Hamilton County Board Reorganizes Monday
It was a pretty quick meeting Monday morning. The organizational meeting took all of ten minutes and was pretty much a formality. John Chapman was nominated as temporary chairman of the board long enough to nominate a permanent chairman for the coming term. Brad Miller was re nominated and unanimously agreed upon as was P.E. Cross as Vice-Chairman. The board members agreed to continue, not only with the same leadership from the board, but also kept the same meeting schedule. They’ll convene each third Tuesday of the month, with a Highway meeting to start at 5:15, to be followed by the regular county board meeting at 6.
The special meeting was called for the discussion and acceptance of a new letter of agreement proposal between the county and Bellwether LLC out of Normal, Illinois. Bellwether is described as a veteran owned, Illinois based operations consulting firm providing services to both public and private sector clients. The Government Performance Services division has developed specialized services for counties of all sizes and have provided more than 80% of all professional consulting services to Illinois Counties since 2013, according to their website.
Board member Chad May described the services in this agreement as beyond the current Administrative Services Contract. The agreement will help provide some specific support on projects and to formalize ongoing support for county operations and administration consulting. In addition to assistance in creating and presenting the 2020 budget, Hamilton County is hoping to provide new Sheriff Tracy Lakin with a procurement audit of the department over at least the last two years to help provide a baseline of operations. In addition, the County is seeking support efforts for the County Assessors office, County Treasurer’s office and County Clerk’s office for streamlining and optimizing the County Tax Cycle.
County Board members unanimously approved entering into the agreement.
The Hamilton County Board will next meet on the evening of December 18th.
