The Public Services Committee of the DeKalb County Board met on Monday, March 1, 2004, @ 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, Robert Rosemier and Richard Osborne.  Steve Faivre was absent.   Others present were Margi Gilmour, Greg Millburg, Ken Johnson, Mary Olson and Gil Morrison.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Mr. Rosemier asked to have the minutes amended to show that on page 2, under the heading “Jail Referendum”, first paragraph, second line, “…. It all started in June of 2002…” not 2003. 

Moved by Ms. Leifheit, seconded by Ms. LaVigne, and it was carried unanimously to approve the amended January 2004 minutes.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Chairman Allen added the item #5a. to the agenda - Court Services Annual Report.   Moved by Mr. Rosemier, seconded by Ms. Dubin, and it was carried unanimously to approve the amended agenda.

PUBLIC DEFENDER’S REPORT

Mr. Ken Johnson, DeKalb County Public Defender, said that his numbers are consistent with the last couple of years.  The recent trend shows more serious cases in the last few months, like aggravated criminal sexual assault and serious drug offenses.  They need to put more time into these types of cases and his resources are being stretched.  Because his clients are stating that they are not getting paid on time by the state, by the downstate funds he has been utilizing for investigations, his professional services line item will show that it has increased.

The Jail population numbers are still the same and have not gone down.  He has an inmate housed in Ogle County, which was a decision by the judge.  He said that there are co-defendants in a murder case that were housed in our jail and the courts ordered that one of them be sent to Ogle County because of safety reasons in our jail.  Driving to Ogle County all the time now is costly and time consuming.  He has bought a phone card for his client for him to speak to Mr. Johnson daily.  It has been working out fine right now.

He said that one of the things that he has noticed recently that on Fridays the caseload numbers are going up and have been skyrocketing.  Payment days and Violation days are on Friday afternoons.   Mr. Rosemier asked Mr. Johnson, are traffic violations more serious - where they would require attorneys?  Mr. Johnson said yes, they are seeing more people that are driving without a license and repeat offenders, revoked licenses, DUI’s. etc. 

COURT SERVICES MONTHLY AND ANNUAL REPORTS

Ms. Margi Gilmour, Director of the DeKalb County Court Services Department, said that there was nothing new to report with regards to changes in the adult court services report, as well as community services.

With regards to her Juvenile Court Services Report, they did have to place a female in residential placement.  She has been on intensive probation, electronic home monitoring and still continued to have problems.  Therefore  she was placed in residential placement at Focus House.  She was placed there at the end of January at $90.00 a day.  The first 90-days she is there will be recognized as a probationary type period.  They will be testing and evaluating her and also work with her mother to see if she is an appropriate candidate for residential placement. 

Ms. Gilmour also informed the committee that the young man that has been appearing in her monthly juvenile reports as being detained for 18 times for violating EHM was just transferred at the end of February to the Department of Corrections.  He has been sent there for a full commitment, however, she does believe that the court will bring him back in about 45 days and may vacate the commitment, but for now he is in D.O.C.    

Annual Report for 2003

Ms. Gilmour said that she was not going to review the entire report with the committee this evening, but instead would highlight certain pages for them.

The pages that she highlighted are as follows:  Page 10 – court referrals that went up a little bit or 13%; page 17 covers the Intergovernmental Agreement with Kane County, which she feels may last until 2006; page 19 covers the history of residential placement; page 24 covers the Learning Mentor Program, page 25 covers the Diversion Program, page 26 covers the Intensive Probation Program; page 33 shows an increase in the adult court services caseload where each officer has 102 active cases; page 41 talks about community services hours that were completed in 2003, which amounted to 28,636 completed hours by juveniles and adult programs.  If you take that number times $5.25 an hour, it would equal a value of service to DeKalb County worksites of over $150,000.  Park districts, schools, churches, all of those kinds of agencies are the work sites that she is talking about.  One positive thing that came out of the community services program was that 20 workers received job offers last year because of their service work. 

