630, we'll call our meeting to order, Dale and Lawrence.
Certainly, certainly.
Lowerheads, Heavenly Father, we come today to thank you
for bringing us all together
and thank you for blessing our lives,
help us do what's right for the County.
and we have a friendly and productive conversations
and this will be asked in Jesus' name, amen.
All right, 3.0, Google of the agenda, Samuel.
Second.
Is there any additions or anything to it?
Well, I'm gonna add something to the,
I think it's a new business.
I wanna talk about the trail agreement,
intergovernmental agreement.
and I think that would be under new business.
Okay.
Anything else?
All those in favor of the agenda as added?
That, aye.
Are you opposed?
Motion carries.
We have approval of the meeting minutes from May 11th.
Motion to approve.
Motion.
Is there a second? Any questions on those?
Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries as well.
We have claims this evening, trolling $860.33.
Move to approve.
Second.
Motion and a second.
Motion by Brandt, second by Baker.
All those in favor, signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Any opposed? There's a few for the signature. At this time, we have public comment.
Yes.
Come on. Excuse my shaky voice. I'm a little bit of this. There's more of you than there is of me.
State your name. My name is Mark Curtis. I live in 1990 Candlewick Lane in Freeport, Illinois, Mark and Cindy Curtis. And so I get you to add this to the sentence. So we're going to be passing it on to the legislature.
I'm involved in the area with the quarry and I just wanted to mention everybody just bringing
this up but my concerns and thoughts about that and some of what it boils down to is
I'm concerned about the groundwater contamination of when he gets into doing other things in
quarry and getting into the concrete and the asphalt and things like that with crushing
and Recycling that oppose risk to the groundwater. My issues are also traffic and safety of the
increased truck volume for residents, school buses and other users and conditions of the
road and just wear and tear. The noise and the hours of operation, I think it's six in
in the morning until six in the evening or something like that.
So, and just the air quality and I moved out there 2015.
It's close enough to be a city,
but far enough to be peaceful and tranquil.
And I believe that this is gonna inhibit that.
And so this is, I mean, there is businesses,
but I just wanted to state my concerns.
And I think I'm the only one
Please give me, thank you for your time and your consideration and if you don't mind, I wanted to be first because I have a sick heart. So I'm going to go home and tend to her. Hopefully that won't be in the minutes. Thank you.
Chair and Rovers, all except one County Board Member,
holding a new fence ordinance in that last month's
Board Meeting.
Are you aware of the fencing project that has started
since that meeting at the 40 located at 466 West Fairview Road?
I'll speak of the activities the owners at Jeffery
has been doing for the past three weeks
along the property line between us.
is graded up and cut out trees and shrubbery on his side.
In doing so, he has knocked portions of his existing
steel coast and barbed wire fencing
and still rutted shrubbery onto my property.
He has shoved piles of dirt under the fence line
and onto my property.
Last summer, he and I spoke of working together
to clean up the property line.
This no longer appears to be his intent.
Last week, a family member called me at approximately 7 p.m.
said he wasn't able to drive up my lane as landscaping waste shrubs and brush had been
thrown over the fence onto my lane. My family member had to throw the best back over the fence
as Zach had already left the quarry for the day. I don't believe when you folks approved the
ordinance you expected these issues for neighbors to have to deal with. I ask that you consider
Director, amending and revising the ordinance to correct and alleviate these and other issues
for people who live next door and aren't just zoned residential, but also zoned ag.
This morning, Zoning Director Williams told me Mr. Jeffery will be allowed to use any
old rusty thrown away nasty loafing or scrap materials he chooses for his fencing.
This is also an issue that shouldn't be inflicted upon neighbors.
Mr. Jeffrey's actions for over a year now have been in constant county and state violation.
Why has this been and continues to be allowed?
Georgia, are you running the camera?
Would you please zoom in on this video?
It's voice activated.
I can't control it.
Is it looking at my phone?
Yep.
Thank you.
This video was taken since your last PND development meeting.
This is a small dump trailer, but you can clearly see
in part what our neighborhood has been exposed to
and expected to endure for over the past year.
Multiply the intensity of the health issues
with the semi-trailer dumpings.
As always, I invite all of you to come out personally,
see what I speak of.
Please call and I'll let you up my lane.
You don't see much from the road.
For the official record, I request my remarks tonight
and this video will be placed into the meeting minutes.
Mrs. Williams told me this morning
that this type of request is only honored
at ZBA and County Board meetings,
not County Subcommittee meetings.
Is that correct?
Please let me know.
Thank you for your attention.
