Sangamon Sun

Sangamon County Board met Jan. 10 

Here are the minutes provided by the board:

The Sangamon County Board met in Reconvened Adjourned September Session on January 10, 2023 in the County Board Chambers. Chairman Van Meter called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. Mr. Stumpf gave the Invocation and Mr. Fraase led the County Board in the Pledge of Allegiance.

ROLL CALL 

Chairman Van Meter asked County Clerk Gray to call the roll. There were 27 Present – 2 Absent. Ms. Deppe and Ms. Fulgenzi were excused. Chairman Van Meter made a motion to allow Mr. Hall to attend the meeting by phone. A voice vote was unanimous.

SPRINGFIELD SANGAMON GROWTH ALLIANCE PRESENTATION 

President and CEO of the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance Ryan McCrady gave a slideshow presentation. They are a public private partnership that has been in existence for a little over four years. They are in charge of performing economic development activities across all of Springfield and Sangamon County. Funding comes from public bodies, like Sangamon County, the City of Springfield, and about 25 private businesses. The best way to describe what they do is they want more people living and working in Sangamon County, and they do that through economic development. His staff includes Economic Development Officer Amber Krager, Director of Business Development Abby Powell, and Director of Marketing & Communications Shelley Tulo. If you reach out to any of the four of us, you reach out to the entire Growth Alliance. Please let them know if there is anything they can ever do to assist you.

Their operations and activities are overseen by a Board of Directors, which is made up of some of their members, investors, and some community members at large. Mike Aiello is currently the Board Chair. Before that, Dan Dungan was the Board Chair, and before that was Hy Bunn.

Like any good organization, they think it is important to have strategic goals to measure and monitor if they are being successful at what they do, so they all work together to update their strategic goals and try to be focused and deep on areas. Their four main strategic goals are: 1) Increase the number of jobs in our community by an average of 1,000 each year. Their typical workforce site is about 110,000 people; 2) Increase the population in our community by an average of 1% each year; 3) Increase the median income per wage earner by a factor of 1% over inflation; and 4) Diversify sources of SSGA financial support. That is very important because you never know when any one of your funders is going to experience an impact from some global economic issue that has nothing to do with our community. That could require them to pull back on their contributions to the Growth Alliance. Economic development activities cannot be a start and stop endeavor. It has to be a consistent approach that stays out there over the years. They want to make sure they are getting more investors and contributors to preserve the future of the Growth Alliance and to keep the growth going forward.

One of the big things they do to help with job growth and retention is business retention and expansion. They go out and meet with businesses in our community. They want to make sure they are retaining their businesses that are here, talking to them, and getting their feedback on how to create the best business environment. If they build a great business environment for the businesses they have here now, it is highly likely to appeal to businesses they try to bring in. They work hard to find solutions and resources for problems and issues they may be having. They have reached out to and met with 90 businesses in the last year and are very happy with that. They want to continue seeing that number increase every year.

They also go out and try to attract new businesses. Their staff has been able to attend economic development conferences and site selector engagement opportunities, including hosting visits in Springfield. Site Selection Consultants are used when a business is looking for a new place to locate their operations, and usually work with a third party consultant to do that search. The reason is they like to have a buffer between the business and someone like him. If they get a deep relationship with a site selector then they usually get a deep relationship with all their clients. It is a great way to raise awareness about the community. In 2022, they were able to do a full conference schedule to interact with these site selectors. For the first time they were able to host a group of site selectors to come to Central Illinois to become familiar with the area.

Mr. McCrady stated he also spoke to them in the past about a consultant by the name of NextSite. They are a commercial retail development consultant that goes out and helps market the community for retail restaurant and commercial development opportunities.

This type of marketing and networking is very specific. He would need to have a full time staff person dedicated to just reaching out to national developers that handle retail/restaurant type chains. With NextSite they get access to some critical data. One of those is a customer journey database. They recently had a retention visit with a local specialty food store. He was able to ask them if they would be interested in knowing the 60 places their customers went before they came to their store. In addition, the 60 places they went after, how long they spent in each of those, what zip codes they live in, what the demographics of those customers were, and most importantly, what types of things they are buying that they cannot get in Springfield. The way they track this is off the apps on your cell phone. They can provide the data through Nextsite up to just two days ago. They are able to use it to monitor events. This includes tourism events, whether it is the farmers market or the Route 66 show. They can tell who is coming from where. What is most important is not where they are coming from, but where they are not coming from. If your customers are not coming from certain areas then you know you are not reaching your areas in your marketing. So, you can expand your customer’s base that way by targeting your marketing in those geographic areas. The database itself that they access would probably be too expensive for the Growth Alliance to purchase, so the arrangement with NextSite benefits them in many ways. The municipalities around the County have been very excited and have seen a lot of benefit from this. NextSite was helpful in generating the data they needed for the development at the Riverton Interchange with the new TA Truck Stop and Taco Johns.

