Good evening. Good to have everybody. Looks like maybe the postcards got delivered. I have a few more
people here tonight. We're gonna start off with a word of prayer and followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.
So if you would please stand. Heavenly Father, we just wanna thank you for our community. Thank you
for the citizens who make up this wonderful area.
Lord, we just ask you to please be with us tonight that we might make the best decisions possible, not
only for today, but for our future. We just ask your blessing upon this evening. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for
which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
President Scott. President Sanders. Here. Mr. Korman. Here. Mr. Ferris. Here. Mr. Ellis. I'm here, but
I'm all here. And Don Durnall. Here. Thank you. Okay, it's not on the agenda, but we're going to, I'm
going to entertain a motion to approve the minutes from last time's meeting. And we have them here in
hard copy this time, actually. So moved.
All right, approve the minutes. I vote yes. Scott? Yes. Jerry? Yes. Mike? Yes. Kevin? Yes. William?
Yes. Dawn? Yes. Motion passes. All right, we have a public comment opportunity at the beginning of the
meeting and also at the end of the meeting. So at this time, is there anybody in the audience who would
like to come up and speak?
If so, please come up to the podium and sign your name and share with us whatever your thoughts are
tonight. Anybody? Yes, sir. I'm coming first out of selfishness because my dinner awaits me after
I'm Jim Perry. I'm a member of the subcommittee on Get this connection here parks recreation and cemeteries
Why the three are together, I'm not quite sure but And I want since we got a great public turnout we
know our subcommittee met with the park board Jimmy Durnall is the chair Jimmy are you chair is that
accurate? president president
of the park board, which I learned is under Indiana code 36 dash dash dash dash, is sort of a state
entity, and it's also identified under ordinances within the town of Ellisville. And I've got
that information from the meeting on Monday night. But we're having a public session tomorrow night
in the Department of Public Works building. Is that accurate?
Yeah, it's back there and apparently you get through it by traversing around town hall and taking a
left and going naturally 90s to the left and you go back to the building there's plenty of parking yeah,
and and so This is parks recreation and cemeteries if you're interested or want to comment on that we
did have one topic of conversation on Monday night, and that's
If the township merges with the town, what happens to the parks? And there are apparently a couple of
county parks in the township geographic area, and those would remain with the county as I understand
it now. So those are some of the issues that would sort of confront these subcommittees as they're discussing
merger, consolidation, reorganization of some sort.
And I've certainly that you know the variety of terms we can use to describe that but we're meeting 6 to 8 p.m.
Thursday night the 5th and then 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday night the 12th one reason why we're in a little
bit of a hurry is because the reorganization committee wants our report I think by the 4th of March
is it? 27th the rough draft and then
And then one more final document on the 4th of March. And maybe the reorganization committee for the
audience tonight could indicate your future meeting dates that I think would also be helpful if somebody
wants to come to this meeting and comment during the meeting. But I'm happy to... I will sort of stick
around a bit, but I may not be here at the end of the meeting. I don't know how long it's gonna go.
But I certainly will be happy to see people. Paula Anderson and Valerie Dewar are the other two subcommittee
members. So there are three of us on the subcommittee. And we'll be meeting, as I say, in the Department
of Public Works building tomorrow. And then next week, I think we're back in the town center, if I'm
But I could be wrong on that but if you do come on the 12th and are looking for us You don't have to
look very far. We're not going to go very far since I got my role later here That's my best way of getting
around and snow will still be here in a week So, thank you Thank you, Jim. And since Jim asked we we
meet every other Wednesday so the next beating will be February 18th and
and the meeting after that will be March 4th. Jerry. Yes sir. So yeah, you're right Jim, the next meeting
will be on the 12th and it'll be at the town hall. Denise, are you there? Yeah, do you wanna announce
your public meeting?
Good evening. The planning and zoning subcommittee will have a public meeting in this meeting room on
February 17th from six to eight. And we'd like the public to come out and attend and talk about some
zoning districts we're thinking of and we'd really like to hear from everybody about
what they would like to see for the township in town. Thank you. And I think I'll just go ahead, Zach,
you're at the safety subcommittee next Tuesday meeting here between six and eight, is that correct?
Six and seven 30. Six and seven 30, okay. Just thought I'd announce them since we're going through the
list. And we have our website. What's the address, William?
That's another good place to go for hopefully we'll be Updating that and keeping everybody up to speed
on what's going on. So that's a good place to check out, too Okay
Like I said, there'll be public comment at the end if anybody is still thinking about coming forward.
So the first item that we're going to address tonight is to review quotes from Banning Engineering and
Shelton to provide maps for election districts. Who's presenting that? You have two proposals in front
of you. One is from Banning Engineering
to prepare election district maps. Their proposal is for 19,400, and then you have a second estimate
from Shelton Specialties to provide, I think he said five council districts, and his estimate is 6,500.
specialties, and he may substantially less than the other one. He is actually the county clerk in Knox
County, so he's very familiar with the election law and how districts have to be drafted. And he will
have five council districts, and it's not in the proposal, but in talking to him, I think he knows that the
govern subcommittee may, at large, you wouldn't have to draw a district. At large is just, at large,
everybody votes. But this would guarantee a minimum of five council districts that are districts. And
if the council, which I expect it probably to be expanded, is at large, this would cover that too.
So that's, those districts are,
town and township. Yes. Based on population. Correct. To try to even out the population between the
five. With a population deviation of around 10% or less, which is what the state guidelines are. Specify.
So, it's already been decided that we're going to have five councilmembers? I thought that was the governance
committees. No, it is the governance committees. Okay.
up to five districts. Yeah, so like I said, if there's at large added, there's nothing that has to be
drafted for that. Could we go to three or go to seven? It could. That's what I'm saying, is or not.
That's correct. Okay. The only thing we based, I think it was with both of these were sent out based
on the plan from Sheridan. Gotcha.
We're not just talking about the town. That is correct. And all the lines would be or could be redrawn.
So does Shelton have any intentions of making a presentation to us in the banning report? They talk
about that, about coming and making a presentation to us and possibly even talking to the subcommittee.
in my conversations with him. He has said he's willing to talk to anybody via phone or come here if
we need him. Okay. What's the timeline for this? Well, I don't know. Banning did it for Sheridan and
Adams so that they're aware of the statutory guidelines. And Shelton, who I've talked to, he's very
much aware of our timeline too. So they would, I would confidently say they're both gonna fit within
our timeline.
6,500 sounds a lot better than 19,400. I agree. I found helpful on the Sheldon document that pointed
out that only the county commissioners have the authority to establish voter precinct boundaries and
that the creation of these maps could result in split voter districts. Thinking through what that's
going to mean, especially if we find ourselves not consistently on the same page about the whole process
as the county commissioners
Do we anticipate that that could present a significant obstacle? That I would not think so.
I've not seen any, pretty much they know that by law, they recommend if I'm not mistaken, the precinct
boundaries and as close as possible. So it would probably be election board that would end up doing
that. And the county commissioners would sign, they've done it before for Ellitsville when we had some
out and it was just a,
going through the surveyor and saying, here's where the borders are, here's where the precincts are,
do we need to move them over a street or whatever? I think that was last done in 2017 when I was on
the election board. Obviously, price wise, I prefer the shop quote dramatically.
not having the timeline spelled out in the quote and not having a written commitment to appear here
and give a presentation. Those are both elements that I would want to have in writing in the contract.
I agree. Well, did you want to delay this a week and we can have him add that onto there? Or do you
want to just go with the other contract? Or do you want to go with this contract?
Yeah, I mean. Can we say that we go with this one as long as he agrees to those terms? Okay. Yeah.
Subject to. Yeah, subject to, yep. Does anybody have a motion? Let's not. I'll make a motion that we accept
David Shelton's proposal for the $6,500 amended that gives us the timeline that works with the state
requirements and what was the other thing? And is willing to appear? Oh, willing to appear. I'll second.
Any further discussion?
Subject to a timeline commitment and a willingness to come and give a presentation to the reorganization
committee Okay, I vote. Yes Scott. Yes Jerry. Yes Mike. Yes, Kevin. Yes William Dawn. Yes motion passes.