I don't know if you guys, is it?
Jackson.
Can you?
And that's, oh, all right.
Okay.
Can I please leave this with you then?
Good evening. How are you all? Good, good. Great. Passed around are an extrapolation
I know on 7.8 within the agenda is the Illinois Department of IDPS's monthly digest of unemployment numbers.
The chart there references the labor force employment and participation rate in relationship to the job posting data.
So as you can see, we continue to have more jobs posted than we do people unemployed and looking for work.
Consistently, same companies seem to be at the top of the list.
They just rotate kind of which position they're at.
GPAC, as well as K&A Recruiting and AMN Healthcare are all healthcare recruiters.
The one I would say kind of more significant thing that stuck out to me, unemployment rate has dropped
Scott, from 5.2 to 4.0, which is pretty substantial in one month, and the median salary has decreased
significantly for the last several months. It had been a little over $30 an hour. It's
at $26.54 per hour at the median salary. So just some things to make you aware of. At
the bottom of the page, I won't go through the list, but our upcoming events, you're
We're all welcome to participate in those.
Moving on to some other economic development activities
in the past month, we continue to work with SiteSelector
for another healthcare organization
entering into our market.
There will be exciting news and an announcement
in the coming weeks for a new retailer
who will be locating at the former.
Taylor, who will be locating at the former JoAnn's location.
We continue our work with Jeff Modica at Alberta's Airport
in helping him craft five-year economic development.
Enterprise Zone applications are in earnest, hard at work here.
We have submitted an application for the Department of Ag Review
for both AutoSmart and LENA.
Again, we're expanding this Enterprise Zone
to encompass development and expansion at AutoSmart,
that's a former visitor center,
and we're encompassing some areas of Lena
within the village proper for residential development.
Per the process for enterprise zone boundary expansion,
we need to get an ad review for each application.
A public hearing will also be held on June 17th
at nine and 930, back-to-back public hearings
that will be at the Greater Freeport Partnership Office
Public Hearing Notices have been published
and we're in the Village Voices and Journal Standard
last week.
I am busy drafting ordinance and resolution
for our six units of government.
In the last month, we met with Sevencia's team
and representatives from the DCEO
talking about their next stage of investment.
As you know, about a year ago,
they put an addition on to their facility
to facilitate a new line of cheese product.
that is going well and orders have increased.
So now their next problem is how to deal
with their waste strength.
So there will be an investment of some sort
in helping to expand capacity
in their wastewater treatment.
They are also investigating a feasibility study
partnering with purpose energy to look at a biodigester.
So part of that process would be taking their waste stream,
seeing how they could capture methane gas
in the process of that waste being broken down.
Purpose Energy is a separate company
that they're partnering with to do this study.
Sevensia has a corporate location in Pennsylvania
where they're already sort of building
a biodigester adjacent to the plant.
So part of the understanding is what other assets
or what other waste streams are in the area
from other manufacturers
and would they be also willing to partner in this?
So we've conducted kind of introductory conversations
and contacts with all the players that you can think of,
Berner, Poor Valley Farms, Chorkels and Cheese,
et cetera, et cetera.
So more to come.
Leslie is hard at work with putting together an incubator, a business incubator program and in the process of writing for the USDA Rural Business Development Grant to help fund a revolving loan program.
Oh, I skipped over. We are also in process with City of Freeport to do another boundary expansion of the enterprise zone, again, also to help expand residential development.
had a beginning conversation with the Village of Stockton
and a value add manufacturer that's located there,
looking to expand the enterprise zone
into the Village of Stockton
to help facilitate some development
that they believe will be to come,
as well as talking to our friends in Kent.
They are also interested, an investment is planned,
timeline is a little bit to be determined,
but I want to have conversations earlier rather than later
because it really is about a six month lead time
in terms of expanding the enterprise
out to help with their development.
Workforce development continues to be a strong priority.
Our Midland CEO program, we were able to hire
and just a facilitator for the fall semester,
start that program.
The offer of employment was just accepted today.
Again, the partnership is not the employer of record.
That will be for the Freeport School District
helping facilitate that as the CEO board.
We held a manufacturing round table last Friday morning.
We had representatives from CoreFX, Verner, StarForge,
Danfoss, TriStar, Hyland, CareerTech, Freeport High School,
DCEO, the Workforce Connections.
Two main topics were apprenticeship programs,
internship programs, developing both of those,
as well as DCEO has a new program called AIM.
It's geared towards manufacturers
and it's to help them with investment
that isn't necessarily going to create a lot of jobs,
but there's significant investment maybe
in automation or other equipment.
