Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

And um uh and as I explained to Ron earlier, we need to have in order to this conference will now be recorded

in order to vote to allow you to vote too. Um we actually have to have a quorum here. Um, and we only have five, not the required six. Um, and so what we're really in a position to have to do is we can go through and do the presentations and such. We just can't vote on anything um and such. And that uh includes um call to order or uh uh consent agenda um and anything removed from the consent agenda and such. So, um it's uh it's it's unfortunate if someone does arrive then we'll back up when we can. Um but first on the agenda today is under the items for information or discussion and that's a presentation by one of my colleagues uh or Harrison from the EDC. Um and it's kind of an update in terms of the stuff that she's put together um on child care the child care survey uh and such. So, Nora, we'll turn it over to you

and welcome. [snorts] Okay, so I'm back. Our childare survey has concluded. Um, as we talked about before, we had three separate surveys that were going. One was for our childcare providers, one was for our businesses, and then we had one open for. So, um, the study was data that we can get from public sources as well as the um information from those specific surveys. And so today, I'm going to go over a little bit of both. So one of the most important parts is understanding the childcare landscape in Linu County and during my research I came up with a number of 7% which the department of health and human services established a while back as the mark of affordability. So child care cost should be no more than 7% of a family's total budget. So this information you can't see it all. Okay. So this is showing the local area and this is showing where our county falls in terms of the rates. And if you can see the whole across all age groups, we are the second highest in terms of rates. and the rates are coming from the Illinois Department of Human Services 2023 market rate survey. So the data is always going to be behind and one of the things that we wanted to look at was to see if current numbers are still

trending the same way. And so in the second chart you'll see in across all age groups still on trend to be second. And this column the columns that you can't see they're showing the daily rate for infants, for toddlers, and for preschool. And then that's multiplied out to show a monthly cost averaging about 20 days. So if you think 5 days a week, four weeks in a month, then about 20 days of child care in a month. Um, and then the chart at the bottom is showing you the median income in the area for a household or for a single parent. And then it's showing you what the 7% cost would be. And then that last column is showing you what it's actually costing based on those 2025 rates. And so you'll see that is a much larger portion than 7% of the income. And keep in mind, we're only talking about child care. We're not talking about other household expenses. So the next highest expense for most households is housing. Um I don't know why you can't see it, but so the the top line is showing the average rental cost for a two-bedroom apartment in our community. And then the second line, what's missing there is showing the average mortgage rate. And so it's looking at a median price home of 255,000 and it's giving an estimate of $1850 for a mortgage rate. And it's giving you an estimate of$,571 for a two-bedroom apartment. So the monthly expense. And so then if you were adding that to the cost for infant child care, so from the previous page, infant child care was about$,570 per month. Um if you were adding those two together, it's showing you that the combined monthly cost is about 58% for um a median household or 52%. So if you were renting, it was I'm sorry, 48% if you're renting and 52% if you own. And so looking at those costs, that's

not including food or your utilities or transportation if you have a car payment or anything like that. So [snorts] really looking at how much of the actual budget is going to child care and why we're saying that there is an issue, crisis, affordability challenge, stuff like that. Um, so then these are quotes from the actual survey and they're talking about members of the workforce and they're saying of the people survey of people who responded to the survey. So, we had about 202 community members who responded to the survey. And of that number, 48% were saying that they have had to either work fewer hours or that their child care costs have caused them to decide not to have more children. You've also got 24% that have declined a promotion or 17% that have left the workforce entirely. And that leaving the workforce entirely is definitely an issue. So then you're looking at um overall at overall numbers of our county. And so our birth rate has been declining progressively since about 2015, but our overall population has been increasing during that same time period. Looking at that, you'll see that that means we're aging in place. We're having fewer children, but our population is growing. So, if you extrapolate that out, there's going to be a point where we're going to run out of workforce. If everyone in the area is retiring, we're going to run out of workforce. Our schools aren't going to have enough children. Our universities aren't going to have enough children. And keep in mind, it's not just a matter of, oh, attract students from other places because this is not just our issue. This is a national Okay. So then when you look at child

