Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

June 3rd, 2026 meeting of the McLean County Regional Planning Commission will come to order. This conference will now be recorded. Attendance will be recorded by staff member Katie McShane. A quorum is present. And I'll also note that Commissioner Bart Fittner is attending virtually today. Hi, Bart. Hi, guys. We'll move directly on to public comment. I see that Trisha Braid has signed in here on the sign-up sheet. Are there any other public speakers?

Okay.

Ms. Bray, do you have the floor?

Good afternoon. I'm here again to encourage this commission to embrace the value of transparency. At the last meeting, words were spoken that deserve serious reflection. Those of us in the room heard that staff are still the creators of the comprehensive plan that's reflected in the minutes you're looking at to approve tonight. There were also statements suggesting that public involvement can limit creativity. I encourage each commissioner to review the meeting recording with the ear of a member of the public. I ask the commission to consider the optics of those statements. The comprehensive plan is one of the most consequential planning documents our region can produce. If the plan is being created by staff, shaped through informal input, and public access is treated as a burden on creativity, that undermines public confidence in the process. I also want to notify the commission that I intend to file a formal request for review with the attorney general's office specific to the project steering committee by the end of the week, alleging violations of the open meetings act by the commission. I previously outlined my concerns to this body and emails to the chair and executive director. I also gave notice of my intention today to file that report or that request with the county assistant state's attorney. Finally, I understand public comment is not the time for back and forth discussion, but there is no prohibition on this commission inviting me or any member of the public to the table outside of the public comment period of the agenda to have a conversation and better understand these concerns. I'm asking the commission itself, not only staff, to consider whether the current process reflects the level of transparency that this body wants associated with its work.

Next we have the consent agenda. Would any of the commissioners like to remove any items from the consent agenda? If no, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Second. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. And we need to say for information or discussion, we have a guest today and who I will let Ray introduce.

Yeah, thank you, ma'am. With us today is Mr. Tim Halsek. He is the County Chief of County Assess. The officer has been in his position for like three, four years now. He's been around in our area for a while. Anything else to add, please feel free. But he's going to talk about assessment But on top of that, there are other areas that he does, and his team does, actually related to planning. So it's not just when we get the deal from the county attorney's office, based on assessment, and is the HOSAC staff going to do property by property to assess valuations and whatnot. But actually, it relates to planning. and he's going to construct some lights for us, what his office does, community planning, housing, just to give you an example, land use map, some information that we rely on to identify the existing land use. It's really a lot based on his staff's work. They'll go out property by property, and then based on the data that they have collected, and then we assign certain land use code small glimpse of what he does because that's not usually what we envision assessing work related so please thank you very much ray i appreciate it um as ray mentioned my name is tim jorczak i am the chief county assessment officer for mclean county uh i have been in my role now for

Just over four years, I was reappointed to my second term in February of this year. So we're excited to start a new cycle of what it is that we do. But to give you a very, very 30,000 foot view over the next couple minutes here of what the assessor's office does at the county level and then what and how we interact with the communities in the rest of the county and with the townships. So let's start off Let's talk about really briefly what the property tax is. Property taxes are the primary means of funding local government, not just in McLean County, not just in the state of Illinois, but frankly across the country. The property tax is the primary means by which our local units get their revenue. Sure, they collect other forms of taxes alongside of it, but for the most part, their day-to-day operations are going to be funded predominantly through the property tax. The property tax is a form of ad valorem taxation. What does ad valorem mean? Ad valorem is a Latin term that simply means according to value. The property tax is levied according to the value of your property. Now I want you to think about an income tax. An income tax is levied according to the value of your income, right? But it's a passive tax. The government sets the rate and they say, okay, we're going to collect 5% of your income and that's going to fund our operations. In good years, you're collecting 5% of a big amount. In leaner years, you're getting 5% of a smaller amount. So you can see how those revenues kind of ebb and flow over time. Same goes for sales tax. Sales tax is assessed generally at a uniform percentage based on the ebb and flow of commerce. And you collect what you collect. And then you budget based off of that. The property tax is different. The tax is levied as necessary to fund the operation of the unit of government that you work in. So if your unit of government needs this many dollars, that is your levy, and then that is allocated out according to the value of each property in the jurisdiction. So that's what gets the property tax made advantage. It's a very stable form of taxation. It kind of eases the hills and valleys that we see a lot of times in government revenues.

All right.

