Good morning, everyone.

Today is Tuesday, May 5th at 8 34 a.m.

And I would like to call to order the health and community services committee meeting.

In addition to being able to attend in person, remote attendance has been made available to the public via Zoom at the link on the agenda.

This meeting is being recorded through Zer Zoom.

Per county board rules and the open meetings act attendance via remote means is permitted for qualifying reasons, as long as the majority of the committee members are physically present.

We've been notified in advance by members.

Danforth, who does not is does not look to be currently on, but he is eligible to be uh present for voting purposes.

Um member Altenberg is also on, but is not uh on for a qualifying reason, so she will just participate as uh in observation.

Is that right?

Is that fair?

She can comment, she just can't vote.

Yep, okay, not observation, but observation and comment.

Um as a reminder to members of attending remotely, please ensure your cameras on are on at all times.

Okay.

Um can I uh ask member Casmin to lead the pledge with me?

Excuse me.

Uh United States of America for which it stands.

One nation under uh individual with emergency and justice for all.

Thank you.

Can I please have a roll call of members?

Yes, Vice Chair Altenberg.

Here member Kasmin.

Member Cunningham.

Is here?

Oh, I see him.

I see him.

Member Kines.

Member Main.

Chair Perr.

Here.

We have enough members for our chair.

Do we have any addendum to the agenda?

No.

Uh public comment.

I believe we do.

Are they online?

No.

No.

There's no public comment.

No public comment?

Okay.

Uh, chair's remarks.

I don't have any comments other than to be here.

Looking forward to the meeting.

Any unfinished business?

No.

All right.

New businesses.

The consent agenda 8.1 is the committee action approving the health and community service committee meeting committee committee meeting minutes from April 7th.

Can I have a motion?

Motion by Member Maine, second by member Kasbin.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion passes.

Move on to our regular agenda.

8.2 is a joint resolution approving an emergency appropriation of 20,000 dollars for fiscal year 2026 and accepting additional funding from the Healthcare Foundation of Northern Lake County Leadership Development Program grant.

Welcome, Director Chris Hoff, as well as Environmental Director Mike Adams.

Good morning, everybody.

First resolution you have this morning is um a request to accept $20,000 in additional funding from the Healthcare Foundation in Order Lake County.

This is a result of a successful grant application to help support leadership development training for some of our staff, uh leaders across the department.

Uh it effectively doubles the amount of money we had planned to spend on this over the course of a two-year period.

Uh so you'll see that a match is required.

That's on top of what was already budgeted for leadership training.

Uh so it effectively doubles the amount that we can spend on that.

It expands the pool of leaders that we can train across the organization, and I think a really nice opportunity for public um philanthropy partnership.

Any questions?

Questions.

Uh did you no just member uh member uh member main?

Yeah, no, this is great.

This is great.

I just was thinking of what we talked about at finance.

So would this be an example of something we talked about at the finance meeting last week?

That if that change went through, they wouldn't need to come for something like this.

So I would just new, yeah.

The next one might be an example of that.

Because it said additional grant funding.

So that's so maybe it should say new.

Yeah it's not additional.

It's a new this is new, yeah.

Okay.

All right, so clarify that in the language yeah.

The only case where um that new clause would kick in is some of the other ones where it's additional funding to an existing grant.

Right.

This one I see the confusion.

Um we'll clarify the language, just saying that we're accepting funding.

Yeah.

So but if this had been additional funding, this would fall under that purview that we talked about.

Okay, yes, that's correct.

All right.

So we just need to make sure we have new and additional.

It's additional overall, but not additional to an existing grant.

Okay.

Thanks.

Um, I did neglect to bring this to a motion.

So can I have a motion?

Motion by member Casmin, member by uh Chair Hark motion by second by comment.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

So um that was a good point.

So you have your organizational development person manager at uh at the health department, and then this is through consultant services.

So is your just out of curiosity, is your OD person going to be utilizing like a like a training, and that's what this pays for, or is this a consultant who's actually gonna do the work in conjunction with your OD person?

Um these are folks that'll do training in conjunction with the OD person.

So OD manages the training and development of the thousand plus you know, health department employees and staff across the department.

So they are responsible for helping to organize that training, identify opportunities, find the right people to help us do that.

Um so these are um trainers who will do the training for us.

Great.

Thank you.

And then Healthcare Foundation of Northern Lake County, um, I've become more familiar with them.

Uh have we gotten a lot of grants from them in the past?

When I say a lot, anything over say a hundred thousand dollars.

I think they have millions of dollars.

They only spend as much every year as they earn in interest.

Um, and for this committee's uh information, if you didn't know, uh they were formed when the two hospitals, the two nonprofit hospitals in Waukegan had closed.

And so um I think by law they form this foundation.

And so they do have millions of dollars.

Uh they give out again just what they earn in interest.

So we have been the recipient of grants from them in the past.

Um they have been a good partner funding initiative, is kind of across the Northeastern Lake County area.

Um, I don't have that grant history with me.

I can pull it and bear it.

I I really was just curious.

So thank you very much.

Sure.

Okay.

Seeing no additional questions, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion passes.

Moving on to 8.3 is a joint resolution approving an emergency appropriation of $13,000 125 for fiscal year 2026 and accepting additional funding from the Illinois Behavioral Health Workforce Center at the University of Illinois Chicago solution focused brief therapy training and implementation initiative grant.

That was all in funds.