One of their big efforts of the community marketing campaign is Thrive In SPI. They do not have their annual marketing impact numbers from 2022 yet, but will have them at their annual meeting later this month. In 2021, they had over 6.2 million views of their online advertising and 2.5 million views of their videos that existed out there in the digital marketing effort. About 70% of those views were from people outside of the region. This is an effective tool to be able to control the narrative and story about our community. By doing this, they can influence the algorithms. This is also very important for businesses to get some ideas of how our community operates. They also provide this marketing detail to human resource departments of businesses here. They use that to recruit talent into their businesses. This will allow them to try to attract them to the job and to the community. It is very important because very few people come by themselves, so you have to sell the community and the job along with it. The Thrive In SPI campaign will continue to go forward. They will refresh some of the marketing material, since this campaign has been around for a couple years now. It does not mean they are going to re-do it. They will just update some of things like the videos and the Thrive book.

He gave them an update on the labor force. What he keeps hearing is “Where are all the workers?” There is this sense that people are not going to work anymore. He does not want to be disagreeable about that, but he can present some facts to show you what is going on in the workforce. The labor force in the Springfield metropolitan area is active and they have returned to work. The problem is we have fewer active workers, and not just in Springfield and Sangamon County, but globally and nationally. He heard that about 3 million people have left the workforce since the Pandemic. They are categorized into groups such as baby boomers who accelerated their retirements because of concerns about their health. In addition, the stock market went up very high, so a lot of them pulled the plug, took advantage of that, and moved on. Another sector that left the workforce were women of childbearing age. As the children in the family were in and out of school at unpredictable times and needed more direct supervision, women typically became the individuals that had to stay home and monitor them. There were also a number of young men, ages 18 to 30 that moved to the “Gig Economy”. Whether they are doing Uber driving or technology type work, they are becoming independent contractors and do not show up in some of these workforce numbers. The good news for our community is when they compare the number of people actually employed in our community back to a year ago; they have 2,900 more people employed out of a workforce of about 110,000. Some people might say it is not a fair comparison. If you look back to the same period in 2019, they are still at 1700 more employed people. These are not numbers from the Growth Alliance. They come from the Federal Bureau of Statistics, and they gather the numbers off employer payroll filings and are updated monthly. The State of Illinois also reports these numbers when they report the unemployment rate. Their current unemployment rate is 3.9% compared to a statewide average of 4.4%, so they are still performing better than average. The problem is they are still not satisfying the demand for workers for their businesses. None of this is to say all of the businesses have all the workers they need. They still need to continue to provide workers, so attracting the population and workers to our community can be very important going forward.

The next question is how much money they are making. The strong demand for labor against a fixed or smaller supply of labor naturally creates a higher price. That is the basic economics of supply and demand. Another number tracked by the Bureau of Labor & Statistics is the hourly wage of private employers across the metropolitan area. Before the Pandemic, it was about $25.58 an hour. Since the Pandemic, it has gone up 20% to almost $31.00 an hour. You can see the workforce shrunk, the demand for workers increased, and the price for labor has increased. They are monitoring this closely. This is either good news or bad news. If you are a worker it can be seen as good news, but if you are an employer it may not be seen as good news. There is a significant amount of money flowing through the community, which does create money that can be spent with local retailers and restauranteurs. The good news is they continue to have an active demand for employment. The bad news is they have to keep recruiting workers and recruiting people to live here going forward.

Under the area of diversifying our areas of funding, in 2022 they on boarded three additional investors to the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance. All three of those were private entities that stepped forward and wanted to provide funding to them. They are also receiving a robust amount of interest from other companies interested in becoming supporters of the Growth Alliance. Typically, the way they have on boarded private investors in the past, is he does not meet with private companies looking for them to become an investor. He usually meets with them due to a business retention expansion visit and then shows them the value of what they can do. At the end of that, they usually ask how they can become a part of the Growth Alliance.

His approach is not to go and sell an investorship or membership. His approach is to show the value of what they can do to assist them, and they will typically want to be a part of what they have going on in the community. They have been very fortunate in that way. They will continue to try to diversify that. The long-term goal is they want to see the amount of private funding for the Growth Alliance go up and the percentage of public funding go down. That is the goal for most economic development corporations as you go into the future.

