Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded.

Attendance will be recorded by staff member Katie McShane. And I note that a forum is present here in person. So first on our agenda will be the public comment period. We have two speakers signed up today. We'll go in order of signing in. First is Tricia Braid. Trisha, go to the floor.

Good afternoon. My name is Trisha Braid. I'm here today to notify the Commission that the Illinois Attorney General's Public Access Counselor sent a letter to the McLean County Regional Planning Commission regarding my request for review concerning the Regional Comprehensive Plan Project Steering Committee's status as a public body. It has been assigned OMA case number 2026, hack 94952. I'd just like to read a relevant portion into the record. Quote, we have determined that further action is warranted. In order to evaluate further this matter, we ask the commission or its legal representative to respond in writing to the allegation that the committee is a public body, In your response, please describe how this group was formed, its relationship to the Commission, and its assigned duties or roles. Please also describe its membership, the method of appointment for those members, meeting schedule, any funding and budget for the group, and the impact of its decisions or recommendation. That's the end of the quote. The McLean County Regional Planning Commission now has seven business days to provide a response. I believe that takes it to the Friday of next week. When I receive a copy of that response, I then have seven business days to respond to whatever the regional planning commission submits. Regardless of the eventual outcome of the Attorney General's review, I'm asking again that this commission rethink your position on transparency around the regional comprehensive plan process. Public engagement and transparency are not the same thing. A survey can be useful, public workshops can be useful, but asking the public to react to information selected and presented by staff is not the same as allowing the public to see how the plan is being shaped, what data is being used, what assumptions are being made, and what feedback is being incorporated or set aside. This plan will affect land use, agriculture, natural resources, infrastructure, growth, and local decision-making across the county for many years. The process needs to be more open than it currently is. So I am pleading with you, the commission, to commit to transparency now, not only because of the pending Attorney General review, but because it is the right way to build a regional plan that the public can trust. That's the end of my comment. I have copies of the letter here for anyone should you like to add one.

Thank you. Thank you. And our next speaker is Kelly Lay.

Kelly, you're on the floor.

Hi, my name is Ojibwe Kelly Lay. I am an elected older woman from the city of Leroy, Ward 1, serving my second term. I'm here, I attended one of your open houses When I arrived at the Saturday meeting, I was the only Leroyan in attendance. Through the course of that meeting, I think around four, potentially five Leroyans wandered in. And I want to talk a little bit about what I see as a bit of rural pessimism being reflected in Actions happening from this Commission and I don't think any of this is intentional, but it reinforces a stereotype that causes a greater divide between our communities and between the county and our city. I do want to step back to say that I am here as a personal citizen because I feel more obligation to represent the people who elected me. I am not here by consensus from our city council, nor am I even aware that anyone else on city council is aware that this plan is in motion for the most part. None of them attended the meeting last night. None of them were aware the meeting was happening. To my understanding, I believe the mayor may have received an email on this next step of communication with the city of LeBron. It was not posted on our city board. So we have a really well-read communication board as you enter the city of LeBron. It was not shared on city public or social media. It was not listed in our events website. It was not listed in our monthly newsletter. Our city employees were functionally unaware. I think that this Like I said, reinforces this belief that the city of Leroy is not served by the county, which I think is a lie. I've really enjoyed working with county board members like Lena Klein who have had questions, but we have a 20-year serving mayor and a 20-year serving city administrator, and words have not translated into actions in their terms, causing disbelief. When we look at what's happening now, We see, again, a lack of communication, a lack of engagement. When we're trying to speak to citizens across the county, it seems somewhat like ignoring the open room to ignore the elected officials. We have public emails. And yet, in no form have I been communicated to through my publicly available city email. I actually checked. I got an email from Jehovah's Witnesses. I think that we could turn that around. Labor is going to be hugely impacted by the plan that you put together. We have regular conversations about climate resiliency. We have had significant struggles securing water. We have, I think, one primary well and two secondary wells. The last time we attempted to seek out...

I don't mean to interrupt, but you're three minutes far out. Sorry.

I'm trying to go really fast. Short to say, I think that If we had a more active engagement with city councils, not only Leroy's, but other city councils, where we actually convened, we had these discussions, we had actionable items on city council agendas, we had an open communication, we'd have a much greater reach into rural areas. Sorry to be a little bit long-winded. I'm used to being on the phone.

All of the speakers are signed up?

Yeah, that's the only two. Also, Commissioner Olsen also has joined us on the webinar, if you want to.