So there's some thresholds
that the manufacturers need to meet.
Again, the state has announced this program.
They have some guidelines, if you will, and guard rails,
but there is no application ready
for a business to apply quite yet.
They're expecting that to be later this summer
or early fall.
We continue to partner with Mercy Health to provide community tours to their physicians that they're looking to recruit to this area.
And we are holding our next workforce alignment meeting this Thursday morning at 730.
From the initial meetings we had a couple months ago, we have sent out a workforce survey asking for data from HR departments.
We have had a fairly significant response from companies.
We are looking to aggregate that data and create a dashboard to get more real-time data.
The information from IDES is great, but we're also looking to understand recruitment.
How successful are local recruiters, local companies, able to recruit talent and hire here?
And how else can we get more strategic, maybe surgical strategic, if you will, in our recruitment efforts?
We continue to work on housing in two facets, again, expanding the enterprise zone as well as
the team continues to work with building owners in downtown Freeport who are looking to renovate
upper floors for residential units. And last but not least, we held our first music on Chicago
Friday. We were lucky enough for the weather to hold off. It was a wonderful evening. And Saturday
Today morning was a free bike ride, the Free Aquanah Cycle.
So that was the first time that we have ever kind of helped co-host this business partnership
also with the Department of Natural Resources and Lake Lee Aquanah.
They had about 35 bike riders registered, they started off here in Tuddy's Crossing
and continued all the way out to Lake Lee Aquanah and then turned around.
some of them stopped at Lena Bruin Company for a little refreshment. So happy to answer any questions
you might have on anything I've mentioned. What was the name of that lake? It's the one by Lena.
Maybe you've been there before. Yeah, it's that one. Sure, I might have a couple of questions. Sure.
You didn't really touch on the hotel motel situation, but are all the rooms at the
FAMONT, which will later on in June will be rebranded and it will become, I'm going to
blank on the name, but it's going to change from a Wyndham chain to a Marriott chain.
and there have been a number of rooms each week that have been pulled off the inventory
because they've been remodeled.
So I think Nicole has accounted for about when she gets her occupancy data every week
from the hotels.
But to my understanding, all the rooms at the Hampton are available.
I've never been in one.
You know what?
Being the fact that I live here, I have had many family members stay there, but I myself
have never been in there either.
Yes.
and just I'm sure you can't you sure you don't have any concrete answer for this
one but is there any has there been any interest in the old Holiday Inn plot of
land? I've heard lots of stories. We have suggested that site to many different
players. Okay. To my knowledge there has been no one who is moving forward at
at this time with purchase.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's a pretty good chunk of land, right?
It's about five and a half acres or so.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's it.
Thanks.
Sure.
Anyone else?
Okay.
Moving on.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Yes.
Thanks, Andrea.
Sure.
How's that?
Great.
The deposit for the month of May totaled $11,369.36.
Total deposits to date for the general fund are $162,715.10.
That's over our projected, as I always say every month now.
Building permits have been going good.
We issued 11 code enforcement violations
for the month of May.
Four violations were sent to our new inspector,
three for overgrown grass that weeds and other vegetation,
two for inoperable vehicle violations,
One no permit special use and one for excessive vehicles
on the property.
That's a special use that was only allowed 40.
We closed two cases, one is pending
and stator eight are still open.
We met with.
The seats are still open.
We met with Doug Rominsky, our new building inspector,
to discuss the process of his inspections.
I emailed him last week with the information
on four homes that are considered to be dangerous buildings,
nuisances that needed inspections.
He stated he will get on these right away.
Nicole performed 16 inspections
and I performed 14 for the month.
We had our monthly meeting with the representative
from IBEW.
Nicole and I attended a Teams meeting
with Andy Shaw, Dan Payette, and Abel Gale, Abel Her, I'm so sorry if I butchered that
name, with Black Hawk Hills to discuss the potential of the BRIC grant building resilient
infrastructure and communities application, we'll discuss that in a little while.
This grant would let us update the zoning code in its entirety.
Nine single-family dwellings have been permitted this year so far, and in 2025, we permitted
11, so things are looking good for single-family dwellings.
and that's all I have questions I would just make one comment and you're I'm
sure you're aware of this that house on 26 north of I drove by there a couple
times a week that is just as just a shame the only thing we can do is send
her back to the hearing officer after I do the letters and then if we wanted it
taken care of we could have someone in the county take care of it hire it out
and then be paid off that way.
But I need to reach out to our attorney, Bornaman.
He is on paternity leave right now.
So it's kind of hard getting answers back out of him,
which I don't expect right away.
