The former Black's property in just outside Clinton will have two organizations on the property come the end of the year.
Thursday night at the regular County Board meeting, the Board approved a lease with Paramedic Services of Illinois (PSI) at the former Black's property, where the DeWitt County Animal Shelter has been approved to be housed. The lease agreement however was not approved without first, some opposition.
DeWitt County Board Member Sherry Brown feels the lease agreement looks "really bad" because PSI is a taxing body of the County and those revenues would be coming back to the County.
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The property will be leased to PSI at $15-hundred per month and Board Chair David Newberg believes it could have been leased at a lot more than that but points to the benefits of having PSI at that location.
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Brown believes if the property was going to give the County a profit, then they should have advertised it and taken bids. She has no issue with giving them the property but would rather have sold it to them as excess property the County has.
Board member Terry Hoffman carried on the argument of selling the property to which Newberg and several Board members pointed out the motion that was before them wasn't to discuss selling it but to enter into a lease agreement.
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The motion passed 7-2 as Hoffman and Brown voted against the measure.
Other news from the Thursday night meeting...
>>The County approved the hiring of Angela Sarver as the new Zoning Administrator in DeWitt County replacing Mike Bradford. Her salary will be $37-thousand with a start date of July 13.
>>The Board approved new committee assignments as former Board member Dan Ballenger resigned and Cole Ritter was recently sworn in. Ballenger headed the Public Safety and Marina Committees. Cris Rogers takes over as Chair of the Public Safety committee and Terry Ferguson takes over as the Chair of the Marina Committee.