Thank you Comment
So I think governance will probably be something everybody's interested in. We have a large crowd here
tonight. One, we probably ought to mention when the next subcommittee meeting that we'll deal with that
is. If people's interested in it, it'd be good to come. And then any extra information we could give,
maybe it's not appropriate right now, but I think a lot of people will be interested in where they can go
to find out more information about this. I think there are some subcommittees that people will really
be interested in, obviously, how their representative, one of them, planning and zoning, I know is one
that everybody's interested in, and obviously safety. So I just think that any information we can give
them, either now or where they can go to get it, we should have that passed on.
out of this committee here tonight. I'll reach out and if I hear back before the end of the meeting,
I'll let you know. All right, now discussion of public outreach meetings. I don't know who. I put that
on the agenda as a suggestion.
maybe the board would consider having outreach meetings in different areas of the township. So I just
thought that would be a good topic for discussion. I thought it would be a good topic for discussion
to think about having outreach meetings at different areas of the township. Would this be after the
plans developed as we get closer to November or
or for input now? Whatever the board thinks would be appropriate. Either or both. You said meet with
everybody you can as early and as often as possible in any context you can in the living room, at a
fire station, wherever. Whether it's two or 200 people. And I think we're committed to doing that.
And I'll say again, I'll be knocking on doors, going to people. I mean, not with this weather, but when
it gets a little bit warmer. I don't think people even want to open their doors for people with this
weather. But any, my contact information will email us is on the websites, on the town website. Anytime
you want me to speak to yourself or a group or meet you for a cup of coffee, I'm very much willing to do that.
And I feel the exact same way, especially hearing the feedback, hearing what you guys think, but any
questions that you would have or concerns or, but mostly just hear what you folks think. Maybe that's
something that should be put on our website is that, you know, if you have a small group or, you know,
book a meeting. Well, should we try to schedule some?
times and locations and publicize that? Well, I mean, we mentioned on the 17th, the planning and zoning,
that is a public meeting where input is going to be asked, you know, or we're going to ask the public
to come and tell us what they're thinking or what they might be worried about or what they'd like to
change. Yes, ma'am. My name is Kathy Weller and I live in Richland Township.
I'm just responding to the postcard. So I'm not really sure what all you're talking about. So could
you just give a little summary of why I'm here? Okay. Yeah. Great question. Yes. Um, we see a lot of
new faces tonight so that we probably should start off with that. First of all, um, I think that all
of us should introduce ourselves real quick. We haven't, um, we've had the same meetings, right?
I'll start. My name is Andrew Henry. I'm a resident of the town of Ellisville. My wife and our five
kids live here. I own and operate a small business in Spencer and I was excited to join the reorganization
committee because I think that reorganization has a lot of great potential for giving the Ellisville
and Richland Township area more control over the future of the town. So that's why I'm volunteering
my time to be here.
Good evening, I'm Scott Reynolds. I am, I and my wife are residents of the township, a few miles outside
of Ellitsville. My desire to be part of the Reorganization Committee was to be part of this investigation
into whether or not this makes sense for all the residents of the town and the township, and to make
sure that we talk about all the things that should be talked about. So thank you for hearing us.
Jerry Sanders, I'm superintendent of Edgewood schools. I'm also a resident of Ellisville since 2019.
So not that long, but in the time that I've lived here, I've really come to love Ellisville and want
to see a bright future for our community. My name is Mike Kornman. I'm a lifelong resident of Ellisville.
served on the town council previously in the 1990s, and on several committees of the town. And I feel
like I'm pretty politically aware of what's going on with our state legislature, as well as local political
issues. And I think it's time that this be viewed. And that's one reason I wanted to volunteer to be
on board and represent the town. So thank you. My name's Kevin Farris. I've been here since 1998. And
I'm a small business owner.
I live in the township, a little bit past the school on Reeves Road. And everybody said what, the reason
that I'm on this board. I'm gonna go next, because I'll explain. Okay, I'm Dawn Durnall. I am on the
Richland Township Advisory Board. I live in the township and have basically a lifelong resident
of Ellisville, Richland Township. And like Kevin said, everybody's
pretty much said everything, but I do want to make sure that we're doing the best thing that we can
for us now and for in the future. All right, I'm William Ellis and I currently serve on the town council.
I've been a resident of Alexville since 2014, lived in the county since 1999. But the crux of the question,
what are we doing here? At the state level, there's been talk
as far as I can remember, at least since 2006, of eliminating townships, consolidating townships, meaning,
you know, you have one smaller township, one larger one, put them together. That sometimes works, but
sometimes you're gonna have townships that have different points of view on things, and it doesn't work.
So when we're looking at this, we're like, Ellisville and Richland worked together for 79 years when
it came to fire protection. We have a shared history and a shared vision of growth.
So instead of changes at the state level causing us to have to react, we thought we'd be proactive first.
And what this would do, this would actually reorganize the government of the town of Ellitsville and
Richland Township into one system. So the borders of Ellitsville would pretty much be Richland Township.
Everybody be Ellitsville, technically.
Please don't quote me that we're changing the name, because that's been quoted. You could technically
change the name. It's almost like the reset button on local government. We're starting from scratch
on one hand. But on the other hand, we have ways that works. The township does things great, like the
cemetery maintenance and poor relief. The town does things great. You probably saw the streets recently
with the snow. The town's done that well. Fire protection for Richland Township, the town has done that
well. So certain things we don't have to reinvent.
So what we want to do is bring the interest of Richland Township in Ellisville, because a lot of what
we do in Ellisville affects you guys anyway in the township. Problem is you don't get a vote on it.
We want you to have an input on it. We want you to have a vote. And where this differs from what you've
heard from annexations and stuff like that, annexations usually are, there's two types, super voluntary
or voluntary annexations.
which is what Ellitsville's been doing. People pretty much knock on the door and say, we're tired of
the zoning and planning of the county, we wanna come into Ellitsville, welcome. But then there's other
people that are not attached to Ellitsville that can't do that. But then there's the other
type of annexations, and it's going through the court systems right now, that they force you in whether
you want to or not. This, though, is a perfect solution because the ultimate decision is you guys.
We started this in October with a vote, I think it was October, we voted on the town council, voted
to pursue it. And then in November, the township board unanimously both said, hey, let's move forward.
So we formed this reorganization committee. We have, I can't remember how many subcommittees,
what is it? Six, seven? There's seven. Seven subcommittees, I believe. And those committees are, the
goal is that if in November we've earned your vote,
and you vote to do this, you're not gonna lose any services, but you're set on the path for success
because one of the things I asked at one of the last meetings, how many people have lived here and had
kids here go to the school system? Raise your hand. Okay, almost everybody. How many of those children,
after they graduated, found a job here in Monroe County and stayed here?
I see even half those. We want to change that because this is a community that's home for all of us.
We don't want it just home to us. We want it home to our children and grandchildren. And that means
a couple of things we have to do. We have to provide the growth to offer good jobs. We have to provide
responsible growth so it doesn't overwhelm our infrastructure. And more importantly, we have to get
the people directly involved. And this is the most direct governance you can have.
So I hope that answers your question of kind of what we're doing. And I'll try to give it to why. I
think we all have kind of a different focus as to why, but it all ends up in the same place. And so
if there's questions, concerns, we want to hear them. What we don't want is January 1st, this to go
through and us to say, whoops, we didn't think about that.
We have a plan that we're working on from the town of Sheridan and Adams Township up in Hamilton County.
They did this successfully in 2024. They did a phenomenal detailed plan on how they did it. So instead
of reinventing the wheel, we followed something that's worked and people on this board went up there
and talked to them extensively. I've talked to them and they are extremely happy. What was it they said,
Dawn, they wished they would have done it earlier?
Something like that. The trustee said that she wished that she would have done it two years earlier
when the board came to her, the town council and asked. Yeah. So we want to give you an option, more
control here. So if you have a problem, have a concern, you come to Ellisville. It doesn't matter what
your zip code won't change. Your zip code won't change. That's a big thing for people. And your mailing
address will not change. That is a postal thing. And it's already we have in the town of Ellisville,
a Bloomington address, Gosport addresses, and Ellitsville. And Spencer. So that'll still stay as confusing
as it is now. Something else that will not change, William mentioned that you won't lose any services.
No services are gonna be forced on you either. So there's gonna be, there will be different tax rates
for the town and the rural people. We will, those of us in the township that are not in town, we still
are not gonna get brush pickup. We're not gonna get
you know, whatever is offered to the residents within the current town that we don't currently have,
those are not gonna be forced on us. They probably are not even gonna be offered. You won't lose any
service. You will not lose any services. And another important thing about the process, this committee
is working to put together a plan that we don't get to pass, we just get to give it to the Ellisville
Town Council and the Richland Township Board, and both those bodies, independently of each other,
have to approve it, and only after that does it go on the ballot for a public referendum for all the
voters across the entire considered area in November. So it's a multi-stage process where the subcommittees
now are doing all the research and discussion to figure out the implications for parks, for cemeteries,
for roads and streets, for safety, for all the different services. We as a committee compile all those
reports and come up with a comprehensive plan that then the township and the town
which are gonna balance their own interests, both have to approve, and then everybody gets to vote.