So that is one question, what we can do now next,
because he did state at one point in time,
we could, don't 100% take my word,
that we could possibly foreclose on the home.
So I want to see what that process entails too.
Yeah, that one looks, it's worse, that's faster.
It's, it's bad.
Okay.
It's a relative of yours, isn't it?
Not that I can, not that I can determine.
She's got three homes,
I kind of wish she was a relative, just given to me.
Well, that's thanks to Diddens, right?
It is.
I've asked several of my relatives,
they claim that it's part of a different clan.
I have a question, if I may. Beth, can you tell me what the goal of meeting with the IBEW is?
Sure. They'd like to see if we have any potential big builds coming up so they can get their name in for bids and such.
a lot of the solar they like to get local so they go out and then you know if it's one that I think
that's going to have a project coming up to be permitted I'll let them know and they try to get
their name out there so they hire in our area Rockford Freeport area um because some of them
they're from out in California being from installation companies so that's great.
Mr. Chair, if I could add one more question, Chair. Somebody asked me if it would be possible to rent the old landfill, the grass, grassy hill, out to like a beef farmer or a milk farmer, got the cows grazed on it. I said, okay, I thought it was the city of Fricke.
Yeah, no, I wouldn't know anything about that.
Marley. I think it's just the south side. Yeah. Okay. That'd be a good idea. Well, the only problem I would have is that right now with the price of beef, people might mistake them for other animals and they'd hang them in their garage and turn them
in the State. That's been happening out in the country a couple different places.
I guess I don't buy enough beefy to even know what the prices are.
That's what I've heard. That's getting a bit ridiculous.
Yeah, yes and no.
Anyone else? I do not have anything to report from Soil & Water. I did not go. I don't go every month. I did not go there other than to say this. Mr. Helms asked about trees last month, and I got a whole bunch of those trees and they're doing really good. Other than that, I don't have anything. Dale?
on Recreation and Trails, there's a pretty good sized bridge repair coming up that will
close part of the trail up towards, well further up towards Orangeville. They'll put some signs
up recommending different alternative routes and there's a grant that's going to pay most
to that. And Mr. Zimmer has the bike rentals started. If you go to the search out on Facebook,
he's going to be in different locations, Teddy Crossing, and then the one in Orangeville,
I think, and the one by the one I always go to, what's that called? The one just towards
the hotel.
West Block, West Block. I don't know why I can't remember that. Sometimes he's going to be there too with his van and bikes. None of the bikes go over 20 miles an hour, which is, I don't know if it's a law or we decided that at the trail, but we don't want anybody getting killed on a bicycle, you know, but I think it's about $25 an hour depending on which model you, I haven't tried it yet, but I'm planning on doing that soon. It'll be interesting. Other than that, that's all I got. Questions for Dale?
All right. Black Hawk Hills. I have not heard anything from Black Hawk Hills.
Now, Georgia, if you could reach out to Dan tomorrow. We haven't heard from them quite a while.
We used to have a monthly meeting with them. We haven't.
It's been like the six or seven months.
It's been a number of months because I know that I think there might be one coming up in July.
If they're annual meeting.
You did meet with him a little bit.
Yes, I did.
Yeah, it'd be nice to get an update. We're contributing about $11,000 a year to Blackhawk Hills. I'm not sure what...
You don't have anybody on there?
Sam Newton.
Okay.
I'm not sure what we're getting for our investment at this point, so it'd be nice to have him reach out and go send it.
I don't have a report, but I do have some questions, and I'm not trying to pick on anybody.
Sometimes I like to do that.
Well, what, as we look at all these issues that we keep getting here, and now we're going to get it, it's getting larger and larger.
Is there anything that the county can do?
As far as, I mean, I know like, okay, the fence was supposed to be built. It's starting to get built. I'm glad to see that. I've been out there. He has a right to do those things that he wants to do. And I'm behind that 100%. And I also know that he's, we have questions about fence rules. There's a law about fences. And part of that fence, whether
you built it or not is still, half of that fence is yours along the property line.
If it's not holding up, you could be held responsible if you were keeping cattle out or something like that.
A landowner can be, at least we can in the country, in real world things.
I just would like to know if there's nothing we can do, then we need to say,
State, this is how it is, this is what it is, and we're going to move on.
I have over and over until I'm blue in the face.
There's nothing we can do.
I had to give him ample time to get the fence installed.
I had to give him ample time for the trees.
He has until August 2nd to get the trees and the fence done.
Like I told him as it was this morning, on August 2nd at 4 p.m. when I'm off of work,
I'll go out there and look.
