The Public Services Committee of the DeKalb County Board met on Monday, August 4, 2003, @ 6:30p.m. in the Administration Building’s Conference Room East.  Chairman Marlene Allen called the meeting to order.  Members present were Eileen Dubin, Pat LaVigne, Eric Johnson, Julia Fullerton, Sue Leifheit, Steve Faivre, Richard Osborne and Robert Rosemier.   Others present were Kenneth Johnson, Margi Gilmour, Mary Olson, Dennis Miller, Jill Olson and Ray Bockman.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Moved by Ms. Fullerton, seconded by Mr. Johnson, and it was carried unanimously to approve the July 2003 minutes.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Chairman Allen amended the agenda to reflect item #3a.) ESDA Director’s Update.  Moved by Mr. Faivre, seconded by Ms. LaVigne, and it was carried unanimously to approve the amended agenda.

ESDA DIRECTOR’S UPDATE

Chairman Allen introduced Mr. Dennis Miller, DeKalb County ESDA Director.  She said that she wanted everyone to know that without him the town of Sandwich would be a disaster area, plus Somonauk.  Mr. Miller said that there was a very severe thunderstorm in the southern part of the county last Sunday.  The winds were clocked at 75 mph and the majority of the damage occurred in Sandwich, some of Somonauk and east of there.  There were several trees knocked down in the area.  Mr. Miller approached the Mayor of Sandwich and IEMA about supporting the cleanup.  He was able to get 2 township trucks, 2 highway truck and 2 state tractors, 6 county highway trucks and the city’s trucks.  They started out on Wednesday morning of last week and still are not done yet.  To date they’ve had about 400 loads of brush and debris hauled off to the dumpsite.  He was able to get 3 crews of prisoners from Statesville in Joliet to help clean up at no expense to the county.  He said that they should be done by tomorrow in Sandwich and then they will move on to Somonauk on Friday to clean up that area. 

PUBLIC DEFENDER’S MONTHLY REPORT

Mr. Kenneth Johnson, Public Defender, said that the numbers are consistent in July.  He said that the court system has been extremely busy since Judge Engel’s retirement.  Judge Klein has been running 3 to 4 different calls since being down one judge.  The County should be very proud of the way the Judge and everyone connected to the court system are getting involved in trying to make things run smoothly.  They don’t know if a replacement will be named. They are currently awaiting Judge DiMarzio’s announcement of a replacement. 

Mr. Johnson said that he wanted to inform the committee about the amount of money that has been given to his office in the way of grant monies from the State Appellate Defender’s Office. They are in excess of $24,000.00 right now and this is just since February or March of 2003.  They have utilized that grant very well and hope that it will be available again in next year’s budget.

His fees line item has increased another $4,700.00 last month bringing it to a total of just over $38,000.00.  This puts the fees line item at about $20,000.00 more than projected, which is great. 

Ms. Dubin asked Mr. Johnson what can he spend the $38,000.00 on?  Mr. Johnson said that he would need to sit down with Mr. Bockman and Mr. Hanson and see if certain items that he didn’t budget for he might now be able to add on and maybe even delete next year’s capital costs.  He would like to give an assistant in his office a $1.50 raise that has been working for the county for a long time.  He would also like to apply some of the money towards one attorney’s salary and increase it. 

Mr. Rosemier asked Mr. Bockman if the $38,000.00 is an automatic rollover?  Mr. Bockman said that the money belongs to the County of DeKalb.  Whatever is not spent stays in the County’s coffers until there is an appropriation made.

COURT SERVICES MONTHLY AND ANNUAL REPORTS

Ms. Gilmour said that her adult monthly report shows that the numbers are slightly increasing, but it still remains manageable. They are down one adult probation officer and have posted the job internally and will be advertised in the paper locally in about two weeks.  The CRS hours continue to be consistent. 

Her juvenile report still reflects the one child that is in the independent living situation.  She believes that that case has a court date coming up in the next 30 to 40 days and the child may be coming to the end of his/her term.  If the child is “termed out” then the child is off of our county’s placement figures and we will not be paying for anything anymore.

