Board - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening. I want to go ahead and call to order to show the panel board meeting for September 10th of 2026. Heavenly Father, as we gather today, we ask for your wisdom and guidance as we make decisions on behalf of our county. Help us work together with respect and understanding as we seek to protect and serve our families, friends, neighbors, and those who call this community home. On the eve of September 11th, we pause to remember those who have lost their lives, the first responders who answered the call, and the many families who forever changed their lives by that day. May we honor their memory, not only with remembrance, but through our actions. Help us embrace the spirit that followed on September 12th, when people set aside differences, cared for one another, and came together as neighbors and fellow Americans. May that same spirit of unity, compassion, and service guide our discussions and decisions this evening, with this meeting, our community, and all those who are privileged to serve. School Hall, please.

Chris Begg. Present. Tim Brown.

Here.

Carol Holt. Here. Sean Conlon. Present. Julie Edwards. Christy Grant. Jeff Gray. Here. Clay Hardy. Here. Keith Bormann. Christy Matlong. Here. Chad Mayhall. Here. Tim Morris. Here. Austin Pritchard. Here. John Stroll. Here. Larry Seifert. Here. Don Tate. Christy Walker. Here.

Thank you. Move on to item three, which is discussion and vote to approve the board minutes from August 13th and the motion on the minutes by Mr. Gray. This board's on the second. Any discussion? Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Move on to item four, public body comment. As a reminder, we have one side of us which i'll start with first and public comment is at the front and back end of our meeting with a five minute limit okay we'll start off with miss earth good evening my name is sandra arp and i'm from flat branch township and why i'm here tonight

board members is to thank you all for being here and to help our county and also we all have a great concern about this Fox Club project the turbine project coming in we would like to work with all of you and get out as much information and ask for your help and guidance as we can all work together on this there is a Facebook page called Shelby County Wind Farm Awareness that has a lot of information and we would like to invite you all to join that page as we all move forward under this turbine presentation coming to our county. And that's all, thank you. Thank you.

Public funding comment? I've got a comment that I didn't know to sign in. You don't have to.

That was just prior to this.

Okay, cool. So my name is Joe Cochran. I own property near Tower Hill that may be affected by the proposed Fox Glove Wind project. I'm not asking the board tonight to decide the entire wind project. I am asking the board to make sure that every decision involving Foxglove is transparent, documented, and based on the requirements already established by Illinois law and Shelby County's own ordinances. Tonight's agenda includes discussion and a vote on a phase three engineering assistance scope of work from Hutchinson Engineering for Fox Club. Before the board votes, I would like to understand exactly what phase three includes, what it will cost, what deliverables the county will receive, who is paying for it, and where phase one or phase two scopes or reports. application status and setbacks. I would also like the county to clearly state whether Foxglove has filed a formal commercial wind special use application. If it has, what was the filing date? If it has not, then I think the county should clearly distinguish the current road use and engineering work from actual sitting approval. When an application is filed, residents need to access the actual turbine coordinates, turbine model specifications, and maximum blade tip height. Those are necessary to determine whether the proposed locations comply with setbacks. Shelby County's ordinance requires turbine location, spacing, dimensions, and blade tip height. It also requires a setback of 2.1 times maximum blade tip height from non-participating residences and 1.1 times maximum blade tip height from non-participating property loans. IDNR recommendations and an independent review. The August 10th IDNR ECOCAT consultation is also important. It describes Foxglobe as a 46 Vestas V163-4.5 megawatt turbines, approximately 200 megawatts, with commercial operation anticipated in 2029. IDNR recommended that the county require nighttime curtailment below 6.9 meters per second from July 15th through October 15th with the blades feathered. If that recommendation cannot be implemented, IDNR stated that adverse impacts are likely and recommended pursuing incidental take authorization for the listed species. So I would ask, has Foxglove told the county whether it would follow the IDNR curtailment recommendation or whether it intends to pursue an incidental take authorization? I would also ask the county to use independent technical review where appropriate. Shelby County's ordinance requires noise and vibration studies and allows the county to obtain third-party verification at the owner's facility's expense. For a project of this size, the county should not have to rely on studies prepared for the developer.

And lastly, roads draining

Hutchinson Engineering is reviewing haul routes, bridges, culverts, or road conditions. I would ask that the county establish a clear pre-construction baseline so taxpayers are not left arguing later about what damage was caused by project traffic. Illinois law also requires a farmland drainage plan addressing surface and subsurface drainage and repair procedures. Finally, I would ask that the engineering reports, maps, haul route analysis, bridge and culvert studies, and other non-exempt deliverables produced for Fox Club be preserved as a part of the public record and made available to residents. Fox Club is clearly a serious project, but serious projects require serious review. My request is simple. Before final sitting decisions are made, the county should have the actual coordinates, the actual engineering, the actual environmental commitments, the actual road and drainage plans, and a complete record showing compliance with the law. If you need any of that, I think this is being recorded, but I also have a copy of it if anybody needs it of all my questions.

Thank you. Anybody comment?

It might be pretty short. If all data centers are built that are planned, there is not enough electricity to operate them without nuclear power. We are creating some of the most expensive AI in the world. China is creating about the same AI for pennies on the dollar. This is what a lot of companies are using now and not ours because ours has so many hands in the money pool or the money pile. The wind and solar farm tax money is an unbelievable amount of money financed by us with grants and tax breaks and way too many have their hand in the pile and making millions from the taxes provided by us. Then we receive a few hundred thousand from the same company who got rich promoting wind and solar farms and give us back some of the tax money back that was ours to begin with. It reminds me of the old shell game used for centuries to hide where the money really is and where it came from. Kind of reminds me of the $600,000 the city used to purchase the ground for the trestle park so the public could view an old rusty trellis and acres of waste.