If it's not done, I'll go back out in the morning because technically he has until midnight.
I'll go back out there in the morning.
If August 3rd rolls around and they are not finished,
then we start the proceedings
for the revocation of the special use.
The land issues of him pushing over a fence
or putting dirt on her property or the brush,
that's not zoning.
That's a civil matter.
It's not.
My neighbor dropped a tree on my lawn and left it lay there.
I couldn't call the zoning department and say,
Hey, my neighbor dropped a tree.
You need to do something about it.
It's not a zoning issue.
It's civil.
So the issues that they're having with the brush here, the fence there, he's
doing what he's supposed to.
I hate saying my hands are tight, but my hands are tight.
There's only so much we can do.
And they think that I can do something about it.
And if I say, I can't do anything about it.
Oh, you're just giving him the red carpet.
I don't know, Zach, anything.
I don't know anybody anything in this county. I'm impartial. I don't care who you are. The rules pertain to everyone. He's getting a fence permit. He's got he got a fence permit. He is planting the trees. And if he gets that done.
of the Trees, and if he gets that done by the second,
then he's allowed to do what he's doing.
He told me he has the EPA permits.
I asked him if I can see him sometime,
when I go out there and he'll show them to me.
I don't need to keep them in office
because that's not something we have a requirement for.
But.
Well, I know that a lot of what goes on
with this whole issue is if he said, she said,
and personally, I'm getting tired of it too.
And I'm not saying that there's something
that you need to do differently.
I just, I wanna know if there's nothing that we can do
to stop the issue and he's doing everything
within his rights, they're actually probably doing more
against him than he's doing them at this point
when it comes to that quarry and whatever people want
to complain about, he still has the right to do that. Same thing comes with the solar facility that
they complain about. That company's solar facility, if they don't want it to generate electricity,
that's their problem. Right. And they cannot understand that. It's frustrating to me. I was
in the office by myself today. The call was off. The observers came in. I'm gracious to talk to
Director, Assistant Vice Chair, Vice Chair, Vice Chair, Vice Chair, Vice Chair, Vice Chair,
we can do. You know, I talked to Zach. I said, I've been told you're hauling in landscape
waste. He goes, I have not hauled in any landscape waste. I said, I'll take your word for it.
I take her word for it. I said, but I just, I don't know. There's other people two miles
down the road that are hauling in landscape waste and burning it as well. I said, that's
not here nor there. We're focused on the quarry and that's it. But there's nothing I can do.
I think one of the things we need to do is change our language. Oh, definitely. You know,
We need to, there's nothing we can do, it's to the point now where we've done what we were supposed to do, and we're going to go from there, so.
Right. I told them it's civil.
They have contracted with an attorney of homeowners out there, so they are contemplating legal action against Mrs. A.
Zach.
Oh, I told them this morning they didn't.
But that's not us.
Well, regardless, if they did name us in the soup, the only thing we have control over is the specialties from them. They want it shut down. That's not us.
Right.
I just want to make sure that, as a group here, we're all on that page, and Beth put up with a lot, and been accused of a lot of things, that that's not what should be happening.
Oh, right. If somehow we're going to have to somehow, then it needs to go there.
And we just say, you guys hired an attorney, you talk to the attorney.
That's right. And let it go.
And we were not going to talk about it.
Honestly, what I'm hopeful I told Mr.
Versus mine, I said this, you know, contact an attorney.
I don't have that kind of money. I can't afford an attorney.
So I just want you to know, we're I'm not trying to accuse you of anything.
I don't want you to think that I just would like to see this over with.
Oh, we all would. Definitely. Yes. And Georgia. Okay.
We have a Facilities Maintenance Report. I didn't see anything.
I did talk to Wally. He has wiped this bill the end of last week, but I know the trees have been
the one that was getting taken out. They've been removed down to the stump. The stump,
He does not plan to have removed until after the event because of the amount of mulch that'll have to get hauled out.
Okay. And have we communicated that to Pearl City?
I will follow up on that. I know he was going, he had been talking with them, so, but I'll follow up.
Well, they had talked to, I know we don't really want to see that, but they would have helped, too, if they could get some of it going, right, if they're just stomp sets of it.
I think he was worried that the amount of dirt that would have to be hauled in, there's the mulch hauled out, the amount of dirt hauled in, and then it would get hacked down, and I think he thought it was safer to leave the stumps and better looking at this point.
Okay. We've had a little conversation already on 7.8, the Illinois Department of Employment Security report for April 26. Anything additional?
