2009 County Board Agenda Archives

Before the meeting started, we had the honor to meet with Representative Mike Smith and Keith Sommer and Senator David Koehler as part of the new Legislative Priority Session. The meeting went real well, although I question the reasoning of presenting a listing of priorities to the legislators before the County Board votes on it. While I had some questions on the listing, which I will discuss below, during the session with the legislators I did not bring them up. I did point out to the legislators that the Funding for the Pekin Landfill Closer is the counties top priority. While the IEPA has done a great job of telling us what needs to be done to properly close this landfill and resolve this problem, they have been unable to come up with the funding to support us in doing this project. My message to the legislators was while the talk and direction is great, the funding is what we really need.

As far as the agenda, items 1, 13, 14, 15, 16 & 20 where pulled from the Consent Agenda. Items 1 & 16 where pulled because of procedural reasons since they where late additions to the agenda. They passed with no objections. Items 13, 14 & 15 where pulled so they could have some minor changes made. They passed as well with no objections after the changes where made.

I pulled item 20 by me. It was the Legislative Agenda and I pulled it so two items could be discussed by the group as a whole. First I wanted to see the addition of a Statement that Tazewell County supports the Reform of the Redistricting Process. This is going to be one of the most important conversations going into this coming year and I feel strongly that Politicians should not be the individuals that decide the individuals that vote for them. I was disappointed by the lack of support this gathered from the board as a whole. County Board Member Paul Hahn was the only member to support the addition of this important message. It is my hope that their unwillingness to make a statement on this important issue is because we may have to make the same changes ourselves.

The second issue I raised was inclusion of the Statement on Enterprise Zoning Clarification. This statement has to do with the Wind Farm in Southern Tazewell County being included in the Enterprise Zone. I felt the County Board made their feelings clear last year when the rightly went against the advice of the State Attorney and voted to place the Wind Farm in the Enterprise Zone. After some conversation, the County Board decided keep the statement on the agenda. The Statement passed in it original form.

For a meeting that had been advertised and billed as the meeting in which one of the most discussed and politicalized decision in the past several years before the Tazewell County Board would be decided, the actually meeting tonight did not disappoint. With the Chairman of the Board on the radio in the morning selling his point of view and the lawyer for the businesses on the radio in the afternoon explaining his side, add to the mix lots and lots of phone calls in the past week to and from Board Members, the meeting looked as if it would disappoint with a room full of people and no opportunity for them to express their feelings on this issue.

The Chairman of the Board, Dave Zimmerman, decided last week that he would not allow any public input at tonight's meeting. I called him and requested that he reconsider, but the answer was no. My problem with this ruling is the fact that we should never tell the public that we do not care what they have to say, and with his ruling that is the message we were sending. A public meeting should always include an opportunity for the public to have a chance to express their concerns and feelings. With this disappointment in mind, I took the rare step to challenge his ruling by using Robert's Rule of Order to make a motion to Suspended the Standing Rules of the Tazewell County Board to allow for public input on this controversial issue. County Board Member Jan Donahue seconded my motion to allow those in attendance to have the opportunity to speak and the motion to overturn the Chairman's ruling passed with all members voting yes except one. I think this was a very important message sent by the overwhelming majority of the County Board that public input is indeed welcomed at the County Board Meetings. I am proud to have taken this unusual action and promise that in the future I will always support the public having the opportunity to have it's voice heard.

As to the items on the agenda, items number 3, 4, 5, 16, 17 and 20 were pulled from the consent agenda. All but 17 and 20 were pulled for procedural reasons and passed without any member objections. 17 was removed from the agenda after the HR Committee voted in favor of 16 over 17, as these were both two different insurance options.

The big agenda item was number 20, as mentioned above. Over the past week, County Board Members Russ Crawford, Mel Stanford, and Jerry Vanderheydt had done allot of work and research to educate many other members of why this needed to be tabled. In the end, it was decided to send it back to the Executive Committee for further consideration. This action was taken after it became obvious that the motion to pass a ban was not going to have enough support.

The only other item on the agenda was the 2010 Final Budget, which passed with only a few minor changes. I will be posting the 2010 Budget on the website in the coming days.

A very busy and important meeting tonight, but I feel that too many people will be discussing the short term issue (Item 16) rather than the long term solution (Item 13) that was also created last night. First on the Consent Agenda, items 3, 12, 13, 16, 18 and 19 were pulled. Before discussing these pulled items, we had two presentations by outside agencies. The first was the Economic Development Council for Central Illinois who delivered the Tazewell County Activity Update. The other was the TransPort Authority that gave a brief discussion of their progress.