So while we do have a physical forum present, Commissioner Olsen has communicated that he is attending virtually due to purposes of employment. So is there a motion to allow Commissioner Olsen to attend the meeting virtually and vote on any actionable items on the agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor? Motion passes. Commissioner Olsen.

If it's a mute button pushed in time, I'm also on the call.

Okay. And Bart, are you absent for purposes of employment as well?

Yes. Yep, we're in the field today.

Okay. All right. Is there a similar motion to allow Commissioner Bittner to attend personally? I can't.

Frank, he's nodding his head. All in favor, aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes. So commissioners Olson and commissioners Wittner invited to vote. I think we only have one item for voting, which will be next on the agenda. Yeah, and Commissioner Roser is also attending virtually. However, she does not fall within the exceptions of the Open Meeting Act for attending virtually, but wanted to recognize Amy's presence. So thank you, Amy, for joining us. Thanks.

Yes.

Okay. So would any of the commissioners like to remove any items from the consent agenda? Are there any corrections to the minutes from our last meeting? If no, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So, thank you. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. All right, motion passes. We do not have any regular agenda items, and I did not get a full scan of the room, but we do have a presentation planned for today. So Ray, do you want to introduce our presenters?

Yes, thank you so much. We have two presenters here today who are with us. Actually, they are representing another committee, and they will explain in more detail. But Sally Capicata from with carl bowman medical center and also megan wilson with the county health departments are here with us and what their group has done which they will explain in much more detail but is related to community health and one of the reasons why we have invited them for the planning commission's meeting is because there's In the last 10 years or so, there's been a really close relationship between public health and urban planning and regional planning across the country and also in other countries with the U.S. and, for example, land uses. help while we exercise and whatnot. Trails, where to build the trails, where the connections and stops for the trail. What kind of trails? Is it for bicycles? Would they be for pedestrians, connections? So that's one of the examples. Another example would be healthy living. There might be neighborhoods or areas in a city or a county where there's not enough supermarkets, food markets, what we call food debtors, and pharmacies, same thing. People don't have access, and how do they get there? If they are located in some rural areas, how to access? People don't have cars that relate to transportation, rural transportation. And there's so many different ways that there's an intersection between public health, community health, and planning. And so that's one of the reasons why we have invited the presenters here today to talk about community health. And there have been community health needs assessments being done every few years. We will talk about it. And there's been annual health improvement plans also being done. And again, it's just a close relationship. We can only see that we'll be getting closer and closer. AARP I mean, they give grants to planning people and committees to how to help the seniors in terms of health and different conditions and get around parks, recreation, that's another area. So on the national level, the planning world, the American Planning Association and the Public Health Association also have close relationships. There's a lot of reasons why I think the presentation today would help us to see things on a typical, obvious basis when we live every day. But then they hopefully will share some perspectives that help to open our eyes a little bit. So Sally and Vegas.