All right, with that we'll move on to new business with the approval of the Zoning
Department's application for the resilience grant. Yes, you received in your packet a brief synopsis
of what it would be about. I know it states to fund and develop and fund to develop and
and Adapt Building Code.
We can't right now adapt a building code.
We do not have the funds nor the employees to do that.
So I spoke with Dan Payette and Abby
and he stated we could approve it
as it would be a phased approach,
stronger enforcement efforts in higher risk areas
and gradually expanding the enforcement over the years.
Since we have in our code flood development
in a flood hazard area.
This is why we would be allowed to apply for this grant
since it's through FEMA.
They want to see more enforcement through your code
with the flooding issues in the county and area-wide.
So that's that.
And the match would come out of the trust fund
and not any county funds.
$100,000?
It would dwindle me down,
but that's the only way I can get my code written.
We reached out like three years ago.
I had, we signed with Hinshaw Culbertson for $20,000 and I've not seen anything.
Anytime I talked to them, it's like, well, we need to sit down and we have me to
have a conversation on which sections you want changed.
We need the whole thing, just in whole rehab to the whole zoning code.
So this would do the entire zoning code for us.
Do you need a motion in the second first before we discuss this?
No, I don't have the agenda.
Oh, and this isn't an action item anyway.
Yeah, it is.
Approval.
Yeah, approval.
It has to be turned into FEMA by the 26th of this month.
Technically, you should have a motion in the second put on the floor.
Yeah.
To discuss.
We have a motion to approve the application process. Is there a second?
I'll second it just for the discussion.
So I'll start with the first thing that stood out to me that concerns me is that this seems to me like all of a sudden now we're going to hire another consultant.
Consultant. And when does that consultant go away in order to make this happen? Because
in the application, it says right in there that we have to hire an approved consultant.
Correct. And is that just for this grant process or is that once we're done, they're consulting
us on what's completed? On the code. They will be the consultation people for individuals
for the revising of the code and then that's that. Once the code's revised, that is it.
I just want to make sure that because we we do these things and then we hire somebody and now
we're responsible for another person. No, no, no, it's just to rewrite the code. Okay. Yeah.
And we can do all that stuff by July 26th? No, this would be for the grant,
to write the grant where Black Hawk Hills
will be writing the grant for us.
But that all has to be done by the 26th.
Yes, the grant application has to be done by the 26th.
But there's a whole lot of things
that have to be gathered by then.
They'll work on it.
They're working on it now.
I told them I had to present to this committee before
and finance and County Board for final approval
before we can even, and they understood that
if we didn't get approval, then their work was for nothing,
but they understand it.
My concern is how much control do we lose
over our own ordinances by hiring somebody
to start writing code for us?
I mean, do we have to follow there?
There can be revisions throughout the process.
So once the code is in its entirety,
it has to sit for a number of days
and it has to go to public hearing as well.
So it has to be visible to anybody in the county.
They can look at it.
They can come to the public hearing and suggest,
well, this is this, this is that.
The County Board can make suggestions as well.
That's how it would be if Hinshaw were writing.
would be if Hinshaw were writing it for us.
It's, to me, code revision has gotten a lot harder
throughout the years that I've been here
because when I started, it was less is better.
And you can see that in some of our codes,
like, you know, it doesn't define things
and things like that.
And so with the newer codes,
as you see that we present every now and then,
they're more lengthy.
Before they were half a page, quarter of a page.
So now we need to get into the nitty gritty
so we have definitions we can, you know,
there's no gray area.
You know, we're just a small rural, you know, county
and you start getting a whole bunch of rules
and regulations that don't necessarily, you know,
relate with the farmers or, you know, small businesses.
That's my concern is how much control
if I may, this is through FEMA. So am I wrong in assuming that it's primarily geared towards flood prone areas? Is that what you're saying about the phone revisions?
No, they're allowing us to apply because we have the Hazard Mitigation Plan for the county
and I have flood development, hazard development in our code. If we didn't have any of that in the
county, we wouldn't even be allowed to apply for this grant. You've said repeatedly actually that
you want to revise the code and update to come. Can you give me a couple examples where the code
Fences for one, that's one that we just did inoperable vehicles that we just did, that's why we revised that. We didn't have campgrounds in there. I think our campground code needs to be more strict.
So if I may, what's wrong with updating them as we get to them? How is the consultant going to see all this?
Officer.
They read our entire code and then they reach out to us in the zoning office and discuss
it with Nicole and I.
I mean, there's words in there like haberdashery.
There are so many definitions of things that we don't even use anymore today.
I just think it's harder and harder, like I said, to revise the code.