care and you talk about low wages in a demanding field. So, one of the key indicators here is that not only are the providers themselves having issues attracting and retaining staff, um, which is of course affecting wages, but also just the education requirements for a childare worker compared to the, um, pay that they would receive. So, you're missing unfortunately a big portion of the chart, but what it's basically showing you is that for the average preschool teacher, 38,000 is a mean annual income. Um, and kindergarten teachers and elementary teachers in our area are at 67,68,000. For this chart down here, it's showing you the comparison of a childare worker and the wages for a typical childare worker at 33,000. And it's compared to wages for an office clerk, customer service rep, retail person, cashier, and fast food worker. One of the most important figures is that if you look at 33,000 for a childare worker, and a fast food worker is about 31,000. So, if you're only 2,000 away and you have less credentials that you need to get, less ongoing maintenance and education requirements, what's the motivation to work in childare? um that actually plays out also in terms of economic development because of course as we're trying to make sure that our current businesses have the workforce that they need to continue their operations and then grow and expand. We also hopefully want to attract businesses, but if their workers aren't going to be able to get child care, then why would they want to locate in that place? So making sure that we're coming up with solutions is to help our

county continue to grow but also continue to just survive in its current state. We would have no choice but to address this issue because if people are not able to afford child care, have children, participate in the workforce, we're going to have shortages. Um and then these are just a few things that came up in the research. And one of the most important parts was that for every dollar invested in child care is a $4 to $16 return depending on um how that plays out but either in a more skilled workforce or reduced social spending. Um there's also the cost of replacing employees and then continued prosperity in the community. And so we're looking at um when we talked about it before, we talked about the importance of looking at addressing the issue on multiple layers, not just one solution because there's no one entity that can really fix this. It needed to be something we address on multiple levels. And so um right now they're talking about well there's a law in place that we would like to support and encourage to increase the minimum wage for childcare workers to $19 an hour by 2026. and we definitely wanted to encourage that because it's only going to help um empowering our employers. So when we looked at incentives in other areas, one of the key incentives in another state um that has picked up speed and gone to several states is the tri share program that I mentioned before in Michigan and it's where childcare costs are split between the state, the um parent and the company, the employer. And so looking at that tri share model and how they're set up in those other states and being able to replicate that in our state would be a huge advantage. And then also building system capacity. So one of the things

that came up in the research with local childcare providers is that um especially the need for non-traditional schedules, those needs are typically met by homebased providers. And we have a shortage of homebased providers, especially since COVID. There are several that quote, but also there's a lot that would like to retire. Um, many people who entered the homebased provider business did so because they were at home caring for their own children. Fewer people are having children. Fewer people are taking that avenue. So, are there incentives to encourage people to take that avenue and start a business? You also have to recognize that a lot of people are renting and a lot of landlords do not want a homebased childare business in their home. So looking at ways to encourage or incentivize local landlords, especially those who are renting houses versus apartments if they would have benefits of their own that might allow them to have a childcare business in their home. So ways to build the system capacity in that local level things that you can do um either a property tax break or other incentives. And so lastly, just the importance of working together and that we are used to solving challenges through partnership and that it's something that we can definitely um solve if we work together. And that's it. Um I can definitely share the presentation with everyone so that you can see the the charts and then the full report once um it's completed. It will be available for everyone to read and see all that. It's not completed as of yet because we did have a group of ISU students who volunteered to help um analyze the data from our study and they're also working with the YW.CA and so they're compiling their own data and research that's going to be added to ours. So once that step is done then we'll add all the logos and share the

report for everybody. Any questions? First of all, thank you very much. Very eye opening. Um with the tri share program, how does Michigan come up with the state come up with their portion because I assume that that's pretty but that's a lot of money. Maybe not. I don't know.