It goes to the state, and the state has to say this is a good plan also, and it'll work. When you talk
about checks and balances, there's a lot of them, but ultimately the best checks and balances, you guys,
and that's where it'll end up and be decided. Atlantic, several pieces of property,
that were in the county to the town of Ellisville. I could do that because of boundary. Boundary's touching
Ellisville already and address has never changed. The only thing, the reason that I did it and on several
different occasions, I like the governing in Ellisville better than I like the governing in the county.
The county's wasn't really receptive to what I wanted to do. Everything that I've done has been successful
and well received, increased people's, not just their property values. It was good for all the neighbors,
everything that I've done. So in the county was always opposed to it, but Ellisville always welcomed
it. So that's why I annexed. And in fairness to the county,
You know, we've got the commissioners and council. Richland Township, they have more issues and more
voices than Richland Township they have to represent. And that's the way they're set up. And they're
doing their job on representing those other voices too. But sometimes that conflicts with what Richland
Township wants. This kind of lets us chart quasi our own direction. When you still have county government,
that's not gonna change.
But instead of them drawing a land use plan and saying how you can subdivide or what your slope should
have to be, we can do that. And based on our growth and super voluntary annexations, I'd say it's been
well received by people. There's differences in ideology to what the county perceives as the focus of
their government. They've got this thing they call urban sprawl that they don't like. I don't think
they understand it.
I've been told by people a whole lot more knowledgeable, like Bill Cook, that they don't understand
it. And they limit... they've got a plan already in place. That plan's been in place for decades of
how they want to see the growth. I can tell you tons of stuff that I don't agree with that. And hey,
you want to hear my opinion? Ask me.
Let's get together for coffee. He'll tell you. Yeah. Why I want to see this happen. I think it makes
sense. I think it's important at the higher level to recognize, too, that while people on this committee
may have perspectives on the advisability of this reorganization, that ultimately this committee is
not, the job isn't to persuade
it's to present the best plan that based on the input of the public and the subcommittees, we think
could be the best outcome. And then that's to be considered by the actual decision makers at the township
and the town level and then ultimately the voters. And so a lot of these details are still to be worked out by
these subcommittees, the meetings that you've heard about, ultimately by us integrating these things
together with the assistance of council. But I think it's very important to ask a lot of questions and
ask the hard, difficult questions. I mean, I'm a resident of the township, not the town. And I think
it's also important that we understand kind of where things would change. I think it's already been
sort of implicit in the comments that have been made.
In the township, a lot of these decisions that would be, you know, subject to the authority
of the reorganized town-township, you know, combination are, these decisions are made at the county
level, things like planning and zoning. And so that would obviously, that kind of authority would move
largely to this reorganized political entity. But the changes for the township
are potentially much more dramatic than the changes for the town. And so I do think it's important that
everybody have the opportunity to ask the difficult questions and get the answers. And I also just want
to encourage people to do that and let them know that we're happy to have that done, just whatever our
individual feelings might be. Kathy, did that answer your question?
Okay. There are. That's awesome. Yes. That was a great question. And really, my opinion about all this
is we're just, we're citizens like everybody else, everybody in this room. And I think everybody in
this room wants the very best for our community.
And that's what it's going to take. It's not just five or six, seven people sitting up in front of you.
It's going to take everybody in this room to talk to your neighbors, to get the word out, have
the conversations when you're outside. Well, you're not going to be outside with your neighbor these
days, but yeah.
you know, when you're at church or with some friends, having conversations. And those conversations,
if we each one take this very seriously and go out and have those conversations, then that's how we're
gonna reach more people and more people are gonna be knowledgeable. We don't want anybody to go to the
voting booth in November and say, I have no idea what they're asking me to hear. We need to make sure
everybody that,
and our own personal circle of influence that we're reaching out and touching and making sure that everybody
understands the situation. And we are just getting started. I personally am still learning a lot about
what we're doing and why we need to do it. And so this is probably the hardest part of all this in terms
of formulating our plan.
and getting our input and knowing what our community wants and developing that plan and having those
conversations. This is probably the hardest part, but if we do our work now, then when it comes November,
it'll be an easy vote for us, I think.
The next item that I had on the agenda looks like it says discussion of dates for subcommittees to make
preliminary reports to the board. We already had that, right? I'll get to it. You said that the township
people, which I remember, will be affected more than the town. Can you just give some examples and also
how you mentioned the county would still
Have some oversight. So can you just give us some examples of the county versus the township versus
the town? What things would be different? Well, for one thing, the township is a lot bigger than the
town, not just area wise, but also population wise. There's about seven. The populations are almost
the same. New discovery. We found out. It's 87.
8,500 for the township and approximately 7,000 for the town. So it's come down from 17 to 12,000. You're
not talking about that. We're using the most up-to-date census. Those are really good numbers. OK. So
never mind. Yes, sir. My name's Dennis Pence, and I've lived in the city most of my adult life.
I guess my question before you is to combine the township and the city. Is this a power struggle to
keep the county from coming in and taking over fire departments and police departments? I know you say
the services will stay the same, but it seems like this is a little bit of a power struggle to make
us stronger to prevent the county from
fighting us on, it's like they want to take us over as well. Is that something you're saying or is this
just my? You mind if I take that? Everyone's looking at William. I think you've hit the nail on the
head. The county and there's members of the county that work great with us, but when it comes to policy,
this is where we have friction.
Since 2017, 2018, every resident in the town of Ellisville has been paying a food and beverage tax of
1% on their food. We don't see a dime of that. And the county went up and fought against us getting
the law changed last year at the state house. So that was a clear indication. They don't want us to
have what they think is their money. They did let us say that if we wanted to pass our own additional
food and beverage tax, we could. That was so gracious of them.
Then this year the commissioners have made the same night that we had our first reorganization meeting.
They decided to have a meeting same date and time for a fire district meeting. And what that would do,
I mean they didn't make a decision on this, but they talked, it was advertised that they were going
to bring town of Ellitsville and Richland Township into the fire district. First of all,
No, it said Ellisville. The notice actually said it, even though they can't do that. Right, they legally
can't do Ellisville. But that tells you the mindset. They think that they can. But then when we bring
this up that we're wanting to chart our own course. We have a 79 year history between Richland Township
and Ellisville providing fire protection.
they are finding a solution to a problem that does not exist. And here's what that would mean to taxpayers
if this does not happen and the fire district goes in. And Bean Blossom right now, the remonstrance
from what I understand was 80% against it. They said tough, we're doing it anyway. And so we know that's
not gonna work if the fire district comes in. But if I'm not mistaken and I could be
a little off in these numbers, the tax rate for Bean Blossom, I think was gonna be 29 cents per $100
increased for people for their fire protection. Granted, they are getting better than what they have
now. They're getting the place staffed 24 seven, they're getting the equipment modernized. But for $250,000
home, that's about 700 bucks more a year in property taxes.
So let's take that if the fire district came into Richland Township. Well, they contracted Ellisville
Fire. There's no equipment. There's no staff. They'd have to build all that from scratch. I think you'd
be lucky to pay 29 cents per $100. Now, realistically, the elephant in the room, reorganization is going
to cause a slight increase in taxes.
We don't know exactly how much, but I tell you, it's not going to be 29 cents. It's not going to be
that much. Based on kind of what we're looking at, back of the napkin things, based on the Sheridan
plan, if we kind of overlaid them, probably what was it, five to eight cents per 100, Mike? And that
depends on, you know, if the subcommittees and the public say, you know what, we want more services
than we have, and we're willing to pay for it.
The goal is not money, because we're trying to make this as close to revenue neutral for the taxpayer,
the people in the township as possible. And because we want to really open the industry of new growth,
where when new stuff comes in, they can be at the higher rate. And one of the biggest things I hear
from town residents all the time, we do not want to have to pay for new growth. Well, the way you do
that is have smart growth.
growth that is commercial, light industrial. We're not necessarily attracting any, but we're not gonna
stop that if you have 100 acres and wanna sell it. It's not our job to tell you what you can do with
your land, to an extent, as long as it doesn't affect your neighbor. So to answer your question, there's
a lot of pieces to that, but yes, this is a good way for us to say, we have our own identity, it's a
like identity, we go back generations of the two. Ellisville is Richland Township,
You know, we're fully in the township. I've actually, I think we have a little bit in Bean Blossom now,
but for most of its history, it has been a Rifson township. And we wanna continue that. I'm in favor
of finding the county in every way that we can and adding extra taxes, tongue in cheek, it goes right
along with our school corporations, which doubles by taxes every year anyway, so.