Yeah.

Uh can I have a motion?

Motion by member Casmin, second by member Maine.

Yeah, I I don't think Michelle's here.

She's not correct.

I'll take this one.

Yeah.

Um, she's got another commitment.

Um, she asked me to note though that uh it is mental health awareness month.

So just a plug for that uh while we talk about this.

Uh behavior health services will will serve thousands of our residents over the course of the month.

Um and this is one great opportunity to train some staff in an in an evidence-based intervention called uh solution focused brief therapy.

It's really intended to help clinicians be able to treat clients, help them meet their needs in a shorter period of time, therefore decreasing the time people are in therapy and expanding the number of people that we can serve in a given period of time.

So these funds help to offset the cost of uh staff participating in that training and expand the resources we have to treat the county residents.

Excellent.

Any questions from the committee?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye, any opposed?

The motion passes.

8.4 is a joint resolution approving an emergency appropriation of $2,000, $2,674 for contract fiscal year 2026, accepting additional funding from the Lake County Forest Preserve District qual water quality contract.

Uh yes, good morning.

Can I have a motion?

Sorry.

Motion by uh member knees, second by member main.

Yes, okay.

Good morning.

Yeah, I'm Mike and I'm director of environmental health.

So the health department and the forest, we already found out the contract together.

They would like us to do some water quality monitoring throughout some of their forest reserves after the contract was completed.

They actually came to us some additional work.

So this just covers the uh fees that would be for that additional work.

So would this this be something like for next time?

This would based on our new rules.

Would this come to us?

I'm asking general.

Yeah.

I think since this is additional, as um member main was saying earlier, I would think that this would not need to come back.

Am I answering that correctly?

I think it's a contract instead of a grant, though.

And we are pretty clear about it being grants.

So again, this one would not qualify either.

Got it.

It begs the question.

Um, but that's a topic for another day.

Yeah, let's let's uh bookmark that for the future when we're having 2600 items in front of us.

Excited by the enthusiasm for it.

But we love we love it, but uh member Frank.

Um for this item and maybe somewhat related for the following item.

Under this contract, does the forest preserve district dictate like which bodies of water they want quality monitored for, or is that something that you guys discuss in collaboration?

Uh we we have a very good collaboration with them.

So we will sit down and they will say, you know, here's their priorities, what their goals are, and then we can kind of help design what kind of sampling that they'll do in this particular case.

The actual work was this is for a lot of it for Slough Lake or Duck Farm Lake, so they're doing some renovation or rehabilitation of that lake.

And so they made this request, and we'll do some additional work for them.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Memorine.

Thanks.

Mike, is any of this um do any of these things come out of the watershed working groups?

Because the forest preserve is like displaying because you guys have a lot of data in those working groups.

So I would think there's a prioritization out of those watershed working groups, and that may be dictating some of these things.

And that's a very good point because a lot of these uh water bodies you know are various needs of impairments, and a lot of the watershed work groups are looking to try to remove those impairments, and how to do that is to rehabilitate some of these water bodies.

Yeah.

Excellent.

Any other questions from the committee?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, the motion passes.

Mr.

Chair, yes, if I could, just because we were having those conversations, could I bookmark another thing for us to talk about with that that finance?

Yeah.

And that is, I'm just looking back at eight two.

Um, and if it weren't a totally new grant, I just wonder, you see that last bullet, it says this grant requires a hundred percent match, which will be fulfilled using existing approved budget resources.

So I wonder if that's something.

I don't know if it would matter or not, that we would want to consider.

Like if you see what I'm saying, it falls below, but it's requiring a match inside the budget as opposed to here's 10,000, yay, for you.

But here's 10,000, yay for you, and you need to provide 10,000.

So I just don't know if that's something we want to pull apart at finance.

I don't know if it matters or not, but there are there are differences.

I think there are differences.

So thank you for indulging me in that thought.

I didn't want to lose it.

Yep.

All right.

Moving on to 8.5 is a joint resolution authorizing a five-year renewal of a delegation agreement through an intergovernmental delegation agreement between the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, IEPA, and Lake County for Solid Waste Management Site Inspections and Enforcement Program.

I have a motion.

Motion by Member Kasman, second by member can okay.

So this, yeah, that's the five-year agreement.

So this is an agreement between the county and the Illinois EPA, the health department gets involved because we actually do the inspections and enforcement of the permitted solid waste facilities in Lake County.

We have the inspectors who are certified to do that.

So again, solid waste facilities are the landfills, both the active landfills, the closed landfills, uh transfer stations, you know, compost facilities.

And so this is a five-year agreement.

Our current agreement ends at the end of June.

So this would take it to 2031.

Just out of curiosity, how many solid waste landfills do we have?

So we have two active ones.

We got design and we have one in countryside.

And there's like 22, I think, closed landfills.

So these are landfills that back in the day, you know, municipalities used to just go outside their dig a hole and put their garbage in there.

Well, as now we have more centralized into bigger landfills.

So, but there's all these landfills around there.

So we just we'll check them out once or twice a year just to make sure they're not leaking, you know, something that's not there, shouldn't be there, or so forth.

So that's those type of things.

Other things could be investigating complaints, open dumping, you know, people are throwing garbage or medical supplies somewhere they're not supposed to.

So it kind of covers a lot of those enforcement activities.

Um just one more question.

The the 22, how long have they been dormant?

Uh some of them have been dormant for 50, 50 plus years.

