Board - Regular Meeting

There were questions on there challenge and say this doesn't have the answer and then tell them why. This test is like 900 questions and nobody's passed it. So everybody's short on even basic levels. Yeah. Yeah. I was so surprised when he said, "I can't take that to that patient with that antibiotic going." And I'm like, "What? You guys always transport with me?" And since I think just recently or something new employee required to be Well, I don't I don't I'm not sure why specifically libraries, but

libraries. that where homeless hang out during the day all day huge problem. Yeah, it's the whole system is on the verge of a real crash cuz there's only so many times you call out [music] wait 40 minutes, 50 minutes. Yeah. I mean, I I just hope that Hey everybody,

Tad's not going to be here and I get to do this. So, I like [clears throat and laughter] the people. We'll get through it. Okay, let's um we'll do the pledge first. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pray. Gracious God, as we face important decisions in this meeting, we seek your divine guidance. Grant us the wisdom to make choices that align with your will. Help us to consider the needs of all involved and lead us towards decisions that bring about positive outcomes. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Teresa May present. Tam Brown. Carol Cole here. Julie Edwards here. Chrissy Grant. Jeff Gray here. Clay Murray here. Keith McCormick. Christine Matlaw here. Tad Mayo, Trisha [clears throat] Miller here, James Mitchell, Tim Moors here, Jean Price, Austin Preacher here, John Stroll here, Mary Cipher here, Don Tate here, Chrissy Walker, Brent Wallace, Judy Wood here. We [snorts] form. Okay, I need a motion to approve the minutes from the November 13th meeting. So move.

All second. All in favor? I believe body comment one.

Okay, go ahead. I I brought my timer, Jake. So I got to set my timer. Okay. So, uh I went to the clean great alliance meeting at the engineers building the other night. I heard an awful lot about how great they were the things they were going to do for us. So, I've been doing some reading up on it. And in the next 5 years, our electrical grid needs about 50% more electricity. So, there's no real place for that to come from. So, one of their few choices is to have solar farms and uh wind farms. But the but the reason we have to have them is because they have all these u data centers all the way across the country that use hundreds of millions of gallons of water every year. So when when they open these as a rule if they open a large one, especially out west, they lower the water table till not only do they take the crops out of the field here, but they they ruin the irrigation system because they lower the water level. So these what these people are telling us, they're helping us. We're supporting them. We're giving them a huge tax breaks. Uh we're guaranteeing our loans. Uh just because we can have data centers. Well, I read some people say we need both. Well, we may need both, but food and water is necessary and a d a data center we can live without, especially if it's going to destroy the water system. I don't I don't understand. I guess I guess Prrisker and these other companies like Clean Grid Alliance uh

they think that uh data centers are more important than having farm ground and raising crops. I believe I would have to disagree with them. I think raising crops and having a water supply is much more important than a data center. We we live without data centers for years. I never heard of one. never heard of computer when I was raised and we got along just fine without them. But we never can we can't get along without food and water. So we're kind of the bread basket of the world in the Midwest and we feed not only a lot of our country but part of the rest of the world. [clears throat] So we shouldn't be taking one acre out of crop production in my opinion at least to provide data centers that we don't need. I even read today where Google said eventually on their data centers they were going to put more water back in than they took out. So I guess they're figured they're going to cause it to rain because I don't know how you could put more water back in the system than you took out. So, uh, we had they had eight people there supposed to be experts on on this clean grid alliance, but of course they didn't want to mention the fact that the buck of the money that they create is going to data centers that uh, not only they raise the utilities in almost every area where they go, but they mess up the water supply. So, I don't know what our governor's point is or what their point is or what the point of the whole country is. At the end of 2025, they claim the United States will have 45% of the data centers in the world. They'll have around 5,400 of them and there's about 5,000 more planned. So, I mean, do we need almost as many data centers as the rest of the whole

world does? Or I mean, what does a stop? there's no limit to amount of program they can use or at least I haven't seen one. I've asked that question before, but no one could tell me. So, I I just think the ed the public maybe needs to be a little better educated on where the money goes and where it comes from from these solar farms and wind farms. I don't really think we need I don't think we should take one acre and give it to them of good farm ground. [clears throat]

some of our most premium farm brand they're using and they don't really see here because it's much more important to them to have a data center. [cough and clears throat] I'm done. Okay. Thank you.

Public body comment. So, I too was at the Kring Grid Alliance meeting and they are a nonforprofit on the premise of uh community education. And so, the thing that bothered me along I I agree with what Jake was saying. Um they say the cost to build one turbine is um a million dollar per megawatt of production. So, the average turbine is 3.6 megawatt. So, that's $3.6 million to build one turbine. That seems uh like pretty expensive to me. Um Illinois right now um has in their cues scheduled to build 10.62 megawws of wind power. So, that's $10.6 million of of construction just for the turbine alone. And then that's out of our 900,000 acres of farm ground in Illinois, that's 10 million 10.6 million acres being taken by turbines. That's quite a substantial amount of farm ground not being farmed. Each turbine takes between 1 to 1 and 1/2 acres of land to construct. They go 6 ft deep with concrete, but when the they're decommissioned, they're only by law required to take 48 in of that 6 foot and put dirt back over the top of 48 in deep. So, they're leaving 2 ft of concrete in the ground or more. That that's based on today's construction, not 10 years ago construction. Um they their own paperwork they gave us gave us three different numbers for property

taxes paid in Illinois. One paper said $77.6 million was paid by the wind companies as property tax. Another paper said $81 million. Another paper said $101.5 million. And the professor that spoke said that in 2023 the wind turbines paid $556 million in property taxes in Illinois. So we heard multiple numbers thrown around and it all sounds great. You get millions and millions of dollars if you just put in a wind farm. But they claim that the local construction jobs um you know it'll make a lot of jobs for our communities. Well, not necessarily because they're not all local. They're from all over the US. One of the guys that was a construction worker that spoke was from Texas. He lives in Windsor right now because he's constructing in Windsor. So, yeah, he's local because he just moved here. And so, it's it's a little bit misleading in my opinion. Also, they claim that all the money, oh, the money will go to roads and bridges, the money will go to education, the money will go, the money will go. Truth of it is each county collects the money and they can do what they want with that money. It doesn't have to go to education. It doesn't have to go to roads. That depends on the board and how they choose to spend the money that's received through property taxes. A percentage does go to education. But [clears throat] we've heard that claim before. Do this and the money will go to education. The lotto is a great example. There are multiple examples. How many taxes do we get paid? do we pay that's supposed to go for roads and bridges? We still have roads and bridges that are crap in Illinois. Um wind has always um it it's uh like windy areas. They produce a lot of electricity and they store it and then they have to send it down and trans uh transmit it to another

area that's not so windy. That's expensive. If you look at the miso for our area, it runs from Canada to Louisiana. So, in my opinion, that's really expensive to send electricity from Canada to Louisiana. That's a long distance. So, that's costing us. They're not doing that for free. That's going to be, you know, given to the consumers to to cover the cost of that. So, it made more sense to me that the MISO should be, you know, four or five states that are closer together rather than run the whole length of the United States. I digress. Public body comment.

Public body comment. I just got one little one here. They [clears throat] was talking about those. I said, you know, they show these these videos. You see them cutting down these uh wind phones all the time. You know, you taking one down and wham and they scrap it out. But the thing is, I said, "Why can't you just put a new turbine right on the top of that? You've already got the piece in the ground. You got the mast. You got all that stuff. Why?" Well, you know, the wind blows and it and it wiggles, it lo and so it's not good enough to put something on top. I'm thinking, if this is going to be an ongoing thing that's going to be something that we're going to invest in and it's all good, then why are they putting a shaky foundation under these things? It's only going to last 20 or 30 years. Oh, they're no good no more. Well, that's bologn sauce. If you're doing something and you're going to do it forever, you put a good foundation under it and it'll hold up. Yeah. I just think it's just a I think it's smoking mirrors and they're [clears throat] Anyway, I'll just stop there. Okay. Public body [clears throat] comment. Public body comment.

[clears throat] Last time public body comment. Okay, we're going to move on.

Okay, we've got a vacancy in district 7 due to the resignation of Sunny. We have nobody's name right now. That's been Sunny uh gave his resignation last meeting. Okay, Michaelels, you've got everything here that uh Roaden Bridge came up with. And unless anybody's got any questions about any of this specifically, we're going to do a roll call vote on it and stuff. So, if you look through there, if there's anything [clears throat] that you have a question about, he's here. He can answer. Motion second. Okay. Now,

anybody got anything that they want to ask Michael? [clears throat] If not, roll call, please. [clears throat] That's the motion. [clears throat] What What are we voting? Michael's just the resolution. Uh, all of all of them. All of that there. That's how we've been doing it. Okay. That's why I asked if you had any questions. Yeah. No, I don't. I just wanted to make sure I knew what we were voting on exactly. So, we're going to group vote for A, B, C, D, and B. Okay. Thank you. Theres Bane. Yes.

