The Knox County Board approved a number of resolutions regarding increases to the Landfill’s gate fee and allocations of funds from those increases at Wednesday night’s meeting.
In total, the board approved increasing the gate fee by three dollars which will be allocated to the county’s building and landfill contingency funds.
Another resolution passed will see ten percent of the gate fees for the landfill go to a special contingency fund that was established to to assist with other departments in the event of a budgetary shortfall.
Along with that the board approved the Nursing Home to have access to that fund. “That we can take money out of this contingency fund to help them out [like we have done] with the Mary Davis Home,” said Finance Committee Chair Brian Friedrich. “We just added on the Nursing Home to this as well to try [to] get them up where they need to be and we’re on the right track with the Nursing Home, getting it up there. If they fall on desperate needs again, we’ll have an avenue to give them a hand.”
The board also approved a pay increase to the county’s public defender.
Under Illinois law, State’s Attorney’s will be getting a 2.2% increase in pay, and because of that increase, public defender’s will also see a pay raise of the same amount.
Board member Jared Hawkinson said that had board members had a choice he would have voted against it, “Just for the record… as of November 30th of 2017 our state’s attorney was making $166,507.90 and our public defender was making $149,856.95. If I could vote no I’d vote no, but a state law is a state law. We don’t have the money for it.”
Full-time public defenders make 90% of what a state’s attorney makes which for Knox County that comes out to over $153,154.05 after the raise was taken into effect. The state’s attorney’s pay after the raise comes to $170,171.17
It was also discussed that around 50% of the salary for the state’s attorney and public defender were reimbursed by the state.
Approved was a bid to Amp Electric Services for a new fire security panel at a cost of $3,485. Hawkinson said that while Amp Electric’s bid was slightly higher than Thompson Electrics ($3,381.08), it was a local company. As opposed to Thompson, which is based out of Peoria.
Also approved last night were an increase of a dollar for incoming solid waste at the Landfill, as well as the re-appointment of Nancy England to the Zoning Board of Appeals for five years.