Uh other ones probably let's see the most recent one, it's probably the last 10 years.

So once they close, there are a whole set of rules that they have to follow.

If they have a closed landfill like the current ones, once they close, there's gonna be a 30-year maintenance program that they'll have to follow, plus probably additional work with groundwater monitoring, you know, leech aid collection, all kinds of things.

So we we work very closely with Illinois EPA on those, because in the permit, each place has a permit, and they have very specific rules of what they have to do.

And then once they close, there's a whole nother set of rules that they have to follow.

I I have a ton of questions, but not related.

I'm super curious about the subject.

Member Maine.

Yeah, uh two things.

One is Mike, I knew about those two, which was I was a little surprised in that bullet where it says 24 operating solid weight and two closed.

Is that 24 to closed plus the two that are open, the Zion and the countryside?

No, operating facilities, permitted facilities include all the things like the compost facilities, the transfer stations.

You guys, I've seen um uh really nice map of the county, color-coded dots of where these things are.

I've seen it, maybe other people haven't, and they'd be interested to know.

And Eric Wagner gets to see those things when people want to build on them and things like that.

But you would be kind of surprised at how many little, you know, boutique-y solid waste facilities are right near you.

So be spoke.

Yes, yes.

Be jeweled also, yes.

So I but you have that, right?

I think we have a map.

Yeah, I just think people might find that interesting.

So in total, you have to inspect 20 or sorry, 46 locations.

Is that right then?

Yeah, it's something like that.

And then some of them require like the active landfills we do every week or every other week.

We'll actually go out there.

Um, and because there's a whole number of things again, leech eight and the you know, the methane that's that's captured, burned off.

Uh, but then other ones are just maybe quarterly or even once a year, just depending on what the permit requires.

Okay, any other questions?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion passes.

All right, thank you.

Item 8.6 is a joint resolution accepting the capacity expansion grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services and authorizing emergency appropriation, the amount of 96,200 for grant administration to increase the capacity of the local homeless crisis response system.

And welcome administrator Strezzo.

Morning.

Um, this is a grant we applied for.

Uh sorry, motion by member Kniesnik.

Second by member Kasmin.

Sorry, Dominic.

No problem.

Uh a grant we applied for to the State Department of Uh Health and Human Services in partnership with the governor's office to prevent and end homelessness.

This grant opportunity focused on the expansion of the capacity of our homeless system with a specific focus on data quality.

Um, so once these monies, if they're appropriated, we'd use about a third of the dollars to help papers offset some of community development staff time.

The rest will be used to develop um a website, specifically uh data dashboard that'll be hosted by the Lake County Coalition for Homeless website with real-time data on our homeless system, um, information on subpopulations, inflows, outfills, number of veterans in homeless, our chronic homeless population.

Um sorry.

Okay.

Um one of the terms of the grant agreement.

Um again, it's focused on data quality is integrating this data with a statewide data network.

So we're agreeing to participate in these cohort sessions where uh county staff would is talking with the led by the office to prevent it.

Homelessness, their staff to really develop a statewide network on homeless data.

Um great value in terms of quantifying the need, uh, education and advocacy once this website is developed.

It is designed to be a renewable grant.

Um, this is the first year um that we applied for, but uh it's supposed to be renewed each and every year based on the amount of funds spent.

Excellent.

Uh thank you, Dominic.

Member Maine.

Thank you.

Dominic, is this website going to interface smoothly with the county website?

And is there gonna be a link there?

I'm concerned about different people developing websites and people would probably start maybe at the county website.

We have engaged with uh I believe Civics Plus or the entity that works, uh designs the county website, but it is not going to be hosted by the county.

We're gonna provide the data, but it is gonna be hosted by an totally external with the Lake County Coalition for Homeless website.

But is there a link from our website?

Sure, sure.

Not yet.

It just seems if we're approving money that I that we need to have some way for people to access that.

Sure.

I I would fully imagine that it's gonna be advertised and direct linked from community development and yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

And is uh just to add on, is there a way to get to the housing lake from our website?

Because I think when I Google it, it's a little bit hard to get there.

So just a thought.

You don't have to, as you're trying to think about.

I don't believe it's how directly, but yeah, but I mean, it's our grant CMAP.

Yeah, it's an excellent point.

It should be easy for us to find.

Anyway, um, this is really exciting.

Yeah.

So um, I think for many, many, many years.

There's been this difficulty in trying to find, hey, where are the available beds?

What is the picture of homelessness here in Lake County?

Um, I think I asked a couple months ago about service point.

So we still use Service Point.

And is this sort of um part of Service Point or can you help me understand?

Yeah, so Service Point helps run um the referral network, which provides generates the reports.

So there are a lot of the reports that will generate the data that will be displayed in this dashboard come from Service Point.

So, yes, there is a they are related separate software systems, but in terms of the overall picture it's painting, they're they're gonna be working together to create that data.

Okay, well, I think this is really exciting, and the idea that we're going to be part of a statewide system is really terrific.

So thank you.

Excited about this grant.

Uh, member Casman.

Um, so what are the different types of data that will be captured?

Totally.

Like you've often heard about our our chronic homeless population.

That is one thing, sub-populations in terms of number of families, um, veteran homelessness, the inflows and outflow outflows, um, number of households and transitional housing.

So if you envision our homeless system, I don't have that graphic in front of me, but we have all the different components, whether it's shelter, transitional housing, supportive housing, but all the different inflows and outflows of that web will be available in in real time.