Okay. What we look at for the most part in property taxation is the fair cash value, the market value of your property. What is market value? We see the definition in Illinois code right here. It's the amount for which a property can be sold in the due course of business and trade, not under duress between a willing buyer and a willing seller. I want to sell my property. You wanna buy my property, I'm not making you buy it, you're not making me sell it. It's what we call an arm's length transaction. That's what we're looking for, okay? That's how we establish market value. We wanna estimate what your home is worth in that type of transaction. And that's the value upon which you are to be assessed, the property tax. And most property is assessed at that level with one main exception. You get out into the outlying parts of the county in central Illinois. I see my friend Anna back there. She understands most of our property, I should say most, but a good portion of our property in the rural parts is assessed as ag land. And ag land is assessed on a different standard. It's assessed at its value in use. So they determine its economic productivity as agricultural land, and the taxation is based off of that. So it's a different standard, so we kind of talk about that a little bit separately. But most of what we talk about is according to the value and use standard. I'm sorry, the value and exchange standard. Every county in the state of Illinois, with the exception of Cook County, because Cook County is always different, every county in the state is assessed at 33 and a third of fair cash value. And there are reasons for that that go back decades. We won't get into here. There are valid reasons why we do it the way that we do it. But when we think about our assessed value, we need to think about our market value and essentially divide it by three. That's what you're taxed on. So if you have a $100,000 home, your assessment is $33,333. That's the way it's levied. Next, please. What is the assessment process? The assessment process... Let's compare it to an appraisal you might have gotten on your property. You go out and you have to get an appraisal for whatever reason. You might be getting a mortgage refinance, which we don't see too often of those right now with the way interest rates are. But 10 years ago, that was very, very, very common. You would go out and you were getting a refinance, so you needed to get an appraisal. Your appraiser is going to look at it on an individual perspective. They're going to look at your house and they're going to say, according to the date, I want the appraisal. I'm getting a refinance on June 3rd, 2026. what is my house worth on June 3rd, 2026? And these, the appraiser is going to do that. They'll look, they'll measure your property. They'll make comparisons to the market. And they say on this date, I think the value is in this case here, $157,500 for your property. In assessment, it's similar, but we do it using mass appraisal principles. So we are, instead of assessing one property as of today, we're assessing a whole bunch of properties as of one consistent date. The state of Illinois, that consistent date is January 1st of the assessment year. So the work that we're doing right now, it's going on in your townships. is based on the value of the property as of January 1st, 2026. So that's what we're looking at. And Matt's appraisal of what we're going to do is we're going to say something along the lines of market data indicate that properties in this neighborhood have sold on average for $100 per square foot. And then we'll apply that $100 per square foot to each of these three homes. You know, you got one home that's 1,600 square feet, one that's 1,550, one that's 1,500, but they're all similar enough in the same market area that we can say, this is gonna be our value. We apply our $100 per square foot, and that gives us our assessed value. It's a very, very simplified way of looking at it, but that's the essence of it. Go ahead. My job as a supervisor of assessments is we oversee the work that's done at the township level. So the township assessors in all your communities and normal in Bloomington and the other townships, they are the ones out doing the work and they submit that to us at the county. We take that information, we do our work at the county to make sure those values are equalized and correct and then we send those values out to the taxpayer and then they have the opportunity to review the value and file a complaint. Our primary function when we're not doing that is we administer exemptions and deductions. You get your homeowner's exemption for living in your property. We administer that. We have senior citizens exemption. We have a couple of those. We have some exemptions for veterans. We administer all those and we try to let folks know, hey, this exemption is available. At this time of year, we always get an influx of seniors who don't realize that there's a senior citizen exemption available to them. And then they come in, they're 70 years old, and they say, I've never heard of senior exemption before. So we get the opportunity to give them a corrected tax, and I always put a little smile on their face, and hey, we're getting a little bit of a discount on our taxes this year. And then we provide the support staff to the county board of review. Go ahead, next slide. The township assessor is the one who's actually in the township doing data collection for most of you. So I know I see Normal here. Who's from Bloomington? City of Bloomington. So City of Bloomington and Normal, you both have full-time assessors with a full-time staff who are out doing this work. And the other townships are generally part-time or contract employees who go out and they do the data field collection. They pick up new construction. They adjust values as necessary. They are the ones who are assigning the land value to properties and assigning the classification. So they're the ones who are determining, we've got this class of property. This property is agricultural. So they tell us this property is in crops right now, has been in crops for the last two years. So we're going to put it on as ag labor. They further divide that ag land down based on, they don't technically do it, we do it in our office, but then we divide that up based off of its productivity, its physical characteristics, its slope, erosion, stuff like that. We make those determinations. Then they also assign, you know, okay, this is commercial land for development, so let's go to this. And then they set the value for commercial land in that particular area or residential. So that's where those decisions are being made, for the most part, is at the township level. They also review sales and individual properties and determine the fair cash value. On or about June 15th, which is a little over two weeks from now, they're supposed to submit those books to us, and then that's when we start our equalization work. I'll give you a very, very, very quick example of what equalization is, because this is the factor that a lot of folks get confused about. Equalization is the process of ensuring that every property is valued according to the same percentage of its fair cash value. So I need to make sure, as the county assessor, it's my responsibility to make sure that your home is assessed at the same percentage of fair cash value as your home is, as Ray's home is, as your home is. That's at 33 and a third. That's what our responsibility is. So to do that, we look at all the sales that come through. We get over, if you go to the next slide real quick, we get over almost 5,000 transactions a year in McLean County. And my office is responsible for looking at every one of those transactions and determining if those transactions are that arm's length transaction that I talked about. And unless there's a very compelling reason for it not to be called an arm's length transaction, like you bought the property from a relative or the government bought it through eminent domain or something like that, unless there's a compelling reason, we are going to analyze every sale and use that in our analysis. OK, go ahead and go back. So what we do is we look at every sale that comes in. You bought your house for, in this example, let's look over right here. on this sale here. You bought your house for $160,000. We'll compare that sale price to the fair cash value that we have assigned in our office. In this case, we have the fair cash value assigned at $160,000. Great. You know, we're doing an awesome job. That is a sales ratio of 100%. We're doing a great job there. We do that for every property that sells in the county. It is an arm's length transaction. Now we look up here to the top, we've got a property that sold for 155, but our fair cash value on it is only 153. We have a sale ratio of 98.7%. So we're a little bit under on this sale, what the market tells us this property is worth. But that's fine. These are all individual data points. We go to the yellow-roofed house below it. We've got a sale price of $148,000, but our office has it assessed at $150,000 fair cash value. In this case, we have a sale ratio of 101.4. We are a little bit over-assessed, but like I said, these are all individual data points. We want to aggregate that data and try to find one consistent number that we can hang our hat on to see how this little neighborhood's doing. So let's say in this neighborhood of three homes, We're going to look at the median sale price in this neighborhood to see how we're doing. In this case, we got one high, one a little bit high, one a little bit low, and one smack dab in the middle. Our median ratio is 100%. This neighborhood is well equalized. We're happy with what's going on here. Sure, the property at the top is getting a little bit of a benefit because they aren't assessed as high as they should be, and the property below is getting a little bit of a ding because they're assessed higher than they should be, but it's within a tolerance. We can handle those individual cases on appeal or on reassessment, however we want to do those. As a whole, the neighborhood is good. So the question then becomes, this neighborhood of three is perfect. Is every one of your neighborhoods perfect every year? Absolutely not. Skip two, please. Thank you. What happens if that ratio is off of 100%? In this case, we have that situation. We did the exact same math. for the three homes in our neighborhood here, but our median sale ratio is 98.7. So all of our sales are below where we want to be. What do we do in this situation? State law says that our ratios have to be as close to 100% as possible. What are we going to do in this situation? Well, in this case, we're going to go in and we're going to raise every home in this neighborhood. Again, these are our three sales, but this is representing a bigger neighborhood. There might be 50 homes in this neighborhood and we're working off the three sales. We're going to take these sales as our data point and say, okay, these sales represent the fact that our neighborhood is under assessed. So we're going to raise the entire neighborhood up by an amount that brings our median sale ratio up to 100%. Like I said, we are doing this to every home in the neighborhood, not just the ones that sell, because we have to treat everybody the same way. If we only raise the homes that sold and left everybody else alone, we're creating a constitutional inequity. We are treating the houses that sell differently than the houses that don't sell. So that's why we adjust everybody. In this case, the equalization factor necessary to do that was 1.32%. We need to raise everybody in that neighborhood by 1.32% to get them to equity. Why is this important is the question. I touched on it a little bit when I talked about constitutional inequity and due process of law making sure everybody's getting treated fairly. But this puts it in a little bit of a little bit of starker relief. Go ahead, next page. If we don't do this, like I said, we are running foul of the Equal Protection Clause of the Illinois Constitution, which says everybody is to be treated the same way and assessed at the same percentage of market value. In this example, I'm going to use Unified School Corporation because that's one we probably all know. It's our biggest school corporation in the county. It covers 11 townships in McLean County. Most of the county geographically is in Unified. And even it takes out into a couple of places in other counties as well. Huge, huge jurisdiction geographically. Its tax rate across the jurisdiction from my house in North Normal to houses up in Rural Carlock and Hudson are taxed at the same percent. Unified collects 5.06696% in 2020. Same tax rate. My little house in North Normal to Rivian are all being taxed at that same rate of 5.06696%. Let's look at an example here of what happens if we're not equalized. So we have our two houses. Let's say we've got this neighborhood, and they all come together. Three townships come together at one point. And that happens to be where those lines are. But otherwise, these houses are identical to one another. They just happen to sit in three different townships with three different assessors. Dale Township, they are fully equalized. They did what they needed to do. They have a ratio of 100%. The tax bill for that house is $2,651 per unit of five. Same goes in Bloomington Township. 100% sale ratio, identical house, tax bill, $2,651. But what if the city of Bloomington Township assessor said, you know what? I don't feel like my taxpayers can stand an increase on their assessment. I'm not going to raise their value. I don't think it's fair that they should have to get a tax increase because, you know, maybe there's not enough sales or something like that. I don't think it's fair that they should get an increase, so I'm not going to do anything. Their sale ratio is 95.5. That taxpayer, identical house, identical level of services from Unified School Corporation, is paying $2,533 in taxes. It's a difference of $118. Now, $118 doesn't sound like a lot of money. But if you spread $118 out over 11 townships, over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of square miles of area, we're talking millions in tax shifts. That's why we have to equalize. So in this case, City of Bloomington Township doesn't do anything. I'm the one who has to step in from my office and say, okay, City of Bloomington, I'm bumping everybody in that township up by an amount necessary to get that to 100% level of assessment. And the same goes on a bigger scale if the state has to do it. If I were to do the same thing and say, hey, you know what, I'm not crazy about doing this, the state of Illinois is going to come in, and they're going to do it for me. And you will not like the result if the state of Illinois has to do it for me, because that causes a whole bunch of other problems. But the state has one mandate, and that is everybody's got to be a 33 and a third, and they will do it. So you want this work done at a local level. It doesn't make me the most popular person in the county sometimes. but it's work that has to be done to make sure that we're treating everybody fairly. So that's the way the assessment process works in a nutshell. Next slide. We have had a lot of talk over these last couple of years. My predecessor, Bob Common, and I like to joke around that he left in 2022, right as the market exploded. And there are a lot of reasons why the market did what it did beginning in 2020 and 2021. But he left, and we have faced an unprecedented amount of value increase across the country in the last six years or so. I haven't seen anything like this. People who have been in this profession 30, 40 years have said, I have never seen a real estate market like we saw from 2020 to 2026. My equalization factors... In 2020, before everything happened, the countywide equalization was essentially zero. We didn't make any adjustments. And you can see in this slide over here what those percentages did year over year. We went up over 6% in 2021. We tacked another 10% on in 2022. We tacked another 12% on in 2023. And then in 2024, that number started to recede back down to about 9%. Last year, it was closer to about 6%. And this year, it's going to be closer to a little over 5% based on our best estimates right now. We're starting to see, and we have really seen that wave sort of crest. But you can see what that has done. But I want to compare that to what price, because people say, you guys are just, you just want to raise my taxes. That's all you want to do. That's all you care about, raise my taxes. The blue line is what this is. I took, for this example here, I took my house because I knew what I paid for my house, what I bought my house for, and I know that the township hasn't changed it. For any reason, the only increases that have gone on are what equalization factors that apply to all the normal townships got put on. That's the orange line. The blue line is what Zillow says my house is worth at any given point on this spectrum over the last several years. You can see we have gone up about 40%. from 2017, 2018 to 2025, 2026. And again, like I said, that's not just my numbers from the township or from the sales that we get. That's backed up by information from Zillow and realtor.com. So these numbers are real and they come from somewhere. Now you can argue, well, you know, I'm not crazy. My house value didn't go up that much that fast, you know? I don't know what to make of this market either, but I do know the data that we have to base it off of. And the data that we have to base it off of tells us that we need to do this. So that's assessment and equalization in a nutshell. That's why we do what we do. I'm going to talk really quickly. Next slide. Ray wanted me to talk about affordable housing. There is an affordable housing program that we administer at the county assessor's level. 35 ILCS 215-178 created a series of exemption of additional property tax benefits for folks who create and develop new affordable housing or maintained rehab affordable housing. Depending on the size and scope of the project, developers can get up to a 35% property tax exemption every year if they qualify with a new construction or qualifying rehabilitation of an existing structure. It's a very good benefit, and it's designed to encourage more affordable housing stock. to come on the market. What happens is they send us an application saying, hey, we've got this project coming on. They give us the details. We determine whether or not they qualify. If they qualify, we do all the verification. And then we apply that whatever that level of exemption is. We've got currently right now two projects that have applied. And I see no reason at this point why they won't ultimately receive it for this year. But this is the first time. This is the first year we've had projects qualify in McLean County. This program runs through, they recently extended it. It was supposed to expire in 2027. They extended it to 2031. The application deadline is July 1st of a given year. So if they meet the qualifications and apply by, let's say January 1st, I meant July 1st, by July 1st of the year. If they qualify, they can receive the exemption. And if they have any questions, they can contact our office. We're glad to help. So with that, Anybody have any questions on property tax, equalization, affordable housing, anything like that?