I reach out to Hinshaw and they revise the codes for me more or less now if I can't get
if I'm done myself.
So.
Have we tried to reach out to you CCI about this?
No, I had no idea that they would be able to do it.
I had no idea you were doing this with InShaw.
Oh yeah, that's been-
I guess my point is, I think there's other options
if we're doing it piecemeal.
I'm sorry to cut you off.
You're fine.
I shouldn't have done that.
Is this, can I finish or not?
Since I've already kicked the door open, I guess, is this something Dan Paya reached out to you about, or did you reach out to him about this and he started telling you what he was working on?
Similar, somewhat the same. We have a quarterly meeting down in Ogo County with Black Hawk Hills, with Ogo County, Whiteside County, Lee County, Boone County, Carroll County, Joe Davies County, sometimes Winnebago.
and Lee County had used this grant a few years ago
to revise their code.
So we were discussing and I said, that'd be something great.
You know, we could use something like that.
So he reached out to me about this, not too long ago.
So I guess, and this goes back to the fact that
there hasn't been a County Board Chairman meeting
with Black Hawk Hills in a number of months.
This is something he should have brought to me.
This could be something he's budgeted for.
That said, you do have funds available.
You're probably the only department in the county
that collects excess revenue in that regard.
But I agree, I think there's other avenues
that we could possibly look at
before we would go down this road.
That's my opinion.
Frankly, I'm not very happy that Dan didn't reach out to me
and talk to me about this.
Not that he can't talk to you about it,
but it's not the correct way to handle it.
But I think UCCI can be a resource.
There's lots of counties that have been updating codes.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you
that they're the answer necessarily.
Maybe they're using consultants too,
but this is an 18-month project,
if I looked at it correctly,
and I'm not sure what the finished product is that you referenced.
I'm not sure what we're going to do with it once we have it.
Enforcement's an issue, just like you had said, I believe, as far as we have
the manpower to...
That's if we adopt building code.
And there's no way we can adopt building code.
I agree with you a hundred percent.
It needs to be done in some way, shape or form, but this is something he
should have been talking to us about months ago,
if this is something that we're under a deadline already
for them to get, when is the deadline to apply?
26th.
Yeah, I'm sure they've known about this
for at least a month or two, haven't they?
Probably longer.
That I do not know.
If Lee County's aren't utilized it, so I'll be quiet now.
So if we had kind of followed through,
You know, we have another source and we can do it one at a time instead of redoing it.
That's, you know, that would alleviate my concerns about losing control over the whole situation.
So, I think I would vote to not do this.
I would vote against this.
emails. With that, I guess we have a motion and a second. And it asks then that all those
that are in favor of the County Zoning Office applying for this Building Resilience Grant
signified by saying aye.
All those opposed, please, same sign.
Aye.
That motion fails.
So at this point, we may not do that.
Dale had another item that he asked to have on the agenda
or just to talk about here tonight.
Well, yeah, just to get it on the agenda for next time,
the funding of the Jane Addams Trail
the continued funding.
We don't have a contract or an intergovernmental remit anymore.
And they're on the impression that the,
we're just going to continue on as it has been.
And when they raise it from 16.5 to $20,000,
the other governmental agencies agreed to that.
We didn't because we didn't have an extra $5,000
they didn't think so.
So we need to revisit the Intergovernmental Green Act and we need to decide if we're going to continue to support the trail.
It's a very nice trail, you know, it's well maintained.
In my personal opinion, it's way underutilized.
I don't believe any of the numbers that they give from the usage.
There's trail cameras out there. You've probably seen the numbers.
a thousand people a month on that trail. I think it's something like a 12,000, 13,000 annual.
Yeah. I mean, you can look that information out. Yeah. I think the better cameras now,
they're more sophisticated. These things would read anything in Wi-Fi, you know, whether you
went like this, you know, with a count of 100 or whatever people should go on the service.
I'm actually not. So anyway, you know, that's a big concern of mine is that you, Scott,
Do you walk on the trail? I do. Do you run into? Occasionally. A hundred or just two?
It depends on the day. During the week, I'll be lucky if I see two or three people. If it's on the
weekend, I might see five, six. I see more in the wintertime than I do in the summer.
I mean, that's how, when I was running out there a lot, a lot of times I'd run, you know, 10 miles and
7 miles and not see anybody, maybe two people, usually a biker more than a fire or a water.