That's incredible.

Um so my my other question is sometimes there's an issue with the quality of the data itself as it's collected from um you know clients.

Is there a way to get it that hopefully that's the gonna the staff costs?

So yeah, it is it's a big lift to get the raw data from a provider and entry point anywhere, you know, if you're talking about a shelter to have that data cleaned up and by the time it gets to this this website.

Um it is an issue, it's an ongoing thing that you know, maintenance and working with, but the staff capacity component of it um hopefully will help address that, you know, spend more time on it.

But it is it is it won't change our process necessarily, um, but there is a cleaning process before it will get publicly displayed to ensure uh accuracy.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Excellent.

I just um had one um request to bookmark if I mean this is really exciting.

If we could just think about this as a story for our newsletter, just to let folks know that this will be available and for those that are interested in this kinds of data.

Do you have a general sense, Dominic, when we would have this up and running generally?

Generally, uh on a scale of a couple months.

Um the yeah, yeah.

I I I don't think you were gonna say anything before September or I I'm hoping for there's a little bit of a procurement process that we have to work through and the technology and integration piece that I'm not overly expert in.

So before snowfall.

I would say let's just hold the story till it is available, but then that would be a nice time for people to be able to click click on it and then go see the data.

Yeah, good idea.

Yeah.

Okay.

Seeing no more questions, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion passes.

Thank you, Dominic.

All right.

8.7 is a community development annual update from both uh director Wagner and Dominic.

Welcome.

All right.

Um, so yes, my annual update from community development.

Uh, the first thing I wanted to talk about is is Housing Lake.

That was obviously a big lift last year.

Um, thankfully, we provided an update not too long ago.

And since that time, there hasn't been too too much action.

Um, but right now where we're at, we are transitioning kind of from that first initial phase into phase two of housing lake.

And what that's really gonna look like is focus in on our four foundational pillars with work groups forming around each pillar with subject matter experts kind of assigned to lead that content.

Um also we most recently uh executed that MOU with CMAP to kind of lock in that partnership for another three years to get their cooperation and help us form uh the core project team that will be in charge of developing content, setting the cadence and really um fulfilling those work groups.

And so those will be the the next steps that you'll hear about in the near future here.

Just also want to provide some updates on some other kind of big picture uh current projects.

Two I wanna focus in on um where grants two million dollars a piece we received from Department of D CEO from the state.

The Healthy Houses was our HVAC repair and replacement program.

We opened up that application portal in June.

Um to date, we've received about 140 interest forms with about 280 potential rental units.

Currently, we're working through all those applications running through the due diligence.

Um, I do not believe that we'll all of them will qualify.

Some of the barriers we're seeing right now is um we're expected around income documentations.

Landlords are the ones submitting these interest forms, but we need income documentation on the tenants.

So there is some hesitancy from tenants to provide uh documentation on their income over to a government entity.

We're working with landlords, um, but that has been one thing that's a little bit slowing down the process.

The other is contractor responsiveness, you know, as part of our procurement requirements.

We need a minimum of three bids for every proposed project.

Um, so that's a lot of properties, a lot of contracts, and um these dollars are subject to prevailing wage.

So that does provide a little bit of an additional administrative burden on some of the contractors that they may not want to deal with.

Um so those are some of the things we're working through now.

Um, but I am confident that we're gonna work through all of those and get uh those dollars flowing very quickly here.

Dominic, can I just ask real quickly, was this the one where you had to have units between like two and eight or something?

No more than six.

No more than six.

Yes.

Okay.

I'm still excited that you got 140 interest forms, though, because it felt so specific.

Yes.

Um we worked hard uh you know, with help from communications and some of our other networking opportunities to get the word out there.

Um I don't, like I said, there's definitely a percentage of the 140 that just the interest form itself was pretty simple to fill out by design.

Um some people may think their tenants may have qualified, but really they didn't.

There's other things that I think will filter that number down, but we do we will be above 100 properties uh by the time it's all said and done.

Wow, that's really interesting.

Just one more question, then in member can you say so?

What was the so there's an income restriction per tenant of those six?

Per household, 80% of area median income or less.

Um the household has to qualify for it has to be mid-housing in some capacity.

Yeah.

Off the top of my the numbers are gonna get refreshed in June, but I want to say for a family of four, eight percent AMI is I want to say like $96,000 for Lake County.

Yeah, that's great.

So it's it's a good a good chunk of the population.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Uh, you said that um, you know, tenants tend to have a hesitancy to share information about their income.

And you know, I can make some assumptions about as a layperson about why that is, but um, I'm just really interested in what insight you might have as like to see what your thoughts are about why they're hesitant.

Um, I mean, it's it's sensitive information we're asking for pay stubs and um verification of household size.

I just think um a lot of the climate around government in general and some of the things that have been happening.

Um just just a little bit of distrust, I think.

And landlords too.

We don't know the relationship between a tenant and leather necessarily.

A landlord obviously is the one who has to apply to the property owner, they're the beneficiary of the dollars.

Um I can see their incentive, but the incentive may not always be there for a tenant to cooperate necessarily, similar to the rental program that we provided uh, you know, uh in years past that is that was an issue there as well.

Well, I may be overthinking this, but I assume that probably a lack of trust was a big part of the reason.

But I'm also curious, like I would think as on a more pragmatic from a more pragmatic point of view.