Her department had 12 juveniles detained in the month of June. One kid was detained twice.  Of those 12 detainees, 6 had been detained for the 1^st time, 2 were detained for the 2^nd time, 2 for the 3^rd, 1 for the 6^th time and 1 for the 14^th time. 

Ms. Gilmour said that at the end of August the IPS Program will be finishing its first year.  She will be coming up with a report for the committee on how the year went; what kind of numbers did they generate, and what kind of things did they see happen with the program.  They have seen that there were no juveniles placed in residential placement in the last year, which was the main goal of that program.

CASA’S UPDATE

Ms. Jill Olson, Executive Director of DeKalb County’s CASA Program, updated the committee as to what is happening in her department.  She said that it’s that time of the year where the budget process is beginning.  Once again, they have made an application to the county for some funding for the CASA program.  Since it is due this week she thought that it might be appropriate to bring it to this committee this evening so that the members would have an opportunity to see it. 

On the second to the last page of her report, Ms. Olson pointed out to the committee the numbers of children that her program has served since 2001.  The numbers have increased over those years from 71 children in 2001, 77 in 2002 to 89 children in 2003.  Her advocates represent approximately 60% of children that are in the juvenile court system on the abuse and neglect side.  Ms. Olson reminded the committee that they are court appointed by the Juvenile Judge to act as advocates for children who have cases in juvenile court who have been alleged to have been abused or neglected.

DCFS has recently provided them with statistical information specifically for DeKalb County for the year 2002.  In the year 2002, 737 cases of abuse or neglect were reported to DCFS.  You might look at the caseload in DeKalb County and say that there are not 737 cases on the court roll.  Ms. Olson said that is a correct statement because a number of those cases are handled within DCFS services.  But if you take those statistics in DeKalb County, she is being told that we are having abuse or neglect case reported 1 every 12 hours, which is pretty substantial.  According to the DCFS statistics this is also above the average for the State of Illinois.  Ours comes in at roughly 37% and the average number of reports statewide is 23%. 

They currently are operating this year on a budget of $79,880.00.  With that budget (last page of packet), the bulk of that money goes towards payroll expenses.  She said that she always becomes leery when she sees an organization and the bulk of their money goes to payroll.    She knows that when she is making her decisions about where she is going to donate she often looks at what kind of money is going out in administrative expenses.  But what their budget does not reflect is the work that is performed by their advocates that is done on a volunteer basis.  Their child advocates, as well as, their pro bono attorneys, have donated a total of 3,360 hours from 44 volunteers.  If you calculate that on an hourly wage of $16.02 an hour or $55,000 in free services provided by the child advocates to those children.  Additionally, they also receive assistance from pro bono attorneys that are in the County and they’ve donated approximately $23,000.00 in services.  Therefore, if you combine those figures, which is roughly $78,000.00, and then add it into their budget, in reality their budget is far greater. We are fortunate to have a number of their services provided on a volunteer basis, she said. 

Ms. Olson continued by stating that “you can’t run a program without some sort of staff support.”  Their current staff consists of herself as the Executive Director, a Case Manager and an intern.  Those positions are currently budgeted at the following: her position at 30-35 hours a week; the Case Manager at 25 hours a week; and the intern varies between 30 hours a week in the summertime and 10 hours a week for the remaining 9 months. 

In order to be able to increase their services to the children that currently are not represented by a CASA advocate, they need to be able to provide some additional staff and support for their advocates. Currently their advocates are increasing at a rate of roughly 10 – 15 per year.  In the last two years alone, she has added another 25 advocates to their program.  With volunteers, she does not want to turn away someone who is going to be willing to provide her program with these much needed services.  She does not want to say, “sorry, but we can’t train you because we can’t afford to staff and support you.” 

