DUANE POTTER --TOWNSHIP SUPERVISOR
DECATUR TOWNSHIP SUPERVISOR DUANE POTTER'S
INFORMATIONAL WEBSITE
What Does the Township Supervisor Do?
INFORMATIONAL WEBSITE
What Does the Township Supervisor Do?
In any branch of government, one elected official can make a difference for taxpayers!
In Township Government, one elected official always makes a difference for taxpayers. That elected official is the Township Supervisor.
Under Illinois Statutes, the Township Supervisor is the Treasurer, responsible for payment of all bills and preparation of all financial reports of the Township. The Supervisor is the only official who can sign payroll or voucher checks and who is bonded for that purpose.
The Township Supervisor is also the Chairman of the Town Board and is responsible for establishing the agenda and recommending policy to the Town Board.
The Township Supervisor is the Chief Executive Officer of the Township. In that capacity, he must initiate and implement all activities adopted by the Town Board.
The Township Supervisor is also designated by statute as the Supervisor of General Assistance and is responsible for Administration of General Assistance programs for the needy.
Performing all of these roles of the Supervisor make it possible for the person who becomes Supervisor to make or break the Township – and its taxpayers.
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FEBRUARY 2013 STATE OF THE TOWNSHIP
I feel good about my current term as Decatur Township Supervisor. My board and I have accomplished some pretty impressive things.
The Township was "broke" when we took over, so for three years, we cut from everyone's budget until we became solvent again. Our solvency was short-lived because the State pulled $1.3 million from our budget for General Assistance. We continued to be as frugal as we could be, but we had to downgrade our General Assistance Program severely. Now, as we finish four years, I can report that the Township is in good enough financial shape that we did not have to ask for our maximum tax levy for next year.
The new Superintendent I hired for the cemeteries has been a great improvement. I reactivated a Cemetery Board and appointed Dan Brintlinger, Linda Kehart, and Bruce Pillsbury to operate them. Go to Greenwood Cemetery and see how impressive our improvements have been.
There was one area that didn't go as well as it should have. I was unable to get our Assessor, Tom Greanias, to assess property. He felt we didn't give him enough money to do his job, so he didn't do it. He never understood that every department in the Township was drawing in their financial strings. We gave him as much money as previous Assessors were given and asked him to provide us with a plan of what he wanted to do. The plan was never forthcoming and after three years Tom assessed only 2,300 of your 27,000 properties. Mr. Greanias will not be our Assessor next term. On December 4, 2012, caucus Republicans chose Mark Younker to be their Assessor candidate for the April 2013 election.
In another negative, Kent West, who ran against me in the caucus, joined with fellow antagonistic Republicans Bruce Pillsbury and Tom Greanias, and Democratic Township Chairman Jim Taylor and Democratic Precinct Committeeman Lloyd Holman to file charges against the Town Board with the States Attorney and Illinois Attorney General. All those charges have been or will be dismissed. Their charges were politically motivated and without substance.
Things are going well right now. Hopefully, the Supervisor for the next four years can concentrate on improving our community programs and perfecting the policies that were put into motion the last four years. I would like to be that person.
The Republican Caucus chose a great group of candidates to run with me in the April 13, 2013 election. They were: Michael Sexton ---- Town Clerk
Mark Younker ---- Assessor
Erv Arends ---- Trustee
L. C. McClinton ---- Trustee
Susan Gant-Reynolds ----Trustee
John Sellers ---- Trustee
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Go to "LETTERS" --Read Letters To The Editor that the Herald & Review chose NOT to publish!
