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DeKalb County, Illinois |
Minutes of the
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The Public Services Committee of the DeKalb County Board met on Monday, June 2, 2003, @ 6:30p.m. in the Administration Building’s Conference Room East. Chairman Marlene Allen called the meeting to order. Members present were pat LaVigne, Eric Johnson, Julia Fullerton, Sue Leifheit, Richard Osborne and Robert Rosemier. Eileen Dubin and Steve Faivre were absent. Others present were Kenneth Johnson, Margi Gilmour, Joy Gullota and Sharon Holmes.
APPROVAL OF THE MINUTESMoved by Ms. Leifheit, seconded by Ms. LaVigne, and it was carried unanimously to approve the May 2003 minutes.
APPROVAL OF THE AGENDAMr. Rosemier amended the agenda to reflect item #7a.) Tax Levy Discussion. Moved by Ms. LaVigne, seconded by Ms. Fullerton, and it was carried unanimously to approve the amended agenda.
PUBLIC DEFENDER’S MONTHLY REPORTMr. Kenneth Johnson, Public Defender, said that the numbers are again consistent. He reviewed the last two years and it appears that on each one of the individual categories, his numbers are roughly between 20 – 25 cases higher in each category. Within the last year there would be roughly another 100 additional cases overall in his office. With the economy being a little bit more difficult, more unemployment, it appears that his office is getting a lot more paper crimes, that is, forgeries, insufficient funds and bad checks, etc.
He still has two pending murder cases. The amount of money that his office received in reimbursables last month were $2500.00, which brings the total to $28,000.00 and is about $13,000.00 more than they anticipated. He feels that the judges have done a great job of reviewing the applications for the public defender and assessing the fees to the individuals that are not quite indigent, but can’t afford to hire their own attorneys.
COURT SERVICES MONTHLY AND ANNUAL REPORTSMs. Gilmour said that her adult monthly report remains consistent once again and the same with the community service program. The juvenile report reflects one child that remains in the independent living situation for an undetermined amount of time. The cost has gone down compared to when the juvenile was in residential placement. They had 14 juveniles detained with 1 child detained twice and 1 that was detained 3 times. Of those 14 detainees, 7 had been detained for the 1st time, 1 for the 10th, 1 for the 11th and 1 for the 12th time. They also had 1 that was in there for the 2nd time, 1 for the 3rd, 1 for the 6th and 7th time.
Ms. Gilmour also informed the committee that there was some new legislation passed in August regarding the DNA indexing of felony offenders. They are getting close to getting the procedure set up in her office, she said. The person working on this will be available to do the DNA indexing of all offenders who are convicted of a felony offense in DeKalb County. They have a backlog of approximately 200 people going back to August. The data will be stored in the same databank as sex offenders. The only people that will have access to this databank would be law enforcement officials at this time.
In her annual report Ms. Gilmour highlighted the following pages. On page ten it reflects the change in 2001 of her office and the State’s Attorney’s Office jointly reviewing juvenile police reports. Because of this the counts under the columns labeled “2001” and “2002” have dropped down. Page 17 shows that the service days for juvenile detention in Kane County have gone down in 2001 and 2002. Ms. Gilmour feels that with the way things are going and if the monthly average remains consistent with FY’02 figures, the balance of the Intergovernmental Agreement with Kane County will be depleted in mid-2005.
On page 19 it shows that residential placements numbers have been low. Judge Klein is determined to keep the numbers down through the Intensive Probation Program, Ms. Gilmour said. Page 20 shows the number of juveniles in the Department of Corrections. Page 34 shows the number of felons in probation, which are much higher than misdemeanors, D.U.I.’s and traffic. In FY’02 felony offenses accounted for 79% of the active probation cases, misdemeanor offenses accounted for 16% of the active probation cases, and DUI/Traffic offenses accounted for 5% of the cases, she further stated.
Page 43 covers the Community Restitution Services Statistics and shows that the total CRS completed hours equaled just under 30,000 hours. Ms. Gilmoure stated that if you times that by the minimum wage of $5.25 an hour it totals a value of service to DeKalb County worksites of $157,101.00.
The committee thanked Ms. Gilmour for her excellent annual report.
Mr. Rosemier asked Ms. Gilmour if she had heard what the reason was as to why the Multi-Family program was canceled yet? Ms. Gilmour said no, no yet, but would let the committee know as soon as she is informed.