This exemption, does it sunset?

No. Well, it does sunset. Depending on the program, it is a 10-year that can be extended, I believe, two additional 10-year periods. But, yeah, it will eventually run out over time, but it can be extended. indefinite up through a maximum of 30 years.

Yes? Can you remind me what determines something as affordable housing? Is that like a certain...

So if they are enrolled in, if you go back, if you look at the form, Section 8, Section 42, or Section 515 qualifies under one of those programs. I believe they have to have 60% or I'm sorry, depending on the program, 35% or more units at or below maximum rent before the period of time. And it's tiered, so there's one program that'll give you 25%. If you reach 15 to 35, a lot of percentages thrown around here. But the application that we put together for this program is very detailed. It's got a very detailed instruction set that goes into the particulars of Other questions?

There's section 42 housing in Hayworth. So is that one of the qualifying?

It's going to depend on when it was constructed, how much new construction, as long as it was built after the effective date the law went into effect. New construction generally will qualify if they meet those income thresholds. There are a couple of things they have to consider about the number of units in the project and how many units are in each individual building and things like that. But if somebody puts up, if you look in South Bloomington, for example, there are some big dozens and dozens and dozens of unit projects in over about four seasons. Those projects over there I think would qualify if they applied for them. Projects like that would certainly qualify.

Is there a database that's accessed by the public as to how many properties are currently qualified for that within our county?

There's a database in my head because there are zero. There are no projects that, and without them applying, I don't know for sure. We haven't had anybody apply until this year. We've got two. I think it's the feds have a, The data is not great from the Fed site either on the USDA HUD website. It's pretty spotty in terms of what's there. I have used it to try to identify what projects might be in the works in the county to get a feel for it. So you can go to the HUD's search tools and kind of find some. But that's the best information I can give you. You can work with the Affordable Housing

So a fun thing we talk about in Unit 5 all the time is how we don't know our funding until we're significantly into our fiscal year because of the different calendars. We operate on a different fiscal year than the county governments, yet we're collecting property taxes on the government calendar. Do you know of any places, so probably that's a state thing, so any other states that have alternate calendars for their school districts versus their counties?

Man, that is a good question. I don't know how... I mean, every state is going to be different because Illinois is a state that gets a lot of local control. So they let local units kind of turn a lot of those things around. There may be states where there is a set every year the local government is on the same calendar. Are you on your own fiscal year? And Bloomington schools are on their own fiscal year and everybody's different?

No, schools have the same.

Okay, so there's a consistent school fiscal year. Yeah. I don't know if there's any state where they exactly line up. They're made well. I know we're not one.

It's just a big challenge for the school districts because we can be through our fiscal year before we actually know what our funding is going to look like. So it's kind of just dealing with an estimate.

Yeah. And where it gets tricky too is in some places, you know, we're, we're in good shape here in McLean County because we, we have,

We're on time with our taxes to where they should be.

There are other counties in the state where they're just now finishing up their appeals window for 2025 payable 2026 taxes. And they'll send out their 2026 taxes in a couple months. Their first installment will come out in August. So we're in good shape here that we're on the state's January 1st calendar. Yeah, it can vary for sure.

And do you handle the corporate tax rates, too, then? How do those, like State Farm and other areas where corporations were asking for adjustments to their tax rate, is that something that goes through you? So that's a good question.

In the ideal world, I said the ideal world, Everybody's paying that same tax rate. Like I said, my house is normal, pays the same tax rates even at five as your house does, where you live, even at five, as Rivian, which is even at five pays. We're all paying that same tax rate. Those benefits that are given, Two, those abatements and things, we don't control that. Abatements are given by whatever units of government sign off on those abatement agreements. Usually, it's the cities and towns that all come together, and they make an agreement, and they put it in place for, usually, it's like 10 years. TIPs are the same sort of deal. You have governments that grant those TIP dollars saying that we put the values on and we determine what the market value of the property is and we let the chips fall where they may as it relates to incentives and things.