A lot of tenants might be thinking, well, this is my income now, but how do I know when the time comes that I will still have this income?

I mean, and I just wonder uh I would do you agree that that's probably reasons.

Yes, there is there's different ways to income qualify, like program specific for this particular one.

It is where you're at right now.

So we are collecting like current pay stubs.

That's the way to qualify.

Often when we do like a new construction apartment billing and qualify, it's it's forward thinking, so you want to project out as best you can for income qualification, but to satisfy this requirement, it's where you are at at the time of essentially the signature.

Right.

Um, I guess I just I spend a lot of time thinking about um when we kind of create policies, right?

In terms of creating the application forms or things like that by we, I mean people who make policy, like and this is not a comment at all on you in any way or your job performance, but I like I'm all one of the reasons I kind of wanted to run for office, right?

Was to kind of keep an eye out for you know, decisions that people make maybe when they're creating qualifications or requirements uh for pol for for people to take advantage of policies, and then like sometimes those policymakers didn't totally think through um what you know what the situation is or um and so uh I this is something you and I can talk more about offline.

I don't want to take a lot of time from this committee with it, but I I'd like to understand I mean that seems like a flaw in the logic of whoever created the policy, and which I assume it wasn't you, right?

But I'm just curious, like when um requirements and policies are written with those kinds of possible stumbling blocks to success.

Like what leverage do we have, right?

In order to kind of help get around that for people again, we could talk about this at a different time.

I don't know.

I mean, I think the challenge is was this a state.

Right.

So pretty minimal in in this sense, um, in the sense that you have two layers of regulatory, so that it's it's federal money that's flowing through the state.

So you have the base layer of regulations the federal CFR that they have to qualify, and then the state in some cases, and they have in this particular program overlaid their own kind of flavor on on what they want to see, including the limitation on the number of units.

They didn't have to limit the number at six, but to achieve whatever objectives they wanted to, they chose to.

So we and we applied for it.

So by kind of applying for it, we kind of agreed to their terms.

So it it we can point things out and present maybe, you know, this these are some of the challenges we're seeing.

Because they do want to see the money spent, so there's some incentive for them to talk to us, but um not a ton of flexibility.

And do you and your office ever layer more?

Like, do you get the chance to layer in um we could um qualifications?

Generally try not to, um, especially for this particular program where we're I think the challenge here is gonna be to spend the money on time.

So we're trying to be as as broad and um inclusive as we can.

Um, but we could.

I mean, there's no there would be nothing necessarily outside of maybe breaking some fair housing laws, which we would never do.

But like Yeah, uh no, we we try not to several legal actions.

Okay.

Well, I just you know, champion of local government here.

I just want to say like I see uh how many hoops you have to jump through in order to um take policies and rules that are determined by other actors and then try to make it all work.

And so I just I don't know, put in my plug for how great um local government is.

Let's let's just keep repeating that all of us thank you.

Member Casm, you had a question or comment.

Yeah, just a quick um follow-up to the excellent point, member Kenny Shade.

Um are you contacted like frequently by policymakers to see, you know, to vet policies before because you have an insights into how that will play out on the ground.

Maybe that's the kind of encouragement we need is just check in with the people who are gonna execute this policy and see if those stumbling blocks exist.

I mean, there's national groups and stuff that you know attend as a community development professional, but not a ton.

I think general the answer would be no, I would say.

Okay.

That's I think that's the problem.

Member Maine.

Thank you.

Yes, Member Kenisnik brings up some really good points, although it does seem in this particular situation, given the goal that you need to have some income.

Like there's otherwise, and I can also see the up to six because it's trying to get smaller people who might not have leverage to get bigger grants if they had a bit great big complex or something like that, although it makes um that difficult.

So I have a couple questions, so I'm just gonna get them all out there.

Um so well, actually the first one would be easy to answer.

What is your time frame to spend this money?

Because I had written that down and then you mentioned that July 2027.

So does it need to be in process contracts, or does it need to be zeroed out by 2020 July?

You have drawn it from the state by July 2020.

Okay, okay.

So um, yeah, I had written, yeah, this seems a little inefficient, but sometimes that's how it is.

Are you looking to do groups or are you doing this as rolling admissions?

Because it's been open for almost a year.

It's sounding you said June of June, uh uh.

I mean, we're May.

Right.

So it's 11 months.

Yeah.

So has any money been dispersed?

We have not paid out any.

We have not drawn any.

So that's a little concerning to me that um we're halfway through.

And but maybe that's that nature that it's all of a sudden spent, um, spent at the end.

Are there any ways to um group um, you know, or it are these so individual with the projects that each one has to be bid out, or are there ways of excuse me, clumping them together to say, hey, I'm gonna guarantee you you know 20 units or something like that.

So it's not here's a one unit, here's a two units, things like that.

I understand once they go in and look in the walls, it's like each one's gonna be different, but could that possibly cut down paperwork and make it more attractive to people if they know, hey, I'm gonna have my crew and I'm gonna be able to do three months worth of work as opposed to here's one, here's one, and bidding all sorts of things like that.

That was our thinking.

And I think the logic is there.

So, like a partner like CEPA, obviously, who has a couple dozen you know properties that are eligible.

Um oddly enough, they are ones that are having some difficulty collecting the bids because of scope is larger.

The ones that we've seen so far come in, have been kind of the smaller one off rental units in terms of getting contractors come in and bid on, but there does have to be a scope of work and bids and a procurement process for each individual unit.