Thank you. Public body comment?

My name is John Herron. I'm the zoning administrator. I just want to level set on where we are with Fox Club. I would classify this as the late pre-permitting stage. Lydia has placed two meteorological towers to study information. And the phase three is part of the road use agreement. We need the road use agreement to be completed to do the full permit. It's required. We have to have the road use agreement before we can get the permitting. And with the permitting, we'll actually start to learn about the siting locations. The county is not aware of the siting plans. And then lastly, after the meeting, I'll be over in the zoning office available for limited questions after the meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, John. Public body comment? Public body comment? Public body comment. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to item five, which is a presentation from Brad Porter, who's a CPA with Laura Bachman Amon, who has been working on our fiscal year 2024 audit. So if we've got you, Mr. Porter, it's all yours. Sounds good. Can everybody hear me okay? I think we're good. Thank you.

Excellent. Good evening, everyone. My name is Brad Porter, principal and CPA here on behalf of the Lockhawks and Redmond Audit team. I'm one of many responsible for the preparation of the audit packages before you this evening. I'd like to thank the board for the opportunity to join tonight. It's really hard to believe that I was presenting this week or 2023 audit just six short months ago. I recall during our last meeting mentioning that we are full steam ahead on getting the county back on track with the audit filing. So I hope that helps to kind of paint that picture. In fact, we actually have the 2025 audit on the schedule already for late fall. So we are not too far away from being back to the six month deadline with the comptroller's office. With that, multiple audits in one year has definitely required contributions from many commie staff and I wanted to start with a special thank you to the many folks that have helped get the audits at this point here tonight. I'd also like to give a special thank you to Anna Katniss and her team over at Sickish. Their audit preparation is very thorough and we really appreciated having them as a partner in this equation. At this time, I will provide a very brief overview of documents that will be issued at the conclusion of our fiscal year 2024 audit process. So let me try to share my screen. Looks like I may have to send a request to share, if that would be okay. All right, we should be all set. So bear with me one second. All right, you should find our letterhead. Yes, sir. Very good. So we're going to start with a three page letter that is issued in accordance with Statement of Auditing Standard Number 114. The primary purpose of this document is to say whether or not we have any disagreements or difficulties that we encountered during our fiscal year 2024 audit process. I would like to see sentences here within this letter ultimately stating that we have no difficulties or disagreements with management that we encounter during our audit process. Now we'll move into our annual financial report, and I know I've provided a very lengthy overview of this with my fiscal year 2023 presentation. So again, we'll highlight some key components within our audit document and management letter, but we'll keep things kind of brief. And obviously, if there are any questions after the fact, I think that will get ahold of me, so please certainly can. Now the audit document itself can be quite daunting, so I will focus in on a few of the intangibles within this document, beginning with page one. On page one, you'll find our independent auditor's report. This section here outlines the opinion that we've issued on the financial statements, as well as the responsibilities of both management and the auditors. So from a management perspective, management's primary responsibility is the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements that are provided to us. And our responsibility is to ensure that we are planning and performing an audit designed to detect any material misstatements, whether due to fraud or error. And from there we then generate an opinion on financial statements. I'd like to highlight that, again, for fiscal year 2024, we had issued a county what is known as the unallotified opinion, which is the cleanest form of opinion any entity can receive in government space. Ultimately stating that we as your auditors deal with financial statements are presented fairly in all material aspects. Now that's not to say we didn't have recommendations that we went through in detail in our fiscal year 2023 overview, many of which just still apply due to the timing aspect of that. So I will briefly cover our management letter here. I just want to highlight that we had no current recommendations from our fiscal year 2024 audit process, which is great. Good news there. But as I mentioned, there are a number of prior recommendations. I want to say there are eight to be specific. um that simply due to timing could not have been implemented by the county team so all of those recommendations very much still apply um however i do know that i've been involved in some productive conversations on how the county is taking action on those here in fiscal year 2026 so we look forward to getting things caught up and seeing some of the strikes that the county has made on these And that concludes my coverage of our audit here tonight. I'd be happy to field any questions, comments, or concerns. Any questions for Mr. Porter?

