- Father, we come to you humbly and thank you for the opportunity that you've given us this evening and
- throughout this whole process. We're humbled by the fact that you're offering this opportunity to us.
- Let us make the most of it. And I'll be with us and lead, guide us, and direct us as we do what it is
- that we're trying to do up here.
- Be with us. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to
- the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
- All right, I'll call the roll. Please make sure your mics are on, all community members. And you're
- counting in presence. Kevin Ferris. Present. Dr. Sanders. Here.
- Mr. Ellis told us he is running late because of traffic, so we will count him in when he gets here.
- Scott Reynolds. Present. Don Durnall. Present. Mike Korman. Present. Thank you. All right. Approval
- of the minutes from March 11th, 2026. I make a motion to accept the minutes. I'll second. Got a motion.
- Don second. The minutes from March 11th. Any discussion or correction on the minutes?
- There was only one spelling change, one spelling correction from the copy that was circulated ahead
- of the meeting digitally. Hello, William. Hey there. Sorry I'm late to everybody. Are we ready to call
- the roll? Yes. Great. I vote yes. Kevin, yes. Dr. Sanders? Yes. William? Yes. Scott? Yes. Don? Yes.
- Mike? Yes. Motion passes. OK, we have a hard stop again at 650.
- But is there anybody that wants to make a public comment to get us started? Just come up to the mic
- and state your name, please. I'm David Willoughby. Actually, I'm a township board member. But on this
- reorganization, I have a lot of questions.
- that I think need answered. And I've talked to a lot of people. They asked me to, but okay. The first
- one is, and some of this I've been told one way and some of it I've told the other way. So I hope we
- could get it straight tonight. So what will happen to the elected trustee if the reorganization happens?
- Okay. Did you wanna take that one?
- the Trustee that will be elected this fall, that position will continue with the town of Ellitsville
- as the Director of Public Assistance. Okay, so that will continue for the next four years. Well,
- it will be, most likely be an employee position. It'd be what? An employed position, not an elected
- position. Right, and will that, well then, I guess I put who will administrate
- the Trustee's office, well, I guess it'll be the elected officers, but will that be, administrator be
- on a salary or will it be an employee punching the time clock? The title is Director of Public Assistance,
- so it's gonna be like a department head, so a salaried position. Okay, and with that, I assume then,
- the administrator, director, they'll be able to pretty much be free to come and go as they need. There's
- a lot of things in the township that trustee, I still call it a trustee, that needs to leave and see
- about things without just sitting in the office. And what is going to happen to the three elected township
- board members?
- We have under the finance subcommittee, there's the township subcommittee is within that, and they have
- two different recommendations for either a seven member or a nine member board for the interim, at least,
- was it two years? And depending on which one is chosen, at least two of the
- board members that are elected will go on to be on the town council if the seven member is chosen, if
- it is the nine member, then all three of them will be on the town council until their term, until that
- four year term is up. So let me get this straight. Two of the board members would be on the council
- of either seven or nine? Mm-hmm. Okay.
- Okay, that part seems a little lopsided to me, mainly being there's more people in the township than
- there is in the town. Right, but for right now we can't, the election that we're having is for the town
- council and for the trustees office and the board, and then also for the reorganization. So we can't have,
- If this goes through, who do you want to be on your town council? Because we're going to have, when
- this is done, if it goes through, there's gonna be five voting districts for the entire, what is currently
- the township that will be the town, and then it will be, it'll be a seven, going forward, it'll be a
- seven member board, and each one of those five districts will get to pick one person that lives in their
- district, and then there'll be two at large.
- So it will be more evenly distributed once this four-year term is up. And they will, well, after this,
- when the next election comes around, these will all be elected offices? Yes. Okay. Well, and I guess
- I'd ask too, you probably answered my question. I asked how many people are on the town council currently.
- Five. Which is five, okay.
- And I've had a question too in this. You may not like to hear it, but I've heard a lot of times, and
- I don't know how many times, but I know I think a couple council members didn't show up enough to have
- a quorum. Has that happened?
- And, one time. That you couldn't have a meeting. For the town council? Town council. Yes, that has happened
- more times than I would like to say. Okay. I have been on some boards and we've had problems like that
- before. And the bottom line, which I recommend to do like that, we just deducted
- It was all brought out. Well, we just deducted a certain amount for not showing up unless they had a
- terrible sickness or something, but. State law prevents us from doing that because yeah, because a lot
- of times maybe there's a nice basketball game on something like that guy. He just want to go, but he's
- getting paid. Yeah, I I don't think that's I think a seven member board with those running for Township
- trustee and those running currently. I don't think we'll have.
- as much of an issue, but the expectation has to be that this is a duty to the public and that unless
- there's extreme circumstances and you shouldn't just miss it. Okay. And the only thing I'll say, maybe
- it was just the committee stuff that I was on, but once we post a fine or deduct from salary, I'll tell
- you attendance did pick up. Oh, I agree.