Um so that so when do you hope to get some money being spent because if if there's such a long lag time, they might not still have their crew or other things, you know, price obviously price of steel has gone up and stuff like that, and their bids are no longer good.

We are hoping very soon.

So there's there's gonna be there's a big due diligence phase that we're working through now.

Again, something I didn't mention too is each property has to go undergo an environmental review, which is another hurdle, but there's no way around it in terms, and that includes a lead based paint inspection, you know, uh scan for flood waves, well, things like that, asbestos, um things like that, and we do have funds set aside to get that done.

But once we get those through, um I think the the big lag is gonna be up front on the income qualification, the environmental review.

Once we turn on the contractors, I think they can work pretty fast.

The scope of these projects isn't huge.

Yeah, I think they can get, you know, if they're on site within a week or so.

I mean, we're talking about just so it's got a big activation energy to get over.

Yeah, oh yes, yes.

Okay, and the state will slow the contract and okay.

Thank you so much.

Member Causman.

Thank you, Chair.

Um where are these the notices for the you the request for bids going out?

Is it on our county website or is it something so strategy we had because we did kind of anticipate this would be an issue?

We put the burden on getting the bids on the landowner, so as part or the property owner as part of their application, they're supposed to be including the procurement the bids and scope of work to help us on our end.

What we're seeing is you know, they may only have two out of three, or they're letting us know I've got one, I'm working on getting the other two.

But the the idea that thinking there is the property owners might have their own network, um, because we don't have to necessarily pre-qualify them, they just have to agree to our terms in terms of prevailing wage and have an agreed upon scope of work.

So we're not necessarily advertising directly with HVAC contractors.

Um we're letting the um we're asking the property owners to do that.

That might be the problem.

If it were on our site, then I think people would see it because they're used to coming to our site, but like SIPA's not good at you or you know, maybe CEPA is, but like I'm not mean don't mean to single them out.

I'm just saying like as individual, you know, uh nonprofit may not be as um experienced and you know, um advertising those, you know, the need for bids.

Um, but as I the I think we were it caused some complications too.

Um we start advertising uh for properties that we don't own and in terms of whose liability and who's designing the scope of work.

It did we were hoping this would be a more efficient way.

Um we could adjust midstream, but uh I I'm thinking this will come through.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

All right.

So the other project, uh similar program and funding source um is the Pads Fixed Site Shelter up on the north side of Waukegan there that is up and running, and that's actually what the that picture is a little out of date.

Um they are anticipating construction completion late July with occupancy in early August.

It's running well.

Funds are definitely flowing on that.

Um the county obviously has um significant resources invested in that project.

And so far, so good.

Uh, some minor construction related delays, which would be anticipated when you're converting an old hotel into a new shelter.

Um, but other than that, things are up and rolling, and we're excited to see that um this summer.

Dummit, can you remind us how many how many beds generally are we looking at?

Uh it is I want to say two 232 or something in that range.

Beds, not necessarily the room, but those are beds, yeah.

And then are there kind of like parsed out family sections within this?

Yeah, there's individual, yeah.

It's all but it's so so all the the beds would be a range and family kind of structure, right?

Generally, the non-concrete bedding, yeah, obviously.

So with the most like quasi-apartments, quasi apartments, okay.

I can help you with that.

Um, so there will be some um if you have a large family, there are some rooms because it was a hotel room, it was a hotel um with an adjoining uh, you know, that were meant to be adjoining rooms, so that'll be larger families.

Um there are um then ones that are singles and they they have a couple of different room sizes.

So if you have a family of four, obviously that would be they would have, but if it's you know, um uh a parent and a child, then that would be a smaller room.

So there is some flexibility within the room size with the with the way the hotel was developed.

So um the fact that it was developed to be a hotel is actually really helpful for the shelter process.

So it's um it's really exciting and game changing.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Our other projects um kind of involve our traditional annual funding round.

So next month we'll bring forth uh our annual action plan for program year 2026.

A lot of that will look familiar in terms of the components and the breakdown.

Um, just for reference, we're talking about roughly about five million dollars in HUD entitlement funds that flow through community development.

About two-thirds of that will go toward housing projects, with the remaining going toward public services and our public improvements portfolio.

Um, but I do want to just kind of highlight the housing projects that we have.

Those are all either under construction or soon to be under construction.

Ravine Terrace is the uh partnership with the Waukekan Housing Authority that was 98 units um and involves both rehab and 28 units of new construction.

That is will be uh it's the rolling, so full occupancy always kind of existed on the rehab, they were kind of shuffling people in and out of the building.

Um that project will be done in September.

EB Lee Place is a senior apartment building in Libertyville on Peterson Broad.

They're up in construction on that and probably only a month or so out from occupancy on that.

Um, they are accepting applications for the wait list on that one as well.

Highland Park Town homes eight units of ownership in Highland Park also through SIPA.

Um, some of those units, the units that we're invested in, will be um utilizing the community land trust model to offset uh some of the acquisition costs for the eligible households.

And then North Point um not under construction, uh, but the financial closing is happening this week and will be under construction very shortly thereafter.

That's a um affordable multifamily building in Gurney.

And Lake Plain, I did highlight that um kind of stealing credit here.

It's not funding that flowed directly through community development, but the county has um significant ARPA investments in Lake Plain, that's in Beach Park, senior um townhomes also through SIPA.

