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Logan County Board Finance Committee
Runge recommends a full-board survey to help start building
guidelines for Community Benefit Fund
[April 09, 2025]
On Tuesday, April 8th, the Logan
County Board Finance Committee met for it’s April meeting. The full
membership of the committee was present for the meeting. This
included Chair Kathy Schmidt, Vice-chair Joseph Kuhlman, Lance
Conahan and Keenan Leesman.
Among the items on the agenda was an opening discussion on creating
guidelines for the Community Benefit Fund. The money for this fund
comes from regular payments made to the county by Cresco Labs.
For quite some time, the money has been pretty much available to
anyone who came seeking it. However, lately, the board and the
committee has begun to question the wisdom of giving out the money
without guidelines, thus the finance committee was tasked with
getting the ball rolling on creating a policy for handing out the
cash.
Tuesday night, Leesman shared a
document with the committee members that he said was not concrete,
but rather a good place he hoped to start some conversations. He
said he had outlined a possible mission statement for the CBF that
would be a guide as to whether a cash request was meeting the
overall criteria of the fund.
The document was not shared with media. But Leesman did speak on a
few things that were apparently on the document. He spoke about
dividing the funding into different pots and budgeting a specific
amount to each pot annually.
He said that while he supported community events, he wanted to see
the money go to more permanent projects that would benefit the
entire community. He spoke about park improvements and also putting
money aside for building improvements.
Andrea Runge with the Lincoln Economic Advancement and Development (L.E.A.D.)
was in attendance along with Dorsey Hill. Hill has earned a
fellowship with the Economic Recovery Corps. She is assigned to the
Greater Peoria Economic Development Council in general and is
working in Logan County specifically.
Leesman said that some of the ideas he was presenting the local
Regional Planning Commission should be able to help and also that
L.E.A.D. could be a good collaborator as well.
Runge said that she and Hill would like to work with the committee
on creating those guidelines and also in developing the application.
She said that much of what was being discussed at this meeting was
in line with the L.E.A.D. strategic plan for Lincoln.
She asked about how the county is caring for the money they have on
hand, are they investing the excess, and she was told yes.
She said that there were some measures that she could assist with,
but that what she has in mind is not for public consumption at this
time. She asked that media not report on her comments that came
afterward.
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During the course
of conversation Runge was asked what the role of L.EA.D. was and
did the county support it financially. Runge said that the
organization is privately funded by certain individuals, that it
did earn a grant this year for some of the work it is doing, and
it does get some support from other sources, but Logan County is
not one of them. However, she said that the county does support
GPEDC which is where Hill is assigned.
Runge said that she was in favor of “casting a wide net” with
the CBF, utilizing bullet points for different funding
categories. She also said it would be a good start to get an
honest opinion from all county board members about how the money
should be utilized. She suggested doing a Monkey Survey to each
of the board members.
She was asked if that survey would be
anonymous. Runge said it was a good idea because when people don’t
have to disclose who they are, they are more likely to answer
according to how they honestly feel.
Runge also noted that in Leesman’s document there was a proposed
question as to whether an entity seeking funding was a non-profit.
She said she wanted to remind the board that in the case of
buildings especially, giving funding to for-profit businesses does
improve the building which impacts community where the building is
located.
Leesman liked the survey suggestion saying that it would provide the
committee with a feel for “will of the full board.”
He said that perhaps there was an opportunity to break the money
into a CBF and also into a County Building Initiative. He said he’d
like to see that question on the survey.
Lance Conahan said that he thought the
original intent of the funding was to have some money for buildings.
He added that his concern was that he didn’t want to see all the
money going to just one project. He wanted to see it distributed
across needs in the community.
Runge said that the survey would help the committee understand what
their priorities should be and then build from there. She added that
L.E.A.D.’s position would be to not influence the committee, but
rather to simply supply them with much needed information so the
committee and eventually the board could make informed decisions.
Runge was asked to move forward with drafting the survey. She and
Hill will do so and forward the draft to Katie Newman in the county
board office. Newman will then forward it to the four members of the
committee. Once the content of the draft is tweaked and approved,
the survey will go out to the county board members.
[Nila Smith] |