No, thank you. Thank you for the detailed work. Again, You stayed in contact quite a bit. You kept us updated on the process and get delivered in the timeliness that you did. So, I do appreciate that and helping you to get us back on track. So, I'm sure we'll talk to you again soon. Yeah, tomorrow. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Just to kind of take you back on some of the stuff that you said. So, When he says that this information is daunting, there's a lot of numbers in here. So feel free to come grab it if you'd like it. For us, the focus as a committee that has a responsibility of fixing has been working to get those done. So every member was assigned some of the findings from previous audits, and as we mentioned, we have communicated with them to make sure that as we went into fiscal year 26, we tried to remedy some of it. Obviously fiscal year findings from previous weren't available when we set last year. This year's budget, but as we go into fiscal year 27 budget prep right now, We are looking at these findings from previous audits, which are, in this one, repeat audits from previous audits. We are working to implement those changes to enhance the programs, the oversight that they're asking for. So we have seen them, we read them, and in cooperation with some of the board members as well as committee members and newly elected officials writing policies to be implemented as we go into this review process. So the work is being done. Some of it's laborious. It's long. It's certainly very boring to do. But it is necessary for us to get there. I also just want to comment. You know, he mentions working to get us in line with the comptroller. They've done everything they can. This audit's loaded into the comptroller system. It's done. Over the past year, and I've said this before, I've spent a lot of time on the phone working with individuals from IDOP, IDPH, Department of Human Services, as well as recently the comptroller who started implementing daily fines for us for being as August was sat on here for way too long. So we are still suffering the consequences of inaction from some time ago. is assessing the fines, but they're not implementing the fines at this time because they see that we are on a path to getting well and getting healthy. And these folks get there quickly. Two audits in a one-year period is pretty quick. And the anticipation is, in the early throes of 27, we will be done with fiscal year 25. So putting this on track, hopefully, to be really close as we roll into fiscal year 28 to be . But these agencies are upset. Rightfully so. They have people to answer to. They give us a lot of money, and we can't report the time and manner on how we spent it, and how we accounted for it, and what we're doing to get our programs right. And so these folks here in this room have put in a lot of work, sweat and equity, to help make sure that those corrections are being made. But these folks that we hired, primarily with grant money, have got this back on track and getting this on a good healthy plan so i do appreciate the tenacity that life's put in to get us there so thank you so with that i'm going to move on to item six which is a discussion about to accept the fiscal year 2024 audit as presented emotionally All right, seeing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. We're going to move on to item seven, which is a discussion about to approve a special liquor permit for Cantor's Tavern at Teotihuacan to serve and sell alcoholic liquor at No Bad Days Farm in Shelbyville Township from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. on October 23rd for a wedding. I have a motion. Is that a yes? No. Move on to item A, which is a discussion vote to approve the following items, and they will be done slightly out of order. Item A is a 50-50 petition with Rose Township Highway Commissioner to remove and replace a cork located at 1350 East, 1260 North, an estimated cost of $16,745. Item C, safety manual for the highway department. And item D, which is an engineering agreement with Hunter City Engineering for various bridge repair projects around the county, numbered 087-3412, 087-3380, 087-3312, and 087-3100. Could I have a motion on these three items, please? Mr. Gray on motion, Mr. Gaines on second.

Mr. Cavendorf, you're up. All right, thank you, everybody. Going through these, item A is a 50-50 petition with Redis Township. It is to remove a dilapidated pipe that the flow line is rusting out, and we are asking for that to be replaced. um it is above the statutory limits and is is in need of repair so i do recommend that for replacement item b which was the item of discussion a little bit ago Safety item C is the safety manual for the highway department. This is being discussed because OSHA has been visiting other counties. We're trying to be ahead of it and this is basically trying to set a safety manual and also just establish safety protocol in our highway department. This is specifically for the highway department so that you just have good safety practices. so item d engineering agreement with hutchinson engineering for various bridge pair bridge repair this is trying to be proactive in keeping bridges that are existing in good condition there are some conditions with these four specific bridges we're trying to be ahead of spending smaller amounts of money now is going to save these bridges in the future which are multi-million dollar But it would be multi-million dollar bridges for . This is all, this is supposed to be, intention is to be paid for Township Bridge, the state fund as well. So it's not going to be local tax money. So that is AC&D. If there's any questions on those. Any questions or discussion on these three ?

The Hutchinson Engineering has also mentioned B. So we're employing them in D for just general bridge repair throughout the county, no particular purpose other than upkeep. Is the Hutchinson Engineering in B, is that? I mean, they're being paid by Fox Club, correct, in that circumstance?

That is the intent. I can discuss that during a little bit. OK. All right. So item B would be paid out of Township Bridge. Item B is going to be paid by . I can go with that here in a little bit. OK.

Vane? Yes. Brown? Yes. Cole? Yes. Conlon? Yes. Edwards? Yes. Gray? Yes. Hardy? Yes. Malin? No. Mahle? Yes. Morris? Yes. Pritchard? Yes. Stroll? Yes. Seifert? Yes. Wofford? Yes. Wallace? Yes. Wood? No. Yannis? Yes. Motion passes, 15 ayes, 2 nays, Brownlock, Enwood. OK, thank you.

Now we're back to item B, the discussion of the Phase III engineering assistance scope of work for Hutchinson Engineering for Fox Club women project at Emotional Society, please. All those in favor on the motion, we'll second it.

Okay, all right, thank you. So this is basically loosely following the QBS procedures of the state. This is not an engineering agreement that will actually be coming next month or in the next few months to do an actual engineering agreement with them. This is choosing the engineer For what is considered phase three, some good questions were brought up. Phase three is this different terminology also for construction engineering. So construction engineering is just oversight of construction, not doing any actual design or anything like that. So whatever is going on in the actual design is whatever Fox or Linea or whoever it is pursuing. So as far as the cost, the precedent has been set for other counties that the developer has paid 100% of the cost. No local tax funds are intended to be used to pay Hutchinson Engineering. That is all part of the discussion with the road use agreement that we are still going through. So the road use agreement will establish how we pay. Likely that's something we're still negotiating. have troubles with that they're not i'm not intending to use any mobile tax money to pay for touches and engineering okay so let me try this plan please so

B, they're hired by the developer, not by us. We are going to be hired. Okay, so we go and do they have a choice in who they hire or are there only certain companies that do that?

They are an engineering firm. This is an engineering firm that's going to act on our behalf to assist us.

Okay, so B, the phase three, that has to do with the road use agreement. Which that has to be in place.

They would even assist with making sure a road use agreement. This is going to make sure that they would help with negotiations in the county side for the road use agreement permits just as an expert opinion in specific for wind and wind farms.

okay so they basically serve like as a consultant to us yes that does what we need to do which then helps the road use agreement is required as part of the permit process they have to have that in place before it can even be approved unfortunately yes so there's a lot of work that happens before it gets approved and we have no i mean we can't we have to follow through with the road use agreement we can't just

I do need a road use agreement. So yes, it is a road use agreement, which is still in negotiation. It's something we're still working through. It's going to discuss the cost of how that's all handled. So the pre-survey, which was discussed as well, is typically a part of the road use agreement. Typically, so long as the road use agreement is continued as we have it, they would be responsible for a survey before and after to ensure that there was no damage, no drainage, and the roads are at least in as good or better condition that they were before. That is the intent. The point of this will be to protect the roads and drainage and make sure it's done right. That is the point of what we're discussing. Any other questions?

