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Logan County Board
Regular March Board meeting
[March 27, 2026]
On Tuesday, March 24th, the
Logan County Board held their regular monthly meeting in the
second-floor courtroom of the Logan County Courthouse at 6:00 p.m.
Ten of the twelve members of the board were present for the meeting
including Chairman JR Glenn, Vice Chairman Dale Nelson, Lance
Conahan, Michael DeRoss, Hannah Fitzpatrick, Kevin Knauer, Joseph
Kuhlman, Keenan Leesman, Bob Sanders, and Jim Wessbecher. Absent
members included Kathy Schmidt and Gil Turner.
Father Joe of Holy Family Catholic Church was present to give the
invocation. Everyone in attendance then performed the Pledge of
Allegiance. After this, guests were introduced. Glenn then made a
small change to the agenda, moving a later item to the top. This
motion was to recognize the Mt. Pulaski High School Lady Toppers
basketball team for their 2026 IHSA Girls Basketball Class 1A runner
up finish. Knauer, or Mt. Pulaski, introduced this motion. The
motion was seconded by Sanders. Knauer spoke on the achievements of
the Lady Toppers, stating they won 33 games and only lost two this
past season, setting a record for the high school. A roll call vote
was taken on the motion and approved unanimously.
Next, the consent agenda unanimously was approved with no changes.
This was followed by public comments. The first comment was a
question to the board, with a woman in the audience wondering if the
board had gone on a trip to see a data center. Glenn stated that
several board members went last week to the future site of the
DeKalb data center.
There were comments against the proposed Hut 8 data center. The
commenters encouraged the board to vote no on the data center,
citing several reasons they do not want the data center in Logan
County.
Another commenter, who stated they were an artist, made the board
aware that Disney recently cancelled their contract with OpenAI.
“That bubble is popping,” they said, “and the board should be aware
of that.” Another commenter who was in favor of the proposed data
center, stated his reasons for supporting it. The comment in favor
of the proposed data center was followed by several other heated and
impassioned comments against.
With public comments finished, Glenn moved on to the action items,
starting with Building and Grounds. Conahan, the committee’s
chairman, started with a county light resolution. Nelson made an
amendment that would change the resolution to allow junior high
schools to request the colored lights on the courthouse be changed
in recognition of state level events for sports. This would be in
addition to high schools.
Wessbecher challenged this motion
and amendment a bit, stating that the lights can be expensive and
difficult to program. He asked about schools that co-op with other
schools, wanting to know if they would need to do the lights “half
and half” to represent both schools. In addition, he stated that the
ordinance only talked about sports. He asked about other activities
such as band or chess teams. “If you’re going to do it for one, you
have to do it for all,” he stated. He mentioned recognizing months,
such as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Wessbecher argued that there
are too many possibilities for overlap that could create problems
for the county if too many people came to request changes of the
lights at the same time.
Conahan brought up the issue of making sure they could do all the
colors for each school. He agreed with Wessbecher that there could
be too much overlap and stated that it might be best to table the
motion until more details could be worked out.
Nelson argued that the changing of the lights is much quicker than
it seems, taking about a minute to do. He stated that they could
require a 24-hour notice and only make the changes during “normal
business hours.”
There was more back and forth, and DeRoss asked if it would be for
the residents of the county, or the schools of the county. He argued
that there are several parts of the county where the kids go to
schools located in neighboring counties. Conahan made a motion to
include all the schools that Logan County students attend on the
list of schools that can request light changes. Sanders then stated
that he thought it should only be for schools located in Logan
County.
A vote was taken on the second amendment, adding schools that are
located outside the county to the list so long as Logan County
children attend them. The amendment failed with an even vote of 5-5.
The original amendment was then voted on, which would only allow for
junior highs and high schools located within Logan County to request
light changes. That amendment passed with a vote of 7-3, the three
‘no’ votes being Wessbecher, Conahan, and DeRoss.
DeRoss then made another amendment, stating that the county would
not pay people overtime to change the lights. DeRoss clarified his
amendment to mean that they are not going to require people to come
in during their off hours to set the lights. He stated that, if a
school wins a competition on a Saturday, they can wait until that
Monday evening for the lights to be changed. A vote was taken on
this amendment, passing unanimously.
Finally, the amended motion was voted on. Just before, Wessbecher
asked that, should the motion pass, if the board would ignore it as
they did their previous ordinance several times in the last year,
according to him. Glenn addressed this comment stating that he would
hope that, should the board pass a rule, they would follow that
rule. The motion passed 9-1, with Wessbecher being the only ‘no’
vote.
The second motion from Building and Grounds was for an updated
server quote from Heart IT. Conahan made a motion to send this back
to committee but did not provide a reason. The motion was approved
unanimously.
