was did they out of the 18 strong disagree and uh 18, some what disagree, did they say why uh they don't have to say why.

I didn't right.

We have not gotten to the point where we've done the analysis yet because the survey just ended last week, Friday.

Okay.

Our next step will be to start doing the analysis, which um which we will make uh most likely start next week.

When we analyze it, we'll we'll look across as cross-tabulation.

And if you don't mind me asking this of the committee members, um, just like the question that was just recently asked is can you all look at uh who said they don't feel valued and what does it look like when you look at that group across other categories.

If there are any specific cat any specific pieces of information you want to know from a cross-tabulated standpoint, please share that with me.

Because we may look at, and I'm just being hypothetical, for example, we may look at 30 points of data, right?

And crosstab, but you may have a 31st or 32nd or in other words, other parts of the report that you would like to see to make sense of of how different populations are um are viewing the organization across multiple data lines.

More than welcome to share that with us so that we can include that um as we go through the as we go through the data analysis.

And and to your question, um more specifically, Dr.

Cunnahan, we'll be able to do that when we have the focus groups and are able to talk to people to get a deeper verbal answer as to why.

And the second thing is the survey does have an open-ended commentary section for folks to uh, but we've not analyzed that just yet to find out what their feedback is.

But that those verbal risk or those verbatim or open-ended questions will also be analyzed to see what the track what attracts and trends are based on those feedback from folks as well.

Thank you, Dr.

Cotton.

Real great.

Yeah.

Um thank you, Chair.

Um, so when you're analyzing the feedback, I'm just wondering what is the strategy in which you're going to utilize to uh analyze that feedback.

Is it something like a like a word collage or is it um the theme or whatnot?

Yeah, thematic.

Yeah.

So what we're gonna do is uh there are a couple of steps to walk through this methodology.

I got us hope you got a paper and pen, because this could take a little while, but I'll make it brief for you.

But what we're gonna do is um first um we we want to our team manually, and then we use AI, and I'll tell you how we get into that.

But but I will we first go through the data, um, see what we we identify what we call um high-level key questions.

And the reason why I put these two data points in there as an example is because these are examples of um of key questions.

And what a key question for us means is the question is very specific and it gives you a very specific answer.

For example, do people feel valued?

Right?

We don't have to we don't have to guess about it.

That's a very straightforward question.

They're going to be about maybe 15 to 20 key questions that give us the most meat and potatoes to understand the organizational perspective.

So we're gonna we're gonna first analyze those questions and get a good snapshot of the organization.

The remaining questions, we're gonna group them thematically.

And then based on the themes of those questions, we're going to uh review what the data points are under those and draw conclusions thematically under those sections.

So what you may find in your report is based on the entire survey, we have let's say 10 main categories that we are looking at.

And each question will fall under one of those categories and we'll give you the summary of those categories.

Then we'll use AI to validate the information, validate that allows us to get more context through that analysis, and it allows us to double check if our findings are corroborated by what I call it Charlie for our chat GPT, what Charlie says.

And then we'll also do the do that similarly with our open-ended questions and develop that data.

From there, we'll now have themes across the board for the major categories.

And from those major categories, we'll be able to identify uh three to five major themes across the organization that the data is telling us.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely.

Understood.

It uh very interesting work.

Thank you very much.

Great presentation.

Uh uh, Dr.

Carter, we will be seeing you April the 14th.

14th, not the 10th.

I won't be there that early, Lacey.

Okay, we have 14th, okay?

Yes, we're looking forward.

I'm looking forward to you.

Yeah.

Looking forward to the good training.

Thank you very much.

Thank you as well.

Yes.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Thank you, Doctor.

Uh 8.

8.3.

And this approach and management.

And uh, she coming with a presentation and discussion of supplies.

Diverse data.

Uh, do I need a motion?

Good afternoon.

Just presentation.

Eva Alberon, the purchasing manager for Lake County.

Today I'm here to give you an update on our supplier diversity program.

So today we'll we'll revisit the public act.

We'll talk a little bit about those supplier classification types that we're tracking.

We'll review our supplier diversity spend data.

We'll talk a little bit about procurement sourcing, and we'll leave some time at the end for questions.

So, as everybody remembers, and we'll just review this really quickly.

In 2022, a public act was enacted that mandates certain taxing districts to um display a good faith effort to collect and publish certain vendor demographic information.

Um, the current report is currently posted on our Lake County website, and we do use a third-party system to help us gather this data.

Um, the system's called B2G now.

We use this to maintain compliance with the act, and we're able to take the spend from our current boss system and kind of data dump that into this B2G now system and perform an analysis on the vendors that Lake County currently purchases from to determine which vendors have diversity classifications.