The Growth Alliance exists because of the commitment of the County Board. They recognize that and are grateful for it. They are just getting started in what they do. They need to make sure their community does not get satisfied with the initial successes they have. The effort of economic development cannot start and stop. If you want to be successful, it is like any marketing effort for any business. You have to keep doing it. You cannot stop because you had a little bit of success. They have to make sure they keep doing that and setting the bar high for their community.

They are currently actively engaged with ten of the municipalities around Sangamon County. They do spend a good amount of time interacting with the City of Springfield but are spending more and more time with municipalities around the County who need a very diverse level of support depending on what they do and the size of their communities. They have been very receptive to what the Growth Alliance can offer, and it has been exciting to work with them. When you hear about the project updates they have, you will notice the biggest ones are not in the City of Springfield. If they are able to attract a large development into the future, it is likely to be in the rural area or the border of a rural area. This development effort will happen all across the County.

He gave an update on two of the major investments they have in the County with energy supply. The Black Diamond Solar Supply is under construction as they speak. Also the Lincoln Land Energy Center, south of Pawnee, is now preparing their site for the relocation of the Ameren infrastructure they need to start construction there. Groundbreaking could happen in mid-2023.

The Scheels Sports Complex is close to finalizing their private financing request from local financial institutions. They expect to be under construction very soon. The goal is to have one of the multi-purpose fields finished with a four-season dome over it by December 2023. You will start seeing more full-scale activities there moving into 2024. He thanked the County Board for their support with the abatement request. That was a critical matter in helping the sports complex be competitive with other sport complexes around the country.

The University of Illinois Springfield closed on their purchase of their downtown facility at 4th & Washington. This will be an expansion of Innovate Springfield and will provide other UIS services into downtown Springfield.

He believes the County Board recently had an update from the group on the Pillsbury Mills redevelopment. He is very excited about what is happening there. The Growth Alliance was able to work with the City of Springfield on Moving Pillsbury Forward and complete the environmental analysis, so initial demolition is happening there. He believes they are well positioned to have a very active year in 2023. The prospects for turning that site into a business get better every day. The funding you provide to the Growth Alliance is critical to be able to tackle something this size.

Also, in the last three or four months, they had a lot of interest from businesses that supply products and inputs into the Ag industry. They have two or three active projects right now. Each of those are between $20 million and $40 million in capital investment. They are starting to see the impact of the Ag industry and what it has. They want their products to be closer to producers. They have some of the best farm ground and best farmers in their community, so they are starting to see those businesses have an interest here.

The other thing that is drawing interest is access to the infrastructure that exists and is being expanded. As those water mains are increased and gas pipelines show up, other businesses want to come take advantage of that infrastructure at the same time. That is the snowballing effect they typically see in growing the local economy.

Going into 2023, they have active business attraction plans. They will continue developing relationships with site selection consultants and there will be more opportunity in 2023 to interact with them than there was in 2022. One of the things they do with their business retention expansion visits is they ask the businesses to refer them to other businesses. They try to do what is called “mining their value train”. When they talk to them and hopefully make a good impression on them, they ask if any of their suppliers or customers might be looking for a location. If they do, they ask if they would refer them to the Growth Alliance and get them in Springfield and Sangamon County.

Mr. McCrady thanked them for their consistent support of the Growth Alliance. They would not be where they are and would not have these successes. The County Board created this entity and have continued to support us going forward, so they are very grateful for that and look forward to continue working closely with them.

Mr. Preckwinkle asked how they vary from the Springfield Chamber and how they overlap. A lot of it seems like it is similar efforts. Mr. McCrady explained that Mike Murphy and his team work very closely together with them. Mike has a good way of explaining that. He says, “Most of the time the Chamber is working with local businesses that exist today in helping them solve problems”. The other thing chambers do, that economic development groups do not do, is political advocacy. If the Growth Alliance is working on a project it would typically take years to get it done, and would almost always stager in the administration at the Governor’s Office or the Mayor’s Office, etc. They have to be very careful to remain apolitical. By them doing that, the Chamber is able to step in and do some of the governmental advocacy things. They participate and collaborate on a number of things and projects. If they have a business come to town then the Chamber is one of the groups he would pull into that meeting. The Chamber is also a membership driven organization, which he thinks is important. Members would be invited to certain things and non-members would have to pay more or they do not get access to that. The Growth Alliance interacts with businesses that do not contribute to the Growth Alliance. They are more of a community-wide effort. In addition, the Growth Alliance leads business attraction efforts. Before he does something new, he tries to make sure the Chamber does not also do that so they do not step on their toes. Instead of making assumptions, he does pick up the phone and call Mike. They both do that to make sure they are not duplicating things and making people feel like they can only be friends with one of them. We want them to feel like they can support both organizations.

