Logan County Board
Finance Committee discusses community benefit fund and per diem

 

[January 17, 2025] 

On Tuesday, January 14th, the Finance Committee of the Logan County Board met for their first meeting of the new year. This meeting took place in the Blue Room at the Logan County Safety Complex.

Like many of the committees, several of the members are new additions to their respective committees. The new lineup of committee members includes Chairman Kathy Schmidt, Vice Chairman Joseph Kuhlman, Lance Conahan, and Keenan Leesman. Schmidt and Conahan are the new additions to this particular committee.

The first issue discussed by the committee was the Community Benefit Fund and how exactly those funds should be used. Frequent readers of LDN’s coverage of the Logan County Board will likely recall this as an issue often discussed by the Finance committee, but with not a lot of progress being made. Leesman informed the two new members of the committee that Finance had previously been attempting to come up with a working definition for ‘community benefit’ that they would use to help guide the board’s decisions on how and when to use the funds.

Leesman suggested that community benefit funds be used for events and projects that help attract and retain residents. Hope of 5th was cited as a good example of how these funds should be used, as they are working on giving something to the community that it does not already have. It was ultimately decided, as it has been in previous meetings, to discuss this further at the next meeting. Leesman, however, did ask all four members to come up with a definition before the next meeting, at which time they would workshop a single definition and go from there.

The next item discussed was Community Action Partnership of Central Illinois (CAPCIL) and the roof they had to have repaired. Frequent readers will also likely recall that CAPCIL had to get a new roof on its Lincoln building. The bill for this was very expensive, and the insurance would only cover a portion of it.

This left an amount of about $20,000 left to be paid. CAPCIL was able to get funding from the city, but was unsuccessful thus far in getting any from the county. This had to do with the previous issue, as the Finance committee did not want to give money from the Community Benefits Fund without guidelines on how the funds are to be used.

Chairman Schmidt was able to give an update, sharing that the roof has now been fixed, but that CAPCIL had to pull money from grants to afford it. This is money that would have been going to human resources, utilities, and rent. She then informed the board that many of these grants are state and federally funded, and therefore have strong stipulations on how the money is to be used, thus why they decided to ask the county for assistance. The committee was not against giving money to CAPCIL to help them recover, but again wanted guidelines for the Community Benefit Fund before they officially decided to do so. This issue was once more sent to old business for next month's Finance committee meeting.

This then brought the committee to new business, the first of which was State’s Attorney Brad Hauge needing the ability to pay an invoice. Schmidt made it clear that Hauge was not asking for new money, only the permission to pay for an invoice. This motion was passed, being sent to the Workshop meeting.

The next item discussed was per diems. This would give the county board members the ability to get reimbursed for some of their work outside of committee and board meetings. It was discussed if a new per diem sheet was needed, or if the old one could be used. It was decided that the old sheet had everything that would be needed. It was also discussed how these sheets would be turned in. Schmidt volunteered to be the one to collect these sheets. It was decided that per diem sheets would be turned in to Schmidt at either workshop or regular board meetings, where she would go and get three signatures on it from Finance committee members before turning it in to be processed.

After per diem was discussed, Schmidt called for a motion to adjourn, ending the meeting.

Matt Boutcher