So we just kind of wanted to talk a little bit about the classification types that we're currently tracking.

So the system allows us to use certified databases where it collects data from local agencies in our area, and it takes our spend with the vendors that we're currently using and it analyzes that against those databases and it spits out kind of a report that gives us the analytics that we're looking for here.

We're currently tracking on women, veteran, minority, and disadvantaged of business businesses, and that's how we kind of come up with the numbers and the different spend types.

So here is just um we've been using the software for a few years now.

So we've got uh about three to five years of data that we're able to kind of speak to.

So we just kind of wanted to give you a just kind of a snapshot of those different spend types over three years.

So this data is based off of three fiscal years.

And as you can see here, our main um category that we're really hitting here with the spend is the woman-owned business enterprise.

Um, where you see multiple would be a classification type where a vendor is classified with multiple classifications.

So they may have a woman-owned business classification and a minority business classification.

So we kind of group those together, but we definitely see um very consistently that the woman-owned business is where we're really making the most impact.

So then now we just kind of want to talk a little bit about you know our spend data trend.

And while you can see that the amount that Lake County spends does vary year over year, we are continuing to actively increase our percentage spend with these diversity vendors.

So, just again, a five-year snapshot here of the data that we have just to kind of give an idea that we we are still making an impact.

And then another way we can just kind of slice and dice the data from this system is we're able to see that we have diverse vendors in multiple areas of spend that Lake County uses.

So a couple of these vendors are our major construction vendors.

We have our temporary service vendor with the Salem group.

Um, we have a variety of IT vendors, um, including one of the new um ERP vendors is listed up there as um one of our diverse classification types.

Also, one of our job contractors as well is listed there.

And at this time, I just want to remind everybody that we are only able to continue to track our general contractor spend.

We're not able to track that subcontractor spend, but again, with a new ERP, we are hoping that we'll be able to change that and and have a better sense of that subcontractor spend with these vendors.

And then lastly, just want to talk a little bit about procurement sourcing.

So the the nice thing about the B2G now system is that it allows us to source additional vendors.

Uh, the purchasing division does issue between 60 to 80 new procurements each year.

So we're able to leverage that system and source additional vendors.

Um, so this year we were we upped our registration by 815 vendors, and we have a total of 9,772 vendors in our system.

So with that, I'll open it up for questions.

Question and about you guys.

Thank you very much.

This is really interesting.

Um I recall we did it a few years ago, and then I can't remember if COVID got in the way or whatever.

Do we still do a separate meeting or can we look into whether we can do a separate meeting where we talk about doing business with Lake County, and we have one uh for people with disabilities, one for veterans, because we've got the second greatest number of veterans in Lake County in the state of Illinois.

Um, and then you know, minorities, things like that.

Didn't we do that one year?

We did do that one year.

Um, and what we found is we have a greater impact when we go to other people, right?

So um actually we already have scheduled on the books a kind of reverse vendor fair that we're partnering with the College of DuPage in March, March 17th, I believe it is.

Um, and there's uh over 200 uh diverse vendors registered for that fair.

So um it's kind of a reverse vendor fair where Lake County's sitting at a table and there's like speed dating that um you can let them know like which uh procurements you have up and coming, and they'll pre-schedule these like 15 minute like increments for suppliers to meet with you.

So we did two of those events last year.

Our goal is to kind of do three of those because we do feel like um we just have a greater impact when we're able to kind of partner with another agency and get more vendors to come out.

Yeah, thank you for telling me that.

I had not heard of that, and I I agree with you instead of having sort of our one off, like why not do it in this way?

And you said College of DuPage.

College of DuPage, yeah.

And do you know or do you know if College of Lake County is looking into doing something similar?

Are they even partnering?

Um, they used to do something similar, but we can reach out and confirm if they're doing anything new.

Okay.

Yeah, we can reach out and see if if they have any initiatives.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I didn't understand consolidated PSAPs.

You might need to turn your purchasing hat back on.

This is Ruthane Hall, Assistant County Administrator.

We used to have a procurement technical assistance center at the College of Lake County.

And we had a great resource there, but many years ago, I think even going maybe back 10 years ago, they consolidated those procurement technical assistance centers.

And I think our regional one now is at the College of DuPage.

Okay.

So that is why they lead the efforts on this and have the greater resource to perfect get the vendors here.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, it's actually an all-day event.

So we're really excited about it.

Um to hopefully be able to draw some some new vendors to our procurements.

Yeah.

Thank you.

No problem.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very much.

Great information.

Okay.

And I'm gonna there's a county report.

No, no, no county administrative report, no executive section.

Memo's remarks.

And I'd declared this meeting is adjourned.

And to the next meeting is May the 26th, 2026.

Thank you.