The third motion involved a CCS Solutions proposal. This proposal
was viewed and approved by State’s Attorney Brad Hauge. For more
information, please read LDN’s article on the March Workshop meeting
here. The motion was approved unanimously.
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The next motion
from Building and Grounds was to approve the purchase of a lift
from AmeriGlide in the amount of $10,277. The lift would be for
when the exterior courthouse elevator is down for renovation.
Conahan stated that this lift would be up in the next week. The
motion was approved unanimously.
The final motion from Building and Grounds was to approve a
quote to have The Carpet House replace carpet in the Treasurer's
office in the amount of $14,255.93. No discussion was had on
this motion, and it too was passed unanimously.
Executive and Personnel was the next committee to present action
items. Nelson presented several changes to the employee
handbook. For a rundown of these motions, please read the
Workshop article linked above. An Amendment was made to clarify
some of the language regarding employee discipline. Several
amendments were also made regarding mileage reimbursement and
rollover vacation time. All the amendments and motions were
approved unanimously.
The next committee was Finance with two action items. The first
item was to approve a liquor license for the Sugar Creek Lodge.
This item was approved unanimously. The second motion was for a
Community Benefit Fund request from Carroll Catholic School.
This item was also approved unanimously.
The Safety Committee was next, with only one item. This item was
a motion to approve the Animal Control contract with the City of
Lincoln contingent on several amendments made earlier in the
month. Knauer, who is the committee chairman of the Safety
Committee, stated that, after talking with Mayor Tracy Welch,
they agreed to a $50,000 per year contract. He stated the amount
was due to the decreasing number of calls Animal Control has
received from the city of Lincoln over the last five years. The
amount was an increase from the previous contract, but not a
significant one.
Knauer stated that, due to previous
staffing issues at Animal Control, the city wanted to have the
contract be month-to-month for the first year so that they can make
sure they are going to be able to get the service they are paying
for. Conahan stated that they are in a much better place now than
they were recently. After the first year, the city would sign
year-to-year agreements. More discussion was had over the motion and
the contract, with several board members addressing concerns. This
motion was unanimously approved.
After this, the second to last committee was Transportation.
Wessbecher brought four motions forward. All the motions were
covered in more detail in the above linked Workshop article. All
four of the motions were unanimously approved. After the motions
were voted on, Wessbecher made an announcement that this year is the
76th year that the Logan County Airport has been in operation. He
stated that they are planning an open house on June 27th.
The final committee was Zoning and Economic Development. DeRoss
brought forward a motion to approve Mr. Pruitt of the Power Bureau
to conduct a study on the proposed Hut 8 data center. DeRoss
immediately made a motion to table the motion. He stated that Mr.
Pruitt had not responded to the inquiries that were made at the
Workshop meeting earlier in the month regarding water usage. The
motion to table was approved unanimously.
Zoning and Economic Development Al Green then shared that he has
been having some issues with the Sugar Creek windfarm. The company
is looking to get more permits, and Green stated that he has been
having arguments with them over the language in the ordinance,
specifically regarding certifications. They have been requesting to
work outside the working hours set in the ordinance, claiming that
the work would not make noise. Green explained the ordinance stated
that all construction is to end when daylight hours are over. Green
continued that there would be a new solar farm company coming in
April looking to build a solar farm off the interstate near Atlanta.
DeRoss then spoke on the trip to the
DeKalb data center he took with Kuhlman and Knauer. He stated that
they have three data centers, with one currently being operated by
Meta, another that is under construction, and one that is still in
the process of coming online. He stated that they got to see a
waterless cooling system being used. Kuhlman spoke on the noise the
data center made, calling it a “constant whine.” Knauer also stated
that there were no generators operating while they were there, and
that they were not there during a peak time for energy usage.
Wessbecher asked about the number of employees they had at the data
center, and DeRoss stated “I would say it was about two hundred.” He
also stated that most of the jobs were in security and maintenance.
Next was Glenn’s Chair’s Report. He discussed the possibility of
having a special regular meeting on March 31st to discuss health
benefits for county employees. Glenn encouraged county employees to
come to that meeting as well.
Before the meeting could be adjourned, a member from the audience
asked about not having a vote for an expert opinion. She stated that
they needed to either find another expert or put off the idea of
voting for the proposed data center for at least another month. She
apologized if she was out of order.
Glenn stated that her comment was out of order, but that he would
answer it. He stated that the moratorium can always be extended, as
it was written that way. He also said that they did not vote to go
with Mr. Pruitt this evening because there were community concerns
that he had not answered since the Workshop meeting. Glenn said that
this does not mean that they are going to stop searching for an
expert to find these answers.
After Glenn answered this question, the meeting was adjourned.
[Matt Boutcher]
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