And I believe that intergovernmental agreement, if I saw that correctly, you get married at 23,
something like that, yeah. But, you know, it is a great trail, but years ago when I was on the
county board, I took a poll at one of the county board meetings and asked how many members had
had ever been on the trail. I don't remember anybody raising their hand. Must've been before
you started walking. I don't know. Well, I've been on the trail for a long time. I'm
on your service. I don't, but maybe you were the only one that raised their hand. But anyway,
that's, but that's both of the things we need to discuss. Do we want to continue to fund
and how much funding do we want to, just because the city wants to give them $20,000, I don't
...
because the city wants to give him $20,000. I don't know why, you know, that makes us
that long than $20,000. So we can put it on that. And I appreciate that. So that gets
on the agenda. First on discussion and Steve Elbeck can't make it next month, but he will
be up here the following month. If we put that, put that on, yes, now we don't really
need words on the agenda, but he'll come out and, you know, try and promote the trail and
talked about the finances and is he sending you
any financial information yet?
No, you should be getting some
because I asked that at the last meeting
that they would send it to you and then you pass it on.
I'll match it up.
Okay.
Anything else for the comments?
Mr. Chairman, I'll say this real quick.
I became aware of the condition of the, I'm just going to call it what it says on the plaque, the Poor Farm Cemetery, out by Menards. It's in really poor shape. So I've asked Wally to look into, I don't even know what the word would be, rehabbing it, I guess, for lack of a better word, restoring it. Yeah, it's in bad shape. There are tombstones that are missing. There's tombstones broken, several of them.
are leaning, falling over. I found one perched up against a tree that is probably 50 feet
away from the cemetery itself. I didn't even, I didn't know we maintained that. The disturbing
part to me is there's a nice monument out there and the last sentence of it says,
because you will not be forgotten and we have not done a good job remembering, so I've asked
Wally to look into it.
We do have to have the permits to do anything out there and I think it's through the DNR.
Is that something right, ladies?
Public Health.
I think it was DNR, was it DNR do you think so?
Did we mow it?
Yes, well, you know what you can, because headstones are laying down, leaning, I could pull them out of the ground if I wanted to. The problem with a lot of those headstones, though, is that they're very, very old. And I don't think you can just replace them. You have to replace them with light material. You don't know if we know who's buried in all of those plots. Some of the headstones are still legible. Some are just completely smooth. It gets worn off.
but we have a responsibility I feel to do better than what I've done with that so hopefully looking at some grants trying to get the headstones restored, repaired, straightened, Wally did all the straightening of the headstones out of the camp monument, did a great job but this is four or five times the number of sites that were out of the camp monument
I don't expect him to do something like that, plus keep up with his other duties, but it's possible. I may be coming back and asking for dollars in the 2027 budget for getting it back to where it needs to be and then making sure we maintain it.
I've never walked that cemetery. I don't know if you'll have the same reaction I did, but it made me almost physically sick to look at it.
Yeah, that's not good.
We have definitely, if Darryl lived in our duties when it comes to that cemetery.
But you're up to the city cemetery a lot.
It's kind of some of the areas are kind of the same.
I don't know what they have for money.
There's candy and cheek, get that stuff we have.
Is that the only cemetery we have?
It's the only one I'm aware of.
Last person that was buried out there I think was in the 50s, but it goes back to the late 1800s.
I'm going to determine that we're going to make it right.
That's good. Thank you.
Thank you. Question, is there a way we can schedule a
of the Board, Workday, Tune, Straighten, and Do What Law is This.
If you have to have a permit, if we have to have a permit, there's requirements of how
you manage a sanitary.
So it's possible that they don't know what the permit looks like, they don't know what
the requirements are.
I don't think I want to try and move a 150-year-old five-year-old headstone on the middle of the
Straightening will probably be the easiest of all of them.
Yeah.
I mean, you can literally pull them out of the ground now, the
ones that are leaning.
Oh, it's a matter of getting dirt shovel and filling a hole in and creating a new one.
I don't know how to do it.
I guess I could Google it and find out, but
sounds like it's an awesome Eagle Scout project.
I guess Wally can show us if he's
I just want to make sure we're doing it the right way.
I don't know what we do about that. And there's one that's broken off maybe three inches above the ground. And that other piece is not there. There's one headstone that they literally have to lift up, mow over, and then they just lay it back down. We can't do that. You know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,
That's disturbing, so, but we're gonna make it right.
Good.
Motion to adjourn.
Second.
We're gonna do, you do the second.
Thank you Clayton for coming on board here.
Yes, thank you.
You're welcome.
And don't be afraid, it is early.
You can ask questions,
or you can go off the link.
If you've got any issues, you might call.
I know that. That's the one right on the corner. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye.