|
|
Reduction
in Kane County Staff Results in Smaller Government and Better Efficiency
Kane County began fiscal 2012 on Dec. 1 with
nearly 24 percent fewer government employees than in 2004 - even as the
county's population continued to grow during the entire period. Long before
the economy sank into recession, Kane County had embarked on a course of
fiscal prudence by keeping a tight rein on spending, building reserves, and
working to control growth in such a way as to keep it from overtaking the
ability to manage it. What were sound policies in the last decade, when
they first were pursued, became a saving grace during what has become the
worst economic downturn in generations. The willingness and ability of Kane
County employees to help shoulder the load cannot be overstated.
"Our employees are the backbone of the
County," stated Chairman Karen McConnaughay. "It really makes you
realize what a great team of employees we have in Kane County. Together
they have provided Kane County with the ability to "weather the
economic storm that has swamped many others."
McConnaughay has praised Kane County's employees
for their efficiency, professionalism and commitment "to serving the
needs of our community" and for continuing to focus on what she called
"the simple idea that smaller government, if it is responsive,
efficient, and professional can capably serve the public without making
excessive demands on the families and businesses it serves."
"Kane County is in a solid financial position thanks to the hard work
of the Kane County Board and the men and women of county government,"
she said. The efficiencies achieved since 2004, when Kane County had nearly
400 more employees than it does currently, were the result, in part, of 14
main functions being consolidated under seven directors. The following
changes were made:
• KaneComm 911 became a separate governing board
previously under the Sheriff.
• Central Services, which had oversight of
purchasing, microfilm, the print shop and mail room was eliminated.
Purchasing functions are now handled by the Finance Division. Microfilm and
print shop services, by the Information Technology Division (IT) and mail
room functions by Facilities.
• The new Executive Director of Facilities,
Development & Environmental Resources took over responsibility for
Buildings and Grounds, Environmental Management, Development, Water
Resources, and Transportation with oversight over Water Resources. The
Development Department now administers Economic Development, Planning &
Projects, and Building & Zoning and has an administrative services
staff. The Division of Transportation previously had a Director or
Transportation and a County Engineer. Two management positions were
consolidated into one, and that Division is no longer under the previous
Executive Director of Development.
• The IT Department added support responsibility
for all County departments and offices including the Sheriff's Office
(which includes the jail), County Clerk (and related election functions),
partial support for the Circuit Court Clerk, KaneComm, and the State's
Attorney. IT also provides additional support for new systems that did not
exist previously, including key and security systems, election equipment,
and media equipment.
• When an Executive Director of the Health
Department was hired, new functions and oversight were added to existing
services over time to include Animal Control, Office of Emergency
Management and Office of Community Reinvestment. The Office of Community
Reinvestment now has oversight of KCDEE. The Health Department eliminated
60 positions as a result of budget issues related to the State of Illinois
being arrears in funding those services. Those responsibilities were taken
over by other social service agencies. The net result was a restructuring
of the Health Department into three divisions: Office of Community Health
Resources, Division of Disease Prevention, and Division of Health
Promotion.
March
20 General Primary: Be Sure To Register
Voter registration in advance of the General Primary
Election on March 20 is available through Feb. 21 by mail or in person at
the Office of Kane County Clerk John Cunningham, in Geneva, and at more
than 40 other locations throughout Kane County. To register, applicants are
required to provide two forms of identification, one with a current name
and address. After Feb. 21, anyone wishing to register to vote can do so in
person through March 13, but only in the County Clerk's Office. Anyone who
registers during the grace period and wants to vote in the upcoming
election must vote at the time of registration. To be eligible to vote you
must be a U.S. citizen, 18 years of age by the next election and have
resided in the precinct for 30 days prior to the next election. Early
voting begins Feb. 27 and runs through March 15.
A complete menu of voter and election
information, including how and where to vote and the locations and times
for early voting, is available at the County
Clerk's website.