She knows that in these economic times that this is not attractive to the board to come here and ask for money that has not been funded before, said Ms. Olson.  However, at some point, Ms. Olson continued, the board needs to address it, respectively, because there is a need for funding.  They receive their funding in the form of grants and foundations.  Grant monies are drying up and foundation money is less. Typically they are seeing as much as 50% of a cut. They also solicit donations in a variety of ways in the local communities.  They seek to be creative in their fundraising abilities and appeals to the communities at large. 

Last year when she came before the board Mr. Hanson made a recommendation that the County could provide some space for them in the lower level of the jail. It was a generous offer and they appreciated it, but the difficulty was that they have certain space needs. Currently they are outgrowing the space that they have now and it is larger than the space they were offered by the County last year.  They could not function as well in their program in more limited space. They have 3 staff members and they have to store files, and because their files are confidential they have to be very careful about access to that information and so forth.  However, they are open-minded to those opportunities if they should become available again.

She anticipates that the number of volunteers to come forth to ask to be trained as advocates is going to continue because there is a huge interest in their program and what they do.  They have to be able to properly train them and have the staff to support them.  The information provided to the committee in the packet this evening shows that based upon current 2003 staffing, and the current number of advocates being 48, their staff ratio is 77 to 1.  The national CASA standards suggest a ratio of 30 to 1.  Currently her staff is severely stretched.  On the other hand, currently based on the number of children being served, their ratio is 1.8 to 1 and the national standard suggests a ratio of 2 to 1.  They are within those ranges.  Where they are really being stretched is being able to adequately serve the needs of their advocates and of course, if they continue to be asked to accept more cases which involve more children, they are going to have to address the issue of how can they increase the staffing levels to meet those needs?

Mr. Rosemier said that if this is a court appointed advocacy program, then why is it that the court isn’t supporting it financially?  Ms. Olson said that she can’t speak to that, but it is her understanding that the funding for the judiciary portion of the County does come through the County Board.  At the time that the CASA program was set up here in DeKalb County in 1993, a decision was made at that time that the County would provide some space, which they did in the basement of the jail for the office, but that no money would be provided.  She does not know if that was a County Board decision.

Mr. Bockman said that the County Board was never involved in setting up the program nor did they give the space to the program in the jail, nor were they asked.  Ms. Olson said that it was her understanding that they provided space in the jail in 1993 through 1996.  Mr. Bockman said that he didn’t know about it.

Mr. Rosemier asked Chairman Allen if this subject should be even talked about right now because this is budget information and the agenda simply calls for space needs?  Chairman Allen said that she wasn’t aware of it either.  Mr. Bockman said that he can answer part of the question, we have not started budget discussions yet.  He further stated that if the question is, “are we having budget hearings”, well the rest of us are not, but you certainly can, but you can’t make any decisions.  Ms. Olson said that last year she came before this committee at the same time of the year and made a similar presentation and requested funding.  She is only following the format, because unlike some of the other offices and programs that you hear monthly, she only comes before the committee twice a year, once in May and once in August.  It is more the matter of timing in which she is invited to appear before the committee.  Ms. Leifheit said that she doesn’t have a problem with what is going on right now with her presentation.  The Extension Services gives us a heads up on what they are going to be asking for.  She sees it more as a heads up, this is what she submitted into the budget.  Ms. Olson said that that’s right because she is not asking for any decision.  Ms. Leifheit continued to say that the committee is not having a hearing right now, she is only making a presentation of what their organization is doing. 

Chairman Allen asked Ms. Olson that on the second to the last page it shows people needing services as 148 people.  Ms. Olson said that it is a speculative figure based on the growth that they have seen over the past few years.  Chairman Allen then asked about the line that says “Children Going Without” that shows 59 children.  Are these the children that you have had to refuse or what? asked Chairman Allen.  Ms. Olson said that it reflects the children currently in the system that they don’t serve as advocates for.  When Judge Klein asks her in juvenile court if she has an advocate currently available, currently she says no because she does not have one.  That’s where that number comes from.

