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County employee urges patience as residents continue visiting old Brookens location
Summary
A county custodian told the Champaign County Board that despite an administrative move, residents continue to go to the old Brookens location; he urged patience and fixes to address lingering location artifacts in public-facing systems.
Jason Benda, a custodian assigned to Brookens, told the Champaign County Board on Sept. 9 that residents continue to arrive at the county’s former office location and that the transition to the new location has left persistent “location artifacts” in public systems. Benda said the errors appear on county forms and in external services such as banks and mapping apps, and he urged board members and staff to be patient while corrections continue.
Why it matters: County customers who cannot find services can be delayed or turned away, increasing service costs, staff time and public frustration. Benda’s comments came during the meeting’s public input period and directly followed board business about administrative moves and facility work.
Benda said he reviewed the HR packet and saw an address on an unemployment report that still listed the old Brookens address and that people in the past six business days he encountered were still being sent to Bennett and other former locations. “There are all of these other artifacts that we can't control,” he said, naming bank notices, driver-services offices and Google mapping as sources of mistaken directions. “Sadly, Google is not a county employee.”
Benda told the board he has redirected people in recent days to find the treasurer, recorder, board of review, the supervisor of assessments and Planning & Zoning. He asked the board to expect that some portion of the public will continue to use the old location for months: “There's still artifacts in other places … I'm preaching patience. We can do a lot of things, and we do do a lot of things to try to reach the public, but we're still not gonna reach everybody.”
The board did not take formal action during public input. The comment was the only public input submitted on the meeting’s sign-in sheet for the evening. The board moved on to its scheduled agenda including a subsequent closed session and budget discussions that may affect future communications and facilities planning.
Ending: Benda asked for patience from the board and staff as the county works through records, web pages and third-party listings; he said some misdirection and follow-up work will persist even after internal corrections are made.