So they're getting involved with the director?

Yes. Yes. I understand that. Thank you. Yeah, we don't want to be a party. We want to... We want to call the balls and strikes of where value is, and then let the units decide, hey, if you want to give incentives, if you want to do stuff like that, that's your bailiwick. We're telling them what the property is worth.

Is this slideshow available online?

I can get it. I can get it to Ray and make sure you guys can get it. Well, he's actually got it. So yeah, feel free to send it out if you want.

We typically would, because there are a few members who are not here present today, we usually would send the presentations to the entire Commission.

Other questions?

Thank you, Mr. Jorzak. Thank you so much. I appreciate you letting me come talk to you. Thank you.

Moving on to 6B, we have Luke with the Regional Housing Initiatives Update.

Here are the PHI updates for June. Under Local Updates, so we chaired the May 2026 Housing Staff Meeting last week, and we'll be chairing the June Affordable Exporter Housing, or ASH, Committee Meeting in less than two weeks. In line with that, MCRPC staff are currently working on a new white paper on housing and transportation.

Shout out to Jake and Callisto. So we are looking at where new residential building permits in Bloomington Normal are located and how close they are to transportation infrastructure, such as bus stops, lines, and sidewalks.

So this project kind of doing a two birds, maybe three birds, one stone situation. So this is really a standalone document, but we're looking at potentially plugging it into the comp plan and or the NTP. And then other updates. Last month, MCRPC attended the 2026 Home Illinois Summit in Springfield, where they held multiple sessions talking about best practices and community-driven solutions to address homelessness in Illinois. Also late last month, MCRPC attended the McLean County Spring Care Fair at the Eastview Community Center. 27 agencies participated, with 11 agencies attending for the first time. They provided resources such as clothing, showers, haircuts, food, toiletries to 60 unhoused individuals.

So they said that they served less individuals during this care fair than the previous one in October last year. This could be due to the success of the bridge, but they're also looking at whether the unhoused individuals even knew about the event, or if they did, whether they had the means to come to the event. Also, other updates.

We attended the Housing Coalition and House Task Force meetings. And as part of the technology subcommittee, we helped draft a survey asking the coalition members what data they can provide and what data they need for their reports and grant writing.

Also, during the last Housing Coalition meeting, we presented those draft surveys that we created for them.

And then lastly, on June 17, Thursday, MCRPC will be attending the Illinois Housing Blueprint Community Listening Session at the Peoria Next Innovation Center. Just a brief overview, the 2027 Illinois Housing Blueprint aims to analyze key housing trends to inform future housing policy

So again, that's June 17, Thursday. So if you want to attend, it's free to the public, except we still have the RSVP.

Those are my updates. We have questions.

Next is 6C, Ray, housing coordinator, position update.

Thank you. Yeah, staff has prepared a draft RFP. It's submitted to Indigo. And after we receive comments, then we'll finalize the RFP and publish it, and then give a few weeks for responses, and then we'll do the recruitment and finalize the selection. So yeah, we hope to hear back from you both soon, if I have an experience.

So is that, I'm sorry, I'm confused, is the RFP for the employment position or for the project?

It's for the position and it's so unusual. I've done a lot of RFPs for a project. For this particular one, I was advised by the administration that because it's a contract position and then we have rather going through like a normal recruitment hiring process that we do with HR, that we have to do this as an RFP process for whatever reasons. The end result will be basically hiring a person to have to implement and also coordinate that plan that was adopted by you all. And also working with implementation committee and other stakeholders in the community, other agencies to make the action items and recommendations.

So once legal approves it, you will post this RFP and people will apply for the RFP?

People who want to apply will respond to the RFP and they will go through the selection process and the bills and whatnot. It's almost like a regular recruitment process, like hiring process, except it has to be done through an RFP process. That's what I was advised. There's some legal reasons to do that, but I wish it would be more straightforward, to be honest.

Yeah. So someone interested in the position would have to do what to apply for.

They will probably give us a date, and they will provide a response to the RFP, including the resume, portfolio, things like writing samples, presentation samples. It's almost like a hiring process, except that it has to be under the umbrella of the RFP, if that makes sense.

How much are you going to advertise for applicants?

The same thing that we would do, we would do the RFP, but then the normal legal posting, but also we would publicize different outlets and advertise that way. We just make sure it's cost our RFP, it's not just RFP, it's called contracted housing coordinator position. I knew so.

So the draft was submitted to legal when?

When do we think we're going to get this back? Submit today. We hope to get it by pretty early next week, and then we'll finalize it. And then we'll push it to advertising different outlets with the help of HR.

So last month, what was being worked out that it needed to be an RFP? Because I think I had it written down as the same.

Yeah, it's a grant funded. It's a contra position that it has the time limit that that it just have to be going through that process. So I think it's, for us, we may have to, I mean, we still do the advertisement, do the interviews and whatnot, and then the final, the finalists, actually, the selected person, the contract will be either with the county or or the commission, but I believe, because it's a legal thing that needs to be worked out, but either way, I mean, either it's like officially hired by the commission or the county, whatever the kind of contract.

So does it get standard benefits or is it just a stipend?

It's just salary. So it's more compensation. I don't even call it salary because if you can consider this almost like a vendor, but then again, employee. And so it will be straight salary, but compensation with

So is it an hourly position or is it contract based upon what the RFP states, the role and the expectations?

Yeah, we anticipate that it will be still like a two-week payment and then with just the total divided by the number of months and then of course it will be higher than say a normal position that would included benefits. So that person, say if that person is without the benefit, but is a vendor, we will pay, instead of $75,000 a year for an employee with benefit, you might pay him or her $90,000, for example.

When did we get, when did this great position get initially, I know it's been a process, and I know we can extend it, right, on the back end. When did we first, how long have we been talking about this?

We, let's see, let's see, I'm trying to think this. So late last year, we got the announcement, but then we had to work out the agreement. The announcement was made by the governor, but then also the grant agreement, and then now the grant agreement is done, then we have to work through that process in reality. Sure.

Lots of rotating.

Yes.

Keep pushing. Well, we hope next time we meet we'll see that the proposal is out and

6D, Jen, with the Human Services Transportation Plan update.

As you know, we've been working for some time to try and regularize some of the actions of the Region 6 HSTP committees. And one of the things we're doing, have been doing, and are taking to the committee is in mid-June, on the 15th, is a revision of bylaws, which have not really been revisited often enough, to first of all confirm that we are adhering to the requirements of the Open Meetings Act, and then that we are defining membership on this sole planning committee. We can speak to committees, we're looking to one based on our agreement bylaw, so that we have members representing each county, which will have one vote piece, members representing each free funding recipients. And they, too, will have one voter piece. And then for each of the now three transit providers in the area, one voter piece on that plan will come in. We are also amending the government amendment to the current Region 6 plan, which changes the references to local transit providers based on each transition at the last floor. And so that would be part of it as well, that amendment. And the bylaws will be on the agenda for the June 15th meeting, and everybody has been apprised of that. And we hope to see a better organized and more clear process for Region 6 in the coming months. Thank you. Any questions?

Thank you. 60 is the Veterans Parkway Corridor Update.

Thank you. The Project Street Committee for the Veterans Parade Project, they last met May 8th, and then they will meet again next Friday, Friday of next week. And the last meeting, the consultants provide updated cost estimates for the project, as well as they have provided some updates on the benefit cost analysis. the cost estimate is better than the one that was presented before about consultants, because they took other considerations. So they have prepared a draft before alternative report. I just sent it out today to the committee for them to review and comment. Also, there was market analysis and economic development report also that will be revealed by the committee members. And so we are getting, this is June already, a final report supposed to be done in September this year. And there will be a draft where they put the final draft report together.