Well, good afternoon, everyone. As Ray said, my name is Sally Gambacorda. I'm the Community Health Director for Carle Broma Medical Center and Carle Eureka Hospital. And Reagan and I are going to be co-presenting today, just providing you with a brief overview, as Ray said, about how community health can intersect and overlap with community development and regional planning. So this first slide here is the illustration of the cover pages of the two primary reports we have related to community health in McLean County. On the left, you're going to see the Community Health Needs Assessment, more commonly referred to as a CHNA, because that's a mouthful. And on the right is the Community Health Improvement Plan. So the Community Health Needs Assessment, just like the name sounds, has a lot of data about however you define your community to be. outline what your prioritization process is for selecting your health priorities for the next three-year cycle. So our most recent CHNA is the 2025 CHNA, and then the next three years outline the improvement plan, so 2026 to 2028. So in McLean County, we're fortunate that each of the four organizations on the bottom there conduct, we conduct a joint CHNA. But before I go into what a joint CHNA is, I'll just explain, you know, why do we even do this? How many of you have ever heard of I-Plan that the health departments did? Because that's been around since like the 90s. So health departments have been doing these assessments with the community for years. the hospitals would collaborate and participate. But with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, hospitals were required to conduct their own community health needs assessment once every three years, and then a subsequent community health improvement plan. So what needs rise to the top in your community, and then what are you going to do about it? Those are basically the two reports. So Chestnut, our federally qualified health center, so Chestnut Family Health Center, their FQHC, they're also required to do a CHNA to meet their federal requirements. And then the McLean County Health Department is required to do an assessment, which they have been doing since the 90s, once every five years. But back in 2015, we determined it would be a lot better for our organizations, for the community, if we had one joint report. So we started having joint CHNAs. The health department basically sped up their timeline so they could align with the hospitals and our local FQHC. So both the hospitals, Chestnuts Family Health Center and the health department are the participants in this joint CHNA process. In order to be a true joint CHNA according, excuse me, to the IRS, you have to define your community as the same. So we're fortunate that we each define our community as McLean County. So if we didn't, we couldn't do a joint CHNA, but we do. Then we have to analyze the data together, identify and agree upon the top three priorities for our county and generate one report. So prior to doing this joint report, there were four different assessments and United Way actually in 2014 did a, community assessment that had a healthy. So we had five. So we now have one. If you go on any of our websites, you're going to see the same report, the same health priorities. We take it a step further in McLean County, and we also have a joint community health improvement plan, more commonly known as a CHIP. It takes a lot of collaboration to produce these joint reports. You can find examples of joint CHNAs if you were to just Google it across the country, but a joint community health improvement plan is not as easy to find unless it's with hospitals in the same system that are near to each other. So we have a very collaborative community, and we're fortunate that we can have both a joint CHNA and a joint CHIP. the structure we set up in 2015 in order to conduct this process is we have the mclean county community health council so rather than each organization having their own councils and sometimes pulling the same people we have one McLean County Community Health Council. That's the group that selects the health priorities for the three-year improvement plan. The executive steering committee, that's one person from each of the organizations that conduct the joint CHNA. So Megan's on it, I'm on it, and then somebody from OSF and Chestnut and another person from the health department. We facilitate all of this work. And then on the bottom there, we also facilitate and lead these priority action teams that are working on the interventions and strategies outlined in our community health improvement plan. So the current council is composed of 44 individuals with 25 different organizations, but mostly I want you to note all the different sectors that are on there. So we don't just look at a health in a very traditional, narrow viewpoint. We have key stakeholders from all of these sectors because we want their input as well and what they're seeing when the health priorities are selected. Each cycle, we can start out by conducting a community health survey. It's in English and Spanish and online and everything in a paper. And we work with food banks and home sweet home ministries and things in order to get a representative sample of the underserved or low-income population. Community health workers this cycle helped reach out to some individuals who are unhoused. Then we have secondary data. We have a data platform, Conduit Healthy Communities Institute, or HCI, that houses a lot of data that you can go to multiple websites and obtain, but this is housed in one place. But what you can't find is that there are community-related ER and hospitalization indicators. that we're able to include in our CHNA. And that allows us to drill down a little bit further into some zip code level data and some additional disparity data. Because in general, community health data tends to be at the county level. Sometimes then it'll jump down to the census tract. But it's harder to get disparity information and everything with community health data. And then, of course, we have data from the health department and other local sources.

So in January 2025, January and February, we had

three two hour meetings with the McLean County Community Health Council. And we shared data, in-depth data on six health priorities for them to vote on. So these are the three that were selected. The other three that were included were chronic diseases, infectious diseases, and oral health. So we shared a lot of data on that. We use a nationally recognized prioritization technique, which the health department had been using for their eye plan for years called the Hanlon method. So it isn't just, I know there's like multi-voting, where you may have been in a meeting where you can put dots and vote on the issue. So it's a pretty detailed, extensive process we go through. Of course, there's subjectivity involved in the prioritization, but the Hamlin method tries to make it as objective as possible.

