Transition Committee First Meeting

[Update: County Board Member Patterson sent me a note identifying the other person in the room as Kay Rhodes, the County Board Administrative Assistant. Thanks!]

Agenda here. Agenda highlights in previous post and on the Executive page linked here and above. Committee page with Chair/member information and agenda links here.

As you can tell in the picture above, the meeting was held in the Putnam meeting room as opposed to the Shields meeting room one normally finds the County Board. It's right next to the Northeast parking lot entrance. In addition to the committee chair and members, interim County Administrator Deb Busey, County Clerk Gordy Hulten were there in (I believe) official capacities as well as Board Member Pattsi Petrie in the audience. There was another woman in the room, but unfortunately I didn't find out who that was at the time UPDATE: it was Kay Rhodes, the County Board Administrative Assistant.

The meeting started very close to the scheduled 4:30pm and began with public participation, though there were no takers from outside the committee members. There was a short delay before getting started into the establishing a schedule of meetings to complete the work. I'd strongly suggest waiting until the official schedule is posted as there may be changes I missed here or afterward due to a member being out of town and a national holiday (President's Day) falling on the 1st and 3rd Mondays idea, but that appears to tentatively be the plan. If that holds it sounds like the meetings will be at 4:30pm and probably be scheduled into June. When discussing how many meetings it might take Patterson mentioned it took four meetings just to agree on a salary for the Executive position.

Weibel then went over the agenda packet, pointing out that the first 26 pages or so were probably the most relevant to this committee. After looking over the materials they began discussing where to start and almost immediately began noting differences between Will County and Champaign. There were technical issues for emulation such a different approach to hiring, as well as population and financial (Will County having over three times the people, lots of growth, and far more money to work with).

They decided to generally follow the same meeting rules as the Champaign County Board with Robert Rules to fall back on as needed, but made a point to ask that information provided come with citations to avoid confusion. They discussed a need to publish the County Executive ordinance (possible legal requirement?) and inviting legal counsel (Donna M. Davis, assistant State's Attorney, I believe) to meetings after submitting questions as opposed to having her sit in on every meeting. An example arose almost immediately as to whether the County Executive counts towards a quorum. "Probably not" seemed to be the consensus, but such details need to be nailed down.

They went on to discuss substantive differences between Will County and how Champaign government operates, when appointments and other actions needed to be introduced before being voted on and other such details and working out details of what is required in the supporting material. After several minutes of discussion on the details there was a general agreement that everyone would have to go through the legal materials and familiarize themselves in depth, "break out the color highlighters!" The task at hand was made clear: they will need to come up with a Champaign County version of the County Executive form of government in Will County with rules for the County Board to vote on.

They discussed organizational rules and legal counsel issues and legal counsel through the State's Attorney's office still. Hulten chimed in on a question of conflicts that the conflicting bodies within the County government have been able to rely on the State's Attorney's office being large enough to cover the conflict without conflicts of interest on internal disputes.

They marveled at another highlighted difference in Will County, that their County Board and County Executive both have a administrative chief of staff for carrying out their duties. Champaign in its dire budget straights and constantly under strain from the Nursing Home has to stretch its budget just for current vacancies it seems. There was a collective mood of "must be nice" around the room.

With materials to study and a general idea of the task ahead, they adjourned at 5:13pm by my watch. I will post the official schedule for upcoming meeting times and dates once they're posted.