The County Board may be new, but the problems it faces this term are all too familiar thanks to delays in selling the Nursing Home. The News-Gazette had an overview today:
Champaign County Board approves another $2.7 million for nursing homeFull article here. The new Executive Form of County government appeared to get over some initial hurdles with the new rules. Recently appointed and now elected member Pranjal Vachaspati raised some concerns along with others via points of order. There was some concern with committee chairmen presiding over resolutions on within their area as opposed to the Executive or other presiding chair.
With the Champaign County Nursing Home still under the county’s control months after the county board agreed to sell it, members approved budget amendments Tuesday night to cover its operations into the new year.
County Executive Darlene Kloeppel said the county’s goal is still to close on the sale of the home on Dec. 31, but the buyers have the option to extend that into 2019...
In other business, the board voted unanimously to approve the creation of a new position, deputy director of administration, to assist Kloeppel.
The position will have a minimum annual salary of $63,745.50 and a maximum annual salary of $95,628.
As part of the move, the county is also eliminating the budget/HR specialist position from the county executive office’s budget. The person who holds that position now is retiring.
The board also approved the appointment of Bradley Diel and Margaret Chaplan to the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District Board. Their terms will last until Dec. 31, 2023.
A motion passed to suspend the rules on the matter to ensure the votes taken could not be challenged or invite litigation later. Member McGuire pointed to his past experience on the board that they were within appropriate protocol and the Executive appeared to agree when further points of order were raised on the issue. The unusual protocol was due to this being the first board meeting and thus there was no Committee of the Whole where committee chairs would have had preliminary motions. McGuire noted that sometimes this happens when there isn't a COW meeting. Regardless it shouldn't be an issue next month.
Long time staff employed by the county were recognized for tenure milestones and assignments were made to committees and liaisons (except the chair's liaisons because he was absent today). For those following the criminal justice reform work being done by the county, the new Justice & Social Services Chair and Vice-Chair are Kyle Patterson - D, and Jim McGuire -R. McGuire served in this role with Robert King last term where the Racial Justice Task Force Recommendations had begun to take initial shape.
The 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report was presented by the independent auditor who then answered some technical questions and recommended a few areas for improvement. One issue he gave as an example was the antiquated ledger system making it difficult to segregate duties for authorizing and making payments to ensure proper checks and balances. There were some other technical questions for anyone interested when the video is available.
A vote on a highway foreman position being changed just passed the 15 vote roll call threshold needed to pass. There wasn't any discussion on why this may have been contentious. Voting no were Clifford, Eisenmann, Esry, Goss, Harper, Rector, and Wolken. I'll have to check to see if there was a budget concern among the more conservative members.
Circuit Clerk Blakeman explained the need for the changes to the job descriptions up for a vote. With the budget crunch squeezing manpower across the county, the Circuit Clerk had been making due, but needs to update the job duties of a couple current positions and make the pay competitive for another to hopefully finally fill it. She was asked by Member Fortado if the current employee contract negotiations going on would be fortuitous timing to work out those changes and Blakeman agreed that it likely would be a good time to do so.
The new Sheriff explained a couple grants the Sheriff's Office was vying for, including one intended to help implement new criminal justice data system that's more in depth than the current FBI standard through the Uniform Crime Report that categorizes by the most heinous crime. The National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) would allow for far more details to be tracked on the circumstances and crimes involved. The grant is available to local police departments, though Sheriff Heuerman could not say what the acceptance rate was at this point. He hoped to transition the CCSO over by sometime in 2021.
The meeting wrapped up at 7:58pm, clocking in at just under an hour and a half. Given the new rules and members, an extremely long agenda (four full pages and a half-page addendum), and the fact that there were Nursing Home votes? That seems like a Christmas miracle. There was no public participation prior to all of the housekeeping resolutions, so that sped things along. That will certainly change as the serious issues of 2019 come to a head.
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