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Animal control, broadband funding
among topics discussed at April 16, 2025 meeting
[April 21, 2025]
On Wednesday, April 16th, the
Logan County Board met for their regular meeting. This meeting took
place in the first floor courtroom at the Logan County Courthouse
starting at 6:00 p.m. All members were in attendance with the
exception of Chairman JR Glenn. This included Jim Wessbecher, Lance
Conahan, Dale Nelson, Joseph Kuhlman, Kathy Schmidt, Michael DeRoss,
Hannah Fitzpatrick, Keenan Leesman, Bob Sanders, and Gil Turner.
The meeting began with the board having to choose a Chairman pro
tempore. Since Julie Bobell, the previous Vice Chairman, resigned
and Glenn was absent, the board had to elect someone to lead the
meeting. Schmidt nominated Nelson and Turner seconded. This was
followed by a vote from the board. With the exception of DeRoss,
everyone voted in favor of Nelson, and he was elected pro tempore
for the meeting.
The invocation followed. Several months ago, the board decided they
wanted to have a local church leader come in for each regular
meeting to give an invocation. This week’s invocation was given by
Darren Palmer, the lead pastor at Faith Church in Lincoln. He began
by quoting from the Bible, followed by a prayer.
The invocation was followed by a time for public comments, of which
there were two. A woman named Melissa Sneed came forth with some
concerns about animal control in the county. She has stated that she
has been seeing an increase in the number of dogs being dumped in
the county. She took it upon herself to take in two of these animals
in 2023 and find them homes. She was unable to get any assistance
from Logan County Animal Control (LCAC) in this matter. This year,
she took it upon herself to go and rescue another puppy that had
been dumped. According to Sneed, LCAC knew about this dog, and
stated that if the village would pay them $200, they would go and
set up their own trap to capture the animal using their own personal
traps. Sneed got assistance from another county, putting her in
contact with an animal rescue to help set a trap. Sneed suggested
that the board invest some money into providing LCAC with a dog trap
that can be used to help rescue these animals that are being dumped,
among several other administrative suggestions mirroring the way
animal control works in Menard County.
The second public comment was from
Don Cavi, the Administrator at the Logan County Department of Public
Health. Cavi shared that he is retiring at the end of the month. He
thanked the board for their support over the many years that he
oversaw things at the department. He also introduced his
replacement, Fay Allison.
After these two public comments, the board then moved on to the
action items on the agenda, starting with the Building and Grounds
committee. This committee did not have anything that needed voting
on, but Nelson did give an update, stating that the process of
replacing windows in the courthouse had begun this week.
The next committee addressed was Finance, and they had three items,
only two of which needed to be voted on. The first item was a budget
amendment to allocate funds for the Logan County Broadband
initiative. A brief overview of this issue, the county had secured a
$6.8 million grant from the state for this project, and plans to run
fiber to all of the towns in Logan County. The county has a plan
worked out with WANRac, the company that is going to do the work,
that the county will receive ten percent of any money made off of
this project, such as companies paying to use the system. The county
would need to put forward $2 million of their own funding for the
project, and had that money set aside. They previously voted to move
that money from Broadband to the County Jail Expansion project.
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Things got further complicated when
Leesman, the board member primarily working on the grant, went back
and was not sure if the county had to have the $6.8 million grant
spent by the end of 2025. Considering that it would take at least a
year and a half to finish the Broadband project, this deadline would
mean that the board could not spend all the money in time and the
project would have to be stopped before it was finished. The board
went back and found the $2 million for this project through other
means, and this motion was to move these funds to a place that they
could be used for Broadband.
Nelson asked if these funds would
be able to be moved to another project if Broadband did not work
out. Leesman confirmed that this was the case with the motion, but
based on what he had heard regarding the grant deadline, it seemed
that that issue was mostly up to what the auditor recommends. The
board then voted on the matter, with it passing in a vote of 8-2.
Schmidt and Turner were the only two members to vote against the
motion.
The next motion was to give a $500 sponsorship to the Lincoln Public
Library Summer Reading Program. This motion passed unanimously.
The final item on the agenda from Finance was an audit presentation.
Brian Mateas, from CliftonLarsonAllen, gave the presentation. While
there were many aspects to Mateas’s presentation, and he did not
cover everything with the board, the general sentiment was that
Logan County was heading in a good place financially.
The next committee addressed was Transportation. There were four
motions on the agenda from this committee, all of them passing
unanimously. The first motion was to approve Illinois Valley Paving
as the contractor for a repair project. The second motion was to
award the County Motor Fuel Tax contracts to Illinois Road
Contractors and Louis Marsch Inc. The third was to approve an
engineering agreement with WHKS to help with review of the Pike
Creek wind farm engineering plans. The final motion was to approve
an engineering agreement for the Airport.
The final committee addressed was Zoning and Economic Development.
There was only one motion on the agenda, and this was showing
support for a Senate bill and a House bill. These bills would
prohibit CO2 sequestration pipelines underneath or near single
source aquifers. The board would send a witness slip to Senator
Sally Turner and Representative William Hauter. This motion was
passed unanimously.
Nelson then stated that they were going to vote on the vacancy left
by former board member Julie Bobell, but could not since Chairman
Glenn was not present. Cindy Gleason was the person the board was
going to consider. The board did accept nominations for the empty
Vice Chairman position, however, with Turner nominating Nelson.
Schmidt seconded the nomination, and the board took a vote. The vote
mirrored the one taken at the start of the meeting, with Nelson
being appointed in a vote of 9-1, DeRoss being the only member to
vote against Nelson’s nomination.
The last thing brought up was that Administrative Assistant Kati
Newman is going to be leaving her position. Conahan presented Newman
with a card and gift on behalf of the board.
[Matt Boutcher]
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