COOPERATIVE EXTENSION UNIT’S ANNUAL REPORTMs. Joy Gulotta, Executive Director of the Cooperative Extension Unit reviewed what her department does and how it is related to DeKalb County. She said that there is an extension office in every county in the State of Illinois. In our county her office receives funding from the State and the County Board. They are part of the University of Illinois and the programs run in each office varies throughout the state. The DeKalb County office is geared towards youth education, for example, the 4H Club, said Ms. Gulotta. They focus on children from ages 8 to 18 years of age. They do projects, after school programs, Biotechnology Camp and Science Siesta. She noted that the funding from the DeKalb County Board amounts to $22,000.00 and that she does have to go through the normal budget process like everyone else does. The monies that they receive from the County support the Master Gardner Program, the Family Programs and the Community Development Programs (please see attachment to these minutes). Ms. Gulotta also informed the committee that she will be requesting the same amount of money at budget time this year.
COUNTY CLERK AND RECORDER’S UPDATEMs. Sharon Holmes, DeKalb County Clerk and Recorder, updated the committee as to what her department has been doing since the last time that she visited with the committee. Ms. Holmes stated that the Recorder’s side of her office had recorded 28,013 documents last year. This year they had recorded 14,000 documents by May 21, 2003 and that they had reached that number last year in July of 2002. So they are seeing a definite increase in recorded documents. That also generates a lot of income for the General Fund. They average anywhere from 150 to 220 documents a day; have used the same amount of personnel; and recorded these documents in a timely fashion. The recording fees generated $254,798.00 and this year, as of 5/31/03, they have generated $313,731.00 in fees. Of this money, $35,932.00 has gone into the G.I.S. Fund (see sheet attached).
On the County Clerk’s side of the office she said that they have finished the Clerk’s portion of the tax cycle on time. Even with the Sandwich School District passing a referendum on April 1st, and filing an amended levy, they were able to incorporate that change and get the numbers out on time for the tax bills. Passports are up by 5% this year and Marriage Certificates are down.
In the Elections Department of her office they will be producing new voter registration cards and part of that new batch went out today, Ms. Holmes said. They will be sending out a few hundred a day and news releases went out today to inform the public.
Ms. Holmes then informed the committee that there is a piece of federal legislation called HAVA that requires all election jurisdictions in the county to go off the punch card system for voting. She said that the County of DeKalb went off of them in 2000 and that our county uses Optical Scanning machines now. We currently lease these machines and pay about $50,000.00 per election or $100,000.00 for two elections a year. This price includes the programming, ballot printing and election-day support. If the county chooses to buy these machines then our county would need to buy 41 units times $5500.00 a machine for a total of approximately $225,000.00. This price still does not include the purchase of the programming, printed ballots, support help on Election Day, or service agreements because we would own these machines, explained Ms. Holmes. She is happy so far with the lease agreement that our county currently has and it is good through the April election of 2005. There are only two companies that are licensed so far to sell these machines in the State of Illinois. The only problem that she saw in the last election with the machines was that a memory card was corrupted or the battery would go out.
Ms. Holmes said that she didn’t know. She further stated that McHenry County purchased the machines and have taken a 5-year loan out on them and that is how they are paying for them. The committee asked Ms. Holmes if the technology changes a lot on these machines?
Ms. Holmes said that also included on HAVA is that each jurisdiction must also have handicapped access by 2006 and must also have Touch Screen machines. The State of Illinois needed to comply with what HAVA wanted. Senate Bill 428 passed and has brought the State into compliance with HAVA for Touch Screen machines. There are many amendments attached to it and they are still “sifting” through all of it. It would cost anywhere between $3,500 to $4,000 per touch screen machine to purchase for each polling place and this does not include other fees like programming, special training for election judges, etc. She said that currently there are 81 precincts and 41 polling places.
The committee thanked Ms. Holmes for a very informative report.
Moved by Ms. Leifheit, seconded by Ms. Fullerton, and it was carried unanimously to place these reports on file.
TAX LEVY DISCUSSIONMr. Rosemier withdrew his motion for discussion on the senior citizens tax levy with an understanding that he could bring it back at a later date.
ADJOURNMENTMoved by Mr. Rosemier, seconded by Mr. Johnson, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
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