So thank you very much. Okay. These are great questions. And I, for me, actually, this is maybe the
best meeting we've had because of your questions. Are there any other questions or comments?
Whoever gets there first. Ladies first though. Thank you. I'm Linda Buckland. I've lived for 38 years
out on the range road. I have a Spencer mailing address. My utilities all come from Spencer. The only
services I get are fire protection, and thank you for that, and the county maintains and plows the roads.
Those are the only services I've got. There's nothing that the township is providing me otherwise. But
now that you're talking about development, I wanna hear some definitions because I'm up there on the
hill and I hear everything that goes on down on that key heap property. There are backup alarms, there
are ventilators, the trucks moving around because it all carries up the hill.
So if you're talking about development, what are you doing to the quality of life for those of us that
moved out there for the peace and quiet and the fact that we don't have a lot of noise and traffic and
all the things that come with development? I mean, honestly, I'm on the alternate route between Bloomington
and Spencer. And when 46 is shut down,
and they have to reroute the traffic. It's all right by my front door. And two years ago, I had a guy
lose control on that road and he went in between my retaining wall and the front of my house. Two degrees
different, he would have been in my house. Now I haven't been able to get the county to re-bank the
road and I don't think anybody's gonna take on that expense. So I'm still not gonna get this,
the services that I need to fix it because the Chevron signs there on the road telling people about
the curve just get taken down every couple of years because somebody plows through them. So I really
want you to stop and think about defining your terms so we know exactly what you're talking about because
when you say development, it means something entirely different to me than it may be to you because
you're hearing dollar signs and I'm seeing loss of
quality of life. And I think that's one of the reasons that it's important to be part of the town because
we made a decision key that's affecting people in the township that you didn't get a vote on. You didn't
get any anybody to talk to about it and you're kind of caught in that gray zone that we made the decision
and you have the consequences. We want to avoid that as much as possible.
We don't want people to say, well, you know, I want this. We don't want you to look out your window
and see nothing but homes and shopping centers or anything like that. When we talk about development,
that will be driven by what wants to come here and by the public. Well, the problem here, though,
is to date, your communication with those of us out in the township has been abysmal.
a brief notice by somebody complaining on Facebook several weeks ago, and then I got the card today.
There has been no direct communication with any of us who are voters out in the township on the pros
and cons of this, on the implications, on the unintended consequences, and that's all the stuff I wanna
hear before I'm gonna go ahead with this, because it just looks to me like it's gonna make it a whole
lot worse out by us,
and it's still gonna be a tax increase and it doesn't matter if it's a few pennies on the $100 because
it's a tax increase for something we're not getting any benefits from. So right now I'm not hearing
anything that's making me wanna vote for this.
We're not asking for your vote tonight or make a decision. But that's what I'm saying. I am not getting
the communications that's going to change my mind. So you guys really need to up your game on notifying
us of what you're doing, why you're doing, when you're doing it. Because you've been at this since October,
and this is the first public meeting I've learned about. No, no, no. We started discussing it and had
the first vote for the town council.
You started working on this in October and the first official notification I got that any of this is
going on is that card that came this week. That's four months. Four months and some of this stuff that
you're doing already sounds like you're working on it's okay, this is what we're gonna go through with
and it wasn't prefaced by saying this is a plan and a proposal. It was like we're taking contracts for
electoral districts.
excuse me, what? But yes, the governance committee has to draw a plan that this year is not for the
electoral districts is the governance committee is going to have to say, how are we going to reorganize
the township and voting? So they have to have a professional do that. That's what there was no buildup.
There was no explanation. There was no preparatory work that you guys all know what's going on. We do
not know when you hit me with you're debating between a
$17,000 contract and the $9,600 or whatever the numbers were and then the URL or whatever it was for
the website went by so fast I couldn't even write it down. There's no display telling me where
the information is. You're not getting the word out to those of us that need to know. This committee
was formed at the end of December. So we have not been working on this since October.
We have had a few meetings up to this point and we had to get approval for funds to send that postcard
out. So we are trying to spin that up. The website has only been up for two weeks because we had to
get funding and then find a developer who could build it in under a month for us. So we're trying to
get a bunch of things that don't have momentum going. I appreciate your frustration. And unfortunately,
with the lack of local newspapers, it's just a shame that we don't have the journal anymore.
But unfortunately, the biggest way that we've had to promote this so far is just on Facebook and social
media, which I realize is pitiful. But without a newspaper, there's really nothing else that we could
do until we got the funds approved. There are local radio stations that'll do PSAs. Well, I don't know
that this... They do PSAs because I've worked for non-profits and they'll carry government PSAs too.
I first heard about this process through the Herald Times at the end of last year, and I've been somewhat
disappointed by the fact that they haven't continued to cover this. The B Square Bulletin is another
local news source that made an initial comment about it but has not continued to cover it. So I would
encourage everybody to reach out to those organizations and any others that you feel like should be
providing coverage of this and encourage them to pay attention and make sure that this information is
getting reported.
Because I don't think it's, I mean, I just wanted to say to the person who was just here speaking who
sat down that I live on Ratliff Road and so I have many of the same concerns when it comes to development.
And so I think the only way that we get the answers on the table is to make sure that we do have as
much attention on this as possible. So please do encourage media and others to attend and report. We
definitely appreciate the feedback.
We've ordered yard signs and we're working on a billboard and some other communication devices too.
But up until the realization committee formed and we had a lead on what we should do, we hadn't gone
there yet. So the communications that up your game, I wrote it down. I agree with that. And that's what
we're doing. Yes, sir.
Yeah, I'm Phil Shanoff. Wife and I, we've lived here for about 45 years now, so a couple three kids
growing up and went through high school here. This lady that was here before me asked a lot of hard
questions. You know, it's kind of an ambitious plan. I'm a skeptic, but I try to be open with these
kind of things. And the thing that I think about is that
we were talking about services, you know, and I heard what Dawn said about, I think it was Dawn, that
what's in place is in place, and as far as township-wise versus what's in place town-wise, that'll remain
the same. I guess the thing that I worry a little bit about is redundancies occurring. And what I mean
by that is, you know, Monroe County,
They do a good job with our roads. I'm in the township. I can't fuss. There's times that, but on balance,
they do a very good job. And I guess what I'm trying to say is I kind of hate to see something like
that. A service that you already have, you don't want to lose that by virtue of this thing. There's
gotta be some kind of a cooperation where
You can use, the county provides a fair amount of services. I mean, you don't think about it, but there's
soil and water, there's surveying. I mean, I'm talking about in-house, different things like that. Mapping
programs, but they do things. So I would just advise or suggest that you think about and try to, kind
of a little bit of a tiff going on, but try to see if that can't get corrected because
You know, it is the township. You know, there's a PLSS township, and there's a civil township. And I
got the Senate Bill 270, and I took a look at it here, and I'm not sure if this is really what you're
referring to, because they talk about attaching one township to another township, and one's dominant
and one's not. But if Sheridan's already done it, and it's been through state law,
It's been approved through state law? Okay, okay. Yeah, this is different than that. Yeah, okay, I'll
let it go at that. I just didn't wanna. Sheridan is actually the third, Sheridan Adams are the third
or fourth that have done it since like 2011, I think. I think Zionsville and Whitetown, whatever townships
they've done it. Somebody said Bordersville, does that sound right? I think so. That's anecdotal, I
don't know either. Right, yeah. And when I talked to people from Whitetown at one of the conventions,
it was all before their time. So I didn't have any information, but they said they don't notice any
problems, but they may not have a good idea of what was before. But no, you bring up great points. Well,
it's just things that came to mind and I'll probably have more later, but I just wanted to say those
things. And we definitely, I can tell you, I wish our county council was,
I wish our commissioners was cooperative and work with us like the County Council. It's a difference.
And keep in mind, if this doesn't go through, you're going to have a change to fire protection. You're
going to have a major change and a major cost. They've already telegraphed that. That's something I
was not aware of at all. I mean, I knew that Ellisville provides fire protection beyond the meets and
bounds of Ellisville. I know that. Now, how that's compensated for, I have no idea.
So the state gives funds specifically to townships that is for fire. That is the only thing it can be
used for. So townships are basically a funnel for fire services, whether it's volunteer or a career
department. So everything that Richland Township gets for fire goes straight to the Ellisville Fire
Department, which is why Richland, that William mentioned earlier, Richland has no town fire
department of its own, and in the Monroe County Fire. Van Buren does south of us. Right, so we have,
so we are, so for 79 years now, the Ellitsville Fire Department has taken care of Richland. It's almost
an, Ellitsville puts in a little bit more money than the township does from the state, but it's pretty
equal in what they get. Okay, well listen folks, thanks. No problem, thank you. Thank you, Dennis.