Have phase one and phase two already happened, or what are, I mean, last month?

Sure, absolutely. Yes. So I use phase three as a terminology claim. It's IDOT's terminology, phase three is construction oversight. It probably would have been better to not label it that. Phase one and two is, in my terminology, is environmental engineering and design engineering. So like the environmental of reaching out to the ID&R All the other environmental stuff would have been phase one. Phase two is the actual design and placement of the turbines. If it was an IDOP project, that's how we would do it. And I think they're happening concurrently likely right now without knowing all the details of what Fox Club is doing. So the county's only likely going to be involved in the phase three. So that's why. or construction engineering side of things. So phase one and phase two are technically happening right now, and hopefully that answers your question. Thank you.

I want to highlight a couple things, and since there's parents here too, so between the two of you, if I speak at a school, right? So we'll run through a couple things. Because I look around the room, and we have a lot of folks here that showed up that are frustrated that it appears that things are being held back from them, right? So if I run through a couple of these things, hopefully this clears some of this up on your part. The project is not permitted yet, correct? That's correct. So it's in the referred to as the late permitting stage, which is the time for permitting the road use agreement and information from IEMR as well as environmental surveys have to be provided at that time. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. And a part of this, if I've read the information that's been sent to me up to this point, right, there are already some preliminary concerns about endangered species and other animals. Is that correct? Yeah. I bring this up, there's probably more, but I'm forgetting because I get more information in a day sometimes, and I can take that a little out. But we are seeing some of the information up front, right? We are seeing some of the preliminary data, I guess, in the situation of, especially when we look at our environmental concerns, right? We look at whether our migratory birds or other endangered species, these things are already being considered and looked at by several agencies. And we are seeing some of that data come through in advance. Mr. Aaron does a fantastic job of communicating. If you've ever spent any time with him and he just offered to meet anybody who wants to go with him over to the zoning office after this meeting, I expect you'll walk away from that encounter as pleased as I am every time that he either calls me. We talk face to face. right? Being an old school military guy who spent an awful lot of time at a senior level at a certain point, I don't have time to read everything to make decisions. And he presents the information to me of like, here's the main issue, here's everything in the data in between, bottom line, this is the assessment, right? So for me, I trust the up front, and I trust the back end. If I need to verify, I know the data's in the middle somewhere. So just understand that he is doing his part very, very well. He is very intuitive. He's very intelligent. He's very up to all things. And he truly cares, right? There's not a guy in there that probably gives a damn more about some of this stuff than he does. He'll spend five minutes with him, and I think he'll walk away understanding that assessment as well. So I guess a couple questions I have then at this point. So for permitting to take place, road use agreement has to be in place. Is that correct? Yes. So is that their responsibility? They have to fulfill that obligation. So by holding off and not allowing for the road use agreement to take place, we are essentially holding them up, which then holds up the project, which also suggests it's potentially new to the plan. Is that a fair assessment? Yes. So this hiring of this engineering firm, to reiterate, is not coming out of local funds, right? This is being made for by...

This is not to be local funds. Yeah, so this would be funded by Box 11. What's that? Yes, the developer, yes.

I have one question specific to that issue, and I think it might hit on what Christine was getting at, is oversight firm consultants kind of only positioning ideally pay for the developer right yes but there is a scenario where you put in her costs once they've been retained developer falls through county is on the book for those funds right i mean until we have a roadies agreement that states how this is all finalized

Yes, I'd say there is a potential, but I don't want to pursue us having to pay anything. If things are tight enough, I don't need to pay an engineering firm for that.

I just wanted to be clear that that is a potential. With some of the other firms that we've hired recently, that is something that has come up. If for some reason the billable were to fall through, we have already reached County, not me, but County has already retained them.

If we do retain them and this does fall through, what kind of dollars is this county looking at to cover this cost?

I mean, are we talking $50,000? Are we talking $500,000? I mean, no, we wouldn't be doing major engineering first. It's likely an engineer sitting in on a meeting, I mean, it would be a few hundred to a thousand, a couple thousand dollars, likely.

I guess my follow-up question is, when you say that, does the state give us a choice? I mean, we're all here tonight because the state doesn't, they don't give us a choice. They're telling us to do X, Y, Z, A, B, and C, and just do that. So do we even have a choice to do it this way? The engineering firm Hutchinson is to protect us and these people out in the gallery. Do we have a choice to just...

The choice is your highway department do it or the highway department farms it out to the engineering firm. Fair?

Yes. We'll try and take on everything that we can. That is my intent. But I know that talking to other counties, it is a major engineering feat and it's more than what I could take on and making sure it gets handled correctly.

So the permit itself, the road permit, is going to protect the county in that if there's damage to the roads during this,

there's the fox club has been responsible for fixing our roads correct so if we don't have anything in place does that mean that we're we have to fix our own roads because this isn't going to stop anything from going on this is to protect the county on the condition of our roads after this is done yes so if we don't have this permit there's nothing in writing saying that fox blood has to repair any damage to our roads or drainage, correct? Correct. Yeah.

So there's two points to this. So you brought up both of them in one. I want to make sure they are separated, right? So the board passed the ability or the requirement for road disagreements on these projects, all projects, right? We even went back and found somebody was using our roads in a different part of the county. and quickly putting road use agreement on there they're like hey stop knocking our stuff over get it fixed right so that's the first one the road use agreement is for that and if i speak it's possible tell me hiring hutchinson is to help them develop the road use agreement and what the for the roads, waterways, et cetera, will be, right, to then deliver to the developer going, here's the thing, when you're done, it's gonna look like this.