It is. Um so it's not just Michigan. There's several different states and some of them have done it with like you've heard about like the mental health tax for example like that quarter% something like that. Um those taxes have been done at either state or county level. There's also sometimes they're um dedicating funds from lottery or from the sales of uh for the states that allow cannabis sales or something like that. Like it's they're prioritizing child care. So, they're setting aside funding specifically for it to help address the needs. And so, the other option, of course, um we had talked about before when I was looking at incentives in other locations. It's a tax credit program that Illinois currently has, but it's not um run the same way Alabama's is run. And um Illinois offers tax incentives to businesses that open childcare centers for their employees. In Alabama, you get those same tax incentives if you pay for childare for your employees. you don't have to open the center, you can just pay for it. If you move that into Illinois's program, more businesses would want to take advantage of that program. Um, they also had grants that nonprofits could take advantage of. So, if you were a nonprofit and you were helping pay for childcare, you'd be eligible for the grant as opposed to the tax breaks because you didn't have to worry about the taxes. So, things like tweaking the current tax incentives that we have would also help. [laughter] Um, and then there was the other option of looking at current employers. There's a lot of current employers that said they offer to offer tuition reimbursement benefits and that not a lot of their employees take advantage of it. Can you allow that for childare instead? Um, especially if you're then going to get a tax incentive for it. [laughter] We hopefully will encourage Illinois to modify their program to match Alabama. So those are the kind of things that we're looking at that we want to advocate for. But um of course it's just

a matter of what stays in our strategic plan, how much um involvement we'll continue to have. So it may be that we're just passing the information on for somebody else to do. We'll see. Now is this a law in these other states or is this just voluntarily that like employers participate in it? It's voluntary.

It's voluntary. hope the incentive is to hopefully encourage the participation. And so when you're saying a tax break um for example, if you sell um if you're a retail store and whatever taxes that you would have paid to the state, it's a break on those taxes. Um whatever it is taxes that are applicable to your business, it's a break on those taxes that pay. So, how that plays out into the different um [clears throat] employers and and their different businesses, there's a whole, you know, section of how you apply, how you qualify. Um I think in one of the states there's because there's Alabama and Florida that offer that and in one of the states there's a certain income bracket that the employee needs to fall in so that um the company's eligibility doesn't change. But you know what is built into the Illinois program will be up to them.

Do you are there any companies in our communities that are that have a child care program in house? Not that well. So like Hartland Heartland Community College does um and I want to say Normal West does. Normal Normal West they have a childare program. Yes. But I'm not sure that it's for I don't know if it's for teachers or if it's specifically for the students to learn the skills to become to work in the childare workforce. Um but I know Hartland they do offer it for their employees as well as for the students.

Do they do they have to pay for it? Do they have to pay for it or is this a benefit that comes with their employment? I'm not sure if they have to pay for it. Um, I know they were saying that they pay their employees above the minimum wage, but even with the um increased pay, they were still having problems retaining teachers um that did come up in the survey. Any other questions for Nor? Yeah. Any sense from our area employers or what not? Do they have like preference? what kind of programs would they [laughter] take advantage of?

So, we did not ask them, hey, would you be interested in this program? We asked them, would you be interested in participating in solutions and continue conversation? And so, in our survey of the businesses, yes, we did have people who said they were interested and wanted to respond. Um OSF just did a recent survey of their own employees saying they did address um child care and the need for childare and they were talking about specifically that it's needed especially because nurses work 12-hour shifts and finding child care for a 12-h hour shift is really hard. Um, there are state requirements, state limits to how long a child can be in care. And that definitely would be a problem for a 12-h hour shift because you also have to drop a child off before you get there, have enough time to get there, and then pick them up after. So, it's you can understand why it would be an issue for sure. And in most cases, you're hoping that one, you know, one parent can drop them off and another parent can pick them up. But what if you're a single parent? You didn't have, you know, the support for that. So, Um if child care stays in our strategic plan, those would be steps that we take next would be convening that group of employers, looking at available options. It would be working um connecting with the state and hoping that we can get them to modify their tax credit intensive program and then hopefully the appetite to see if they are willing to um try to create the tri share program in our in our state and then in our county because it's implemented at the county level in those states that have the program.

At what point is this term a crisis?

It already is. um it already is. So, realistically speaking, um one of the things that came up is that they're looking at census data. There's about 8500 working age adults who are not in the workforce in our county because of childare reasons. Um, with that thought in mind, anytime you have an employer that's trying to staff and they're bringing people in from out of the county because they don't have enough people in the county, there's a solution right there. If childc care was available and reliable and affordable, then maybe half of that 8,500 would be willing to reenter the workforce.