I'm going to turn it over to Megan. Sally's so good, she doesn't come up here with notes or anything. Megan Wilson, I am the Health Promotion Program Manager in Clay County Health Department. And so I'm just gonna kinda expand a little bit on what Sally was going over. So our Community Health Needs Assessment, that is, it identifies the biggest health needs in our community. And then our Community Health Improvement Plan is the action plan put in place to address those health problems. Um, so the community health improvement plan, it's just not a health department plan. It's just not a hospital plan. It is a community wide action plan. The structure for the community health improvement plan, like Sally was saying, we have three health priorities, those being behavioral health, access to care, healthy eating, active living. And each one of those health priorities has the same structure. So each one has an overall goal. It has related social determinants of health. We align it with other local, state, federal health plans. It has strategies and interventions to achieve the overarching goal. And then with those interventions, we have a list of organizations that will implement these interventions for us. And then we reach out to these organizations on an annual basis to get data from them, outcome data, you know, to see if we're making any progress with these interventions. And then in three years, we do a three-year summary since the community health improvement plan goes on a three-year cycle. So in three years, we compare all of that data for all of the interventions to see if we're making progress. Do changes need to be made to those interventions? Were they not working? Were they successful? Are we getting closer to our ultimate goal? These are just some of the sample CHIP interventions. So like you can see, they're all separated into the different health priorities. But one thing that I do want to point out is that all of these interventions go beyond just health care. You know, the hospital cannot do all of these interventions on their own. The health department can't do it on their own. We rely on collaboration with, you know, multi-sectors, like Sally was saying, including public health healthcare schools government community planning and so forth um so i'm not gonna you i'll let you read through um some of these i'll just touch on a few of them to show how that collaboration and things works so mobile health services brings care directly into communities where access is limited so this requires coordination from the health care providers local governments, community organizations and things to get that in place. Embedded school counselors. So that is a partnership between obviously the schools and behavioral health providers to get mental health services to the kiddos like where they're at during the day to eliminate access to care barriers and things like that. Healthy food accessibility efforts. So that one, it's just not about nutrition and Ray kind of touched on this a little bit as well. It's about the accessibility of grocery stores, food markets, food pantries, and things like that. Are they accessible to our residents? Are they able to get there? Are there any food deserts and things? Active living opportunities are closely tied to community design. So those include like sidewalks Um, Parks and trails, um, things like that, you know, where can we safely go to walk and bike? and be active. So as members of the Regional Planning Commission, many of the decisions that you make are, you know, around transportation, land use, housing, community design, so forth. Some of those, you know, directly support some of these interventions and things that are listed and ultimately do influence the health of the residents of McLean County. So here I'm just going to touch on community development and how CHNAs can be, the Community Health Needs Assessment can be utilized for that. So the Community Health Needs Assessment helps identify the community conditions that influence health. So such as housing, access to food, transportation. It goes beyond just the clinical care to highlight broader regional factors like poverty, education, neighborhood stability, that shape health outcomes. So by identifying these challenges, the Community Health Needs Assessment was created can help create opportunities for hospitals and regional planners and community partners to work together on strategies to better our community. So that's, you know, the physical environment of our community or, you know, establishing new programs and things like that. So how can the CHNA data be used for community developers? Well, it can be used to make better decisions. It can help understand what's happening in our community. It shows where people might be struggling. It shows where there might be gaps in resources, services in our community. So it can guide investments in transportation, housing, parks, healthcare, community needs. So for myself, I use the Community Health Needs Assessment for grant writing. I use that Community Health Needs Assessment data to prove that I might need a program And that program will benefit our community. So I'm going to use that data to prove that I need funding to start this program. And I more opt to get it, you know, to receive that grant and that funding if I can prove that there is a need in our community. And the Community Health Needs Assessment helps me do that. Um, and I feel like there's lots of, you know, there's other organizations and things as well that utilize it for the exact same thing. Um, so the community health needs assessment, yes, the health department needs it, the hospitals need it. Um, but lots of the other, you know, organizations and things need it as well to help prove that, you know, programs are needed in our community and so forth. Um, so it really is for everyone and it benefits our community. Collaboration is key. I kind of already touched on that as well. So one of the strengths of the Community Health Needs Assessment and the CHIP is that collaboration is basically written into it um you know we can't do this alone it's a community plan it requires you know multi-sectors and things um all sectors play a role they all have different expertise that they can bring um and if we work together you know change can be made a lot faster right um that was the benefit of joining um you know, making this a collaborative effort between the hospitals and the health department and Chestnut and things as well. We're not working on separate plans, we're working on things together so we can move that needle a little bit more. And the CHIP, you know, the community health improvement plan, it helps reflect the work and the commitment of many of the partners working together as well. So that whole list of different organizations that are doing interventions in the community health improvement plan, you know, we're working together to improve the health and well-being of McLean County here. So here, it's just an example of some of the collaboration that we have done as well. So in 2023, our Invest Health team, they were able to attend an Invest Health convention. So we had representatives from these six different organizations. We had a representative from the McLean County Regional Planning Commission and things as well. So Invest Health is all about bringing different sectors together and recognizing that housing and neighborhood conditions can have a real impact on health. So at the convention, they were able to learn about affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, and temporary housing solutions. So then in 2024, we had a team that traveled to Montana for a site visit to learn more about housing strategies. So this was just a great example of, you know, seeing what one community is doing really well and bringing those ideas back here to McLean County to see if those could be implemented here. So in this case, like housing issues. Another example of multi-sector collaboration was the Community Health Needs Assessment Executive Steering Committee. We partnered with Peoria and had a conference. It was called Building Healthy Communities Development Strategies to Improve Health and Wellbeing. So this brought together national experts and community developers to talk about community development, health, innovative funding strategies, And this just shows the benefit of multi-sector collaboration. yet to um so here um we also at the end of our three-year cycle we come up with a 2025 kind of like a highlights of a summary um it's a shorter version because our community health needs assessment and the community health improvement plan are long plans this is just like a short condensed summary report that we do at the end of the cycle so this is all available our community health needs assessment the community health improvement plan this summary report all of that can be found on either one of our websites the health department carl osf and so forth so Any questions? I hope this explained a little bit the connection between community development and health care. It's not all about health care. It's all about where we work, play, live, and things like that. It all affects our health.

