DeKalb Times

DeKalb County Law & Justice Committee met April 27.

Here is the minutes provided by the committee:

The Law and Justice Committee of the DeKalb County Board met virtually via Zoom on Monday, April 27, 2020. Committee Chair Dianne Leifheit called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. Those members present via Zoom were Mrs. Karen Cribben, Mr. Tracy Jones, Mr. Jim Luebke, Ms. Linda Slabon, Mr. Paul Stoddard, Mr. Jeff Whelan, and Chair Dianne Leifheit. A quorum was established with all seven Members present.

Others that were present included Gary Hanson, Margi Gilmour, Michael Venditti, Tom McCulloch, Michael Douglas, Roy Plote, Greg Millburg, and Kathy Lampkins.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

It was moved by Mr. Jones, seconded by Mr. Luebke and it was carried unanimously by voice vote to approve the agenda as presented.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Ms. Slabon moved to approve the minutes of the February 24, 2020 Committee Meeting. Mr. Whelan seconded the motion and it was carried unanimously.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

There were no public comments.

PUBLIC DEFENDER’S REPORT

DeKalb County Public Defender Tom McCulloch submitted his March 2020 standard monthly report to the Committee. He noted that the statistics are for the end of the period before the Courthouse shut down, and so it will be the last one that looks familiar to the Committee. Since that time, cases have kept coming in and the Public Defender’s Office has been appointed. He assigns cases to the respective attorneys, but the system has continued everything at this point. They appear at every bond call and, in some cases, attempt to adjust the bond amounts and conditions to get people out of jail. There have been a couple of pleas, but they were under extraordinary circumstances. For cases that are ongoing, new court dates have been provided and the clients are notified. Since the Governor continued his Order, they are going to do the same process over again for matter that will be up in May. He informed that future reports will reflect increased caseloads and fewer closures for a while.

Mr. McCulloch additionally shared that he hired V. Mary Baccam shortly before things closed down; she’s been in the office daily getting acquainted with a huge caseload. She’s had experience as a prosecutor and in the private bar.

He added that his staff has done an excellent job handling their cases under difficult circumstances: sometimes they work from the Office, and sometimes they are working remotely from home. Calls are forwarded from the Office, and people are in touch by text and email.

Many precautions will be taken once the Courthouse is opened back up. Each individual (staff and public) will be required to wear a mask and their temperatures will be taken at the door. Courts will have staggered start times in order to mitigate the amount of public in the building. Jury trials are not expected to reconvene until late summer.

COURT SERVICES REPORT

Ms. Gilmour shared that she has about 5-6 weeks left before she retires from the County after 30+ years. Judge Stuckert officially appointed Mr. Michael Venditti as the new Court Services Director on March 30, 2020. Ms. Gilmour noted that she was thrilled with the appointment and she has complete confidence that Mr. Venditti will be a great Director for the Court Services Department.

Ms. Gilmour noted that the Committee has the Court Services Reports for the month of March and echoes Mr. McCulloch’s statements that these will be the last reports that reflect “normal” numbers. Court Services is operating completely virtually and maintaining regular contact with their clients. Bond Calls are up and running every day, including weekends so the Pretrial Officers have operated normally (virtually). Mr. McCulloch has graciously allowed Court Services to utilize some equipment in his office to do virtual interviews with clients.

Mr. Venditti reiterated that by and large nearly all court services business dealing with the public has been done virtually, however some essential functions cannot be addressed this way and simply have been on back log. As a result, effective May 4th he will be implementing a procedure to safely interact with their clients. They intend to exclusively utilize the North Entrance of the Legislative Center for their staff and clients to enter/exit the building. All clients and staff will have their temperature checked and be required to wear a mask prior to entering. Clients will wait in the foyer until an officer in PPE can greet them and walk them through the decontamination procedure. Upon entry to the building, they will utilize the employee break area for a sanitation station to have everyone immediately wash their hands. Clients will also be restricted to Court Services’ new hallways office, in order to minimize potential contamination of other parts of the building. In the event more than one client is waiting to be seen, they will be instructed to wait in their vehicle until they are ready to be admitted. In the month of May, Mr. Venditti doesn’t not anticipate very much foot traffic as many court functions have also been temporarily suspended, however in the interest of being proactive, he wanted to be sure this procedure is implemented and will likely be in place for months to come.

Chair Leifheit thanked Ms. Gilmour for providing her Court Services Grant Summary (attached). She also asked Ms. Gilmour if she felt that any of those grants could be in jeopardy due to the current pandemic and situation of the State. Ms. Gilmour expressed that she didn’t think so and staff continues to apply for State and Federal grants to keep their programs going. They also ensure they have good data to support the successfulness of the programs which helps them a great deal in re-applying for grants.

Ms. Slabon inquired about what was happening with client’s community service hours. Ms. Gilmour shared that they are currently on hold and no additional consequences are being added at this time by the courts.