To the items pulled from the Consent Agenda, number 3 was pulled simply as a mater of procedure. It passed with no discussion. Numbers 18 and 19 were pulled and minor changes were made through amendments. Member Dean Grimm also wanted to abstain from voting on these two. Other than member Dean Grimm, all others voted in support.

Number 12 was also pulled as a mater of procedure. I will be attaching the presentation presented by Member Harris and the Health Services Committee concerning the Pekin Landfill Closure Proposal here by the end of day tomorrow.

Number 13 was pulled by me. This one concerns the creation of a Human Resources Position. This is a position I supported creating in the last campaign and earlier this year when the Human Resources Committee voted to table the action. I have said all along that this is the answer to the plague of lawsuits we have seen over the past several years. The creation of this position tonight is maybe one of the most monumental actions taken by the County Board in the past several years and is a clear action in the right direction as far as ending these wasteful lawsuits. I spoke before the vote to clarify the direction the county wanted this position to take: "All of our leadership throughout the organization needs to utilize this individual in all staffing decisions and actions. Adding this position will do nothing to solve the potential risk to the county if all of the leadership does not utilize it during every staffing decision or action. All leadership members of the county need to work with us on this important accomplishment." All Board Members voted in support of creating this position.

Number 16 was the Behm Settlement, which I opposed because of the Confidentiality Clause that stops us from discussing the details of this case. I feel it is wrong for us as elected officials to give up our obligation to explain why we voted the way we did and the facts we used to make our decisions. It is our responsibility as elected officials not to just go to the meeting and place a vote, but to go back to those that elected us and explain why we voted the way we did and the facts we used to make those decisions. It should not be a decision for us to make to give away this responsibility we have been entrusted with by the individuals that elected us. I was the only Board Member to vote negative on this issue.

While I have a feeling that the Behm Settlement will be discussed in the short term, it is my hope that the creation of the Human Resources Position is seen by the general public as the Tazewell County Board taking the necessary long term steps to final end this plague of embarrassing and wasteful lawsuits."

Simplistic meeting tonight. On the consent agenda, only items 6, 15, and 25 were pulled. Of these, only 25 had any conversation. Member Dean Grimm pulled this in order for Health Department Director Amy Tippey to update the board as to the Disaster Plans for H1N1 her and staff have prepared. All items on the consent agenda passed without opposition.

Keith Worner of the University of Illinois Extension gave the County Board an update on the organization. He reported that last year they prepared 58 news releases and newspaper columns, distributed 82,678 newsletters, educated 21,867 adults and 16,272 youth through face-to-face teaching, educated 1,555 community members through non-face-to-face contact and had over 46,800 hits on their Tazewell County Extension website.

David Jones and Sub-Committee Chairmen Carol Imig gave the County Board an update concerning the progress made on the Storm Shelters at the Tremont Facility. As you will remember, earlier this year I sent out a newsletter concerning the need for serious upgrades to the Tremont Facility to provide our employees and visitors to our offices at Tremont with Storm Shelter protection. Member Carol Imig, the Chairmen of the Property Committee of which I am a member, created a sub-committee to look into solutions to this major county issue. They found a short-term fix which was to work with the original supplier of the current defective shelters to fix them immediately. This work has begun as two of the five defective shelters were fix earlier this month and actually enlarged. As far as a long-term solution for the entire facility, this will be the focus of his sub-committee over the next few months. I want to congratulate Member Imig, Member Dean Grimm, Member Jerry Vanderheydt and Member Tim Neuhauser who are serving on this sub-committee along with representative of the County Offices at Tremont.

Finally, documentation was distributed to the County Board Members concerning a review of the Overtime Practices and Usage in the Corrections Division of the Tazewell County Sheriff's Office. I will be reviewing this information over the next few months as I imagine the rest of the Board Members will as we proceed with the budget for next year. I will post this report for you to review also in the next few day under the "In The News" tab.

Very interesting meeting tonight. A quick meeting, but a few really close votes. As far as the In Place Committee Meetings, the Human Resources Committee tabled the discussion of forming a new custodial staff. This was an item coming from the Property Committee, of which I am a member. I voted for it at committee and still support it do to the fact that it has little impact to the budget (would actually save the county money, but very little as we ran a cost comparison with other companies quoted prices) and would give us more flexibility with our abilities to maintain our facilities. We need this flexibility as we have recently taken ownership of the Arcade Building in Pekin and as such will soon have tenants that have needs that may require custodial service beyond what we currently have available. With more needs and actually a slight savings on the financial end, I do not see a negative here. I really hope this makes it out of committee next month and comes forward for a vote.