Well, Megan and Sally, thank you so much for the insight into the process and putting these assessments and plans together. It's really helpful and also the tie-ins to regional planning, so I appreciate it.

Yes, I hope everyone reads it. And utilizes it.

If I may add too, and some of the colleagues also serve on some of our transportation housing committees as well, and we participate in some of the MassHealth programs and meetings, and so really close working relationship also. In fact, I think Jen belongs to one of the working teams that was mentioned. So yeah, we just see that's really a close relationship between public health, community health, and planning, so we appreciate it.

So next on the agenda, we have Luke with our Regional Housing Initiatives Update. Luke, you have the floor.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Here are my updates for the month of July. Last month, we shared the June 2026 Affordable and Supportive Housing, or the ASH, meeting. And in line with that, we are currently still working on housing and transportation white paper. So this white paper has two parts, a walkability heat map, and we're also looking at residential building permits in relation to transportation infrastructure, such as bus stops and sidewalks. So just a brief highlight. We looked at 414 new residential permits from 2023 to 2025 for both the city and the town. And most of the new residential developments are on the outskirts of moving to normal. 91.1% of the new residential developments are less than a quarter mile or five minutes away from the nearest sidewalk, which shows how important active transportation and ADA compliance is. However, 77.5% of the new permits are further than a half mile or a 10-minute walk from the nearest bus stop. So this shows there's room for improvement for transit-oriented development. We're still working on looking at residential remodel data. So we'll probably have more information next month. Other updates. Earlier this month, MCRPC attended the Illinois Housing Blueprint Community Listening Session in Peoria, where they presented housing-related data for all the counties in the north central region, including Buckeye County. The biggest takeaway from this session is that McLean County has drastically different needs than the rest of the counties, including Peoria, Livingston, et cetera. According to one of their slides, based on the IDPH projection, McLean County is expected to have an additional 11,000 households by 2036. And then the closest, the second closest county is Woodford County with 591 additional households. So it is comically insane when they showed that chart. Similarly, according to Ida, McLean County needs 5,000 plus market rate units by 2035. Second closest within the region is also with 100 units. So again, completely, we need way more than our neighbors. All right, moving on. MCRPC also continues to attend the Housing Coalition and Unhoused Task Force meetings. In relation to this, on July 23, Thursday, the Central Illinois Continuum CICOC conference. The theme will be Building Lasting Foundations, and this will bring together service providers, community partners, and advocates to share strategies to prevent and end homelessness. So the Central Illinois Continuum of Care is composed of 11 counties, including Mopeng County, Kankakee, Vermilion, etc. This, again, July 23, Thursday, 8 to 5 p.m. at the St. John Lutheran Church here in Bloomington. And then during that same day, immediately after the conference, from 5.30 to 7 p.m. will be the McLean County Housing Coalition Community Forum. This is open to the public and will feature speakers from the Regional Office of Education, Home Sweet Home Ministries, Mid-Central Community Action, Heartland Community College, and the Central Illinois Continuum of Care. This will discuss housing and future. And they're also hoping that this community forum will be a student forums for the county. Those are my updates if you have any questions.

Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Ray with the housing coordinator position update.

Thank you. Yeah, I've been working with the legal counsel with the county and we have finished the RFP. It's been published. It's on our website. It's available on our website. And we're also working with our IT. So hopefully it will go to the county website tomorrow as well. And we have a closing date of July 27, so about three and a half weeks for RFP responses. And if you know any, while you might be interested in qualifying, I encourage them to submit proposals.

Any questions?

Can you remind me when the grant funds need to be extended?

They have to be extended by October of 2027. And then with possibility for extension, when it gets closer, we will request for extension. And we should probably need to do that, right? Yeah. And also, we've had previous discussion with the staff at the CBO.

Okay. And then a follow-up question. I think in the May 2025 meeting that there was a discussion about, like, does a committee need to be formed to oversee? Is this that same position? It's probably the same one.

There will be what we call an implementation committee that will be formed to implement that housing recovery plan, basically, and that contains recommendations, which as part of the main responsibility of the housing coordinator is to help to implement, to undertake the implementation, working with the committee and other partners.

