Kane County agrees to tech upgrade funding plan
Money from a special tax dedicated to funding transportation and public safety costs will be used to pay part of the costs of Kane County's pending $12.6 million technology upgrade for the court system.
County board members tentatively agreed to the plan this week after a pitch from Judge F. Keith Brown. Brown is the chairman of a committee examining the upgrade and how to pay for it.
The plan involves using a portion of the public safety sales tax as a dependable annual revenue stream to pay for the system. However, the money targeted would yield only about $820,000 versus nearly $3 million in costs for just the first year of a five-year project. There are some reserve funds from previous years of collecting the tax, but no official was willing to commit any of those funds to the project yet.
The good news for county board members is court services, which handles probation, has decided it can use probation fees to cover the part of the technology upgrade that affects that department. That pulls more than $900,000 of costs off the table.
Board member Bonnie Kunkel said that still leaves a lot of costs unpaid in both 2013 and beyond. If all five years of the implementation cost about $3 million each, that represents a cost of about $15 million, she said.
“I'm not happy with that,” Kunkel said. “I don't like that number.”
Kunkel said she's worried about drying up a funding source by using the public safety sales tax when there are other major public safety projects looming. Those include the expansion and consolidation of all judicial functions and the possible expansion of the county jail.
Brown said every department in the public safety spectrum, from the sheriff's office to prosecutors and judges, are on board with the technology funding plan. And now is the time to act, he added.
“If we don't do something soon, I'm really worried about some type of technical meltdown that will cost us even more money,” Brown said.
The majority of county board members agreed, and the plan will go forward as a factor in the budget for the next fiscal year. Brown's committee will present a detailed plan for expenses and how to pay for them during the budget process.
He said he still believes the total costs of the project will be well below $15 million and even the $12.6 million that a consultant projected. Will County just upgraded its judicial technology at a cost of less than $6 million, he said.
“We're way behind in this area,” county board member Phil Lewis said of the technology in the county legal system. “We need to catch up, and we need to do it as soon as possible. We need to find the dollars.”