Is that fair or not, at least? I think we are on the same base, yes. They're going to assist us in making sure everything is done correctly, that it's as good or better than what it was. That is the assessment.

And just as a recap, since we have a full house, when the, the major to require road use agreements right to even apply they gotta pay five thousand dollars right to even apply for a road use agreement up front it's five thousand dollars for the county to you know whether we need additional outside assistance on some of this

And we could make it a part going back that negotiations, we need to have some of this up front to help with paying for some of the costs. We'll discuss that as well.

Good idea.

I like that negotiation.

Yeah. What he just said about putting money up front and putting it somewhere in an account

that we have in case something happens we have that money sure i mean i'm not sure we require it right but we sat here and worked with the developer not too long ago and went from no money up front to all money up front by the time the meeting was over so i certainly think we do have some ability to speak up and make sure we're putting protections in place to make sure we're not left in our situation

So do we need to do that phase before moving forward with this?

So I think that phase is a part of that phase. It's part of the negotiation. And it needs to build into that. That begins everything. And I don't like the part where they have to make the roads as good or better. I don't like the as good. leave them alone and they're as good. I'm sure they're going to make them better, but I just don't like them as good in there. I would have much appreciated it more better.

If anybody has questions, they can call or email me.

I'd be happy to go through more details on anything.

All right, so between the two of you, did I leave anything on the table unanswered or incorrect? Thank you.

Yes, sir. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Michael John 22 probably answered this. Just so everybody is aware, the state has set forth what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. If we try to put a stop to it, then the state steps in and we're on the hook and there could be legal action. is that correct that is correct sir okay just just so everybody's aware that we as a county board we don't have hardly any say in this

Sure, but we do have some say, right?

And I think we proved that with the first project that did run through this board is you do have a voice, right? We did speak up and, you know, we went from a little up front to everything up front to make sure that essentially the landowner, right, and the local land was protected in the event of some sort of either, you know, mishap or an ID commission.

a comment you know i i have been 15 years ago i was a proponent of windmills and solar panels i thought they were the greatest thing i even when i was a kid i used to love the windmills that pumped water you know and i remember they used to be all over the place remember and they slowly disappeared People got tired of putting up with intermittent power. When the wind doesn't blow in, you're going to have to get your water pump. And so they went to electric, an electric line from a power plant, or my grandpa used a gas motor. This intermittent stuff is ridiculous. And we're talking about shutting down other power plants like Kincaid and maybe the one over here on the other side of the river. What are we doing? Why would we pick this stupid idea of having half-time electricity? And we sit here and we talk about this primrose path that they're leaving us down. They're getting real damn good at it. They started up north with these windmills and they put them in. And as they're building them, they're coming down this way. Well, it's been 20, 25 years. And guess what? The ones up north are coming down now. So they're building them down here, and they're tenured down up there. They're a joke. I went to school for this stuff, and I can tell you they're a joke. They'll never produce their... And I used to think, well, look at this. This is so cool. They put this here mast up here, and if the generator goes bad, they can just take it down, put another one up. That's not the case. No, no, we can't do that because of the vibration of the wind. And so the base is loose, so we can't even use that. If they got hundreds of yards of concrete and rebar that they buried in the ground, I talked to someone. This did not come from where I...

I'm going to have you narrow your scope a little bit just due to the fact that we're on a topic here and not a personal discussion about this, right? There will be one more public body comment at the end, but we are on a larger topic here.

Okay, well, I'll have some more public body comment. These things are jokes. I don't know, what do you think about what Trump says? I love what Trump says. Okay, okay. We're gonna go back on that.

All right, we'll talk about this later. I have a question. Yeah, thank you. Any other discussion on that?

I just have one comment. The way that this is worded with phase three, I think that that would have pulled out of the problem because we're one and two, and that's just the terminology. I think we all understand that now about the base three part of the system. But it is something that has to be done prior to the permitting statement. And if we don't approve this, I think we're going to have other problems.

Yeah, I guess my assessment is that I'd rather have somebody in the corner that's looking to protect our roadways than want to waste on something that we don't have to because the decision's all right. At least if I could be able to make the decision to know that we're not today, as good, both that issue and the issue of our roadways go. So, yes, ma'am.

Just want to thank John, Michael. Everybody's been involved with this group, Pat. I mean, this is new for us. I'm glad everybody came tonight. Thank you. Just a word of caution or just a kumbaya moment, I guess. Remember, we're all new to this. Some people are for it, some people aren't. I know how my constituents feel about it. I know how I feel about it. We have been given a very narrow ability to move. it comes to this when it comes to wrinkles and every day that changes so john is a part-time guy and he's working full-time hours basically to make this happen a lot of us do a lot of things at night early in the morning to try to get the best for for our taxpayers but i encourage everyone to remember um i think there comes a time where it looks like you're headbutting Be sure that you're not shoulder to shoulder with somebody and you don't feel the same way about it. Because I think sometimes it gets misconstrued, especially with social media. You're not sure, well, so and so is upset with the board. I think everyone in this room probably knows we're doing our best to get this taken care of. To follow the law and get what everybody wants out of it. And it's hard. It's really hard to be moved from. But be sure that if... There's apparently two groups that are involved in this. If you have a spokesperson that handles all of the PR stuff, let them handle the PR stuff. Because the more FOIA requests, the more emails, the more sit-downs that John has to do or any of us have to do, the less time that we can spend fighting the battle. So just be aware everybody's trying to communicate, but if, you know, if I get eight FOIA requests in one day, I've got five days getting done. Well, that means that those other five things that were on the plate that day can't get done. So just be conscious of your time and be sure, if you have some time to say, what can I do to help? That's wonderful. Pass this information on to people. Now that I've given you this pile of stuff to ask for, please, please share it. If there's something that's not readily available, sometimes it's not readily available, but you did for it from three or four years ago, please be understanding that those things all take time out of his day for him to come up with those items. And if it's really, really important, great, but try to narrow your scope as best you can to make it easier, and you will end up getting, I mean, the lion's share of what you want. So hopefully we can get through this together.