Sixth act is the regional cop plan updates with Ray and Anthony.

As he's getting ready, I just want to acknowledge our members, our commission members, And Beryl, who also serves as the liaison to the Working World Project Steering Committee for this project. So after the update by Anthony, Ms. Beryl, anything else to add? Please do so.

All right. Hi, everybody. The last project steering committee was held on May 12th for the comp plan. The meeting summary for that meeting is now posted on the Comprehensive Plan Project website. You can see that now. Shortly after that meeting, we kicked off the first public engagement campaign for the McLean County Regional Comprehensive Plan. This included the release of the project website, the visioning survey, the associated promotional materials. The first round of engagement, this first public engagement campaign, is scheduled to run through the end of July. So far, we've received over 200 survey responses just in two and a half weeks, which is great engagement. We're glad to see that we've gotten that many. We're on track right now. We'll see how it keeps going. We're on track for 100 responses a week, which is great. We are also seeing strong engagement on our project website and the associated promotional materials. There have been just under 2,000 individual visits to the project website, 2,700 interactions on our Facebook posts, and roughly 2,100 email notifications sent through our constant contact email list, and 11 new contacts added through the capability on our website. And as I said, we anticipate this first round of engagement to go through the end of July. So we have roughly eight more weeks to promote, collect information, There's an advertisement out there. We're currently working with local newspapers and radio stations to run paid ads promoting the survey. We're hoping to work with the Normalite to get some newspapers out to the rural communities and the Great Plains Media Group radio station team to also kind of pick the word out there where we can't always be because we've got a big county, so it's hard to be out there all the time. But speaking of that, I have gone to a couple of in-person promotional events with the county clerk in Carlock. Stanford and Lexington, so we're trying to get the word out. Passing out some flyers, we have English and Spanish versions of both. Those flyers are also available on the website to download for whoever wants to download and hang those up. We also have English and Spanish versions of the survey that can be printed off of our website. Other than that, if you haven't already, please make sure to visit the mcplan.org website. to visit the project website. It's a little bit weird, but it's right there on the first page to visit the comprehensive plan project website. Take the survey and share it with your constituents. That's all I've got. Any questions?

What is the survey that is needed for this accident?

How do you do that? Yeah, so this first survey is pretty general. It's essentially seeing what people want, what their priorities are. in conjunction with the public workshops, are going to help us narrow the scope of what exactly we want to put the most effort behind. Some of the early responses we're getting are high taxes. So we know now that in a comprehensive plan, that's something that's going to have to be addressed. And so these responses help us gauge the most important topics for people Any other questions? Anyone online with questions?

Well, it's just been a pleasure to be part of the team. This is my first steering working group. And everyone's showing up. It seems like there's a lot of conversation happening. I would say I'm most eager to get the survey feedback because that's really the meat of what we want to hear about in order to talk about the real substance of this plan. Yeah, the next couple of meetings will be really exciting, because we'll have some data. And then also those public engagements, I'm planning on attending some of those too, just to see how that goes.

Yeah, sorry, that reminds me. I think I might have skipped over one. We're working currently on finalizing that public engagement schedule. We're anticipating five individual engagements, two in person later this month, one virtual now and July when we'll have two more in-person meetings. Those will be out very shortly. I still got to confirm with a couple of the venues. And then we anticipate putting that schedule out alongside a second push for, hey, take the survey. Look at what we're doing. We want your input on this process. That'll happen sometime mid-this month.

Yeah, if I may also add one thing. Hey, this is Bart. I'm sorry, I had my phone muted. If it's in order, I had a question.

I just want to acknowledge another member on the Black English Steering Committee with the Creek County Farm Bureau in the audience today. Just thanks for sitting. Anyway, sorry about the questions here.

No, no problem. I just had a question about the steering committee, or I guess that's what we're calling it. I've had some comments that there's some concern that the Open Meetings Act is not being followed as far as folks participating if they want to. And I don't know all the details on that, but I was just curious what your take was or if that's something we needed to check with like the state's attorney's office with or something like that to find out if we're in compliance with what we need to be.

Yeah, we had, we kind of briefed the commission a bit last at the last meeting, maybe because of timing. But we made an inquiry to the Attorney General's office, and then they had an abiding opinion, because they also sent a case back to us, basically listing some of the criteria that should be evaluated whether our working group should be subject to the OMA. And then the conclusion was things such as, is it like the members, were they invited by staff? In this case, it was, because all the members, they were all invited by staff. The budget, there's no budget. It's a group work. project that staff want to get a group of people with different backgrounds, variety of maybe geographic area. We have different heads, to be honest, to provide some guidance, input, feedback to staff as staff is preparing this comprehensive plan, this work. the Project Student Community Working Group is not the only channel for us staff to get public input uh as what anthony was saying in multiple ways we we value uh input from from the public and so that's why we doing this not just for one round uh of the first round of two and a half months of public engagement there will be two uh second round i mean second round and the third round you'll through a process so from what we gathered from the Attorney General's office. We believe we are in compliance as a working group that does not have to be subject to OMA and want to reiterate that we're not trying to hide anything, but this is just a working group, an internal group that we staff trying to work on the project and we There will be opportunities to not just survey, but focus groups, maybe interviews. There will be public workshops, surveys. So there are many multiple ways we're trying to do to collect feedback and input from the 170 plus thousand people in McLean County. And so we recognize this is the largest county in terms of land area, while Missouri is the largest in terms of population. We recognize we're trying to get as many people's feedback as possible. It's hard to narrow it down, oh, we have to select a certain person and whatnot. We're trying to be just people with different backgrounds associations uh with their job with their different social uh committee involvement you know they also members uh as a public member you know living in the county so they hear things from the neighbors and friends families those will provide good input and so we We believe there are multiple ways for us to collect information and feedback and really to give staff opportunity in hearing all different comments so that we can proceed in a professional way, basically. Thank you, Ray. I appreciate it.

And just to mention that discussion from last meeting summarized in the minutes and also encourage you to view the YouTube video if you haven't already. But I do appreciate you bringing this up and I would hope like. If other commissioners are being contacted that we're discussing that at each meeting and finding ways to address that feedback and connect those individuals, you know, with, with the plans, engage them with the plan. We can certainly.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Cause I, it's just, I just want to make sure we don't have a repeat of any, any concern that anything is going on. That shouldn't be, I mean, the strategic land use plan. I thought we handled fairly well, but we had some issues with perception of the way things were being done. I just wanted to make sure that we don't subject ourselves to more issues, and if that means being a little more open in certain circumstances, that would be great, because I think the concern is there's a lot of representation by folks that represent organizations, but there's really not a structured way for just someone from the general public to to be heard other than just through the comment period, which is all very good and through the public meetings and all that. So there are definitely opportunities there. But I just know we had a county board member that wrote a letter with some concerns about the topics that I'm talking about now. So it's just really out of an abundance of caution to make sure that we don't come under any more scrutiny than we have to and that we're doing everything exactly the way we should. So as these questions all come, we've got the right answers.

