Tonight there was a Committee of the Whole Meeting, not to be confused with a regular old County Board meeting. At these meetings the various areas of responsibility report in with other County departments on everything from proposals to budgets, but mainly their monthly reports. For County Board pros, click here or scroll down to jump to tonight's meeting. If you're still learning how all this works and more information on these meetings in general, just keep reading.
If you click around the main County Board website, you can get to it by going to Meeting Info and it's the first under County Board and Regular County Board meetings. There you can find information for older meetings or tonight's. There you can find the Agenda and the Agenda Packet.
The Agenda lays out what was planned on being discussed, while the Agenda Packet has all sorts of supporting information relevant to the meeting, including the previous Committee of the Whole's minutes... which summarizes what was said, motions, and vote totals.
They also have printed agendas and public participation forms on the table by the rear entrance of the Lyle Shields Meeting Room... the room where most of the various County Board meetings are held. For those curious who Lyle Shields was, I snagged this excerpt from the News-Gazette:
Mr. Shields was very active in area government and leadership activities. He was a member of the Champaign County Board for 41 years and served as chairman of the board for 10 years. He served as Condit Township supervisor for 36 years and in the Sangamon Valley Fire Protection District for 40 years as a volunteer fireman.
Mr. Shields served on the National Association of Counties for 11 years as a member of the board of directors. He was president of the United Counties Council of Illinois for two years. He was a Republican Precinct Committeeman for 30 years. He was selected as Farm Leader of the Year by the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette in 1992. He was a member of the Champaign County Farm Bureau.
But remember, if you can't make it in person, they do like to remind you that:
Meetings are live streamed at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/champco1776 This is an offsite link.
Recordings of prior meetings are posted on the County Clerk's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/champaigncountyclerk
With the Agenda and a note pad, you're pretty well all set to go. Although if you have to go, the restrooms are across the hall just inside the two "Pod 400 Urbana Park District Gym" doorways. The ladies' room is in the doorway nearest the meeting room, and the men's nearest the entrance (the after 4:30pm North East one... there are signs, there are maps! It's not so bad, I swear!). I quickly scribbled a layout of the meeting room with a bonus hallway and bathroom map, but it was all pretty obvious other than the bathrooms. But just for good measure... my Lyle Shields scribble map, for the harshest of judgement: [Update: better maps (now with less reflection glare too!) here]
Tonight's Meeting (for those who skipped ahead):
Tonight's meeting lasted a couple hours, but last month's Committee of the Whole on the County Clerk's YouTube channel was three and half hours. So they can be longer. Once they get started, it's much like any parliamentary meeting you ever may have attended. Roll calls and quorum check (enough people attending for it to be a legitimate meeting) and approval of minutes. But then public participation.
Katie Blakeman announced some of the preliminary results of her Amnesty Week effort. And a couple citizens came up to ask the board to consider alternatives to using the jails as mental health and behavioral centers as well as asking for responses to a questionnaire previously submitted to the board. I didn't quite follow either very well, so I'd refer to the video (link now available) on that. The rules say five minutes, but with only a couple participants it appeared they cut off the longer speaker at about eight after a "quickly please" a minute prior. Speaking of those public participation rules:
The various departments went through their reports and tossed about numbers with other officials sitting at the same desk/seat used for public participation to answer questions about numbers or policies that involve them. For example the auditor or Tammy Asplund (Recording Secretary), Tami Ogden (Deputy County Administrator/Finance). You'll find that during the meetings first names are used quite a bit, so a first challenge is to familiarize oneself with who is in the room and referring to previous minutes to find out who "Mr. Hall" is if the context makes it difficult to discern with so much administrative bureaucracy blurring together.
One thing of striking note was the County Administrator's report about all of the software systems needing upgraded from ERP software, IRS software, Metcad, Courthouse systems, and another software program relied on where the vendor is closing their business and they need a whole new provider. All while still wanting to move on the hardware side from mainframe to cloud based system.
And the IT director is eligible for retirement and there isn't an human resources director.
There was a great deal of MS4 compliance work that honestly went way over my head since I literally had to google a few times to find the relevant Illinois Environmental Protection Agency page that helped me get half a clue.
The gist was they need staff to get all of the the things done and they did make a motion to make part time guy a full time guy as an alternative to getting someone with a masters degree in administration to be an assistant county administrator. There seemed to be confusion on what the County Executive position would take over on workload.
Mr. Hall, who may be John Hall (Zoning Administrator), but I need to verify that also got into the MS4 EPA issues and stressed similar issues with staffing for it with a part time guy who has only been at it for a year and having no way to inspect for permits with the MS4 workload. On the enforcement program he stated he didn't even want to talk about how far behind we are on that.
Mr. Hall made the argument that a little bit extra in staffing will pay dividends.
In the end the board had two votes on an assistant county administrator position, that passed by a hand vote, but due to 1 non-voting had a second roll call vote with a switched vote that failed, which left open frustrated arguments on which one was valid, which I believe was the initial hand vote... but even I got confused when it was brought up again later in the meeting. I believe it will be an item for the full board meeting coming up.
Mental health got a one time bit of extra funding with a unanimous vote.
Animal control got the go ahead to work with U of I Petmed for a revenue neutral cooperative program for spaying and neutering by a unanimous vote.
Tami Ogden fixed a long running formula error causing a discrepancy between the Administrative Services budget numbers and the Auditor's official numbers.
And a bit contentious sounding was the "Approval to Release Request for Proposals for the Purchase of the Champaign County Nursing Home" that passed by what appeared to be a split Democratic vote. I believe this helped move the process of selling it along, but as the motion title suggests only in putting out a request to get proposals. Ah, parliamentary bureaucracy. Ain't it exciting!
The News-Gazette had an article on the release request, available here and added to the Nursing Home page here. It has additional explanations of what was actually voted on that makes more sense.
So, there you have it, with more details and corrections to come, I'm sure. But you've joined me on my first County Board meeting...
...so hopefully yours will be better prepared and less like an away mission to strange new worlds and more like a simple way to view and interact with a a level of government that we probably should pay more attention to as a community. If you're a pro at this and see errors, mistakes, or if you're a n00b like me and have questions, feel free to laugh, mock, ask, or demand I draw a better more legible map in the comments section.
(also it's already 11pm, so typos will be fixed in the morning!)
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