Thanks. Yes. Brown? What are we voting on?

I don't know.

B. To hire B. OK. OK.

Yes. Holt? Yes. Conlon? Yes.

Edwards? Yes.

Greg? Yes. Hardy? No. Matlock? Yes. Mayhoff? Yes. Morris? Yes. Pritchard? Yes. Stroll? Yes. Seifert? Yes. Walker? Yes. Wallace? Yes. Wood? Yes. Yantis? Yes. Motion carries, 16 ayes, one nay.

All right, move on to item nine. This motion votes to approve a resolution for Shelby County as a trustee to acquire all packages pursuant to public act 404-0553. I have a motion to sign it, please. I vote for Mr. Barrett in second. Mrs. Matlock? The law was changed with the effect July 1st that changes how tax sales are performed. If you'd like a very detailed description of what that looks like, you'll have to ask somebody else because it took a 42-page PDF for me to get a basic image changed, and I still don't use one of them. So essentially what we're doing is adding, if that's all right with you, a little bit of

Essentially what we're doing is we're taking the tax buyers out of the equation and letting the trustee take all of the certificates that would have been sold in the past. What changes is how one gets a tax deed now. But instead of having all of the tax buyers, the trustee will handle everything.

So the resolution was created. We got people who called around, or the clerks called around, getting some ideas from other counties. OK, where does this stand? What is your approach? So we're aware that, due to the fact that this is a brand new law, it's clearly not completely understood by everybody. And we're doing the best we can to at least put this process into place, because we have obligations in October that have to be done this way. So since the resolution was created, apart from that, I will entertain any questions or discussion and do my best to do so.

Okay, I'm going to give this a shot. So it used to be, is this the same process where it used to be if tax is going to be paid so many years that they could be purchased by an individual and sold at the tax sale?

It's the same process. It's the same process, except instead of having the tax sale where the taxpayers come, the trustee will take all of the delinquent parcels and then After a three-year period, there will have to be like an auction, which they do now for parcels that taxpayers will get deeds on. But also now, instead of somebody buying a, for example, a $500,000 house for $5,000, whoever has equity in that property gets their equity back. It's very complicated, convoluted, in my opinion. But there was a Supreme Court decision, Tyler versus Hennepin. This impacts more so the treasurer's office than it does the council. It's our process, thank God. It doesn't change a lot. But since the tax sale is coming up and things have to be published, it's kind of vital that we get this done.

Does this cost us money? Do we pay them?

The trustee, we have a contract with the trustee. And they handle a lot of parcels now. But it's not as apparent what they handle because they have tax buyers. And the trustee normally takes all of theirs at 0%. So again, we really don't have a choice.

We have to vote on this before October. Right.

It doesn't mean again, we're aware that there are groups that are, you know, bobbing for a change to this. So there might be a change that we make down the road. But with the information we have, this is the best approach with the information we have at this time.

So the trustee is a different company?

Right. Our current trustee is Joseph E. Meyer & Associates. They're in Edwardsville. In fact, they represent the majority of counties in the state of Illinois.

So they determine who, I guess I'm not understanding, once they get the tax bill, what do they do with it?

What they'll do is, for people that don't pay their taxes, you know, these taxing districts still have to get their money. That's why there's a tax sale. But Joseph E. Milne pretty much handled all of the processes that are required by law from the tax sale until the parcel has to be sold at auction. And I do anticipate more cleanup language and more changes to this House bill as the state moves forward. I just don't know what those are going to be.

passes. Move on to item 10, which is a discussion vote to approve a temporary moratorium on data center permits. I have a motion to approve. Mr. Prichard, Ms. Bain, all second. Apart from the buses, which I'll talk about later, this is the topic that I do get tapped on the shoulder more than others lately, which is the influx of data center production in certain areas. And the committee got together, drafted a moratorium to give the county a year to figure out what the impact would be. Again, in the vein of protecting our friends, neighbors, and our natural resources, is to put a moratorium on data centers being built in Chilling County. So with that, everybody's got a copy of it. If anybody has any questions, comments.

i just have a question will this moratorium hold up against the state like will that overrule the state because the state sets guidelines of what we can and can't do so is this moratorium to hold up against those rules or is this just something where we're saying listen shelby county does not want data centers um either way i mean either way it's fine i'm just trying to get clarification so at this point we're not aware of the state having guidance or you know telling us what we can and can't do

That was on the wind and solar.

Never mind. Sorry.

So that's the point. We're not being told.

So this is just kind of a proactive.

Okay. Yeah. We have waterways. We have lands that we want to protect until we have full understanding of what these impacts could be to these businesses. Okay, seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Aye.

All right, we'll move on to item 11, which is discussion of vote two. Where is this? It's in Dry Point Township.

I didn't know that. It's on the main road in Cowden if I looked at my map right.

Any other comments or session questions?

It's on the main road.

Is it commercial? Not to my knowledge. I'll be honest with you. I don't know. Any other comments? But it does put it back on the tax hold. Well, I mean, we're getting the money, but we're not paying the money.