Page 43 details the specialized program of electronic home monitoring, which is run by the Sheriff’s Department and her department assists them as far as regular contact with the Sheriff’s Department regarding juveniles.  She said that most adults on probation are not put on EHM, where juveniles are put on EHM much more frequently.  Page 46 talks about the DNA Indexing project and shows how many people were scheduled to take the test and how many were completed.  Random Urinalysis testing shows that most of the people tested were juveniles because it’s a standard condition on the juvenile court order that they submit to random drops.  It is not a standard condition for the adult orders in this county but they are working on changing that.

Page 49 covers restitution that is paid in the Circuit Clerk’s office and the probation officer’s job is to help the defendant make his/her payment plan and remind them constantly to make those payments on time. 

On page 59 Ms. Gilmour states the goals that she would like to accomplish for 2004.  The first goal is the implementation of YASI, which is a site for the state-wide Youth Assessment Screening Instrument.  Staff and management are scheduled to attend a second round of training in February 2004.  Social history forms and intake worksheets will be modified to include information required for the YASI interviews of juveniles. 

The second goal is to participate in a LSI-R Site in which DeKalb County Adult Court Services has been selected to pilot the Level of Service Inventory (revised LSI-R), a new screening instrument designed for adult offenders.  In the future the LSI-R will be used on a state-wide basis to determine the risk/needs of adult offenders.  Staff will attend a training that is to be scheduled in the Fall prior to piloting the new screening instrument.

Finally, Ms. Gilmour mentioned that the pending legislation under HB3555 regarding lifetime (10 – 20 years) probation for sex offenders would not be addressed at the Spring session. 

The committee thanked Ms. Gilmour for her very informative annual report. 

REGIONAL SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS ANNUAL REPORT

Mr. Gil Morrison, Regional Superintendent of Schools, reviewed their Annual Report for the period covering July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003.  He began by highlighting various pages of interest to the committee.  On page 1 it explains the various calendars that they follow and their duties.  He thanked the DeKalb County Board and the Public Services Committee for providing funding for personnel and housing their offices.  He said that the total school enrollment for the school year covering 2003-2003 was 17,077 students.  He mentioned that on page 3 it explains the distribution of funds to the various offices.  Most of the monies for the various schools in the county do not come through their office anymore, they are done electronically.   

On page 6 it discusses the certification process for teachers in the county.  He said that next year’s report would include the first year that teachers took part in the Professional Development Course.  On page 7 it discusses how truancy supervision is a big part of their office duties. 

Ms. Leifheit said that Mr. Weber needed extra help for the electronic filing of teacher’s certificates, has anything happened on the state level with this?  Mr. Morrison said that it’s working but even though there is electronic filing occurring, there’s still a lot of bugs in the system and questions that need to be answered.  They still have to have a piece of paper that states they are a legal licensed teacher that his office needs to process without doing it electronically.

Mr. Morrison said that he has found some mistakes in the report that Mr. Weber filed and that he will make those corrections and get them to the committee this week.

COMMUNITY SERVICES UPDATE: SENIOR SERVICES TAX LEVY

Ms. Mary Olson, DeKalb County Community Services Director, passed out the Senior Services Tax Levy Applications to the committee.  She said that there were seven applicants, which were all the same ones from last year.  There were two agencies that had problems with their applications this year.  Family Service Agency had seven pages to their summary instead of six and Opportunity House did not submit a budget or audit with their application.  She will be asking them to submit it to her before the April Public Hearings. 

Ms. Olson said that she visited with all of the agencies from last year and checked their reporting numbers of which all looked fine.  She said that she has copies of all of their audits, which were all clean.   

Ms. Olson asked the committee to approve the tentative times that she is submitting this evening for the agencies to report to this committee at the April public hearings.  They are scheduled fifteen minutes apart like last year.  However, this year there will be no presentations heard - only a question and answer period. 

Ms. Olson then presented her 1^st Quarterly Report Breakdown for the Community Block Grant to the committee, which showed that all of her programs’ goals were met.  The only changes were under food stamps, number of single people and employment (see report attached to these minutes.)

Moved by Ms. Leifheit, seconded by Mr. Johnson, and it was carried unanimously to accept all of the reports that were presented this evening and to place them on file.

ADJOURNMENT

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

                                                          Respectfully submitted, 

                                                          __________________________________
                                                          Marlene Allen, Chairman

_____________________________
Mary C. Supple, Secretary