A registration form can be downloaded in either
English or Spanish. A completed form should be mailed to the Kane County
Clerk, 719 S Batavia Ave, Bldg B, Geneva, IL 60134. Anyone who registers by
mail must vote at the polls on Election Day or vote absentee in person.
Excluding Aurora, Kane County has roughly 218,000 registered voters.
Residents of Aurora should consult the Aurora Election Commission for all voter
information.
Kane
Finance Department Honored For Award
For the 14th Consecutive year Kane County has
earned the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental
accounting and financial reporting with an award-winning comprehensive
annual financial report (CAFR) for the fiscal year ended Nov. 30, 2010.
Kane County was awarded a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence by the
Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada
(GFOA).
The GFOA, a nonprofit professional association
of about 17,500 government finance professionals, has offices in Chicago
and Washington, D.C.
The award recognizes Kane County for
demonstrating what the GFOA described as a constructive "spirit of
full disclosure" to clearly communicate its financial story and
motivate potential users and user groups to read the CAFR. The association
also presented county Executive Director of Finance Cheryl Pattelli and her
department with its Award of Financial Reporting Achievement for preparing
the county's award-winning CAFR.
Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay
said the award was "the highest form of achievement for a finance
department." She credited Pattelli and her tiny department for
continuing to keeping Kane County among the most esteemed in Illinois for
financial reporting.
According to the GFOA, the CAFR program was
established in 1945 to encourage and assist state and local governments to
go beyond the minimum requirements of generally accepted accounting
principles to prepare comprehensive annual reports that demonstrate a
spirit of transparency and full disclosure.
|
As Kane County moves
toward completion of a 2040 Land Resource Management Plan over the next
few months, special attention will continue to be given to the challenge
of providing a long-term, sustainable supply of drinking water.
How will Kane County
provide an additional 50 million to 60 million gallons of water for
another 300,000 people in the most efficient and environmentally
responsible manner?
Read More
|
The Kane County
Board voted in November to approve what County Board Chairman Karen
McConnaughay described as “a first step in the direction of dispatch
consolidation.”
Adoption of a
resolution authorizing provision of emergency 911 and dispatching
services to South Elgin is part of a clear national trend over the last
two decades towards public safety system consolidation, with radio
networks developed to cover counties, regions, and even states.
Read more
|
|
Kane County State's
Attorney Investigator Dave Berg, it seems, has tried to follow pursuits
with regard to his happiness. In high school, he knew he wanted to be a
police officer. It was a job he would hold for 30 years before moving on
to the Kane County Child Advocacy Center (CAC) as an investigator, a job
he pursued because he wanted to work with youths.
"When I was a
sophomore in high school, we were assigned topics for a term paper. I
wrote about the Illinois State Police. That was the start," said
Berg. At the time, he was one of very few police officers to have a
college degree, a trend that has changed.
Read more
|
The Kane County Juvenile
Justice Center (JJC) will mark the New Year by incorporating DuPage
County juveniles into what has been a long-standing mix of inmates into
the regional detention facility. An intergovernmental agreement between
DuPage and Kane Counties to affect the transfer of DuPage juveniles to
the nearly 15-year-old facility for the next four years was approved by
respective county boards late last year.
"Nothing is
really different here than what we've done with three other counties
(DeKalb, Kendall and McHenry)," said Kane County Board Chairman
Karen McConnaughay.
Read more
|
|
With the National
Weather Service forecasting the Winter of 2011-2012 to be “colder and
wetter than average,” and with the February 2011 blizzard still fresh in
everyone's memory, the Kane County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)
announced Dec. 6 that it has enhanced its severe winter storm plans to
include new technologies and procedures. OEM director Don Bryant said the
plan enhancements are designed to better coordinate a countywide response
and improve communication with the public.
“With enhanced
coordination of information and resources before and during a winter
storm event, Kane County and its municipalities will be better prepared
to serve the public during any severe winter storm,” said Bryant.