Doug Turnip Seed, lived here for many, many, many years. And I've got some concerns, and I'll just voice
those, because I know this is extremely early in the planning stages. So I acknowledge that. But I've
had some concerns with development and growth, which was brought up earlier. You're expanding into a
bigger organization. And before I will vote yes on this, when that time comes, if it comes,
I want to know for sure what the financial part of this is going to be. If you're going to expand the
police department and other services or provide expanded services which are already low on funds, I
don't believe, and I'm sorry, that a five or eight cents increase in tax is going to cover that. The
other things that I've had happen, and I've been in here a couple, three times in the past, is
the voluntary annexations, they're voluntary because the rules aren't as strict as the county. And that
has good effects and it has bad effects. The bad effects that I have personally witnessed is the city
council has given in to developers and those people that are building the infrastructure along 46. And
that's been very disheartening.
Because I feel like the focus has been on development and grading tax dollars and funds and leaving
us Unrepresented and so that's a that's a hard pill for me to swallow I've watched the agreements that
we've been in here and we've agreed upon just totally Undone And so that's been that's been a little
disheartening. So when you tell me that you want to develop a
You wanna grow and you wanna provide the financial base. I mean, I really wanna see a good plan because
what I don't wanna see is more development happen and 46 get more difficult to navigate without there
being an alternative way to get in and out of neighborhoods and on 46 in a manner that is safe. So these
are the things that I definitely wanna see, but I want some assurances that once we agree to this, that
we're just not going to
let some stuff go because a developer or somebody with financial interests gets what they want because
they don't wanna do what we agreed upon originally. So those are my concerns. As a member of the town
council, if you don't want to publicly, but please let me know if there's something we have committed
to that's changed. I need to know about that because I'm not aware of anything like that, but those
are things we need to hear.
Are you in the township right now or town? I'm in the township, but I'm surrounded by town. Right, and
this would help you in a sense, have more direct representation too, because you're gonna be electing
a representative from your district instead of all at large. You don't even get a vote on stuff we do
that's next to you that could impact you. This would help with that.
But yes, all those things you mentioned, before that plan is voted on by the council or the township,
we've got to know that too. Because what we don't want to do is having, you know, January 1 say, oh,
we didn't think about this, or we have to go back to the drawing board. We get one shot at it. Yeah.
To back her, this lady before me is concerned, are you guys going to define what you mean by growth
and development?
I mean, I really like to know that because it affects me because I have to turn out on 46 every single
day. You ought to get involved with the planning and developing subcommittee. Yeah, come to that meeting.
When's that next meeting? The 17th? Yeah, I understand that. But my question is, is that going to be
well-defined before the vote? That's my comment. Well, I will say our UDO currently for the town well
defines those things. I can speak for myself when I say growth.
The biggest thing I hear from residents in the town right now, because that's who I represent, is their
taxes are too high. They're tired of the taxes going up. And right now we have kind of an imbalance
of residential, more residential, which takes more resources and puts more taxes, more stress
on infrastructure, than we do things like light industrial and commercial. I wouldn't want a bunch of
strip malls.
But like if Crane is always, that is a driver of industry in our region. And there are companies that
support them in the defense industry that would like to do manufacturing similar to what's happening
on the west side of, and for me, that's what I envision. And our UDO and when they'll be figuring out
for the township,
What we don't want to do, if you wanna keep your area agriculture, we're not gonna force you to change.
But on the other hand, if you have somebody, I think I mentioned earlier, the 100 acres, they no longer
wanna farm. Is it fair to tell them they can't sell it to someone that doesn't wanna develop that into
an industry that's gonna bring jobs to the area, that's going to bring
tax relief with the tax revenue, because, I mean, we could get $2 billion in new revenue. None of us
are gonna make a dime more, so it doesn't help us, but it does help everybody with their taxes. It does
help the schools especially, because they're able to get more revenue without their, but we also have
to, the quality of life, because we don't want everybody to be so crammed together that you're spending
45 minutes getting from here
You know, what you see right now, that construction at Sale Street, we don't want that to be a typical
drive all the time. So those things have to be in mind. Harmon Farms, I believe, aren't they working
as they build out, aren't they also working on alternatives like weight connection to the school and
back way over there. So those are things we keep in mind. And we really, I agree with you, we really
need to take the emphasis off 46. And I mean, for me, if I had a magic wand,
unless there's a stoplight, I would not have any right or left turns off of 46, because highways should
not. They're strode and they should. No, I agree. I don't want to see any more stoplights, but at the
same time, I want to make sure. Yeah, not a ton of them. I'm saying that spotlight with French roads,
those are things that I envision. And some of that's been worked into the UDO. And that's what he's
talking about. I think ultimately,
we can talk about the things that we might like to see or not like to see, but for better or for worse,
it often comes down to what does the law actually say? And so I think that these are really good questions.
You know, what's the relationship between the town's unified development ordinance and the Envision
Ellitsville plan and the like, and how will that expand or be applied to the township?
I don't think that any we can't really say right now because right we you know, but I will also be at
the planning and zoning subcommittee because I'm as a citizen apart from being on this committee very
keenly interested in Those discussions so I would definitely if you if you're able to I would try to
attend and and make sure that those questions are raised To make that comment because
I won't vote yes unless I know and I'm comfortable with it. And Scott, one thing I kind of like to brag
on you a little bit. I hope it shows that we're not just trying to get people a rubber stamp. You've
been concerned about growth in Ellensville. So we want that voice. So we have somebody on our subcommittee.
And I'm glad.
A quick recommendation for me, there's actually an interesting book called Strong Towns by Charles Marrone
that I read last year, and I recommend it. It gave me a bunch more information and thoughtfulness about
how towns can preserve their character and also responsibly support their financial obligations over
time. And there's a lot in there about neighborhoods and growth and infrastructure. I own a small business.
I run a small light manufacturing company.
I've been really glad to be able to create jobs in this area. We went from four employees to close to
30 over the past five years, which I think is cool. But I also don't want to see completely unrestricted,
no rules, Wild West, pave that, build that, do whatever, because that will destroy or diminish, degrade
the quality of life in our area. To both of the speakers who have asked us to give a precise definition
of what we mean by growth,
That's hard to do in advance. It's largely going to be building a flexible and responsive but still
constrained approach that can look at the available opportunities for growth that wants to happen here,
companies that want to start here, local small businesses that want to begin here and grow here. And
so we could probably pick some things we don't want to see, but we're also trying to give ourselves
a direction that we want without putting the whole area in a straitjacket. And there's tension there.
It is going to be, parts of it are going to be ambiguous. And we don't know for sure what opportunities
will be available five years from now. I would rather have the residents of this area have more direct
elected representation
overseeing that five years from now, then have our hands partially tied by other things that we don't
have a direct say in. So I trust the residents of Richland and Ellitsville to make better decisions
about growth for Richland and Ellitsville than a more general purpose one size fits all approach for
all of Monroe County. Does that make sense? Andrew, by the way,
Some heads probably exploded from the town council that's listening, because I've been beating the drum
about stronger towns for three years now, and I thought I was the only one that read the book. No, you
recommended it to me, and I read it. I did? Yeah. OK. See, I've recommended it to so many people. I
think you're the only one that's read it. I actually listened to it on Audible while I was driving up
and down 46 to and from work. Was I right? Isn't that an amazing way of- Very helpful. Yes. Recommend
it. Strong Towns by Charles Barone Jr. OK.
to come back to one more time before we end tonight to see if anybody else has a public comment. But
does anybody on the board up here have a matter they would like to bring for discussion? I thought we
already did that, but the previous meetings? And Linda, you had asked earlier about the website. I said
it very quickly earlier, and I apologize. It is Ellitsville Richland.
info.org. Nope, all one word, Ellitsville Richland info.org. And that's where we're posting documents,
we're posting video links to these previous meetings, we're posting announcements about upcoming meetings,
and anything that we can think of that will be useful, we're trying to put it all up there so that you
don't have to have a social media account, you don't have to notice a billboard, and you don't have to
Wait, everything's gonna be going up there on an ongoing basis at let's fill Richland info all one word
dot o RG Yes Yes, ma'am Yeah, so my name is Liz vital and I just happen to be on County Council So I'm
happy to hear that you're not angry at everybody No
So I hear a lot of conversation for some time now about the Sheridan plan, but I don't see anything
anywhere that tells me or shows me what the Sheridan plan is. Is there a way to provide that information
on your website or how would people find out what you have learned about them or what they are willing
to share with you that could be shared? I will double check. I thought that was on the website he gave,
but isn't it on the town website too, Mike?