I just wanted to highlight that more for awareness, uh, but again, that didn't flow through community development.

I sorry, I can't help myself on this.

Is that Lake Plain?

I'm thinking they took the name from the Lake Plain natural feature, which is P-L-A-I-N, not P-L-A-N-E.

It's very possible.

There is a lot of Lake Plains points and liberties and um things that we're doing.

I just hope they're not really calling like a hairplane.

Because that the feature out there is a is a plane, P L A I N.

So most likely an error on my part.

That's good.

Yeah.

The status of our ongoing uh activities that we do in community development on a yearly basis.

Uh, the big one is our long-term compliance portfolio.

So when we invest in housing projects, specifically rental projects, we have a responsibility to make sure ensure that they maintain affordability for a period of time.

Um, that can be anywhere from five years to 20 years based on the level of investment.

Currently, our portfolio consists of about 80 properties, about 480 units that we're responsible for on an annual basis.

And what that means is an on-site file review.

Uh, there's submissions that they have to make on each one of those units, documenting income and letting us know vacancy rates and things like that.

Good.

Sorry.

Uh, sorry.

Oh, I wanted to just yeah, you could finish your slide and then remember.

Yep.

Uh in terms, yeah, there's an on-site file review and also a physical inspection that takes place um no less often than once every three years.

Thank you.

Uh, something you said a moment ago sparked a question I've had in my mind for the last uh couple of weeks, and I've been wondering about it.

I I don't really understand like I understand that with a lot of these, it's typical to work into these agreements that the landlord or the property owner must provide affordable units for X number of years, right?

And I'm just curious, maybe it seems like a dumb question, but why would we ever put a limit on that?

Are do we are the policymakers actually thinking, well, someday we won't need affordable housing because we will live in this utopia and there will nobody will everybody will make plenty of money.

I mean, I why why do we what's the rationale between putting a limit on that?

And why would sometimes it be five years and sometimes it's 20 years, which seems like a huge difference.

So that's an easy one.

I'll start there.

So it depends on the monetary level of investment.

I think it's $15,000 or less, maybe it's only five years, and the funding source to some extent.

But we're talking about rental, it's usually our home program.

So $15,000 or less, five years, 15 to 25 is 15 years, and above that is 20 years, or any new constructions automatically 20 years.

So that's how it's determined at the federal level.

Why limit it?

Um partly, I think is to if we never live our the administrative burden, like if we were on the hook for compliance on all the units we've ever invested in since the start of the program, we'd probably be close to seven or eight hundred units, which the program doesn't pay us enough to monitor those.

I think it is one thing functionally though, um, these units are often layered in with tax credits and other subsidy requirements.

These buildings, more often than not, uh remain affordable in perpetuity anyway.

So our funding source isn't necessarily the cause of that, but functionally they do.

And a lot of them turn over after a period.

We are seeing that some of the buildings we invested in back in the 90s, right around you know, the 30-year mortgage hit.

There's there's a recapital capitalization that's involved.

So having these requirements live past kind of a 30-year, which is like your traditional mortgage, can cause issues with kind of the refinancing and the recapitalization.

So having a hard break allows new financing to come in.

Um but for the most part, um they stay affordable.

Okay.

Thank you.

That was really helpful.

Oops.

I just skipped over all um HUD reporting and compliance and subrecipient monitoring are related.

So those are our requirements that we do on an annual basis with all our recipients.

Um we go on site, uh look at their program files, make sure, you know, complete our kind of own auditing, uh, make sure they're complying with our rules, and then we report up to HUD both quarterly, semi-annually, and annually on different topics.

Semi-annually is our labor reporting, annually, we just have our general performance report and quarterly um is our our financial reporting that we do into HUD.

I did want to also mention briefly, uh, we did were awarded a new program request last year with an increase of our affordable housing dollar and doubled it from 300 to 600,000 in terms of the county's appropriation.

What that allowed us to do was we put it directly into our application round and award out to a couple um uh programs and projects here.

I wanted to highlight uh the permanent supportive housing program with the Lake County Housing Authority.

Um, we would not otherwise be able to do if not for these dollars.

Um, we would not otherwise be able to do if not for these dollars, um, coalition legal uh providing expungent expungement services to the community community land trust.

Um, the reason AHP is especially valuable here, AHP can go up to 100% of the area median income.

And oftentimes we do these home ownerships in high market areas.

So be able to make the dollars work.

It is helpful to have some of these units available to home households earning up to 100% AMI.

And that's only on AHP.

All our federal dollars are capped out at 80.

And then the YCC program that is a vocational program where the graduates of their program essentially flip houses, generate some program income and you know, sell those homes to income households.

So really great programs that otherwise without the county's dollars, not sure we'd be able to invest at the level we are.

And I think that covers it.

Oh, we can ask questions.

Sorry.

Um could you please go into?

I know we've talked about it, Eric, but the the timing of the next phase of housing lake and activities that are going on between now and then.

So we've been uh meeting and discussing the sort of the framing of phase two with our CMAP partners.

Um they've retained their consultant that they utilized uh during phase one altogether studios.

Um right now, Altogether Studios has developed a suite of content for a series of revenue uh webinars that are going to be um launching uh in the early summer, we believe.

And so we're gonna be looking at that content and uh ensuring that um we're continuing the level of engagement um for this program that's necessary to keep momentum going into phase two.