On the consent agenda, items 5, 6 and 7 where pulled. Member Neuhauser pulled 5 and I pulled 6 and 7, although they are all very similar. They all involve the custodial contracts for our other buildings that are being consider for the above mentioned new custodial staff. Item 5 involved the McKenzie Building. I voted on committee for this at Property and it came forward with the lowest bidder. The three bids where A) Professional Cleaning Service at $18,083.52, B) Clemmers at $18,000.00 and C) Tazewell County Resources Center (TCRC) at $20,601.12.

Item 6 involved the Veteran's Affairs Commission/ESDA Building and the bids where A) Professional at $9,902.88, B) Clemmers at $4,200.00 and C) TCRC at $4,320.00. This one came out of committee with the recommendation that the bid go to TCRC.

Item 7 involved the Justice Center and the bids where A) Professional at $48,653.28 and B) Clemmers at $49,200.00. The recommendation was to go with the current provider rather than the lower bidder.

My issue with all three of these was that we need to almost always take the lowest bidder. By doing this, it takes all of the "grey" area out of the decision. It is simply black and white; who is the lowest qualified bidder. With that then, no individual can question why an individual received a bid. One look at the manipulation and illegalities that have taken place in this state over the past few years tells you why we need this clarity. In this case, unfortunately TCRC is a non-profit with close ties to the County, which makes them different than the other bidders. While I support TCRC, I still thought it was important to have the moral clarity; lowest bidder is lowest bidder.

However, this was not the way the votes went. All three items went to someone other than the lowest. For items 5 and 6, Members Hillegonds, Hahn, Vanderheydt, Palmer, Von Boeckman, Sundell and Meisinger joined me in voting for the lowest bidder. For item 7, Member Stanford joined me and the others listed above in voting for the lowest bidder. As mentioned before, all of this effort failed as the majority voted to give the bids to other individuals rather than the lowest bidder.

Long meeting, but most of the meeting was covered in Executive Session. On the Consent Agenda, items 1,10, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24 and 25 were pulled. 10, 23, 24, and 25 all passed with no objections. Item 18 did not advance out of committee, as they tabled this one year extension for further discussion when more information concerning the budget becomes available.

Item 1 was pulled for several questions and further clarification. An amendment was proposed to change the setback limits from the 1/2 mile that came out of the Zoning Board of Appeals to the 1/8th mile suggested by the County Land Use Committee, which is also in line with the EPA setback requirements. After much discussion, the amendment passed with Members Carol Imig, Terry Von Boeckman, Dean Grimm, Mike Harris, and Russ Crawford voting against. I felt the federal setback limits that already are in place are enough and could not see any reason to increase them. With the change of setback now set at 1/8th mile, the amendment passed with Member Harris voting against.

Items 19 and 20 required further discussion in executive session, following which the majority decided that they needed to have further discussions before moving forward. A motion to send this back to committee was made and passed. I voted against the tabling of both of these items because I felt that after three months of discussion, we had enough information to move forward.

Finally, under K: Communications from Elected and Appointed County Officials I had a statement I read concerning statements by the Sheriff concerning the Merit Commission conflict from the week earlier. Here is that statement:

"I am very disheartened by the improper release of material covered in Executive Sessions of the County Board. Members of that session trusted one another that what was said would be kept in that meeting and only released when all had decided that it was an appropriate time with very limited exceptions. To be given information and then to have individuals discussing it with the media less than 24 hours later is an inappropriate use of Executive Session and a breach of trust."

Very basic, straight-up meeting with some interesting and important items approved. Of the Consent Agenda, items 1, 16, 17, 20, 21 and 22 got pulled do to late additions to the agenda. Of these, all passed and the only one that had an opposition was 21. Members Crawford, Imig, Dean Grimm and Meisinger voted against. To me this was just a simple procedural motion to bring the precincts in the county into state guidelines. There was a presentation by the Township Supervisor of Cincinnati Township concerning the consolidation of South Pekin into one precinct, but the County Clerk said that would not be possible do to state guidelines.

Some interesting and important items that passed with no objection where 1, 3 and 15. Item 1 concerned the use of Stimulus Funds for the repair of Dee-Mack Road. Unfortunately only the portion of Dee-Mack road between Business 24 and Bypass 24 can be repaired with Stimulus Funds. Previously, we had voted to have the all of Dee-Mack from Business 24 to the County line repaired. With this change, we are going to take the money we could not spend on the northern part of Dee-Mack Road and repair Allentown Road.