Tim Brown. Yes. Carol Cole. Yes. Julie Edwards. Yes. Jeff Greg, [clears throat] yes. Clay Hardy, yes. Chrissy Matloff, yes. Trisha Miller, yes. Tim Moors, yes. Austin Pritchard, yes. John Stroll, yes. Larry Cipher, yes. Dante, yes. Brett Wallace, yes. Judy Wood, yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. I need a motion to vote on the 25 tax levy for fiscal year 2026.

Tim and Christine. Any discussion on [clears throat] this? Was the Shelby County Treasurer included in coming up with the tax levy for Shelby County? You mean the figures that we came up with for the levy? Yes. Well, I'm pretty sure she was, wasn't she? She She wasn't at the last meeting that I was at, but I have to think that she was involved.

Let me let me rephrase my question. I talked to her today. She was not involved. Why Why is the treasurer not involved in figuring out the tax levy for Shelby County? You mean breaking down the the percentages of what everybody gets? Is that what you're saying? Yes. She's the treasurer. She knows when the meetings are. I don't think we put a sign on the door that said she couldn't come in. Is she invited? Is somebody asked her to attend the meetings?

I don't I don't know. Can we clarify that this was discussed and and I believe the budget committee is where the legislative I think that is where I mean according to the letter that Tad [clears throat] sent out to the full board I think that that's where the levies were um where you guys discuss what but also the the uh our new accountants our our uh CPAs and stuff they had input into helping us try to figure out right?

How to do this and stuff. But as far as the treasurer, I know that she knows when we have the meetings and stuff. If she had a concern or anything, she could have reached out. She could have come to the meeting because there were some other people other than the committee at that meeting. It isn't closed meeting for anybody. That's what I was going to say to disc to Tim's question. It was discussed in an open. [clears throat] Yes. Yes. Fair enough. Okay. Okay. Tim, did you happen to read uh Tad's letter that he sent out to you? I did.

Teresa, [clears throat] I was asked to to share this with everybody. And this is from Chairman Mayal. [clears throat] Fellow Shelby County board members, as we look to set the levy, I want to acknowledge those who have helped in the process. A lot of time was devoted to understanding the process as well as the impact of the board's [snorts] actions on the county finances and to the taxpayers of Shelby County. Every fund balance was reviewed along with historical trends and forward-looking spending estimates. This effort allowed the committee to present a levy amount that covers the expenses for the next year while using some excess reserves on some accounts such as IMRF that have been overfunded for the past few years. We were also able to identify and fund shortfalls in the social security fund, providing balance and funding in the correct amounts for each fund. This detailed research, analysis, and planning allow the committee to reduce the amount of money to be collected by Shelby County from the Shelby County taxpayers in 2026. Fiscal responsibility of department heads and intentional involvement by the committee allow for a better budget planning process that reduced the overall 2026 budget. I want to thank the budget committee for their dedication this year to the monitoring of the budget and for their intentional attention to detail in establishing the lev. The committee was able to be detailed and intentional due to the assistance and resources from sikish. Their comprehensive data and open communication allowed for timely decisionmaking and the tools and education will serve the county for many years to come. The outlay for this work

has the potential for financial efficiency that better serves the county and the taxpayers going forward. I also want to thank Shelby County Clerk Jessica Fox for her insight and input during this process. Her experience and perspective were invaluable. Finally, I want to thank the residents of Shelby County for the trust and patience given to us over the past year. Chairman M. Thank you. [clears throat] Roll call. Unless anybody's got any more questions. Do a roll call. Teresa Bane? Yes. Tim Brown? Yes. Carol Cole? Yes. Julie Edwards? Yes. Jeff Gray?

Yes. Clay Hardy? Yes. Christine Matwa? Yes. Trisha Miller? Yes. Tim Moors? Yes. Austin Pritchard? Yes. John Stroll? Yes. Larry Cipher? Yes. Don Tay? Yes. Christy or Brett Wallace? Yes. Judy Wood. Yes. Motion passed unanimously. [cough] [clears throat]

Okay. The next one is this discussion and vote to approve the calendars. I think everybody got the update for the board meetings and the schedules for the committees and stuff. We need a motion. We need a motion. Dante Austin. Anybody got any concerns or questions about meetings and stuff? Okay. All in favor? Committee reports?