Um we're looking at the essentially like the fall time frame for beginning the the work groups in earnest.

And so we anticipate that um there's a lot of work that has to go into the development of the the workshop program for each one of these four pillars.

Each pillar has its own sort of policy basis, and the um best practices approach for each of these policy areas is going to be very different different.

So there's a lot of lifting that we have to do right now with uh the core team to get the content um in place so that we can have a successful workshop run in each of these four pillars um that's gonna last through the next several years.

Excellent.

Any other questions?

No, well, thank you, gentlemen.

Appreciate your bringing the update to us and uh we look forward to hearing more on all the various programs.

Member Chair Hart.

Thank you.

May I ask a question uh not related to community development, but more around planning, building and development?

Is that fit with that member comments?

Okay, uh oh, sure.

There it is down there.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So I have a question for Anna.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Moving on to uh let's see, nine.

And do we have a county administrative report?

All right.

We do have executive session.

I mean, I'm willing to move member remarks up if if we're okay with that.

All right, let's move up member remarks.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate that.

So Eric and I have been chatting over the last however long about uh data centers.

I think um there's confusion uh with the public about uh Lake County's responsibility, particularly in regards to the Grays Lake data center.

There's an idea out there that Lake County Board um was part of that approval process, which we know is not the case.

Um I did read something recently that Wa Kegan said, hey, our unified development ordinance does not allow data centers.

I know your team is working very hard on what we're doing here.

I guess I just want to understand um, I know you've got many work plans, sort of what your date is for maybe the completion or start, like really starting that process with the ZBA, and then for our board, let's say somebody comes in and they want to put in a data center in the unincorporated area.

Uh, are we able to say um, you know, at this time we're not approving those because we are in the process of creating our regulations.

So first question relates to the um the timing of the the process um as um I've mentioned at the PBZE committee uh meetings.

Uh are we able to say um you know at this time we're not approving those because we are in the process of creating our regulations so um first question relates to the um the the timing of the the process um as um i've mentioned at the pbze committee uh meetings um we do have a uh uh period of best practice research that we've been um we've been taking on at staff level that's leading to the development of uh of a discussion and presentation for the committee um is set to to occur between June and July of this year in the uh in that meeting when we we have the discussion about data centers and the different impacts the ways of the mitigation strategies for data centers for any of those impacts and the sort of general best practices approaches to regulation we're also going to be um seeking uh decision from the committee on moving forward with uh ZBA public hearing process and so that would lead to uh the a an action on um uh a resolution a board resolution directing the ZBA to conduct public hearings um we do have the opportunity as part of that process to if the it's the committee's desire to do so to um also enact a temporary administrative deferral on any um any applications for data centers that happen to come in in the meantime um the challenge with that process is that it it is only uh eligible for a hundred and twenty days of delay and so we want to make sure that we can wrap up the the public hearing process and board action by that point in time um we think we can do that within the general time frame that we we have to get a decision through the ZBA the committee and then full board and so during that time frame we could place a hold on any applications that were proposed in the meantime before we get to that point before we get to committee action and board action um advancing the the ZBA public hearing process um we do not currently have a specific land use category for data centers and so it would have to be regulated on the basis of an interpretation in our ordinance and so um I I will say that we have not had any serious proposals for any uh data centers in the unincorporated area um yet and so we we also are going to be sharing some information at the committee um when we we come in june or july that um sort of addresses some of the constraints in in locating a site um specifically the you know access to adequate power supply and that sort of um that power infrastructure that's a condition precedent for developing a data center there's a very uh limited number of sites available within the unincorporated area that could be eligible for that so we're uh confident that we can work through this entire process without um any significant um issues faced with you know a data center proposal thank you and I just want to apologize I've had data centers on my mind so when I saw you I was like oh I really want to ask him and this is HCS so I apologize for doing that um and maybe for uh I might just ask it again in PBZ and E it has just been uh a very uh a big topic so my apologies to the committee I actually liked the question yeah but it it was not the right place for the question so thank you thank you thank you all right on seeing no other member comments I think we are going to move into executive session and I think I have to read something right yes I recall oh can we have a motion to go into executive session motion by member knees second by member casbin you do need to state the reason why you want to go into oh the reason I want to go into executive session is to review closed session minutes pursuant to five ILCS 120-2C and I will assume the motion applies yeah you have to file by the steps all right um okay can I get a roll call yeah vice chair altenberg I don't know if she can vote she can't vote member casner Cunningham member Danforth member can easily member main chair period aye and I don't have vote because they have one okay everyone's electronic devices okay we are now in closed session all right we're back into regular session item 11.1 is committee action approving the health and community service committee executive session minutes from October 7 2025 can I have a motion motion by member main second by member knees all those in favor say aye aye any opposed the motion passes 11.2 is committee action regarding a periodic review of closed session minutes can I have a motion motion by member knees second by member kasman all those in favor say aye aye any opposed the motion passes

Item eleven point one is committee action approving the health and community service committee executive session minutes from October seventh, two thousand twenty-five.

Can I have a motion?

Motion by Member Maine, second by member Kniesnik.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion passes.

Eleven point two is committee action regarding a periodic review of closed session minutes.

Can I have a motion?

Motion by Member Kinesnik.

Second by Member Kasman.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion passes.

Any other member remarks or comments or requests?

Seeing none, we are adjourned.

We will meet together on May twenty-sixth, two thousand twenty-six.

Thank you.