TREATMENT COURTS / SOBER LIVING HOME REPORT

DeKalb County Treatment Courts Director Michael Douglas joined the Committee to provide an update. He reported that courts, treatment programs, and probation appointments have all gone to virtual contacts via Zoom and/or Skype and all seems to be operating well that well. Currently there are about 60 participants between the three different Treatment (DUI/Drug/Mental Health) Courts.

Mr. Douglas shared that Treatment Court currently has two grants. The 708 Mental Health Board provides 100% funding for a Part-Time Peer Mentor Support person and the rest of the grant funding comes from the Adult Redeploy Illinois grant that covers from 7/1/2019 through 6/30/2020. Out of the $383,000 they receive, $265,000 covers salaries (breakdown attached). Mr. Douglas is currently working on the 2021 grant now which would begin 7/1/2020 and would cover $506,000. The increase would be for an added position of a Drug Testing Technician, which he is hoping will be approved.

Chair Leifheit noted that she inquired about the grants because she is pretty nervous about what the State of Illinois is going to do. She asked if Mr. Douglas feel fairly comfortable with the Adult Redeploy grant coming in. Mr. Douglas shared that he did feel comfortable and the Adult Redeploy Grant has been pretty well funded over the past few years. DeKalb County has been involved with them since 2016 and every year since then the state grant total has either maintained or increased.

Mr. Douglas additionally updated the Committee on the Sober Living Home. He reported that the fund is now flush for the Sober Living Home, which is a good feeling after being in a deficit for some time now. There is space for 7 male participants in the home, in addition to the 1 House Manager that lives there. For the past 11 months, the house has served 63 individuals and the average for the 11 month period is 5.7 people (with a capacity of 7), which Mr. Douglas is pretty happy with. There were a few months where the house was at full occupancy so individuals in the program had to find housing elsewhere.

As far as funding, since May of 2019 the revenues have totaled $24,400 and the expenditures has been $16,667 so they are finally building up some reserves for the house. This will help in the coming months where most of the current residents are unemployed and will have trouble paying their rent. The current House Manager is a graduate of the program and is very dedicated to the success of the residents. An added bonus is he is a handyman and treats the house as if it were his own.

Steady employment and transportation continue to be a challenge for the house residents but Mr. Douglas noted that he has seen a lot of improvement in both areas. Mr. Douglas lastly noted that there still is a voluntary organization dedicated to increasing public awareness of, and raising funds to assist in, the work of the DeKalb County Treatment Courts called Friends of DeKalb County Treatment Courts. Their fundraising efforts are at an unfortunate standstill at the moment but the hope is there could be an event later in the year.

SHERIFF’S DISPATCHING AGREEMENTS

Mr. Hanson explained that the Sheriff’s Dispatching Center is broken up into two difference groups. The main group this is being discussed tonight are the entities that had a dispatching center approved in the original referendum back in the 1990’s. There were six dispatching centers approved in that referendum. Sycamore and Genoa are two that later decided not to do their own dispatching services, so they folded into the County. That is why they pay a fee to the County that is a lot larger than the smaller communities.

Off and on through the years, Board Members may have often heard complaints regarding the cost of the dispatching service. In 2016, a five-year agreement was put in place in order to try and get some stability into the program and hopefully allowed communities to budget further out. There is one more year left of that contract starting July 1, 2020. During the current twelve-month period, Sandwich came onto the County’s Dispatching Center. The reason they did was that the State of Illinois mandated that the number of dispatching centers throughout the state be reduced. So, DeKalb County went from having four dispatching centers down to two. Sandwich folded into the County and NIU folded into the City of DeKalb. With that consolidation came a free from Sandwich to do their dispatching services. There is also an agreement within the Dispatching Agreements that the County would share any savings if new monies came in. There is now an opportunity to do that, which Mr. Hanson believes will be very well received by Sycamore, Genoa and the Genoa-Kingston Fire Protection District. Because it is almost at the end of the five-year agreement, this is also a chance to put a new five-year agreement in place. Conversations have started and so far, everyone is happy with the new arrangement.

All of the communities have approved the agreements, besides Sandwich which is meeting right now, Mr. Hanson shared.

It was moved by Mr. Luebke, seconded by Mr. Whelan and approved unanimously to forward the Dispatching Agreements Resolution to the full County Board recommending its approval.

There are no COVID-19 cases within the DeKalb County Jail nor has there been.

As for the Digital Radio System, the Fire Department System has been currently working well with the VHF on the new tower system for about a month. Fire chose not to migrate to the new digital system. They are working through a few minor issues regarding pagers, but those are being addressed as they come up, sometimes the problem is on their end. For the Law Enforcement side, the system is working well County-wide with new digital system. There are problems in City of Genoa itself so they are still on the old system. These same issues are in the North East corner of the County for Sheriff’s cars but those issues are being solved with already purchased in-car mobile radios. The real fix will be to install a transmitter on the Genoa Water Tower. This would have been done except E. F Johnson has ceased travel for its engineers and technical people because of COVID-19 restrictions.

ADJOURNMENT

It was moved by Mr. Whelan, seconded by Mr. Jones, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting at 7:23 p.m.

https://dekalbcounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/min20-lawapr.pdf