Okay, I looked on the Richland info when you're okay. And I didn't see it there. Okay, I will make sure
within the next day or two, it's on there because that is crucial to give kind of everybody kind of
a broad idea, especially for you being the fiscal body, the county to kind of know where that fits in
with everything. So no, I think we discussed at the last meeting that needed to go on there. And I did.
Yes, it's not yet in our resources section. Okay, yeah. So if that could be on there, I think that would
be helpful because it must
surely give the rest of us some idea of what you're thinking about, right, based on what they've already
done. And is there, does the Sheraton plan or the Sheraton community, wherever they are, do they have
anything or did you find out any resources about feedback from people that live there, what they're
thinking about it, or does this plan talk about that? When they voted on it, it was almost,
it was overwhelming. It was an overwhelming yes, that the people of the town and the township voted
yes for it.
Yeah. And so is there any current feedback about what they're experiencing now that you could share
or they could share about what they're experiencing now as well? Because their plan is in action, right?
Right. So if we had some current feedback on what it is people are experiencing now, I think that would
be useful, right? Because they're living it now, right? We only met, the few of us that went up there
met with just the former trustee who's now an employee of the town.
and the town council president and their PR guy. And so we didn't, we haven't actually, at least I haven't
anyway, talked to any actual just citizens to see what their thoughts on that were. Do you know if the
town, Sheridan, I'm sorry I'm focusing on this, but I like information, right? So if they have taken
maybe a survey of what the people think about it now that it's in place, I think that would be useful
if there was something like that.
I'll reach out. I do know they were lucky they have put some flexibility in the plan because what's
kind of interesting is they had one of the reasons that they did this was to get more direct control
too from the city of Carmel and the county wanting to over expand and put high density housing in the
area. So it's kind of a little bit opposite in that aspect.
but the people there wanted more control because you had an outside entity making these decisions for
them and they didn't. So that was one reason the township overwhelmingly voted for. But when I say that
the flexibility, originally they had contracted or had memorandums of understanding with the county
to continue doing the roads and things like that. But I guess that as soon as it passed, then that all
changed. But luckily they were able to pivot. And the original plan,
with a suggestion was to eventually build out their Department of Public Works to cover the whole township,
you know, in stages and the county would take less and less, but it ended up changing where
they subcontracted for a lot of it, saved a lot of money on the taxpayers. So it offers some flexibility
there, but I haven't, that's a good, I mean, I'll, I do know I've been on there
We have Ellitsville high neighbor here for Ellitsville. They have a similar one for Sheridan. And I've
been on their Facebook group. I haven't asked anything because I'm not a member there. I'm just kind
of alert. And I saw a lot of the same concerns there around this time in the process as we're hearing
here. But I noticed after the vote, I haven't heard anything on it. And there's nothing recent. Doesn't
mean there's no concerns. It just means it's not
there, but I will reach out to the town council president to see if they've done some surveys, or even
public comment, because if you're getting more people involved, which this obviously is, if something's
wrong with it, chances are within the first couple months, you're gonna hear about it pretty quick,
even if they voted yes. So I will reach out, I'll commit to that. So speaking of different what's wrong
or whatever, I heard tonight, I thought I heard tonight,
Richland Township population was very similar, I thought, to the Ellitsville town population. But the
numbers I've seen before in different reports, public reports, don't indicate that to me. So I'm wondering
what the real numbers are for population for Richland and Ellitsville. Mike, do you want to speak to
that? Yeah. So the real numbers are 8,000 to 8,500 people in the township.
Our last census was in 2020 was 6,635 people. So we're pretty sure we're over 6,700 just based on new
starts building in that. So those are the good numbers. I've got egg on my face because I was told the
numbers were different for quite a while and I've been using them. And so if you want to come see me,
I'll give you all the facts. But the first fact I give you was incorrect.
But but those are the numbers. Okay, and that's very viable. How how it's on the census. Okay, and As
everybody around here in Rowe County says now just Google it I think there was an email since his inquiry about the
the numbers of Richland and Ellisville, and Ellisville's numbers are included in the Richland and Noble.
I think that's where the confusion was. That's where the confusion was, yes. Double counting. So, yeah.
Okay. Turns out the old numbers just turned out to be legit. All right, true. And so is there information,
back to the Sheridan thing, is there information before and after their reorganization, or what do they
call it, about the tax rates? Did they have
Did they go up or down, or where's all that? They have that. Sheridan went up 4 cents per 100. Okay.
And that can be shared also on your... Yes. I believe that's in the reorganization plan. If not,
it was... It is. Okay. It is. Okay. Yeah. I couldn't remember if I read that or... In my opinion, you
can't have too much information. Right. Well, exactly. Well, because you never know what you don't know
until... Right. Yes. Okay. Well, thank you. The Sheridan plan is a good, almost a half inch
So that's a lot of information. So you've got your information, yes. It's great because, yeah, you can
find anything you want. We can't even email it, so it's so large. Thank you. Thanks. So this is probably
a good time to say, for anybody that doesn't know, I'm the town manager and your utilities director.
Michael Farmer I should have said somebody else so Sometimes people want information immediately these
meetings are fine and they go from one week to the next and so we've made an offer when this all started
to reach out by coming to anybody that has questions or setting in a
in a room like this and spending as much time as I need to with anybody to tell them how we operate
now. We have a pretty good idea of what will happen if we don't reorganize. So that's worth sharing.
And so whether it's the county council or individuals, the reorganization committee,
I will spend as much time as I can explaining the best I can of what we think's gonna go on. I can talk
about how we look at economic development now as a town as opposed to a reorganized town. And I won't
have all the answers, and I might even have a couple wrong answers, but I would spend an inordinate
amount of time with anybody.
This I carry with me all the time. It's a map of the township. If you lay that out between two different
people and I'm there, pretty soon you're talking about a lot of things and you go pretty much in depth
on what could happen here, what may happen here, and the plans that the town has now. Whether they meld
with what the reorganization
plan is in the future. I can't say that. I won't speak for that. But I would spend an ordinary amount
of time talking to anybody because it's very important. Very, very important. And so you can reach me
by calling the Utilities Office or the Clerk's Office. I'd give you my cell phone number, but I'm not going to.
Also on the website, the email direct contact information for each member of this committee is listed,
and you are welcome to contact any of us at any time with any questions you have. We had discussed earlier
the idea of public outreach meetings, and that kind of tapered off when we moved on. I would be very
interested to hear from those of you who took the time to come out this evening. What kinds of public
outreach meetings, if any, where and when would you see value in those?
You see a couple heads nodding. I mean, obviously, we meet on Wednesday evenings. Wednesday evenings
aren't conducive for attendance for everyone's schedule. Some people have other things going on. And
I want to make sure that anybody who wants to know more about it has the opportunity to ask questions
in real time. That's very valuable. I'm happy to make time to meet with people, to come to an organization or come
I will have fewer answers than Mike, but I will write down all of your questions because I want to know.
Anybody have suggestions for where we could have outreach meetings? If you want to just form neighborhood,
meet at somebody's house. That's how Sheridan did a ton of that. And of course, Lions Club and all the different
community organizations, churches, something to think about. Yeah, don't have to do it this week, but
we are interested in doing that. I'm interested in doing that. So if you'd like me to come sit down
and talk with you, I'd be happy to. My email is on the website. And you also should mention podcasts.
So we have a YouTube channel that's being run by Dawn Durnall from Richland Township. We're going to
be recording some videos answering
frequently asked questions and discussing them in a shorter, more concise format than having to find
it in an hour and a half long tax video from a public meeting like this. And we would happily discuss
and record answers to any particular questions you have. Questions about what do we mean by growth?
That's a great topic for us to discuss and point out what we do and don't want to see. Ultimately, we
can't predict the future. We don't get to call the plays three quarters in advance.
but we do want to give you guys more information about what we're thinking, what we see in the Sheridan
plan, the questions we've already been asked, our best take at the answers to those questions at this
time, so we can refine those and get you more information. Hey, William, you had a motion last meeting
about moving to weekly meetings. Are we gonna discuss that? I'm more than willing to. Diane, do you
have anything?
letter. I was told to stand further away from the microphone. I'm on reporting on behalf of the planning
and zoning subcommittee. We've met two times and our first meeting was spent learning a lot about what
is currently in place and I have to compliment Mike and Denise for
answering many, many, many, many questions that we had about it. We all have copies of all the different
zones and your concerns are many of our concerns too. I will share that with you. And the second meeting
we, and I would encourage you just as a sidebar, before our public meeting, if you can have a copy of
our objectives, the people that are going to attend that meeting, that will help you
help us, I think, because these are the things that we're charged with doing. But our second meeting
was last night and we got more detail and I have to compliment our community for the plans that are
already in place. The Envision Ellisville plan was awesome and the current UDO is very specific and
although it's thick, it's thorough.