I mean, we may want to be proactive just because we're on such a short timeframe because this has taken a long time. I don't know if we can be proactive and have that committee voted on, ready to go, so this person can hit the ground running?

Yeah. Yeah, that's the intent. The implementation committee will be a smaller group. And yeah, that's our intent. Once that person's hired, and yeah, we just hit the ground running. And in fact, maybe some members' representations on the selection committee will be participating.

Anything else on the Housing Coordinator? That's Jen with the Human Services Transportation Plan Update.

Which, with your permission, we'll do from here. We had a quarterly Region 6 meeting on June 15th, which I know is part of our schedule. The policy committee, which we did have a quorum for, reviewed, edited, and approved new bylaws, which we had given to them ahead of time. And that approval established the Region 6 Planning Committee. So we are no longer using two different committees. Technical and policy is originally set up. We moved to a single committee at IDOT's information. The committee includes representatives from each county board of the five representatives. Any 5310 grant recipient agencies, they tend to be social service agencies that use the funding to provide transportation to their client's house, and they are important to this process, and the three service providers that are currently serving the region. Our next task is to update the plan, which we've already started. And that will include a new public survey and updated demographics, as well as any information that comes out at the continuing quarterly meetings, 1 September, 1 December. And the plan is expected to be, is required to be completed March of 2027. And Ray and I are about to embark on visits to the counties to explain this process, why it's important and the counties are part of it, starting tomorrow. And I hope we'll be able to do that quickly and render the why. Any questions?

Well, Jen, what will the forum be for that? For what? The meetings with the counties.

It's not a formal meeting, it's just a discussion. So it's up to them to decide who they want to participate and how they reach an understanding of what they do.

It's basically like a meet and greet because we have worked with sometimes their staff or some of their partners, but this opportunity that we want to cultivate that their carnival chairs and their colleagues have a better understanding of what we do and why we need their participation. So it's just more like an introduction to education.

Other questions?

All right. Next, Ray. The Veterans Parkway Corridor Plan update.

All right. The Veterans Parkway Corridor Plan is supposed to be all done by September of this year, so only a few months away, last phase of the project. And the last meeting of the committee was held in June, and they, with the help of the consultants, the committee discussed the preferred alternatives, the report that they've drafted, and also the potential funding sources. Kind of anticipating, once the plan is adopted, what kind of funding sources, what kind of grants that the staff and our partners can look out to get funding. And we all know that transportation funding it's not one grant to solve all the problems. So it's going to be multi-year, multi-phase, and different scales of the projects. And I think that was discussed and highlighted was the market analysis and economic development report, which was also a draft. And once the committee finished medium and comment on the report, then we'll post on the website and then we'll advise the commission interested in those reports. And those, I call it sub-reports, will be covering the overall draft final report that also will be available for public review and comment, probably sometime in either August or September timeframe, we'll keep you updated. And the next meeting of the committee will be in August. The July meeting is canceled, but the next meeting will be August. Question?

Thank you. And we'll move on to the Regional Account Plan 2045 update. Anthony?