Just say, we did decide this is a working group and not a committee, right? I believe we decided that last time. And I think that made a difference as to what we were subject to. I don't know if that was written down or documented, but I believe we talked about that at length and we all agreed that this is not a committee and therefore that's why it wasn't subject to the committee. The other thing is I think the people in the group that are meeting, some of them are mayors of their own constituents. And what I think is important we do is charge those folks that are attending to push out that information and engage with their constituents. It can't be just on me or Ray. I mean, I'm not engaged like that. But we have an ecology action group that they work with a lot of people in our community. And they have a lot of connections that they can push out these surveys to and invite feedback from. Extension office is there. So there's a lot of people that are well connected that are part of the team talking about, for instance, last time we met, what we talked about was really like the logo and the website design. But when we start getting to the feedback, we're counting on the people that are attending that meeting to be helping us engage with their folks that we may not have access to. So I think that's really important, and I think hopefully people are going to be doing that

Yeah, and what I'd like to see, and I think we've talked about, is the regular updates to, you know, at least Cassie and Leah, who chairs the land use and transportation, so that they're getting the updates and those are flowing, and they can get those back to anyone reaching out to them. So I would like to see that and hope, you know, that's going on and that's being reported back here, too.

Yeah, we are actually...

Thank you, guys.

Yeah, thank you, Raj, yeah, for raising the questions. We have been doing monthly updates at all the Land Use and Transportation Committee meetings. And so Anthony and I were there yesterday morning. And basically what we do is we provide updates for the chair, or if the chair is not available, the vice chair, to give an update to the County Board's Land Use the chair to explain and get the word out to other members of the county board for one thing. We also shared the same update with the city and town of the council so that, you know, have to get the word out, you know, the status of the project, the constituencies and whatnot, and to you all, and so it's on, like, YouTube and other ways. Again, nothing too high. We want the process to go as smoothly as possible to get the best product for the good of the county.

Was this the update that Phil Dick read at the land use and transportation committee?

It was the vice chair, Adam, read. Yeah, I don't feel anything. I don't recall.

Yeah, we provide the update to the transportation committee chair in hopes that they will inform the county board. And Lita Klein is a member of the project steering committee, so we also hope that she's giving her personal experience of those meetings at those land use and transportation and county board meetings to hopefully get the word out there.

And what's to stop the, so like the mayor's association, we have a rep on the team for that. What's to stop them from maybe saying, hey, each mayor could have an event, town hall event, where the public comments are much, you know, part of the, I think, monthly meetings. I mean, that could be a really good way to engage on a smaller level because we're just trying to do a very high level approach to this big plan that's not necessarily about, you know, normal or you know, Leroy. So if we can break it down and push it out to that level, it's just going to be more available to people in that way. So, I mean, and I'm kind of new to town, so I don't know all the people, but I just think, you know, we all have to do the work to push it out and kind of get some feedback from those that would be interested in getting it. but i don't think this is the meet you know like the meetings that we're having for this you know working group i don't think that's the place necessarily so so i do i'm concerned about the optics um and i don't have any issues to have if there's anything various going on but uh uh the question i asked is so or one of the questions i would have is

There is a perception, I think, especially in rural areas, a sensitivity to development because development encroaches on rural residents. And that's something that we need to be sensitive to, okay?

I think the other thing, too, is I don't think the concern is with

I think staff, and there's a lot of events. I think there's a lot of input. I think the concern is more the processing of that information.

It's filtered through staff and the group.

And by the time it's put together in a plan, you know, by the time it gets to this commission, it's way down the road. You're really not going to change it. These are just some thoughts I have.

So we have a farm drill. We have someone like that, but is there somebody else? I'm just wondering, is there another rural component that needs to be on the group? And could we make the data available raw? Why can't we just make that available and we can still process it for what we need to do, but there's Would that be something that we could do? Because that sounds like, what I'm hearing you say is that the concern about, from those surveys and from those forums, what information gets then filtered into the plan. So if the surveys are made in its complete format, then you would have access to that and you can determine for yourself if that, if something was more, I would say, Since being on this committee, there are multiple plans that we have adopted where we haven't been a part of the writing or the planning process in any way. We approve the work of the team. I guess I'm curious, as we look at all of these different committees, Luke mentioned different committees. Are any of the committees that you work with subject to Open Meetings Act that you present on every month? Like Veterans Parkway, that's not an Open Meetings Act, right? you know, the Metropolitan Transportation Plan, that's not, is that Open Meetings Act? No, the Presenting the Moments. Okay, okay, so we'll get some clarification there. That one might be different because I think it's a state government thing. But most of what I'm seeing is not, do we have any standing committees that are subject?

We do. We have the Transportation Technical Committee, typically meets on the third Friday of every month. We have the Transportation Policy Committee that typically meets on the fourth Friday of every month. So those will be subject to the OMA, and we do that. Also, HSTP, the Women's Service Transportation Plan, we have a regional kind of joint committee, and that's also OMA to be compliant. Those are the ones that are subject to OMA. Yeah, it's just like working group.

So what's the standard? Are these, because they're subject to OMA, is there something written in state law that makes them necessary? How do those rise to the level of being subject to law?

Yeah, so Jane, if you want to touch upon, because basically in other states, because the NPR law, the state regulations, the federal regulations, If you can expand on that, we are watching the STP, the two policy, the NPO, the whole list of that.

As far as the transportation technical and policy committees, they exist under our role as the Metropolitan Planning Organization for Bloomington-Darling. And they are open meetings and have always been in my tenure. Even though we were not consulting L&A specifically with regard to those, they were open meetings and continue to be. Do you want me to just finish off with the MTB, and then you can... Maybe answer the questions first. Well, that's the answer to one question. Because our operation as an MPO is subject to federal regulation and to the state of Illinois' oversight, it's a different kind of action than the plan that we were doing on behalf of all of the program. So it's a different thing, but anyone is welcome to be involved and to join us whenever they want to. It doesn't happen very often because, frankly, it's boring. It's all about transportation, and I've got to say, it's not the most compelling set of meetings in the universe, but we do run them as open meetings.

Interesting.

Thank you for the context. And Amy, I'd also add there's some helpful materials inside of the Open Meetings Act training that's provided by the Attorney General's Office. There's a few slides just dedicated to that topic.

These are the concerns, I think, that I raised at the April meeting that I was online for. And I think one of the issues, I went over and talked to some of my neighbors and said, would you take this survey? And they were very distrustful of what's happened here. And so I think releasing the data would be really helpful. And I think with the strategic land use plan, that base data has still not been released to the public. So I think that would be a really good start. And I'll ask my question again. Are we, as commissioners, permitted to attend the meetings as a fly on the wall, a silent observer? I think I got a maybe last time.

Let me just preface by saying this. We are trying to go a little bit one step above the OMA, although we believe that we are subject to for this project. We're going to post meeting summaries on our website, probably available. And we want committee members to feel comfortable with the working group members to fill the conversation and talk and to give your feedback and guidance to staff to have a good, you know, ending with a good product?

I think the concern would be more so from an OMA perspective, if there are two members of the regional planning committee attending and participating in a meeting, discussing work of the regional planning committee, and it's not documented through OMA, that then would be a violation. That's three. That's not three.

But that would be a concern, I think.

You know if we don't want to be perceived as conducting business. No, I'll point out a straight nut Right, but we just and I think that attending a meeting like that could give that impression that we're conducting business Outside of our standard meetings if it's not subject to OMA and so that that's a I think that would be a legal concern I would be worried about

But to go back to the definition of the bylaws, isn't this just an advisory? There's no policy being determined? Yeah, it only doesn't distinguish between them. I know, but I think that's why we decided it was a working group and not something the committee needed to vote to establish.