All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, motion passes. Move on to item 12, committee reports. Okay, so now we move on to chairman updates. couple things so i mentioned the buses a minute ago one of the things over the past you're gonna have two years is just a surplus of uh inaudible buses that sit in the middle of town and we've had a press to see if we can get those moved along and so today i signed 19 titles for disposition, and so hopefully over the next few months we will start to see those buses sold off either for scrap or we're, my understanding is we have some buyers that might want to buy some of the buses, but they are, they haven't signed for it to be sold as of today, so you should see that a lot start to empty up and create some space. The only thing that I've got is we are well into budget prep season. And, plus we learned from a few years ago, it was waiting for the last minute. Certainly didn't talk to anybody when it came to budget prep, and so we started working in July and August last year, and we're doing the same this year. And so, if anybody that's not on the budget committee would like to be a part of that process, don't hesitate to reach out to a member of that committee. They've all been given kind of their assignment right the departments that they're working with to shape up ask questions and develop their budget for fiscal year 27. it is a valuable process to learn um so is the levy so people learn that process By all means, tap one of us on the shoulder and be a part of it. If you would like the list, I know we'll send you who's working with who on this. But the divide and conquer process where we worked last year, and then we're able to get back together as a committee and finalize the budget and turn the show over and not take months and several extra meetings to be able to get that done. So I appreciate the cooperation on that so far because it has been really helpful. All right, so we move on to item 14, which is appointments. I have the following. This is Greg Kuhn, Commissioner of the Drains District, trustee for a three-year term. This is Annie Hinton, Commissioner of the Combined Drains District in Kuhn, the town of Tower Hill for a three-year term. In Kuhn, Commissioner of the Drains District, the number one township. flat branch in Assumption for a three-year, two-term. Judy Elbert, commissioner of Irvine-Clarksville and Shenville townships for district number one for a three-year term. All in motion. All in favor please abstain. I second Ms. Matlock. Any questions or discussion on the appointments? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Move on to item 15. Okay. Moving on to item 16, which is a discussion vote to approve the payment of claims. I have a motion to approve the claims. Will Ms. Reagan call second? Any commentary or adjustments from audience? No. Okay. Any other questions or discussion regarding payment of claims? Okay, see if none, we'll call vote, please.

Thank you.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Thank you. Moving on to item seventeen. Public body comment. Yes sir. Yeah, I have two things.

First on the engineering, I think it's good to have an engineer. But when it comes down to the road usage agreement, will the local township, boards,

And I don't normally get a lot of back and forth on this, but I do want to make sure that we're answering your questions on some of these things. Because, again, you guys took your time to come out, so I want to make sure everybody knows you're here.

So I'll defer. Yes, the road commissioners are definitely going to have info. We're going to have a sit-down meeting with us, attorney, and everybody. Yes, I definitely want their input.

Yeah, because they know the roads better than anybody. Absolutely. And the second thing is, you talked about the limited ability of the board. There's been a court ruling. Tate Road Solar versus the County of Winnebago. And it's been upheld by the fourth appellate court and it gave the county back a lot of their rights and ability to, you can't just go by the actual, it didn't give them the ability just to say, no, we don't want it. But they turned down the solar project and it gave them the ability to do that i would like everybody to look into that ruling and it does give the county board an expanded ability to probably like for the environmental aspects and economical aspects and it does give the county right now more power could you do that for the sake of writing it down it was tate solar versus the county of Winnebago. And it was a lower court ruling, and it was upheld by the fourth appellate court. So it does return some of the ability back to the county.

This was for solar?

It was a solar project, but I think it would apply to any project. Is it T-A-I-T? T-A-T-E, I believe.

All right, thank you.

it's joe cochran again and just to piggyback on what mike said um that even though it was a solar project it still follows under the same lma compiled statute under um it's it's under solar and wind applications so that's and so far it's been upheld so i just wanted to throw that in there too thank you

from here originally into Moore County, Indiana. Big wind farm went in over there. There's another neighboring county, Fitton County, that was able to stop some of the wind farms that you mentioned that didn't have much leverage to do. They changed a lot of the setbacks to make it where it wasn't feasible to go in. It would be too close to any property line because it was a huge field. So I think there is stuff that could be done.

along that line so okay thank you for that so before i go any further i will tell you that since today i did send our budget options legislative committee an email with a couple of others and spoke to the state's attorney to figure out how we if we can structure some sort of committee specific to renewables What that framework looks like, I don't know. We certainly have requirements such as meeting act requirements and other things that we would want to look at following. I have a concept in mind of what it could look like. Certainly making sure that every district is represented. What that looks like, I don't know. What it looks like legally, I don't know. But I do think it's important to get the feedback and concerns addressed. are willing to put in the work to do the research, right? Again, bringing us information regarding a particular ruling that might help in some of this sort of stuff. Environmental, economical, concerns right these things are certainly important because this is our home we live here and those are the things that we need to be looking at right what's good for another county isn't really relevant to us but it doesn't mean we can't take ideas from from other places of what's worked for them as well, and I think it's important for us to get that idea shared together. You know, while I think that social media is fine, social media sometimes is also not fine. And I'd like to find a way to get a collective group of people together to work in the same direction, right? I don't want one-minded thinking, right? I do want abstract, good, solid idea generating. with solid fact-based information and data on information. I would take ideas and suggestions as well as far as what that framework would look like. So ideally, we come up with some sort of framework and we run it through all the potential challenges or what ifs, what are we missing, what legal parameters are we missing that might be involved here. And we have an organizational meeting for the new board meeting sworn in in December. We set the rules for the board at the meeting in December to establish a new committee. If it's actually an official county committee, it would be done at that time. So that gives us between now and the second week in December to pull something like this together. And so again, I'm willing to hear those ideas, suggestions. It doesn't mean all the to place them all into the bowl and see what we can come up with. So I do appreciate you putting me aside. And again, I understand the passion. I understand the opinion base to this. And I understand the fear that comes with all of this. It is different. It's something we're not used to. This is our home. We want to protect our homes. So I get it. So with that, public body comment.