Right. That's a tough situation because if you pay more for it, it costs more.

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, it it already is considered a crisis. It's just how bad will it get before it's addressed. It [snorts] really just takes the right group of people prioritizing it and saying, "Okay, it's affecting us enough that we need to do something about it." And obviously for an employer, it's a lot harder for an employee to leave if my child care is connected to work. it's a lot harder for me to leave that company that's enabling me to afford child care. So, it's a it's a retention tool. It's an attraction tool for employers that offer it. I mean, you know, whether it's onsite or something you're paying.

Any other questions? Nora, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Um, you are more than welcome to stay and listen to the rest of our meeting, but uh I don't think anyone would be offended if you decided to uh end your day here and uh and move on. So, uh your call for me and definitely let me know if you have questions. Feel free to email me if you wanted to see the the um charts that you weren't able to see. Just send me an email. I'll have to share all Yeah, send a updated version to me and I can share with you. [clears throat] Thanks. Is that your Yeah. You want to grab your You'll miss that later. Yes. [laughter] A couple weeks.

Thank you. Or tomorrow. Yeah. Or walking out the door. Um Okay. Um we're now on to the housing coordinator position update. Ray. Yeah. We um the one thing I can update is we are still working with BCO the state agency uh on the grant agreement and uh it's taken longer longer than we expected but uh we we we sure you know things will work out. We're not anticipating any any thing happen to our grand or what let me put it that way. So it just allow processing and staffs to go through. That's all.

Will it extend the timeline of the expectations of the grant development? If I remember right, you have to do something within a year or something. It's uh we we actually I have some discussion with BC already. Yeah, I know we have here for for September. I think we're looking at maybe November 27. uh but there's some flexibility even to the extent that if it turns out we need to uh ask for amendment I think they're open to it. All right. Um number C uh regional housing uh initiative update Luke.

Hi [clears throat] good afternoon everyone. Um for local updates, we've facilitated the October housing staff meeting on October 23rd. And uh for that, we've also posted the white paper titled housing, population, and social economic trends init county on our website. Um so some highlights from the white paper include some municipalities such as Downs showed growth while other m municipalities such as Stanford showed signs of shrinking, population decline, and high vacancy rates. Um, also growth of income and employment outpaced the increase of housing units, pushing prices and rent higher. Um, moving on, we've submitted the CDBG first part to report to the city and the CDBG second part to report to the town. Um, and also the November housing staff meeting will be rescheduled to December due to a conflict with Thanksgiving. And so for other updates, um, we've attended the housing coalition three uh three weeks ago. The coalition discussed leadership who's going to chair the housing coalition and also solidifying its goals and structure. Also, we attended the house task force last week. Um, in that meeting, we discussed cold weather response which was activated last Monday and then also Matt Burgger, CEO of Home Sweet Home, announced that the bridge uh the non- congregate shelter for the homeless will be delayed and is now scheduled to open in January. have any questions?

Questions?

Thank you. Appreciate it. Um and uh the human services transportation plan HSTP update from Jennifer. Uh good afternoon everyone. [clears throat] We have some good news and some sort of moderate news. Um we're in the process of correlating information received and submitted to us in a survey that was distributed to all of the uh participants in the regional committees. So it was kind of a disappointing response. We were going to follow up nicely but still net. Um so we are also correlating responses that don't have to do with committee membership. So some of the questions that we asked had to do with a variety of subjects about which they are better informed in their communities than we are. trying to sort of soak that out of them and we're once again going to go back and say please tell us more about this. Uh as you may as we've talked about Thomas Valencia who's sitting over at the computer has done great work in producing a dashboard feature on our website regarding region six and its constituent counties and services provided from service providers. Um that is now posted to the MCRPC website. It's kind of a soft launch and it's a work in progress still. Thomas has put in a lot of time and effort to make this a resource not only for members of our committees in region six but also for the general public. Uh we are awaiting the public confirmation on a new service provider for Linu County, but the word is and this has already started to some extent that Futures Unlimited, which is an agency that has been active in the Pontiac area throughout the county for a long time and great work. I have been in the position of reviewing their their program and their vehicles and all the rest of it over the years. and they really have uh an excellent program