Mr. Rosemier said that he just wanted to say that it is a shame that a vital program in the County has no one showing it support. 

Mr. Faivre asked Ms. Olson that in order to gain a perspective, he would like to see the national recommendations for funding; where our county sits with relation to similar sized counties and the surrounding counties.  He would like all statistics to reflect this.  Ms. Olson said that she can contact the state office and ask if they can provide her with that information.  Ms. Olson said that based upon her inquiries to the counties that are part of the Northeast and Northwest regions of the state, except McHenry, Ogle and Jo Davies, which have no CASA program, the funds are either combined with county support and grant monies or one or the other.  DeKalb County currently remains the only exception to that.

Mr. Rosemier asked if the court system has been approached?  Ms. Olson said that she has not personally approached Judge Klein.  Perhaps that is something that she should have done, but thought that it was more appropriate for her to look to the county since it is the underlying financial basis for budgetary items.  Mr. Bockman said that perhaps what the court might do is possibly order a person to pay, just a suggestion.

Mr. Rosemier asked Ms. Olson if she has asked Mr. Hanson or Mr. Bockman about space needs?  Ms. Olson said no, not recently. 

The committee thanked Ms. Olson for her very informative update on CASA.

MEETING DATE

Chairman Allen said that it was suggested by Mr. Hanson, because of budget timing and Labor Day, to hold the committee’s next meeting on September 8, 2003.  Moved by Mr. Rosemier, seconded by Mr. Faivre, and it was carried unanimously to move the September meeting date to September 8, 2003.

OLD BUSINESS

Before Chairman Allen introduces Ms. Olson, she handed out to the committee the criteria sheet for the exempt employee evaluations that will be held next month.  She said to read it over and do their homework and see if they can answer those questions on the sheet for each of the exempt employees.  She also said that if they have questions, go to anyone to find out an answer for their question.  Go in with a positive outlook and if you find a negative comment, then find out why there is prior to the evaluations.  

Chairman Allen then said that we have spoken about the agencies that do the best presentation at our hearing for the Senior Tax Levy monies and that they should get more money then the one that doesn’t do such a great job.  Next year she is suggesting that maybe no one will do a presentation, but they all do the paperwork.  Chairman Allen indicated that this will mean that a lot of the committee members will have to do homework.  Mr. Rosemier said that he felt that it was an interesting concept.  Chairman Allen said that if you would have questions, then go visit the agency and get answers.  Ms. LaVigne said this would get the board members out to the agencies to see what they do.  Chairman Allen said this is just a suggestion for the committee to think about over the next month and that they will discuss it at the September meeting.

Chairman Allen explained to the committee members that she invited Ms. Olson, DeKalb County Community Services Director, to bring the application for the Senior Tax Levy with her to pass out for everyone to review and make suggested changes at our meeting in September.  Ms. Olson said that some of the information that we ask for in this application cannot be changed because of the State Act, others can be.  One thing that the committee needs to remember is that this is a purchase of service, it is not a grant given to an agency, said Ms. Olson.  It is not necessarily designed to help fund an agency that is struggling.  This is funding where the County purchases services that you feel will benefit the taxpayers of DeKalb County, said Ms. Olson.  Mr. Rosemier said that he never heard this statement before.  Ms. Leifheit said then you didn’t listen at the last hearing because that is exactly what we did, we purchased services. So if you have never heard this statement before, then you missed the whole hearing. 

Ms. Leifheit said that her only concern about not having the agencies present is that perhaps a board member might misinterpret that an agency said and bring it back to the group as if it was fact.  The agency would not then be able to defend itself.  If a board member asks a question with the agency present that way we can all hear what they have said.  Chairman Allen said that it is only a suggestion and that’s a good point.  Mr. Rosemier said that maybe you can have the best of both possible worlds, don’t have them make a presentation but we can ask questions.  He further stated that he felt it was inefficient for each board member to go and visit each agency.  Chairman Allen said that that’s not true, that she felt it is very efficient, because not all of us would have the same question(s), but Ms. Leifheit has raised a good point.