And most communities of our size don't have anything comparable to that. And they certainly don't have
anything so recent. That's the other thing that's so helpful here. This is not a 20-year-old plan. And
it is specific as to
what is expected currently. Now our charge is to determine how much of that comes into play because
we're now incorporating, that's not the right term, we're adding, we're adding a lot of more rural property
than perhaps what this UDO was expecting. And that's where many of our questions were. And again, Denise
has been very thorough in answering those questions and helping us, but we will need the input
of the community as to the feelings and thought processes. But we are listening and that's why we decided
as a group, we need to hear more, I hate this microphone. We need to hear more from community residents
as to what are your feelings about it. But again, I think with Mike and Denise's help, they can explain
thoroughly and completely
what can be expected, you can't micromanage it, but you can be thoughtful with it, and I think what
our entire community wants, the business community, the residents, they want it to be predictable, very
predictable, and they want decisions made in a timely manner, in weeks or short months, not years. And
I think that's what this group can accomplish
as a part of the whole process. And that's it. So the date of February 17th, it would be good to have
a packed house here, I think, for that evening. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. She didn't say.
She did? Okay. Okay. I didn't know she did. You probably did. I mean, you did. That's it. It cut out
just when you said that.
Let me ask you, when we talk about growth, who wants more pizza places? No? Okay. Wait a minute. I'm
going to add to that because it's a little bit of a joke, but just take a few seconds here. I was involved
in my previous levels of fire chief three years ago to the market studies for Ellisville area. We were
told we could have up to eight pizza places in the Ellisville area because we seemed to like pizza.
And if anybody watched the roadways on a Friday night, you see them all down the road. So you see every
place packed. So that's the nature of our beast. And we had one close, and there's two more looking
to come here. What's your plan for the road? Peace? Yeah. All right, anything else before the board?
Are there any other committee meetings? Yeah, I was just going to ask the same. Are there any other?
I mean, we passed a motion last time
says request, but you could also say direct each subcommittee to make a report at our subsequent meetings
starting tonight. So it sounds like maybe not every subcommittee has a representative here tonight.
Are there any other subcommittees that would like it? Public safety, maybe? I see. And finance. I see.
Okay. Zach's right now come up for public safety and then after him.
And maybe we can add a line on the agenda going forward, just to have a designated spot for these reports.
Zach Michael from the Public Safety Committee. We met last Tuesday, and you got a lot of great information
from the fire department, the police department, the building department, and each individual member
of the committee is now working on drafting the plan, or parts of the plan. Just a reminder, Mike announced
it earlier, but we will be having a meeting next Tuesday, February 10th,
here from 6 to 730 to solicit input from the public on what they want to see from public safety. So
that's our report. Thank you. Elaine Thompson, and I'm on the Finance Committee. And we've had two meetings,
multitude of information budgets and tax lobbies and so on.
And we meet tomorrow. We're going to put it all together. And I believe we will have a good rough draft
for you on time. Thank you. Any other reports from subcommittees? Mike, do you have anything on the
water, sewer and wastewater? I don't. I think somebody that's on the committees here, Terry, are you here?
Yeah, Terry's here. He represents BBP Water. And of course, I represent the utilities in Ellesville.
But we have not had a meeting yet. As I said before, fortunately, we talk amongst ourselves anyway.
And their boards have long-range planning in place. Currently, Ellesville's going through a long-range
planning for sewer to the west.
You know, our water system, we have long range planning and we're probably 75% through it based on what
we thought in 1998. And so we're kind of set. At some point, we should meet to reconfirm how we'll work
together. Terry and I's had some discussions about how being BBP water
And also water, we border each other. And as the town moves to the west, there'll be a time when the
town will be interested in some kind of economic development project or a housing project that will
involve how we go about our business. And yet we'll have to work with BBP Water for fire protection,
make sure they have good water supply,
for fire protection and a lot of times economic developments dependent on utilities and infrastructure
already being in place. So that process was ongoing before this started. So I don't know who's in charge
of the utility subcommittee, but we actually have been working on this
years before now. And so I think we're in pretty good shape. I don't know what the expectations are
for the utilities. But like I said, we have contracts right now working on our infrastructure plans
for five, 10, and 20 years moving west. And we have in place an infrastructure study for the whole town
as it is now.
We had brought up earlier about, you mentioned about my motion last week about meeting weekly. Are you
thinking we need to revisit that? I'm really grateful to see all you here. I'm really encouraged to
have a larger turnout at the meeting. I know that there were some folks, partly because of the snow,
some deliveries got delayed, some mailboxes weren't.
as accessible, not everybody got their postcard as soon as we hoped. I got my postcard today. Some people
only had a few days or a single day of notice from the postcard about this meeting. Of course, the postcard
says that the next meeting will be two weeks from today, so I'm not... Yeah, I'm just throwing that
out there. The postcard wouldn't give them warning if we added a meeting the next week. That's true.
Unless we had a better way of getting that word out.
Along the line, I was wondering if we should, Mike, talk to Fields and Company and have them take the
suggestion of the lady that spoke earlier and get some PSAs out if we can on the radio stations. All
the local ones that. Yeah, I mean, they asked me the other day if they wanted to reach out to HT and
maybe ask them to come see us and do an article now. And so, yeah, we can do that.
I just think, I think she's right. We need to get as much out there as we possibly can. I was not aware
that we could do the PSA announcements. I know in one of the nonprofit groups I work for that was lobbying
for ballot question, they would not do that since it was a yes or no ballot question. But they, I mean,
it's not going to hurt to ask.
So we will just for the meeting for awareness. We're not doing the actual for the battery. It's how
they interpret it. We can try. Yes, we definitely will try because I think every meeting we've discussed
outreach and better ways we can do it. And even between meetings, I've had conversations with everyone.
What more can we do? And especially my keys. I'll get the yard signs out. I think the grounds going
to fall next week. All right. So then back to our.
back to our question that I didn't really mean to take away from, but about meeting weekly. Okay. I'd
point out if you do go to every week, we may have a couple of conflicts with the fire territory meetings.
So if you had a meeting at six, it'd have to have a hard stop at seven. Hard stop. I think the meetings
would be at seven, so it'd be like a 650 hard stop. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well. Yeah.
And you have a plan. I think you have some subcommittee meetings on Wednesday, too. I'm trying to look
them up. So if he's going to go to every week, based on what Scott says, maybe it's good to plan to
have them starting in March. And that'll get you away. And even in March, we have two dates for the
fire territory meetings.
11th and the 25th. 25th, right? Yeah. Yes. So those would be hard stops, but there's nothing wrong with
that. Here's a suggestion for the board. If we go to weekly meetings that the weeks that are not the
every two weeks that the postcards say, that's when we do kind of what I'd say our organizational business.
We get the report from the subcommittees. We can make sure there's certain ones there. We can have more
time with that.
some public comment if public shows up, but then on the two week meeting, kind of keep it almost the
whole thing open for like we did tonight to hear from the public. To receive information. Yeah, to receive
information because I don't think the public wants to, you know, as an example of us discussing the
contract, I mean, it still would be a public meeting, but those that want to know more about what are
you talking about or how is this going to impact me, this is more to administrative thing
that won't really impact you, but what this is for will, and that would be a better time if we have
a meeting just on those things, just a thought. And if we don't have any administrative things to do,
then we don't need to meet that off week. To complicate the situation, I would say people will want
to know when you're going to meet,
and they want the information, but at the end of the day, if they want to get up and ask a question
and they want to hear this back and forth that's going on, what I call meet to what is going on, then
they'll expect it every time and they won't know which one's an admin meeting. No, I just said we'll
still talk to the public, but since they weren't advertised on the postcards, we probably wouldn't have
as much of the public. Just a thought. I mean, so that's... Touche.
Well, I'm hard pressed to vote for double the number of minutes I have to prepare. Yeah, I'm nodding.
I don't know. I mean, I'm happy to have other people push back. I'm not sure that a meeting a week from
now will put us in a position of having a lot more information that we were able to share back, because
I feel like there's a lot of work that's being done at the subcommittee level right now. I would rather
people, members of the public,
use that opportunity to go to those meetings where they're going to have some direct input into the
thinking of those subcommittees. And then once that reverts back to us, then we'll have more meetings
here. I agree with that. I'd like the public to know we're not afraid to do that. It's just we don't
want to waste your time, especially. Yeah, but everybody has such limited time. I mean, we're all busy.
So I would just rather ask people to direct their energies toward those subcommittee meetings and giving
their feedback.