Good afternoon, everybody. We have a quick presentation for this update. A good amount of material to go over. So since our last commission meeting, staff have been looking hard on promoting the Regional Comprehensive Plan website, survey, and public outreach events. Here we have just some of the promotional activities that we've completed over the last month. This includes a list of organizations that receive our promotional materials, such as the McLean County Marriage Association, local community Facebook pages, and nonprofit organizations, just to name a few. We've also been working with local newspapers and radio stations to advertise the plan and the public workshop schedules. Specifically, we placed ads with our public workshop schedule in all eight of the Normalite Group newspapers. Those papers serve Bloomington Normal, Colfax, Cooksville, Saybrook, Aerosmith, Anchor, Chenoa, Bentley, Lexington, Hudson, Carlock, Danvers, Hayworth, and LeRoy, as well as the Cities 929 radio station. We'll have a couple of ads, 15-second, 30-second ads, running the next couple of weeks to continue to promote the remaining three workshop events that we have. One virtual, Launch and Learn, on July 10th, and then two other in-person meetings later this July. We have copies of that schedule here at the front, if you'd like one. Next slide, please. As you can see here, we're receiving a good amount of engagement across all of our platforms. We've received over 300 survey responses so far, with good distribution across the rural and urban areas. Last month, we sent out our second email notification through our Constant Contact email list, which contains over 2,000 people. This notification list in and of itself has also seen growth since the planned kickoff, with 27 new subscribers using the link on our project website. We also created and shared the workshop schedule through Facebook and Instagram with our own Facebook post receiving roughly 1,400 interactions with numerous other shares and distributions across the platform. Additionally, we've been engaging the community where they are. Last month, we attended the Bloomington, Downs, and Leroy farmers markets to promote the survey and hand out our public workshop schedules. Additionally, we held our first two public workshops over the last few weeks. The first being in Lexington on June 25th and the second in Deloitte yesterday, June 30th. Next slide, please. Here we have some engagement pictures from the farmers market and our first two workshop events. So this first round of engagement, including the survey and the public outreach events, are designed specifically to gather the general consensus of the community as to what the biggest priorities for the future of the region are. Next slide, please. The next outreach campaign later this fall will begin to dive deeper into what actions the plan should recommend in order to achieve the goals that have been established during this first round that we're doing now. That would be the opportunity for members of the public to think more critically and recommend actions to include in the plan itself. This first round of engagement will run through the end of July, so we still have roughly a month to promote the plan, promote the workshops, and collect survey responses and public input. Once this first engagement campaign ends, MCRPC will begin to create a public engagement report that will summarize engagement activities, analytics, and public input. That report will then produce an the overarching goals for the McLean County Regional Comprehensive Plan. That report, as well as the existing conditions report, will be posted on the project website for the remainder of the development process. Members of the public will be able to view these reports and provide any input they may have to the existing questions and comments in the middle button on the project website. These will also be incorporated into our subsequent outreach events. So they're not just going to be posted on the website. We'll have discussions about them at our public events These reports will then eventually be incorporated into the final planning document. Posting these reports on the website and incorporating them into our outreach campaigns will allow for ample time for public review and involvement way before the first review period for the actual comprehensive planning document. The same process will occur for all subsequent reports and summaries coming out of round two engagement and the engagement of round three engagement. As the development of the plan progresses, these reports will be incorporated into our outreach activities.

Next slide.

And again, if you haven't already, please make sure to visit the Regional Comprehensive Planning Project website by visiting the plan.org. Take the survey, review the promotional materials, and share those materials with your constituents and any interested parties. Any questions?

Have y'all gone over to the local NPR station and asked them to do, like, a story about it and the way it matters?

We do have a list of news agencies all in McLean County that we send press releases to. Actually, if you go back a couple of slides, we were on the front page of the McLean Chronicle, so that was awesome to see. And then we also were interviewed by WMBD, and we were on the TV news station there. We're hoping to get something on NPR. I think that's going to be our next big task, is to see if they're working on something or if they need a little bit more information from us. But we have done some of their community ad spots, essentially, where if they have the air time, they'll announce our workshops.

Yes, we're hoping. I would keep hoping to email them directly, not just directly. Because they could do a great story on that. Yeah.

Usually, the news outlets, if they see something they're interested, they'll be one of the first ones to contact us. But yeah, definitely the press release, and we have other news or other interests or something that, yeah, we definitely, we know what WGRT is. A lot of people, not just on the radio, but also on the website.

Any other questions about the timeline or when things are going to happen? I know we talked at length last meeting about that timeline. Anything else? Any questions?

All right, thank you.

I'll just contribute one thing from the internet.

Hello, this is Amy. I just want to thank you for all of the engagement and the sharing all of the contacts and efforts that you've done to bring awareness to this project. It's not like we have a huge staff or a huge team that's working on this. This is Andrew doing everything. So I really appreciate... all that you are doing. The only request I think I would have is that it seems like many in our county have a good connection with their county board member. And so maybe, and I'd be happy to send an email myself as a commissioner to all of the county board members to just kindly request that they share this information with their constituents. It seems like they're a logical choice connection and have a breath of contacts across the county. So that might be just a thought. I'm happy to do that if you think it's more appropriate to come from a commissioner to a county board member, but just trying to get more surveys completed from and have a representation from as far across the county as we can.

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. We do send all the promotional materials to our County Board contacts, and a majority of them are subscribed to our Constant Contact email. We also give monthly updates to the Land Use and Transportation Committee, which gets a good amount of the County Board members, but not all of them. We hope that they review those notes in the County Board packet. So if we do reach out, we can continue to do that as well.

And Anthony, in those communications, do they ever contain like a direct ask to share with Oh, my gosh, I'm blanking on like their constituents. And also what I think is impactful is the timeline slide. So sort of that forecast of like, this is what we expect to be showing and talking about and giving them the opportunity to ask questions. So I think keeping that in front of them, too, like this is where we are and this is what's coming. So I guess the question in there is. Are we just, not just, are we sending the public outreach items but with an ask, or is that something we can consider doing?