It's the interest, really, of data and whatnot. I mean, we collect data. I mean, we need all the help we can. You know, come and join us on a weekday. You know, when we work so hard and we collect all the data and we try to compile and list all the comments we receive. And, you know, we're We don't have no power, because that would be helpful for us. And so basically, staff is just doing our professional work, where we collect feedback. And the survey results, we just compile them, or we share with the committee or working group. And then for the monthly updates, like what Anthony was saying, I mean, actually, he gave some of the updates in terms of the data collected, how many surveys we have received, right? when it comes to after the due date, July 31st, then we can share with you, okay, how many of the respondents live in whatever CIPCO? You know, how many of the people within this income category and how many people envision the county to be this and that? We'll be doing all those network to share. And then for you all to consider, because we don't want to have you at the last moment to review a plan. I appreciate the involvement, the understanding, and that's the reason for the monthly update. And if you'd like to have more detailed update, we can come talk with us after the meetings and we would be happy to share because really I mean we love to share our work and so if you know we can do more of course we can always do more we have to but again we have to recognize the resource and just looking at the number of projects we have and these are not like two one two months projects you know these are somehow over a year, year and a half, two years project. And yeah, so we had to, for us, for staff, we had to evaluate, okay, how do we prioritize it, still doing the best work we can for the good of it, for the best of the company.

So I got a thought. You know, it might be something to consider to get the data from the survey, and then, you know, could we just have, like, one dedicated meeting to a public situation that doesn't involve this working group to say, here's the feedback. This is what we got. Does anybody in this public, you know, people are so concerned about wanting to come up. Great. Okay, let's have a side meeting that isn't even a part of the steering group or whatever we're calling working group. and give an opportunity to say, okay, what do you have to say? What are we missing here? Here's the data. What's the deal? It seems like something might have happened before. I'm sensing that there was a previous problem with some kind of planning thing that occurred, and maybe there's some pushback about this project repeating that mistake, right?

is it really open meeting yet or is it really just like hey do we need to just have an avenue for people to talk you know what i'm saying i think part of the issue is that by the time a draft comes out it doesn't seem like a draft when a draft comes out for the public to look at yeah it It seems like it's way past the draft point.

So maybe we need to engage with the public before we make a draft. But not every meeting that we have with this working group should be involving people and never get anything done. So I mean, okay, maybe there's, I don't know how long this process, maybe it's a year of meetings that we're going to be having once a month. Maybe there's three or four meetings where we check in. I mean, you know, just to make people feel like, hey, we are, this is a part of it, but to have it always be open to the public, we're not going to get what we need to get done. And I think there's a reason, and we have a good group of people that really care and want to do a good job on this. But I don't think it's fair to be like, okay, I'm just asking you to record. Like, we're asking a whole lot from this group that doesn't need to be an Open Meetings Act. I mean, I think there's something underneath this that is not just about an Open Meetings Act. I don't know what's the root cause here. Right. I mean, this is not about... Exactly. So if someone could just be straight and say, this is the problem and this is what we want to do about it, I think that'd be much more helpful when you give your...

As somebody who lives in a township or a county, this plan is all I got. So you might live in Bloomington or Normal where you have your own comprehensive strategic plans that plan many years out in the future, but there's a whole bunch of us in the county. This is it. How do we understand? So the strategic plan that's happening here If you live in Normal, Normal has their own separate strategic plan. Right. Bloomington has their own separate down, right, all these municipalities. Okay. But there's a whole bunch of folks that I represent on this commission in McLean County that don't fall into an existing municipality.

So they're in the county, right? Yes. So their county representative, you know, can adopt this plan or not, right?

Right, but I'm just saying this is our plan. So this doesn't have to be the plan for maybe you that live in normal. So this is just a great consequence for me, for the folks that I feel like I'm here representing. So I just want to, again, not end up making some of the mistakes. And I'm not asserting that anything nefarious is going on, but optics matter.

Mm-hmm.

Interesting. So, I mean, I just, so does the county not do anything for itself and it just counts on this commission to do stuff or do they have their own?

This is for the county.

So, but what we produce here isn't a mandate. It is, does the county, the board of county people want to adopt this, right?

It's a little bit up to the county board to make the final decision.

And we have, board are on this meeting in their working program?

Just one. Who is the chair of the transportation?

There's a question. Do we want to have a separate meeting with the county board to present the plan and have them public attend that? Or how do we do this better? I don't want to create more work because I know what it's like to be overwhelmed with a lot of work and it's sort of you're the small guy and you're going to get all the pushback because you're the one that's standing there, right?

Yeah, through the monthly update to the Land Use and Transportation Committee, we hope the members on that committee would help to share. Also, I look at the minutes and whatnot, you know, to share with their colleagues on the When we start distributing the survey, you're encouraging folks to complete the survey. We also share through the county administration to distribute to county board members and for them to further push it out to their constituency. And we do that with the city, the town, all the members on the planning commission, as well as people on the working group. And so there's so many ways we try. And so again, recognizing our county has 170 Over 170,000 people. We know we cannot get to everybody's ears and mailboxes and whatnot. But through all your help, through all the other folks' help, we're trying to maximize the exposure of the process and every step along the way. And that's why we have the monthly update. Just so to keep you apprised, we don't want it to at the first meeting and then toward the end, oh, here's something for you to look at. We want to, for your discussion and questions when we do the monthly update through this planning commission. So we, again, in terms of data and say for the survey, this reasoning survey that we're doing, I'm sure Anthony, at the second stage or after the closing of the first round survey, you know, after July 31st, when we compile the results, we'll share with you all. And then we'll share to the public to tell them, hey, this is what, based on the survey, the vision for the county. And from that, go to the second round and say, okay, what are some of the scenarios? What are some of the strategies? strategies to guide the county to achieve the mission. Right? Because that's another public process. Yeah.

I was going to say, and Andy brought this up earlier, but it might be good to offer each of the municipalities in the county the opportunity to have a session in their municipality. So I'm going to Hayworth, or not Hayworth, but going to Hayworth or to Chenoa or any of the other communities and having their mayors organize something as to what's going on so no one is left out so to speak and if Gridley decides they don't want to do a session like that, then that's fine. But the effort was made to make sure that we cover and get feedback from people and such.

And that doesn't need to be led by staff. Staff can provide the work product, the deliverables they're working on, the data that's been gathered, but it doesn't mean they'd have to run the meeting either.

No, I think that's a great point, too, because, I mean, time is – know stretched already we all worked really hard so being able to enable the mayors and the people that have you know the real concern need to hear the voices from their people put it out to them they have information and then it's on them to you know that's your job as mayor right or the county board member representing that area and then you know it goes out that way and comes back to us hopefully um so

So moving things on, so what I'd like to do is confirm that the individual commissioner's questions have been answered related to this topic and that the suggestion I have in pushback is identify one or two things we'd like to have updated next month by staff and by Ray to make this a little bit more productive in terms of the monthly update that you keep referencing. Does anyone want to proceed differently on this topic?

It would be helpful if Ray would put together, not necessarily a timetable, but the meetings that we talked about, incremental meetings, at what stage. Just give us some thoughts on that, how you see that working out.

Yeah, yeah. What we can do, if it would be helpful, because a few meetings ago we shared a timeline. So maybe from the next meeting on, we can put an arrow. where we are on that process. And then what are some of the work that, or updates on work, or summary of work, you know, to that point. And then what's the next step? So you kind of see, okay, what have we collected, what we've done, what we've heard, right, you know, to that point. And then we can share with the commission, okay, for the next month's admission, that's what we

Because we're going to have two rounds of surveys, right, Anthony?

Two or three. We'll have three rounds of public engagement.

