Liquor Approved and Solar Problems for White County Board

White County has approved its highly anticipated Liquor Ordinance. There will be different licenses businesses can get and for any future events, like weddings, being held in White County. Newly appointed Alcohol Commissioner David South is excited to add this title to his resume. Bellwether constituents explained other important details,

“Basically, they would get a warning with a fine, second offense would be a warning fine for a vote with a license.”

“If there’s any violations of the term in the ordinance that there’s over -serving if you’re serving past the hours, if you’re not following, so if your license is for only beer and you’re taking it with them and you’re only licensed or on the site. So if you’re violating the terms, the ordinance says you have an ordinance violation, fine, you owe this much, you pay the County for it.”

“There’s a set amount, it’s between $200 and $500 for the first time offense.”

State Attorney Chris Neal concluded,

“If they don’t want to pay the fine, then, okay, we’ll vote to revoke your license, and then you don’t have a liquor license anymore.”

It has been two months since Tiffany James attended the White County board meeting to get help with the solar panels that encircle her property from Invenergy, now Ameren of Missouri. Unfortunately, James has not received any answers from the company since then, and it didn’t seem like the White County board had either.

James explained that she has gone so far as to contact and have visits from State Senators and a realtor who is a member of the Appraisal Institute and has extensive background in evaluations pertaining to James’ situation.

The board asked County Engineer Brian Ray if he had been in contact,

“They’d like to see a number, an actual damage amount number, and they would like to pay the County and have us make the repairs and use that money. I’d rather be out of it completely because with three guys spread out over 160 miles, I don’t have time to manage that. I would still prefer to have a contractor actually come out there and work with them.”

The company should be done by the fall if they want to bypass the farmers, that is.

More conversations were had, but State Attorney Neal will try to contact them again for answers to the many problems that have occurred since they arrived.

County Clerk Kayci Heil discussed that the permanent vote by mail will take place on August 7th, and it’s supposed to go out to everyone who has not already signed it. Don’t worry; there will be an opt-out option. Heil stated that the State requires them to be sent to every registered voter. Once a person chooses to opt-out, you can send it back to the County Clerk and will not receive another one.

EMA director James Bolin updated the board on the Hazardous Mitigation meeting on August 26th at 6 PM at Floral Hall and explained a problem he has been dealing with.

“I’m having a little trouble keeping my accreditation right now just because I work all the time. I’m working with a state guy, and I did do a video conference one day last week. They want me to go to Chicago for a week and train and sit in a classroom and learn how to run the EMA and do that kind of stuff. They want me to do, they have very little stuff online. They do have a few things that I can do online, but not a lot. They want me to spend up to, I have 40 hours of continued education basically to keep my accreditation. I have to have the accreditation stuff done by 2025, and I think they’re going to extend it to 2026, so I’m doing everything I can do, and I will keep up as best as I can, as long as I’m showing effort they won’t, they’re not going to shut us off, but I’ll do what I can. If you don’t have it, you don’t have somebody doing what I’m doing trying to keep the accreditation up, keep the County up on the paperwork alone, then if a tornado comes through Carmi like it did over in Mount Vernon, the local really we have a certain amount of resources we can we’ll expire that real quick and then the State has the resources. It’ll go not as quick but fairly quick also and it may be 48 hours before they get here 24-48 hours maybe 72 hours or more before the feds move in. Still, if you don’t have anybody here doing the position you’re not getting any of that they’re not going to be here to help, but they will eventually.”

The board agreed to help find him someone who could make the situation easier.

Lastly, the Consent Agenda was approved with Rhonda Forston being appointed for the Egyptian Health Department board, an increase from the State of Illinois for the Sheriff and Public Defender’s salary, and Novacom cameras installed in the Carmi Times building.

The next White County Board meeting will be on August 21st at 7 PM.