LOYAL. LOCAL. COMPLETE.
During a Wednesday, Sept. 13 meeting, members of the Edgar County Board and representatives from the Edgar County Highway Department breathed a collective sigh of relief. With the presentation and filing of Compliance Review No. 62, a document detailing nearly five years’ worth of expenditures for general maintenance in the county, maintenance in each of Edgar County’s townships and for the county’s township bridge program, the county can close out a chapter described by many as frustrating and arbitrary.
“We’ve been going through a horrendous audit for about… five years,” Jeff Voigt, county board chairman, said. “We’re all through it, but we thank the staff for persevering. All of you.”
According to Aaron Lawson, the Edgar County Highway Department’s county engineer, the ordeal began when the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) stopped assigning an auditor to each IDOT district for annual reviews in the Spring of 2012, electing to process reviews through a centralized state operation. Under the latter system, local representatives were asked to sign off on annual expenses before those were sent off to be reviewed at the state level.
In 2018, the change was reverted, and district auditors were tasked with reviewing all expenditures that occurred under the previous system as part of a “five-year document review,” per Lawson. For Edgar County and the other members of IDOT District 5, the process of sorting through old receipts, paystubs and documentation for even the most insignificant purchases was grueling. Some counties are still in the midst of their own five-year reviews or are just starting theirs.
“It took five years to do one county,” Lawson told a Prairie Press reporter.
While documentation has been submitted from 2013 to 2018, Edgar County may be in for a second helping of the review process to catch IDOT up through 2024, but there is no timetable for when the review process will begin anew.
In other business, Deena Hasler, chief county assessment officer for Edgar County, offered an update on this year’s property tax assessments and valuations. Sale prices are still soaring, affecting the valuations of properties throughout the area.
“The minute we get something valued, it sells for 50 percent higher,” Hasler said. “We just absolutely cannot keep it up as long as we have spenders (or) we have lenders willing to lend the money. I don’t know what to do.”
Hasler told board members her office may be required to apply factors to certain townships to bring sales prices and property valuations into balance. Factors had to be applied last year as well.
“The biggest complaint I get is ‘I haven’t done anything to my house.’ And I say, I’m sorry… but the market has,” she explained. “The market has done this to your value.”
The board addressed several other items.