Is there any opposed? Okay. Committee reports. The finance committee met Tuesday and paid the bills. I didn't have any problems then. Um I did broken bridge on Monday. We got through that paid the bills there. So anybody else got committee reports? We'll move on. He's got chairman updates and correspondence. I have none. Okay. And then the chairman appointments. I need a motion. Let let me read the names first. James Brent Fogelman to the sheriff's merit committee. Ryan Spain to the airport and landing fields committee. Matlock Christine Matlock to replace Carol Cole on the airport committee. and John Stroll to replace Julie Edwards on public [clears throat] safety committee.

Motion motion to accept these Judy Christine. Can I ask a question? Sure. Why is Julie being Why is Miss Julie Edwards being replaced? It's at the chairman's discretion. That's That's true. Yeah. It wasn't my request. It's at the chairman's discretion. So, all in favor? Oh, can can I ask why she was? I wasn't told. I don't know. I have no idea. I don't have anything to input. You'll have to ask staff. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. All in favor of these appointments? I I You need to ask if anyone's opposed. Anyone opposed? Yes. [snorts] Wait a minute. Wait a minute. There's three. You got it.

No, I'm fine with it. [clears throat] Old business. I have none. Anybody else have any old business? Okay, I need a motion to approve the plans. Christine Austin. Roll call for that. Bane, yes. Brown, yes. Cole, yes. Edwards, yes. Greg, yes. Hardy, yes. Matt, yes. Miller, yes. Morse, yes. Pritchard, yes. Stroll, yes. Cipher, yes. Tape, yes.

Wallace, yes. Wood, yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, back to public body comment. [clears throat]

I also attended the wind meeting last night along with Clay and Joanna. I've been trying to get educated on this for a long time and keep an open mind about it. I'm I'm still not totally decided, but there was one thing I learned and that is that these wind farms or solar farms significantly increase the tax revenue for a county. Um, Logan County has seen that. Um, Bloomington, Mlan County has seen that. And if Shelby County is looking for some way to increase our property tax revenue, I I don't know how else this county is going to do it. We have about 23,000 people living here now, and we're probably going to have that or or less in the future. Also, we probably all know that uh electricity demand is increasing. And we all want the lights to come on in the morning and the coffee maker to work and and we all don't want a nuclear power plant in our backyard. But you know, the electricity does have to come from somewhere and the demand for electricity is increasing. I I got to say that after attending that seminar last night, I'm I'm pushed a little bit more in favor of it. Um the power has to come from somewhere. [laughter] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. public body comment.

Yeah, I just want to clarify what you read or we don't understand the tax levy is reduced this year from what it was before. Correct? Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, in regards to the G's comment earlier on the megawws on these generators, for those that don't know, don't be fooled by a placard. When it says 3.2 two gigawatts or megawws, whatever the rating is, that's if it's operating at 100%. Wind farms in the Midwest operate between [clears throat] 20 and 35% on a good day. So, thank you. That's where your tax comes from is based on that wattage. Are you there? Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Um, is the wind farms kind of under same regulations and stuff for the state of Illinois as the solar farms? I mean, are we just kind of kicking a dead horse no matter what we do? The state of Illinois says we can't do it. We can't we can't reject these solar farms or these wind farms from the way I understand it. So, I mean, we can all sit here and talk and argue and say we don't want them and we do want them and everything else, but to me, it's [clears throat] it's a mute subject because we're going to be either fighting them in court, costing taxpayer money, or we just agree with what they want to do and go along with it to get along more or less. I mean, I don't think wind and solar is the future, but that's my own personal opinion. I can go on and on about that, but I mean, we keep talking about I mean, I got Jake's point. He don't want it. There ain't nothing we can do. We can't say no. If we do say no, we'll take this to court and beat us anyway and and do it anyway. So, it's just like, you know, we we're in a hard rock in a hard spot and we we can't get out of it. We're just going to have to go along. And if they want to come in and take the farmland, they can do it. As long as you got a farmer saying he'll let lease this ground, man. Then the county board or nobody else can do about it.

Well, what you just said, there's Okay. First, I thought you were saying they could come into the farm and imminent [clears throat] domain take the farm when the land owner's against it. That's not what's going on. I mean, the land owner has to agree. Yes. Okay. Okay.