Mr. Bockman said that when we, the County, originally designed this system he asked himself how the County could de-politicize the process?  His original thinking was that he had some people picked out to serve as a buffer between our board and the agencies.  Let them do the research and the hearing, that way if there is a hard decision to be made it would be without political consideration.  As he read the statute again, it clearly gave the authority to raise the funds to the board and the sole ability to allocate them.  He said that the more he thought about it he thought, “why interject a step in the process and put the board in the ridiculous position of having to jump over somebody’s recommendation to do what you want to do anyway.”  What goes on here, he feels is entirely honorable, if people in this group want to advocate for a service that is more valuable than the other. 

Mr. Faivre said that he shares Ms. Leifheit’s concern and suggests that we strictly limit their opening comments and then ask questions.  Mr. Bockman suggested said that maybe this committee could submit 2 to 3 questions that you could ask each agency to answer ahead of the hearing. 

Mr. Rosemier asked Ms. Olson who she solicits bids from?  Ms. Olson said from all of the senior providers; she also advertises in the newspaper; she mails out the application to anyone in the past that has shown interest; and they put it on the County’s website. 

Mr. Olson also informed the committee that the agency applying does not need to be a non-for-profit agency or not even an agency itself.

Mr. Johnson said that last month he had requested a State’s Attorney’s Opinion on the subject of Conflict of Interest and he was wondering if we had received a reply from the State’s Attorney?  Chairman Allen said that the question has been asked, but Mr. Matekaitis has not answered it yet.  Mr. Bockman said that at the time he talked to him Mr. Matekaitis said that he was working on it. 

Mr. Rosemier said that under Old Business he wanted to talk about the discussion about reappointing the Supervisor of Assessments.  He distributed copies of the minutes pertaining to this topic from both the public services committee and the executive committee.  He points out the friendly motion to approve the recommendation of the reappointment of the position with no name.  On the second page it shows the report to the Executive Committee and he feels that it reflects only Chairman Allen’s personal opinion and that he feels that the statement does not reflect what went on at the public services committee meeting.  He said that he did remember making a statement that said “ ….it did not reflect on the quality of work that Ms. Whitwell has done…….  He does not feel that it is necessary to put those comments in the minutes, but he does remember making that statement.

Mr. Rosemier said that in the Executive Committee Minutes it says that you felt that the committee treated her badly…..   Chairman Allen said that we did not forward the name because the timing was crucial.  Mr. Rosemier said, Chairman Allen you missed the point, we weren’t treating her badly at all.  Chairman Allen said, that we treated this position awful.  Mr. Rosemier said that it was out of sequence to reappoint someone before the evaluation – that is the whole thing that motivated the discussion.  It had nothing to do with Margaret Whitwell.  He said that he visited with Ms. Whitwell and talked with her the morning after the meeting to reassure her that the committee in no way was judging her.  Mr. Rosemier further stated that as he was talking with Ms. Whitwell, she pulled out the state statute and said that she has to be reappointed between 90 to 120 days before her expiration expires.   We should have reappointed her in the month of May and it only occurs every four years. 

Mr. Bockman said that there is some honest confusion about what the state statute compels and what we do by choice.  Technically, if you read the entire section on the employment of the Supervisor of Assessments it also says, “shall serve until their replacement is appointed.”  So, technically, if you had not acted last month Ms. Whitwell would still be the Supervisor of Assessments.  It allows her to continue her duties in the interim.  We do not have to line up our evaluations with the state statutory appointment dates for one good reason.  The evaluations are being used to set compensation not to decide on employment.  If Mr. Bockman had been present at last month’s meeting, he said, he would have suggested that the committee rely on her past year’s evaluation. 

ADJOURNMENT

Moved by Ms. Fullerton, seconded by Mr. Faivre, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting.

                                                          Respectfully submitted,

                                                          __________________________________
                                                          Marlene Allen, Chairman

_____________________________
Mary C. Supple, Secretary