And those subcommittees would be wrapped by March 4th. So then if you wanted to go to a weekly meeting
after that, and you could even. Because then we can say to people, they said, what's your proposal for?
We'll just say, roads, as somebody brought up. We can say, this is what the subcommittee recommended.
We will be able to actually answer questions as opposed to just sort of talking. We're still in the
process, yeah. All right, anything else? No.
Anybody else from the public? Good evening. My name is Tim Crouch. I'm a lifelong resident of Monroe
County and about a 30-some-year resident of the Ellsville area.
Couple questions, first off, what you're doing I think is very ambitious if you're looking at later
this year putting up, I mean I understand it, you're talking about a referendum later this year? Okay,
you've got your work cut out for you. Okay, also it appears to be your focus is that you're very interested
in getting public comment. I for one, and I don't know how many share
My view out here feel like that I'm kind of still in the dark. Not a lot of information, and maybe I
just haven't went to the right places to find it. But one thing is, has there been any kind of master
or overall scope plan on what you're proposing? Why the issues it's going to be taken up into that process?
the process itself, the timeline, the deadlines, anything like that out there that I have missed or
I'm not aware of that would give me a better feel for why we're here, why we're discussing this, and
what the intent is in the whole process. Number two, if you're coming back to the public,
with intent of convincing us to vote either yay or nay on an issue like this, when is there going to
be a final document that we can look at that actually we can dig into to find out what your, the ideas,
the reasoning, the value, the other issues associated with to convince me that I'm going to, when's
that going to be available?
Darlin, Eric, we're looking at probably May or June. We need to get to Baker Tilly a draft plan so they
can finalize it. And then we're hoping to get the reorganization plan to the council and the township
board by end of May. Okay, so before the end of May. Very aggressive. It is. That timeline is because
there are state requirements we have to hit. Right. It's not the timeline it would have
ideally picked for work of the scope? Well, yeah, okay, I understand that. But again, it's very aggressive.
If you're convincing the citizenry that this is a good move, okay? Well, that's just when the plan would
be available and then you've got from then until November. Right, but again, if you're talking about
a referendum in November, and then I assume that
Once the final document's out there for people to digest, then you're going to have public meetings
on that. So we can discuss what's in the document with you, clarify things, ask questions, raise issues
that we may have concerns with, those types of things. So I'm just trying to wrap my head around how
this is going to work. I'm very interested in being involved and want the best for the community.
I'm not saying whether I agree that this is a good move or not at this point. The final question I have,
and it's really more questions than anything, and that is at your subcommittee meetings, I assume that
they're open to the public. Are those posted with information indicating the topics that will be discussed
in those subcommittee meetings at the time, so me as a citizen can show up with that, with questions
and issues centered around what
the subcommittee focus should be? They've been on the website, haven't they, Mike and Denise? Yes, and
we've been sending out postings when a meeting's about to happen, and it goes to website, Facebook.
It's almost a weekly thing. A high neighbor, yeah. But the website that was mentioned, is that one central
point that we can go to get all information?
So on the subcommittees, because the subcommittees are made up of the citizenry, they've got to decide
week to week when they're going to meet. There's not a hard, you know, because everybody's schedules
differ. So it's not a, it's not something that you can plan from now until, what, for the next three
weeks. What I'll do, tomorrow I already made a note, I'll talk to our people that keep the information
out there and see if we can come up
with a calendar that would be updated every day that a new meeting is scheduled because. And then I'll
make sure that gets on the website so you do just have one point of information. Yeah, that would be
great because obviously, again, if the intent is also with the subcommittee is to get public input,
then yeah, as most and I understand coordinating people is difficult, scheduling is difficult, but
Again, if the key is getting public input, then we have to have an opportunity to be able to provide
that and know when to show up to do it. Generally, what are the topics or what are the general discussion
points are going to be involved at that subcommittee level? There's seven subcommittees. One's planning
and zoning, so they'll handle all the issues.
I don't think those subcommittees are gonna be producing an agenda prior to each meeting. So no agenda
outlining specifics or anything like that that we can look at beforehand. Yeah, there will be. They
have the objectives that they have to follow. Yeah. Is that something we can post those objectives?
I have to, let me see here, because committee members,
The website doesn't, but it should have all the subcommittee members contact info on there also. I thought
it did, maybe just, do you remember seeing? We never discussed putting contact info of private citizens
on the subcommittees on that website. We put our public emails on it. Oh, that's right, yeah, that's right.
I guess they can email us. I'm gonna try to just make sure we get the calendar as you guys book the
stuff and have him put on the website, because you're right, we'd be putting, I mean, they're not elected
officials or anything like that. They're- When all else fails, you can call the clerk's office. She's
not here tonight. And you can call the clerk's office and ask for that information. It'll get to me and I'll,
I'll get it back to individuals and like I said, we're gonna try to post all this too. But if all else
fails and you're interested and you don't think you're getting the information, you call the clerk's
office and you'll get personal service. Okay, well I would urge you to try to, as information is gathered
and as the various groups interact, to try to put as much information out as you possibly can.
if indeed you are, if you are indeed interested in public input. And we definitely are, because we can't
do this without it. I can tell you, if you just come to the town hall every night at 6 o'clock for the
last two weeks, there's something going on. I'm telling you, because I've been there. So you can almost
not miss. And if you're lucky enough and the lights are out, you get to go home. I'll say at
the subcommittees, we have finance, public safety,
planning and zoning, there are longer names in it. Parks and recreation. And cemeteries. And cemeteries,
yeah. Governance. Governance and water, wastewater and sewer. And I just wanted to make another clarifying
comment because I realized that a lot of people attending are hearing some of this for the first time.
I'm gonna ask somebody to correct me if I say something that's wrong here,
As far as the role of this committee goes, we are tasked with putting together a proposed reorganization
plan. Once that passes out of this committee, this committee is finished at that point. And then it
goes to the town council and the township board, and then ultimately, if they pass it to the voters.
Some people involved in this committee may then take on sort of a
you know, an advocacy role I would imagine, you know, some may not as far as the plan goes. But while
we have our opinions on where we think we're going, you know, ultimately our job on this committee is
to find facts, put together a plan, and then we hand it off. Hopefully that helps. Am I correct in that?
Sir, yes, thank you. If I may, I applaud you guys for what you're doing. I just want to be clear about
something that I see is confusion, and that is the input from the public. And everybody wants information
and all that, and you're compiling all this and you're making decisions. But when it comes down to the
final, I would say that's the final.
No more discussion of, well, why are you doing it this way or that? So when it comes September or whenever
this is finalized, we get the final report. That's what's locked in. That's what we're voting on. Okay?
That's what we're voting on. No more public input of let's change this and let's change that. Well,
where did you come up with that at?
That's what these meetings, if you're having it every two weeks, we should be here, we should be commenting,
we should be informed. If you guys will have prepared some things that will give us information, because
we're all wanting information. It's new to me, I wasn't even aware of anything until I got a postcard.
And that's the reason I'm here. But once it's finalized, it's finalized,
and we need to make the public aware there's no more input, there's no more discussion. So I hope that's
the way it is. It's not gonna be changed right up to the day we actually vote on it, and then I don't
know what changes have been made. Once it goes to the state, it's done. We cannot change anything.
So in June, I think that's the date. And if there's something people really wanna lobby for, then the
new council. I wanna know what's locked in solid before I vote.
and there's no more discussion on it, okay? Thank you. Doesn't the language say that both the town council
and township board have to pass substantially similar? Yes. So once those do that, and they're voted
on, that would be what's submitted to the state. So everybody will have, it should be all their questions.
I mean, I shouldn't say all their questions. Everybody's gonna have questions, but. And William, isn't
that the plan is going to try to spell out the exact details of implementation
for every single thing, some of those details will be determined by the reconstituted, reorganized governing
body starting in January at the referendum passes. But all the big picture pieces and understanding
of the general impacts across all the services, that has to be really clearly locked in for the document
for public vote.
Thank you. I'm Michael Richardson. I'm on the Subcommittee on the Planning. But I want to address the
information. I also work for the United States Postal Service. And I want to explain something why those
postcards were so delayed. We had a trucking company called 10 Roads Trucking that went bankrupt and
kind of left the Indianapolis area without some possibilities of trucking. So the mail said in Indianapolis
for quite some time, but we couldn't get it out.
The snow was no help. Some of your mail set in Bloomington for four or five days before it even got
to the routes. So I don't think no one's blaming for the tardiness of the mail. It was late, of course.
But there were some hardcore reasons, and not because they didn't do their job, we didn't do ours. So
I just wanted to address the reason for the tardiness of that mailing.
Meeting's adjourned.