Mr. Cahnman asked if the power point presentation could be emailed to the County Board members. Mr. McCrady stated he would. He also asked about the goal of increasing the number of jobs for employment by 1,000 each year. He asked how many jobs they have increased up until now, and asked how they measure whether a job increase is attributable to the Growth Alliance. Mr. McCrady stated they could not attribute it to them. If they lose jobs, they are blamed for it and so if jobs go up they will take credit for it. He does not really know how to go about doing that. He thinks their labor force is getting close to what it was four years ago. They saw a huge dip during the Pandemic years as different industries were impacted. They need to continue growing their labor force back to what it was 10 to 15 years ago. They still have a lot of work to do to get it there. There will be years where the job numbers go up and down just as the unemployment rate goes up and down, so they want to continue doing that. The best way they can grow jobs is to grow the businesses that are here right now and make them successful. Mr. Cahnman asked how many they are down from 10 to 15 years ago. Mr. McCrady stated he thinks they are down about 5,000 jobs. He can pull those numbers for him. They still have a lot of room for job growth and he would like to see it continue to go up.

Mr. DelGiorno thanked Mr. McCrady, not as a County Board member, but for his work with Moving Pillsbury Forward. He wants to impress upon all of his fellow County Board members that without the foresight and leadership of Ryan and the Growth Alliance, he does not believe the Moving Pillsbury Forward would have been positioned to get the congressionally directed spending that Senators Durbin and Duckworth just announced for $2 million. This will go a long way in remediating and seeing some progress in redeveloping this site. Ryan and his team have been instrumental in being the conduit to facilitate financing for some strategic investments that set them up for that kind of grant award through the Senator’s office and with various funding and grant mechanisms that will be coming down the pipe through US EPA and other agencies. This would very much serve as a model for local government and for our stakeholders and partners to do this, not only for Pillsbury, but also for other sites they have been grappling with for many years. Ryan was just smart enough or crazy enough to decide to bite off the big one they have all been looking at on the north side for many years. 

Chairman Van Meter asked Ryan if he just announced that the largest construction project in the history of Sangamon County is going to have groundbreaking in June. Mr. McCrady stated they have not announced it. Sometimes he is able to encourage projects to move forward by just telling the developers you are going to do this. It will break ground in 2023. Chairman Van Meter stated he wanted to emphasize how huge this is. He asked Ryan what his confidence level is on this. Mr. McCrady stated it is pretty high. They are spending half a million dollars just to relocate the Ameren infrastructure on that site. Chairman Van Meter asked if he is 90% to 95% confident. Mr. McCrady stated he is. It is a $1.2 billion project, so they are not just going down the street to fill out a loan application. They have to go to Wall Street to get the investors needed to close on it. Their workers are building every one of the projects he named, and they have project labor agreements. When he has a developer approach him about a project, he is very clear that if they want local financial assistance on this, they want their people working on it. He feels like our community deserves that shot. They have great workers here, and he finds it hard to believe the quality of workers is not good enough to build what you want built. Chairman Van Meter pointed out that is not happening in the City of Springfield but is out in Sangamon County, and $1.2 billion is a pretty good return on their $500,000 annual contribution to this.

MINUTES 

A motion was made by Ms. Williams, seconded by Mr. Bunch, for approval of the Minutes of December 13, 2022. A voice vote was unanimous.

MOTION CARRIED

MINUTES ADOPTED

CORRESPONDENCE 

A motion was made by Mr. Bunch, seconded by Ms. Williams, to place correspondence on file with the County Clerk. A voice vote was unanimous.

MOTION CARRIED

CORRESPONDENCE FILED

RESOLUTION 1 

1. Resolution approving the purchase of bulk rock salt from the State of Illinois Joint Purchasing Program.

A motion was made by Mr. Fraase, seconded by Mr. Mendenhall, to place Resolution 1 on the floor. Upon a roll call vote, there were 26 Yeas – 0 Nays.