And I think after every piece of that is a good time to check in, because we'll have data from the public, and then we will check in back with, you know, this is where we stand with this information, make that data available publicly as a raw data, right? And then it can be interpreted by professionals as their job, you know, like to do the planning. But it's out there, and it's transparent. You can see the data. And then also to push out and say, maybe, you know, here's what we suggest the mayors of these towns or the county people. Follow our schedule. If we're going to meet and we're going to check in on these three points, you should be doing the same thing with your folks. Put it out on them, right?

Does that make sense? But I want to clarify, so the three points, so say Anthony identifies three deliverables he's working on in the next month to be presented. Are you saying that would be a separate or as part of the update? And so that's on our public agenda.

That's what I'm asking. We will, and I don't think it needs to be just for the commission.

But this is an open meeting, and it would be published ahead of time.

Yeah, and that would be fine.

And we would all have a few days to review it and ask our questions before the meeting. I mean, I just want to clarify, like, what are we talking here? Because it is a very resource-constrained organization. There are a lot of work efforts happening right now.

Well, I think in my mind it's important when you get to certain summary points, when, I mean, a whole big body of data is hard presented to us as it

been part of the process to see how are we going to prioritize these things. I mean, you sort them out.

So I think that it would be helpful, not just the committee, but somehow before the final draft comes out, have a point where you say, this is where we're at at this point. These are our priorities at this point.

Based on the data, this is the feedback we got. Based on where we're at now. This is what we've talked about is most important moving forward. We're going to focus on the next three things. And that sheet of paper or summary goes out to each mayor, each board person, or whatever. And that's the check-in, right? And it could be brought to us.

Yeah, and I don't think it needs to be real regular. But my point is before the final draft comes out, there needs to be we need to kind of know where you're at before the stress. And it's major milestones, basically.

Exactly.

Yeah. So does this feel, the first episode, does it feel like it was exactly? And so like in construction, we always do 30, 60, 90, you know, so you could, we could just do like, okay, we're at 30% of the meetings. We're going to check in at 60%. We've gotten this far. We're going to check in at 90%. We'll see the draft. We'll see where they came from with that.

I spend a lot of time in staff. I'm just putting out raw data. I don't think that would be right.

But it does create public transparency.

There's some people that are going to take it.

I mean, it's a pretty nice spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be filtered and sorted. But here's a spreadsheet.

I don't know. Some of the responses will have to be.

Yeah, of course, private. Of course, and all the guests.

We'll be happy to do those milestones. And in fact, from staff perspective, each milestone is based on work done prior to. It's like foundation, right? We build it up. So it's important. for not just for staff to put this together, but for everyone to understand, okay, because step one, step two, because what we have done in step one, and when we move on to step three, because what we have, yeah, from step one and two is building up so that we know actually there's continuity, there's rationale, there's data that support those, their input and whatnot, and so that they can see how we arrived at the final step of the recommendation. Does that sound?

Yeah. We certainly appreciate your expertise in analyzing data and the planning process to guide us through. I think we're all kind of learning and trying to understand, but also coming from a lens of making sure that the public has a role and a trusty role. Like, I'm concerned about the folks that have said that they don't feel comfortable. So is there another way that we could allow individuals to provide feedback where they feel safe? You know, is that something you would, like, if you received a, I don't know, a letter dropped off at your door, you know, I mean, is that something that could be incorporated into the feedback? I don't, you know, yeah.

Well, a lot of these things that we're talking about tonight are in the process of occurring. So the check-ins, you know, we planned an intermittent outreach reports, summaries for each engagement. We're doing public workshops, which we can take and call it the public informational meeting and make it a little bit more formal and talk about what we're going to derive from this data. But these are all things that, unfortunately, in the last go-around, it was a little bit of a condensed timeline. This time we have a lot more time, and we're planning for that time a lot better than the last go-around. So I'm very confident that a lot of these concerns from the last go-around are going to be remedied. In this go around there will be ample time for a final draft sent to the county board to be adopted. Six months before that that actual adoption takes place. We want to make sure that we provide ample time for the actually work and change depending on what people have to say about it. Into a document that everybody's happy with so

Our final update is from the manager on MTP.

The content of this has been chipping in my brain throughout this conversation. So I think what I'm going to propose for tonight is to keep it short and simple because it's 26. And next month, I will address some of the topics that have been raised with respect to our MTO program as opposed to our RPC function. which is that which controls or serves over comprehensive planning. One of the things we're doing is putting off our first survey so that it launches pretty much as the county comprehensive plan survey is sunsetting. We're trying very hard to avoid confusion between these two important documents and projects. And one way is to emphasize the differences we talked about. I will just repeat her experience. The Metropolitan Transportation Plan is largely a function of our role. It is a function of our role as the MPO, which is designated by the federal government and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Not to mention our friends at the Illinois Department of Transportation never like to say about this. So the content of the plan is very much directed by the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, And how we manage it is also subject to a barrage of rules and guidance coming from those two organizations. And I'll talk more about that next month, although not too much more because your head's been just blown. But trust me when I say this is not exciting stuff. They have a ritual that they want us to carry through, and we're carrying it through. As I think I've mentioned, this is the sixth time I have prepared what we used to call the honorary transportation plan. And the rules of it, it's just all there is to it. So we think late in July for a survey that we already have kind of waiting for us to get started, so as not to create confusion. Another thing we're going to be putting out is what we're calling the existing admissions chapter. So it's a summary of transportation features and concerns, partly driven from the survey, but partly also from our own practice and the ongoing work that we do. And I hope that I'm not going to promise that for July. I think it might be more accurate or more sensible to release in August. We're continuing to evaluate the draft projection report. There's been some tweaking done in response to questions from our participants. And we'll finalize that as well as we can and get that out too. And finally, we are using a working group for this process. Some of its members are dictated, again, by the federal government and the state, and they include people from the state and, again, the Illinois Department of Transportation, as well as mostly the Federal Highway Administration. We do hear from TRNSA, and we do deal with TRNSA. And we are making sure that we've rounded out that group. with local experts on transportation issues, employees in general, which is to say the engineering folks from the city of Dakota and the county. And we are also in the process of sort of creating a more accessible scope so that people understand what we're doing. This plan is focused on the organized area. We have what we call the metropolitan planning area, which is dictated initially by the census, but later by and state. And that's what we're using as our focus area. We will certainly address concerns about transportation in the rural McLean County. Um, one of our roles is to oversee rural public transportation in this county and various others, and that's on your list as well. Any questions? Although I'm afraid to ask, but yes. Okay. Thank you very much.

Are there any other matters to come before the commission? Sometimes in July, we don't meet.

I've been here since July. Are we meeting in July?

Because it's the League of Independence Day. Right, right. Yeah, so, I mean, up to the commission and the chair, you want to reschedule, because 12 July is a Friday this year, I believe. So, we want... It's a Saturday. Oh, Saturday? Oh, okay. So, is that... We can think if that's a preference, we can either reschedule and then see what works best for most of the commissioners. I know a lot of times you have different commitments and changing the week, it might mess up a little.

Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up, Mark. So if you want to have discussion now while we're in session, I think from my perspective, we have plenty of business to come before the commission, but also recognizing and respecting the holiday. I'm available.

Given the level of business that we've got and such, it makes sense to just keep it scheduled for the date that it's already on.

Yeah, and with the concerns about transparency, I think I wouldn't want to do anything at this point that makes it look like we're trying to cover anything up.

Yeah, and for those who can't attend, you know, we're happy to fill you in, and the recordings are always available, too, so.

Okay.

Are there any other matters to come up for the commission? If none, is there a motion to adjourn? The June 3rd meeting of the Plain County Regional Planning Commission is adjourned at 5.45 p.m.