Public Service Minutes May 2002

DeKalb County, Illinois

Minutes of the
Public Services Committee

May 6, 2002

The Public Services Committee of the DeKalb County Board met on Monday, May 6, 2002, at 6:30 p.m. at the Administration Building's Conference Room East. Chairman Sue Leifheit called the meeting to order. Members present were Marlene Allen, Dr. Conway, Eileen Dubin, Michael Haines and Robert Pritchard. Edward Brown and Jeff Metzger were absent. Others present were Ken Johnson, Margi Gilmour and Margaret Whitwell.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Moved by Mr. Pritchard, seconded by Mr. Haines, and it was carried unanimously to approve the minutes from the April 2002 meeting.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Ms. Whitwell asked to be moved to item #4 on the agenda because she needed to leave that evening for Springfield.

Moved by Ms. Allen, seconded by Ms. Dubin, and it was carried unanimously to approve the amended agenda.

SUPERVISOR OF ASSESSMENTS ANNUAL REPORT

Ms. Margaret Whitwell, Supervisor of Assessments for DeKalb County, briefly reviewed her report for the committee (on file in the county board office). She said that her staff has remained the same over the last year. The property tax program is working but DevNet is still working on rewriting assessments. New construction was down from the prior year. They had 22 more subdivisions this year with a total of 50 for 2001. There were only 40 assessment complaints filed in 2001, which was very good. She said that there were 33,914 parcel counts vs. 33,095 from the year before. The majority of these are new subdivisions. She highlighted the following pages: page 7, which shows a graph on the equalized assessed values that went up by 5%. (The amount that makes up that percentage has increased because of the total value.) If you look at 1987 we were at about ½ million assessed value and now we are almost at one and ½ billion, we are growing. On page 10 it shows Percent of Assessed Value in use from 1997 – 2001showing that commercial increased by 1% in 2001, and farmland went down by 1% in 2001. Farmland assessments went down 10% in 2001 and will go down 10% in 2002 and in 2003. These values come from the Department of Revenue and the University of Illinois. They use productivity, yields, cost of production, what the farmers are getting for their crops, and the Federal Land Bank mortgage rate. 5-year averages are used in calculating farmland values- we are losing the good years back in the 1990’s and we are pulling in the more current years that haven’t been as good.

Page 12 shows the new construction variance in their amounts. 1994 is up because of Nestle’s, but the rest are a more gradual rise. The median price for 2001 farmland currently is $4,789.00, she further stated (see page 13). There were 308.97 acres that were subdivided in 2001. On page 14 Ms. Whitwell covered the Senior Freeze Exemption. She said that when they started with this exemption there were $1,293,000 in exemptions filed. The freeze exemption amount is now up over $8,000,000. These exemptions are filed by seniors with an income of $40,000 or less. The frozen value amount remains. So that as assessments go up, the difference between the assessment and frozen value increases and the exemption keeps getting bigger.

In her mapping department they processed almost 4,000 documents that went through that department which shows that it increased over the last year. She attributes this because of created and deleted subdivisions, annexations, etc.

Ms. Allen asked if the drainage district in Sandwich was going to be on her tax bill for this year? Ms. Whitwell said yes, it is on this year’s tax bill.

Ms. Whitwell finally said that she would probably be coming back to the committee later this year to request that she be able to discontinue the senior exemption renewal process.

The committee thanked Ms. Whitwell for your very informative report.

PUBLIC DEFENDER’S REPORT

Mr. Ken Johnson, Public Defender for DeKalb County, said that the conflict attorneys are really doing their job and extremely busy, and that the county is really getting their money’s worth from them. The thing that concerns him is not the number of juvenile cases they are getting but the work involved on them. We seems that they are getting more and more parents in abuse and neglect situations and it is taking an enormous amount of his staff’s time. He and the State’s Attorney’s Office are trying to move the cases through the court system as swiftly as they can so that the jail population does not increase. There are extremely serious in the jail now so that is a problem.

He also said that his office is getting ready to move by mid-June. The county should save somewhere in the amount of $30,000.00 a year from not renting any longer. He reminded the committee members that this cost savings would offset the part-time attorney in his office. He also said that the utility costs should go down and the phone bills, because the phones will now be on the county’s system.

RESOLUTION: ELECTION JUDGES BI-ANNUAL APPOINTMENTS

Chairman Leifheit said that the County Clerk sent this request to the committee to recommend the bi-annual appointments resolution. These are names that have been submitted by the Democratic and Republican Central Committees for election judges, she further explained.

Moved by Mr. Haines, seconded by Ms. Allen, and it was carried unanimously to recommend the resolution for election judges bi-annual appointments and to forward it on to the full board for approval.

COURT SERVICES ANNUAL REPORT

Ms. Margi Gilmour, Court Services Director for DeKalb County, briefly reviewed her annual report for the committee (on file in the county board office). The following pages are the ones that she has highlighted. Page 10 deals with juvenile statistics. She said that the referrals have dropped by 20% in 2001 and that 80% of juveniles are males within the age range of 14-16 years old. Page 13 covers the number of violations. She said that the Technical violations have gone up by 31% and that the criminal violations have gone down by 10%. Page 17 covers the detention stays at Kane County. The total number of detention admissions in FY’01 increased 17% when compared to FY’00. This increase is consistent with the increase in the number of service days at the Juvenile Justice Center in Kane County. She also mentioned that with the charges assessed for detention to our Intergovernmental Agreement, she feels that we will deplete the funds in 2005.

Page 18 covers the Electronic Home Monitoring Program and it shows that it increased by 50% in 2001. Page 19 covers the Residential Placement Program. The numbers are holding and right now we have 1 juvenile in placement. Pages 22 and 23 reflect Administrative Sanctions that were started in May of 2001. Basically this is when any child that has been found to violate their court order technically, (school is a good example). The probation officer explains the administrative sanction program to the child and their parents and they have an option to comply with the sanction that the probation officer is going to give them instead of going to court. The sanctions are determined on a grid system that takes into account the severity of the violation and the officer can come up with a sanction. It can be anything from writing a paper to doing community service hours, increased contact with the probation officer, a curfew, etc. We cannot put a child in detention, electronic monitoring, and those kinds of things. The purpose of this is to give the juvenile a consequence immediately and to keep the kids out of court. If the juvenile complies with that sanction then it’s a done deal.

Page 24 discusses the Multi-Family Problem Solving Group and they have seen the numbers drop pretty significantly and she is going to be taking a real good look at this program. She has another intern from NIU who is interested in doing the project. They are going to be pulling everyone of those files from kids that have been in the program and what’s happened to them and try to figure out why the numbers have gone down.

The committee thanked Ms. Gilmour once again for a very good report.

Moved by Ms. Dubin, seconded by Mr. Pritchard, to place these reports on file.

Before adjourning, Chairman Leifheit informed the committee that because they really don’t have anything coming before them in July this year that she is thinking of canceling that meeting. They were in agreement with her.

ADJOURNMENT

Moved by Dr. Conway, seconded by Mr. Pritchard, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting.

Respectfully submitted,

_______________________________
Sue Leifheit, Chairman