which they are now expanding to public use um under the name futures connections but again we don't have this officially yet but IDAB is involved and we are hoping that they will progress to being not just a 5310 a social service agency provider but 5311 public rural transit provider very very soon that would be a huge advantage and we are preparing for the next quarterly meeting which will take place in mid December and that's why I'm going to be nagging people giving us more responses to our survey [clears throat] any questions on behalf

questions for app um we'd like to introduce a consultant uh that's working on the veterans parkway

yeah I have invited Mark Van introduces himself he's one of the uh project managers for the reference pathway project uh of of the the consultancy of TIN. You might have seen him on screen in the past when you approve the TIN contract at that time under the name of Sam. So, you know, merger acquisition thing, it becomes part of the TY but I'll have uh and he's in town that's why I invite him. Hey, you got time to stop by for the public engagement. I'll cover a little bit, but Mark, you want to say a few words before I provide the update about the project?

Sure. Hi everyone, Mark Bennett. Sorry to barge into your meeting in the in the middle of it, but happy to be here and uh we had two really great events last night uh and one more open house tonight. So, we're about 75% of the way through the the planning project as far as uh the scale of the project. And uh that means we've we put a lot of thought and analysis into it. We're hearing a lot of feedback this uh this week and we've got uh about another eight months left to uh to continue refining uh that analysis. So happy to be here and uh good to see you all. Thanks Mark.

So yeah we let we thank the the consulting team they have other consultants really uh working on different aspect of the plan. So you got time to stop by tonight 6 uh o'clock or 7 o'clock. Uh we have two presentations tonight and then we also uh on November the 12th we have a ver a virtual uh public openhouse uh if people cannot make it. So um we have the link uh information on our website interested or please continue to share uh with your friends, neighbors, family uh as you have done in the past and you have got the flyer um few weeks ago. So um yeah that's ongoing and if you recall this is kind of the second um more more concentrated public engagement effort you know for this two-year long study and so we are as Mark pointed out we are little over halfway uh so the project is supposed to be completed by September 2026 and so we are at an important junctures where different options are being looked consider that's why we invite public inputs and feedback to to on the different options so that they can narrow it down further to a preferred option. Uh so yeah uh if you got time uh uh stop by the library public library downtown Boomington tonight 6 or 7 uh if not definitely uh virtual is another option on November 12. Uh then that's the update. Uh yeah, PSC the poly streaming committee continues to meet. There won't be a meeting uh next week, but then they will have a workshop in December continuing meeting and providing input and guidance for the process. Okay, questions for Ray. We're now on to the strategic land use plan. Um [clears throat]

uh all right, I have a little update for the strategic land use plan. We are nearing the end. Uh we finished the second and final round of public outreach or public outreach review and comment of the plan. Uh that was over on October 22nd. I gave about a month for an extended second round of review and comment. Uh in that time we held two additional openhouse events. Uh one at the Downs Fire Department and one at Hartland Community College with roughly 20 attendees per meeting roughly. uh and we received an additional 16 online responses and two email responses. Uh the overall sentiment of the second round was that many of the early concerns were addressed uh and corrected such as the removal of the east side highway east of Tanda Barnes Road and the reduction of the proposed industrial land use in southeast Bloomington. Uh there are still some concerns specifically regarding the potential loss of agricultural land within Bloomington Normal and the one and a half mile planning area surrounding Bloomington Normal. Uh I dived into this a little bit deeper uh and using the land use data from this proposal. Uh within Bloomington Normal and that one and a half mile radius around that jurisdiction, there's a potential 33% change in agricultural land use. Um however, when looking at the county there's only a 3% potential loss in in a land. Um this plan as it sits now shows that there's over 90% of the acreage in the county will remain agricultural. Uh the majority of this potential loss is concentrated within or immediately adjacent to existing municipalities, existing development areas. Um uh and one other thing to keep in mind when hearing these statistics is that these percent changes reflect a