I'm good. I'm good. I just like to echo some other my sentiment along the same lines as what Greg is saying and Jake and Clay and Tim were saying. I um I think we have to remember even though uh someone in Chicago is trying to make decisions for our farm ground, our heritage is here and I don't care whether they say you don't have a choice by God we can be led about our descent. We don't sit back and say well they tell us we can't so we just we can't. We can still be professional. We can be loud. We can be concise. We can have people that are really invested in telling the truth about how these fields work. We can bring them in. We can have them talk to land owners. I don't want any of my constituents to be to be misled by these people. And there may be a few that are wonderful companies that do great things. But when you talk about taking and putting a solar farm or wind farm in the middle of somebody's family ground, I don't care if they've had it for five generations or two weeks, that's their choice. And I want them to have all the details. And the more that we talk out and the more that Brent tells his constituents and Tim tells his. They'll ask questions and that is where our goal is. We've got to not we've got to stop saying, "Well, they they say we can't, so we have to vote yes." We don't always have to vote yes. They're not going to send us to Vietnam. So, we have to make up our minds that we're going to say we don't like this and we're going to stay loud enough that people pay attention because we have watched other counties that have done things in their their road use agreements and such that have kind of held them to the mark somewhat. And we have to stay to that. We can't just back off because someone says no. Nothing changes if you don't say no. You know what's wrong. That's all I say.

Okay. Probably by opponent too. I I I went to the same seminar and got a lot of the same points that the other guys did. One thing that stuck in my head was that they kept saying that they would increase property values. And I had actually heard the opposite. And that's the only time that I've [clears throat] heard that people were able to actually keep from one of the solar fields from coming in because they were able to prove in court that it was going to take away from their values of their home.

That's right. So, that's always something to look at. I mean, they're they're going to say yes, it's going to raise your value, but how many people are going to run to buy a house next to a solar field or or a winter [clears throat] I was also at that meeting. Okay. And they sold they they sold a the good deal. I mean I mean it sounded really good. You're going to get all this funding. You're going to get anytime they want to do a project like this. What's the first thing they say? It's going to go to schools. You're going to have jobs. It's going to go to your firemen and and your police departments.

[snorts]

go and do all that. Okay? But boy, they can really make it sound good, but they're not going to talk about four different numbers there. They're not going to talk about a lot of the other things because they don't want to say that. They only want to sell it on. [clears throat] So, yeah, we have to be mindful. Very good. We have to be mindful. We have to make people ask questions. So, if we don't do it as a board, who is? So, yeah, we have to have people ask questions. If you're against the wind farms and solar farms, you need to talk to the school boards, the school superintendent, the municipalities, the mayors and the and the trustees of the villages because we've seen it in the past where the school boards And the school superintendent will sign contracts or agreements with the wind farms and the solar farms. And they would be held to the agreement that they have to go when asked to another public body or meeting and speak in favor of the wind farm or the solar farm. and they cannot decline to do so and they cannot speak against it. Otherwise, all the money that they were promised, they have to pay it back. Mount Palasi got into that situation and when we wrote about it and exposed it, they declined to sign the contract. We got there in time for to to know that the contract was going to come up for a vote and they were going to sign it and

we got a copy of it and that's what was in that contract and it's in other contracts with other school districts. Uh they'll have the superintendent and the school board chair go up and tell you it's the best thing since sliced bread. But at that point I believe they have to say that and they're mandated to say that in order to keep getting that check. That's all I got. comment. Can I have just two minutes? I know it's two minutes. Yes.

Okay. [clears throat] Well, this whole thing just kind of it reminds me of like, you know, the colonists when they had to house the British soldiers, you know, they had to do it. What What makes Why do we have to if we're going to have some green energy? And I'm not against green energy. Why do we have to do it their way? We have a dam right over there and I know it's a flood control dam and I know it's a federal dam and I know these things, but why couldn't we make it a hydroelectric dam and I know it wouldn't be like the Hoover Dam and it would produce some electricity and the the tornadoes wouldn't tear it up. You know, why do we have to go by their plans? You know, if if we're doing something green, this do something green. We got a damn right over here. We could do it. I I I just don't know why we have to go by their plans.

Anybody else? Public body comment. Public body comment. Motion to adjourn.

All in favor? Hey everybody, before you leave, I want everybody to be safe going home and everybody have a merry Christmas. Okay. And Michael, thank you to your guys for the work on the road last week. It's appreciated.