MOTION CARRIED

RESOLUTION ADOPTED

RESOLUTION 2 

2. Resolution approving the low bids for the FY2023 Township aggregate supply contracts.

A motion was made by Mr. Fraase, seconded by Ms. Lathan, to place Resolution 2 on the floor. A motion was made by Mr. Preckwinkle that the roll call vote for Resolution 1 stands as the roll call vote for Resolution 2. A voice vote was unanimous.

MOTIONS CARRIED

RESOLUTION ADOPTED

RESOLUTION 3 

3. Resolution amending Section 15.05.200 of Title 15 of the Sangamon County Code setting forth Residential Building Permit Fee Schedules.

A motion was made by Mr. Stumpf, seconded by Ms. Douglas Williams, to place Resolution 3 on the floor. A motion was made by Mr. Preckwinkle that the roll call vote for Resolution 1 stands as the roll call vote for Resolution 3. A voice vote carried. Mr. Cahnman voted No on Resolution 3.

MOTIONS CARRIED

RESOLUTION ADOPTED

WAIVER OF TEN-DAY FILING PERIOD 

A motion was made by Ms. Williams, seconded by Mr. Bunch, to waive the ten-day filing period. A voice vote was unanimous.

MOTION CARRIED

TEN-DAY FILING PERIOD WAIVED

RESOLUTIONS 4 - 13 

4. Resolution approving the procurement of goods and/or services for the Election Office from Illinois Office Supply for the purpose of printing and delivery of ballots for the April 4, 2023 Consolidated Election in the amount of $40,000.

A motion was made by Mr. Miller, seconded by Mr. Madonia, to place Resolution 4 on the floor. A motion was made by Mr. Bunch, seconded by Mr. Madonia, to consolidate Resolutions 4 – 13. Chairman Van Meter asked County Clerk Gray to read Resolutions 5 – 13.

5. Resolution approving the purchase of goods and/or services for the County Board Office from various vendors for the 2023 county fleet vehicle purchases in the amount of $208,801.

6. Resolution approving the purchase of goods and/or services for Information Systems from ConvergeOne, Inc. and other vendors for the purpose of updating Sangamon County’s computer network in the amount of $175,000.

7. Resolution approving the purchase of goods and/or services for Information Systems from Dell Marketing, LLC and other vendors for the purpose of upgrading personal computers and other Endpoint equipment in the amount of $150,000.

8. Resolution approving the purchase of goods and/or services for the Regional Planning Commission from Lardner/Klein Landscape Architects, P.C. to provide consulting services for the countywide Route 66 corridor study in the amount of $160,000.

9. Resolution approving the purchase of goods and/or services from the Farnsworth Group, Inc. for the Regional Planning Commission to provide consulting services to prepare a land use plan for the 9th Street/Peoria Road Corridor in the amount of $200,000.

10. Resolution approving the purchase of goods and/or services for Public Health from Houck Transit Advertising for the purpose of bus advertising for Narcan in the amount of $80,000.

11. Resolution approving a grant application for the State’s Attorney from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office for the Violent Crimes Victim Assistance Program in the amount of $31,00- $41,000.

12. Resolution approving an agreement between Sangamon County and Heartland Housed for the purpose of addressing homelessness.

13. Resolution approving an agreement between Sangamon County and Heartland Housed for the purpose of providing staff.

MOTIONS CARRIED

RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED

OLD BUSINESS 

There was no Old Business.

NEW BUSINESS 

A. Resolutions

There were no new resolutions.

B. Appointments

Appointment of Stacy Stremsterfer to Pleasant Plains Fire Protection District to fill the unexpired term of Nancy Miles for a term expiring May, 2025.

Appointment of Tom Fraase as the Sangamon County Deputy Liquor Commissioner.

A motion was made by Ms. Williams, seconded by Mr. Bunch, for approval of the appointments. A voice vote was unanimous.

MOTION CARRIED

APPOINTMENTS ADOPTED

The nominations for appointment in February were also submitted.

PUBLIC COMMENT 

There was no public comment.

REPORTS OF COUNTY OFFICIALS, REPORTS OF SPECIAL COMMITTEES, 

REPORTS OF STANDING COMMITTEES & COMMITTEE REPORT ON CLAIMS 

A motion was made by Mr. Bunch, seconded by Ms. Williams, to place the reports on file with the County Clerk. A voice vote was unanimous.

MOTION CARRIED

REPORTS FILED

RECESS 

A motion was made by Ms. Williams, seconded by Mr. Bunch, to recess the meeting to February 14, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. A voice vote was unanimous.

MOTION CARRIED

MEETING RECESSED

https://countyclerk.sangamonil.gov/County-Board/documents/MinutesJanuary102023.pdf