Read more
|
A resolution
applauding the achievement and innovation behind the county Farm Bureau’s
Harvest for All hunger relief program (and in recognition of the Bureau’s
recent receipt of a highly coveted national award) was passed by the
County Board Nov 8th.
The Farm Bureau
accepted the highest award an association can receive at an October
awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. Characterized by one industry
publication as “the Nobel Prize of Associations”, the Summit Awards honor
organizations that advance America and the world through their work.
Read more
|
|
Kane County Forest
Preserve Commission President John J. Hoscheit was recognized recently by
the Illinois Association of Park Districts (IAPD) for his 15 years of
service to the forest preserve district.
An attorney from St.
Charles, Hoscheit was elected to the Kane County Board in 1996 and has
served in the dual role of forest preserve commissioner since then. He
currently is midway through his fifth, two-year term as commission president,
having first been elected to the post in 2002 by vote of the
commissioners.
Read more
|
As of Jan. 1,
electronic equipment is no longer being collected with regular trash.
Until recently most outdated electronics w ere thrown in the trash and
disposed of in a landfill, wasting valuable resources, according to
Jennifer Jarland, Kane County Recycling and Resource Conservation Program
Coordinator.
But with the start
of the new year, electronic waste is banned from Illinois landfills. By
state law, unwanted electronics must now be taken to a registered
recycler for proper management.
Read more
|
|
Volunteer crews with
Batavia Access
Television (BATV) and their equipment are such a familiar site
at County Board Meetings, they could almost go unnoticed.
But Batavia and county
governments know how much they would be missed if they weren’t there.
Cities as large as
Los Angeles have had to go without the community voice that public access
cable channels provides and USA Today reported last year that
since 2005, when support and public funding for cable access stations
began to really dry up, roughly 600 public access stations across the
nation had already gone black.
In addition to
regular public meetings, BATV has provided coverage of special events in
Kane County such as the grand opening of the Stearns
Road Corridor last December.
Read more
|
Residents of
unincorporated Kane County, along with 18 municipalities that lie totally
or partially within the county’s borders, will be asked in the March 20
General Primary Election if they want their respective governmental units
to move forward with bulk or aggregating electric power purchases on
their behalf.
The County, Cities
of Elgin and Aurora, and the Villages of Huntley,
Algonquin, Barrington Hills, Big Rock, Burlington, Campton Hills,
Carpentersville, East Dundee, Gilberts, Hampshire, Hoffman Estates, Maple
Park, Montgomery, Pingree Grove, South Elgin and West Dundee will ask
voters:
“Shall the
[governmental body] have the authority to arrange for the supply of
electricity for its residential and small commercial retail customers who
have not opted out of such program?”
Read more
|
|
For the fifth year
in a row, Kane County government employees have come to the aid of their
hungry neighbors via their "Holiday Helping Hands" project. A
donation of $12,500 in food and cash was made Dec. 13 to the Northern
Illinois Food Bank (NIFB), based in Geneva, for distribution to 27 area
food pantries.
Since the employee
food drive began in 2007, "Holiday Helping Hands" has generated
in excess of $50,000 in employee donations, said Kane County Board
Chairman Karen McConnaughay during a hand off of the 2011 food and cash contributions
to NIFB President and CEO Pete Schaefer. The donation equates to more
than 50,000 meals, she said.
Read more
|
Simply stated, Kane
County planner Janice Hill is “the type of employee every organization
wishes it had,” according to County Board member Barbara Wojnicki. As
chairman of the county’s Farmland Protection Commission it fell to
Wojnicki, on behalf of the County Board, to recognize Hill last month for
her “visionary leadership and management as…Kane County’s first and only
Farmland Protection Manager.”
Hill has worked for
the county for more than a dozen years and has provided staff oversight
for the county’s groundbreaking farmland protection program since its
inception more than 10 years ago.
Read more
|
|
.png)