If some of these people are interested in that committee can they get in touch with you through um the county email is the best way to get in touch because i talked to a young lady today and i think she would be perfect for that committee um you know they have a lot of concerns just like we have a lot of concerns and if we can get a good group of people you know not just 10 people we get a good group of people with lots of ideas that's that's what we need we need more help so you know get in touch with tab had an angle on the shelter county website so yeah we thank you all for coming and take up john's offer to go over to his office and he can answer a lot of questions for you

i just had a couple comments my name is joe ryland with the laborers union i just wanted to add if this project does happen you can certainly ask for things like a project labor agreement that's a tool that you have almost like making sure that your roads are in tip-top shape when it's done you got a ton of these projects usually operating engineers the laborers and electricians all of which tons in shelby county right here so that's something you can ask for this project does happen

uh there's a project labor agreement on it so we can ensure people from the area go to work thank you hello buddy comment hello buddy comment hi my name is jillian um i was the only lady i did not come prepared to speak today um this is all new to me but i am here to uh stand up for our land, protect our land. I actually got to speak with some of you guys today. So I do thank you for your emails back to me. I am the one who's kind of running the social media. I have amazing . So I have got to sit here and listen to a lot of you speak about the land and how much you guys love this land. I'm all new to this. I'm new to the whole even party. I got to marry into an amazing family that loves this land, that has taught me to love this land. And so I'm just asking that if you have information, please contact our Facebook page. We are working together on putting things together to get out information. Anything that you have regarding laws, roads, drainage, Even if you've been contacted by them, we are asking that you speak to us, give us that information so we can gather it and give the correct factual information because unfortunately there's not a lot of information out there.

Thank you.

All right, public body comment? Public body comment? Public body comment?

Yeah, you know, here we are, sitting here, 250 years of freedom. And we're putting up with people telling us how we're doing in our county. I don't get it. You know, why do we have to go by their plan? I mean, could we do our own energy? What if we put a water turbine in a dam, you know? Why do we have to go by their plans, is my question. It's a recipe for failure. China makes a bunch of these windmills. They sell them all over the world. They don't even use them. And, you know, I've seen some people, some pretty spunky people look back years ago. They put up these solar panels. I thought, that's cool, you know. Well, later on when the solar panels pooped out, he just kind of let the whole thing go. He didn't go back and put them up. I think they're probably not worth the time. We talked about green. There's nothing wrong with carbon dioxide. Our plants love carbon dioxide. They're so afraid of this carbon dioxide. There's nothing wrong with carbon dioxide. It's a natural process that God put in place. We talked about the schools. How much, oh, it's going to help the schools. Isn't that the way they sold us the gambling thing? Oh, the schools is going to benefit so much Well, what good is it going to do for the kids to go to school and maybe get a computer and all these computers, all this stuff, whenever they can't get out of school and they can't afford their utility bill? What good is that? Let me see. You know, and I'm not against landowners. I want them to make lots of money. I really do. And I think the landowner and the solar people and for the Wind turbine people, if they can go together and put something up and make lots of money out of it, good for them. But they want you to pay for it and they want your kids and your grandkids to pay for it. Is that a good idea? They're leading us down a primrose path. They're getting real good at it because they've been doing it for a long time. And you get left with nothing. They want to shut down Kincaid. They've got various power plants they want to shut down. Is that a wise idea? We sat here and they got us arguing about this. Oh, well, get this here maintenance agreement on the roads. We're going to take care of the roads for you when we do this project. If we do this project, yeah. Why shouldn't they pay for the road if they've done the project? Are they just going to, you know, if we don't sign it, they're going to come tear our roads up and say, there, you're stuck with it. And we act like we can't do nothing about it. Don't we have a state's attorney? We pay her, don't we? Why do we have to put up with what Pritzker and all Yeah, I also happen to know, it's not from anybody that I work with, other people have told me that when they put these windmills up, one windmill takes between 8,000 to 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel to construct one. So how green is that? Right off the bat, before it even turns, speaking of that, before it even turns, President Trump made this comment, I don't know how much you put in President Trump when he says this, He said every time the windmills go around, it costs $1,000. I think that's probably pretty accurate. You know, something else about freedom here, too. You people that all bought your generators, you got your home generators, one of these days, whenever they got intermittent power, they'll be commandeering your generator to power up the grid. So just think about that. Let me see, what else do I have here? Why do they always want to use the land, the farmland? You know, it's always about the farm. Why don't they put them over a parking lot? You know where they have your car sitting in the shade under a solar panel? Your car would stay cool all day. You wouldn't have it sun fade. But they always want to put them on the farm ground. You know, how many people are going to starve because we're taking thousands of acres out of commission? It's not about the environment. It's not. It's about control. Okay, well, I don't know. I guess I covered about everything I could think of right off the bat. We better think real hard. They got us going on. We're all thinking about this, you know, talking about this, and they got it all set up. They know what they're going to do, and they're going to do it. Because we're sitting here going a long way.

China ranks number one in the world for installed wind power capacity. That's all I got.

You have one minute and 52 seconds left, JD. You say China ranks number one in the world for installed wind power capacity?

Biggest one in the world.

I just want to...

remind everyone that when it was first brought to us on the women's solar it was explained to us that we cannot make the state's regulations any less you know in other words we can't mess with their regulations we can make we can decrease in other words we can cut down are the closest to the roads and all that kind of stuff, but we cannot increase that. So they don't want us messing with their laws. All we can do is more or less just do what they tell us to. If you want to kind of impact this, I'm not sure this is the level. I think you need to be talking to the people in Springfield.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.