Item 3 was the County transferring Broadway Road from the city limits to Veterans Drive over to the City of Pekin. This had been discussed as the road expansion work for this section had been planned.

Item 15 involved the County using it's budgeted Economic Development Funding to help pay for Retail Development Study's in the communities of Washington, Morton and Pekin. In Washington, this involved the study of Sunnyland Plaza, an area that is close to my heart since it is practically in my backyard. I am hopeful that this new study of these aging Strip Malls will help point to positive ways to revitalize these Retail Developments.

Lots of changes to the agenda and several very big actions taken at this meeting. As far as the agenda, Mr. Worner was not able to in attendance and had to be removed from the agenda. Also, the Transportation Committee Meeting did not take place because the item material was not ready in time. Item 3 on the Consent Agenda was pulled by the filer PDC so it can be reviewed more at the committee level. Personally, I have known and other board members should have known for the past several months that this was coming forward to us. With that knowledge, I find it hard to understand why some members felt they did not have enough time to be prepared on this item.

Further Action on the Consent Agenda included the pulling of items 1, 2, 9, 16, 17, 18, and 23. Items 1 and 2 where pulled simple because they were late additions to the agenda and passed. Item 9 was pulled for the same reason, but I fell this is an issue that we need to watch very closely. Property Chairmen Imig and County Administrator Jones brought this to the Property Committee that I am on this past month and discussed the severe erosion that has occurred at the Tremont Facility. Because of the location of this erosion, we need to act quickly to stop the continued damage of the site. Administrator Jones found us this grant opportunity to assist the county with this issue and I congratulate him for his quick research and action to hopefully save the county money.

Items 16 and 17 have been at the Property Committee for the past several months now. This is huge addition to the county and a very significant and kind donation to the county from the Monge Family. While I have major concerns that we are adding another building and still are not working with a Space Needs Study in place, which could advise and guide the county as far as the best use of the facilities we have, the location and the fact that this facility was being donated made this opportunity to good to pass up. The building itself was the donation, with the parking lots adjacent to the building being the only payment they requested. I, along with the rest of the county board, took the time to tour the building and I saw first hand the excellent condition the building is in. Repairs will be need soon to upgrade several items like a railing on the stairway that need to be increased in height for safety concerns and some minor repairs to the slope of the roof, but again the price and location of this facility made this too good to pass up. With that said, I will be stepping up my request that the Property Committee get serious about looking at the renewal of the current Space Needs Study that has been forgotten and also building a long term vision of what we want to do with all of our facilities.

Item 18 was pulled and discussed at length. In the end, Members Dean Grimm, Brent Grimm, and Linc Hobson voted against this bid that did pass. They had questions concerning did the lowest bidder actually meet the bid requirements. What helped make up my mind was statements from County Administrator Jones and the States Attorney's Office that the bidder did meet the requirements.

Finally item 23 was pulled from the agenda so that Members Dean Grimm, Brent Grimm and Linc Hobson could abstain from voting on this Enterprise Zone Request from the village of Morton. Member Harris had several basic questions concerning Enterprise Zoning in general. As far as my opinion, I have repeatedly said that while philosophically I would like to see an end to Enterprising Zoning, in reality the way the laws of the State of Illinois are written an municipality that does not offer Enterprise Zoning is at a serious disadvantage as far as business growth. This is an example of the difference in Philosophy and Reality in local politics.

A very long meeting, but most of it was in executive session. Items 3,4 and 17 were pulled from the consent agenda. Items 3 and 4, which covered Tazewell County's usage of the Federal Stimulus funding for Transportation upgrades, I have already discussed in News Update on the "In The News" tab. You can also find more information concerning this topic on the "County Board Agenda" tab under "addition #1 and #2".

Many items where pulled from the consent agenda, but most where for procedural reasons (last minuet additions to the agenda). I-15 was an exception. Member Grimm pulled this because of the close vote (five votes in support, three votes against) on Property Committee. At that meeting I voted against approval of this architectural design of three fourths of the first floor of the Tazewell Building do to the fact that we have no current proposal or consolidated plan for the rest of the building. At the County Board Meeting I stated that I was now going to vote in support of this because of information I received after the committee meeting concerning the reasoning the other members had for supporting this design. While it is true that we do not have an overall plan for the rest of the Tazewell Building, and they also are concerned with this lack of information, it is important that we also get the Regional Superintendent of Schools offices consolidated and keep the ball moving that direction. I will continue on the Property Committee to push for an updated Space Needs Study that will help identify what the rest of the Tazewell Building will be used for in the near future. Member Grimm was the only member to vote against this item.