situation where every single acre of proposed change is completely developed, which is very unlikely. Um so that's the I guess the worst case scenario is is a 3% loss overall in the 700,000 acres of of land in the county. Uh at this stage, we're now working on releasing the final draft document uh for official consideration. Uh the next steps for this plan include working with our partners from the city, town, and county on any final revisions, polishing up any final small edits, uh and then releasing the final draft document. Uh we anticipate having that draft completed in the next one to two weeks. Once we have that document finished, uh we'll [clears throat] make it available on our website publicly. Uh and then from there it'll be up to the individual local governments to review the plan, schedule public hearings, and then take a vote on it. Uh that's about where we're at. You have any questions? I'd be happy to answer them. questions from

most of the comments positive or um this second go around we had significantly less uh interaction with the the comments which the last meeting I kind of attributed to a potential you know okay we're okay with it so not really going to comment on it right no news it's good news right right but uh I would say there were a lot more positive comments this this go around a lot more um understanding of the planning process and what this plan actually entails and then a an appreciation of the acknowledgement or you know changing of of potential concerns from the first round.

You mentioned the side highway. So the thought is is that's a non-issue.

So we met with the uh road officials from the city town and county and kind of brainstormed what we could do. There's a lot of discussion about how it wasn't needed, not wanted. Um and so we decided to remove it east of Tanda Barnes. So before it connected to 55 and 74 and then went east of Tana Barnes and made that full connection. The new thought process it's really very loose. It's has almost no actual planning around it yet was just removing that section east of Toronto Barnes, leaving those interchanges and then potentially the barns. Um, but again, that would take a lot of additional planning and reports and whatnot. But the at this point, a full east side highway is is not in the plan. Not something that we think is going to be needed.

Any other questions for

um not a question, but just for the for the planning commission. uh you when after the uh the final report is out and put on the website, we do intend to uh the next step for the planning commission is for you to consider acceptance or receive and file not adopting the plan. Uh uh but then we will leave to the county, the city and the town for their consideration of adopting the plan. So um uh because they handle land use decisions you know when they have resolving requests and special use permit conditional use permits uh like EG you know I J and issues just like near the boundary so they're more directly impacted you know or they can use the recommendations you if the elector body suit you so just want to give you a heads up and we'll give you updated too as we move along. Okay.

Anything else? Uh just for Ry, have any other segments of the regional comprehensive plan kicked off or what's planned after this final draft is ready for the strategic?

Yeah, staff is uh while we're working on the strategic land use plan, you know, we can kind still on the on the back end kind of behind the scene on some existing conditions report. Uh so as soon as the the strategic land use plan is is done and and then move on to the next phase, we'll continue the work on the on the competency plan. And we still shooting for maybe in the fall of 2026 to w up that, but we'll take probably uh higher gear in terms of public funds, you know, in terms of bring it out to the public probably uh beginning of the year. But in the meantime uh uh the holidays and everything that we still want to w up good substance uh the data the existing conditions report so when we take off for the public uh to to digest and to provide input then we've a solid plan to show the public that we continue on that process.

Any other questions? Okay. Is there anything else that needs to come before the commission today? If not, um uh I thank you for being here. Wish we had uh uh more of the commission members so that we could actually take some action on stuff. Um so uh um yeah, you have something else.

Just just sorry miss that uh that may just two things really really quick. uh on public outreach. Uh this past year uh so far we have done a lot of different public events and thanks to Jake your coordination working with different uh groups and organizations we have reached out to uh over 1,500 people in terms of getting the transportation safety message out to the community by participating giving away swags and whatnot to the to the attendees. Um and many of them are kids too and we yeah it's it's fun things for some of the staff who also help out in those at those events. But just the last uh month two months uh we reach out to about 600 folks uh from the day of play uh uh in downtown uh

normal and also trick or treat uh at the square. Uh so yeah, we continue to to try to promote the message of uh safety, transportation. So but again, thanks to Jake and the other staff member who partic who participate and try try to get and make it a safer committee for everyone. Thank you.

Um one last thing, we have a new Sorry, sorry. Uh we do have a new intern uh uh from Illinois University uh because his class schedule cannot join us today. Uh but his name is Rahee. Uh so hopefully he'll be able to make future meetings and then I can introduce him. Okay, that's all. Thanks. Okay, good. Well, um unless there's objection, I'll declare a journ. Thanks. Have a good evening. Thank you. No objections yet.