Yeah, every time we ask them to make sure to get the word out. We don't have a huge team. It's hard. There's 121 municipalities in the county, largest county in Illinois, so we try our best to get the word out as best we can, but there's a lot of evidence to do that, so we try our best to to get as many as we can. And speaking of this timeline, we have made a small update to it, really just a housekeeping thing. Phase two and three have been updated to spring, summer, and summer, fall. It's just worked out that way. We have a little bit of a clarifying point for that timeline.

Amy from the Internet again, I would just add it sounds like this might be something we want to share with the county board member from was it Leroy? Because we had a public commenter tonight expressing concerns about the sharing of information in that community. So that might be good to relay and pass on to that county board member so that they're aware and can do any additional support for us.

Yeah, absolutely. And we have constant contact with the McLean County Marital Association, which will be Roy Marriott's a part of. So we hope that that is one of those groups that we can meet that will help us spread the information across the county because it sucks. So yes, we absolutely will reach out to them.

I think sharing that with both of them would be good.

Will do. Can I ask, with the updated Is there time built in, like what if some of the documents that have already been worked on and filed through the commission don't align with like the mission and value and vision? Yeah, we will. Is there? There is time.

Yes. We anticipate all aspects of that, of this conference. We have a big chunk of time set aside to actually draft the plan. And specifically land use is one of those topics. So we will make sure that that is out for people to review ahead of time so that we have more than enough time to make any corrections or add or change it when we need to. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Last but not least, Metropolitan Transportation Plan update. Jen.

Thank you. We are finalizing the working group for the Metropolitan Transportation Plan, which is the latest iteration of the Metropolitan Plan for Transportation. As you know, that's mostly focused on the urban area and immediately surrounds our Metropolitan Planning Area. So they will meet on the 24th of July. We are working on revision of the agency-wide public participation plan as part of the MTP, and that's in progress. A data-based existing conditions report will be complete as a draft by the end of July. That will give some time for internal staff and for the working group to look over. Working group comments on the existing conditions are required every Labor Day, and we will post it once we get to that point and are made wherever revisions might be needed. A lot of our outreach on this plan will come through the public survey that we have already designed to be published later this month. We're also getting ready to start scheduling stakeholder interviews, so individual entities plus focus groups which cover topic areas. into the fall, actually late into the fall because we've been told don't get people during harvest season because they won't show up. So a number of our groups have a rural component, although, again, the plan is really focused on the urban area. So the goals and objectives will be discussed and refined by all through the outreach activities by early next year. And the goals and objectives will also incorporate the Go Safe Action Plan goals because part of our intent here is to make sure that our safety goals are top of mind and that everyone can see that, you know, we've gone through the effort of the Go Safe Action Plan, and that's going to be brought in to make sure that we have everyone considering those safety requirements because, again, our goal is zero deaths by 2035. It's closer than we think. And the plan will be completed and submitted to the federal government by September next year. It's a month early. Ray thought we should have some cushion time just in case, but we are aiming for that now. And there is time for us to, most of next year is consolidation of the data and assembly of the plan. So we will have lots of time for that. Any questions this 5 o'clock hour?

Just want to clarify the date for the working group, the July 24th is still edited. So it's not, you know, we still have to work with the working group to settle the time. That's just one of the possible times for the meeting. It's not set, but I think we hope to have the first meeting of that working group by the end of July.

That's ambitious. Thank you. Thank you. Ray, any other updates from staff in your office?

Let's see. Jake, anything that we want to mention in terms of public outreach? There will be, in addition to the comprehensive plan outreach, we also do the transportation safety, messaging, and as part of the public events why not we also incorporate that so just so you all know too so we don't just promote the campaign for that project but also trying to spread the word about safety transportation safety to the community and then change the one car coordinating we have a lot of events this month and next month through the summer and so we if you're interested you know we get give you a schedule to work with. So you can have to spread the word to your networks and so get a message and all the work that just what we do and it's only part of the picture. I mean, you have seen and heard today, I mean, that's those special projects, not to mention the day-to-day things that we do. And so we have And they work really hard and try to do the best we can, but we cannot do it without your help, members of the public's help, or the entire committee. And so we appreciate it.

Thank you. So for the commissioners here and online, is there anything else that needs to come before the commission? All right, hearing quiet, is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Second? Second. All in favor, aye. Aye. July 1st, 2026 meeting of the McLean County Regional Planning Commission is adjourned at 5.03 p.m. Thank you, everybody.