See recent NEWS BRIEFS --- "Financial Actions Taken by Your Current Town Board" on December 4, 2012; "Negotiating AFSCME Labor Agreement" on December 6, 2012; December 12, 2012---"State Reimbursement of General Assistance Expenses Incurred Prior to June 30, 2011"
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NEWS FLASH-----TO LEARN ABOUT TOM GREANIAS'S COMPLAINT FILED WITH LISA MADIGAN, ILLINOIS ATTORNEY GENERAL, GO TO "LETTERS" and SELECT: Response to Attorney General March 19, 2012 (click on date highlighted) _________________________________________________________________
July 15, 2012
What is the state of Decatur Township? Not good! The State of Illinois stopped funding our General Assistance and Earn Fare programs as of June 30, 2011. This was a welfare-to-work program that we initiated for Decatur Township when I was Supervisor in the early 90’s. The state was subsidizing the General Assistance program for the township to the tune of 1.5 million a year. They were paying union wages to the workers in the program, they were paying part of our building costs, and they were paying our medical providers that were taking care of our indigent. Suddenly the state not only withdrew their money for the future program, but also failed to pay what they owed us and our medical providers for services we provided before 6-30-2011, the date they stopped. We are still attempting to collect the $484,000 they still owe us.
Should the program have continued? Perhaps not. It had gotten too expensive for the benefits provided – but -- losing the state reimbursement is giving the township really big financial problems. The laws are still in place mandating that the township give a monthly check to those who show need and also that we pay their medical bills. So – the Township Board has had to shuffle things around and do what we can. We had to lay off four employees, because there is no program for them to operate and no money to pay them. We now must take care of our mandate with three employees and their Union contract that expired July 1, 2012, and which the Township must now negotiate.
Fortunately, the Town board last year agreed to lease the upper part of our big building. The Lutheran Child and Family Services is a wonderful fit for our building and the township is comfortable on the lower level. The lease money allows us to maintain the building, pay our utilities and replace the money the state formerly paid us in rent. Many thanks to the people who came to our special meeting and voted to allow us to lease the building. Without the Lutherans’ rent, we would have been forced to raise taxes dramatically.
We have jiggled and juggled the budget, cut here and cut there, and we have managed to stay afloat. The state has agreed to reimburse us the money owed to us as of June 30, 2011. But we have not received reimbursement yet. If by some miracle, the state should pay their overdue bill, we will be able to survive. But, we will be unable to pay for our General Assistance program in future years unless we are able to increase our General Assistance Tax Levy. We will be asking taxpayers on the November ballot to allow Decatur Township to increase the maximum levy permitted by law from .01% to .02% of the appraised value of all Decatur Township property. You will be hearing a lot more about this prior to the November election.
Our Town Board has adopted a budget for next year. We had to look at each department's wishes very carefully. Funding for the Assessor's office continues to be a problem. Tom Greanias is not doing his job as Assessor. You are all aware that in his first year and a half, he did 309 assessments out of the 27,000 he was supposed to do. For the first time in the township’s history, we had to hire the county to do our assessor’s work, which they accomplished in less than two months. (I might add that the county assessor has one less person in their office than Tom has.) In 2012, Tom completed only 795 property assessments. To this day, I still see no signs that any assessing is being done. We have offered help of various kinds. We talked to the PAMS/PRO software company from which the former administration purchased the program he is supposed to be using. They told us exactly what computer equipment he needs to maximize he system. We offered him $11,000 from our budget to give him what he needs for new computers. We offered to send the township’s computer expert to help him get the system on line. However, he was unhappy that we were interfering in his business. The system is the same one the county uses and they have mastered it. He would be fired if he were in a private business situation.
The town board, including myself, is rightly concerned about giving Tom any money in the budget. He complains that we didn’t give him enough money to do his job. That complaint is something I would listen to if he were attempting to do any kind of a job. He has as much money as the previous assessor had when the previous assessor completed the quadrennial assessment. He is doing nothing. The taxpayers of the township deserve better. They deserve to have their properties properly assessed. By law, Tom is an elected official, so there is very little we can do besides cut his budget, although we are looking into other ways to solve the problem.
The cemeteries are coming along very well. Our Superintendent is doing a great job. We had a successful Civil War Tour of Greenwood last October and people are still talking about it.
See News Briefs for updates on Township activities as they occur.
Duane Potter, Decatur Township Supervisor
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DUANE POTTER --TOWNSHIP SUPERVISOR