- So, okay. Mr. Willoughby, may I ask you a question? Sure. Which would you prefer when it comes to the
- organization of the new town council? Would you prefer the township board, those elected, it's pulled
- from there for the reorganized town council and have seven starting right away? Or what was the other
- one, nine and then,
- two would only be temporary. I'll tell you, my thoughts, I'm leaning towards the seven permanently,
- because I think would be a problem. How do we determine who's temporary? But this way we start getting
- everybody into the cycle. But I just want to know what you think. I'm sorry, I'm really having just
- a little trouble hearing. Okay. I don't know why.
- There's no problem. There's two proposals that we've been given from the governance committee. There's
- one that I don't know if they specified, but at one time I'd heard the top two vote getters from the
- township board would be those that come on to the town council. The other proposal is we would have,
- still have a permanent seven member board, but in the interim have nine members and those other four
- would come from the township. But then other two, yes, yeah, the other two. But then those other two
- would eventually go away and we'd have to figure out when and which two is temporary. So what I was
- saying is I'm leaning towards the seven member board and doing at the top two vote getters for the township.
- I worry from voters is gonna be confusing. We run for nine this time, or we have nine, but they're not
- really nine.
- It's really a seven-person board, so I don't know what your thoughts are being a township board member
- and potentially one of those top two vote getters. I'd say a seven-member board, top two, top two vote
- getters. Okay. And I guess that's all I have. All right. Do we answer your questions though? Yeah.
- All right, I'd like to hear that. Thanks. All right, we're gonna move on to
- Looking at the district voting map. Is this the big one? Doesn't have yours.
- Isn't this the one? That's it. Yeah, the most recent division. Has everyone got a chance for the dome?
- You don't have those? I don't. You play that off yourself. No, that was here. That's the same as this
- one, right? Yes. You get the phone. It's here. I take the big one. I can read it. Okay.
- And that one for the record is a 4.2 variance. Let me check. I printed that off of your email. Yeah,
- the only difference in that is Bloomington at the corner was part of those that were Richland City.
- So for the most part, yes. OK. You want to tell, I don't know if you have it with you or not, but the
- population of each one of the districts? It's in there? Oh, is this it? OK.
- Yeah. So to recap to some people who may not have been to the last meeting where we first saw these
- maps, there's going to be five districts. There is a state guideline, best practice, but not a hard
- number where we're trying to get no more than plus or minus 10% population equivalency across all five
- districts and redraw them in such a way that does not needlessly complicate where the voting lines fall
- in a way that makes
- campaigning and election setup and everything else, difficult. So we have a variety of proposals ranging
- from a 4.2% population variance up to a 9% population variance, each with slightly different borders
- to consider. Someone more complicated because there's areas from each district in another district.
- Yeah, the uneven population density meant that to get the district's population balanced, you have little
- carve-outs and carve-ins that don't fall where we normally think of neighborhoods starting and ending
- just because you needed to have more people over here or fewer people over here in order to maintain
- the desired population equivalency. So last time we were looking at this, we were all leaning, I think,
- toward the, well, I'm not gonna,
- say what anybody else was doing, but we were talking about the 9% as in some ways being the
- most geographically well-designed, if you will. And that was also one Mr. Shelton recommended. Right.
- But then it looks like the more recent map, the one that's been rendered on the computer, it's 4.2%.
- is a little bit different from any of the ones that we've looked at before. And I'm just looking for
- whether anybody has clarification. Is that because of the impact of subtracting the bits of Bloomington
- in the southeast corner and adding the bits of? What it did, the other map, when we look to especially
- districts four and five that are running this year, district three would have been expanded. So the
- person that's running, one of the potential people that could get elected for one of the districts in four
- would now be in District 3, but then next year, we have Districts 1, 2, and 3 coming up, but then we'd
- already have someone living in District 3, so we couldn't have somebody run in District 3, which would
- cause, so Dave looked at that and then he redid them, so he took our feedback and as you can see on
- some of the other ones in these neighborhoods here,
- They're not as, so he smoothed it out and actually was able to get it a little bit more uniform. And
- district one is a lot larger, but at the same time, district one, the population is spread out more.
- And that is really a lot of it. District five has some of it. District three has some of the township.
- So does district two. With the understanding that when the census comes in,
- we'll have more growth in the township. So we'll start the same amount of districts, but then all things,
- because we won't be redoing the maps mid cycle like we would now. This would get us till the census.
- Yeah, 2030. So the 4.2 map gets us a slightly better rate of population equivalency. It avoids having
- to stutter step the election cycle and have people get rezoned into other districts
- after they've been elected. Right. Okay. And it's a lot easier for the voters to understand because
- it doesn't have all the implant. The current one that's shown on the screen is the latest proposal at 4.2%.
- That is the most recent requested clarification from Mr. Shelton.
- what I had sent to the reorganization committee. I don't know if you heard the conversation. The big
- difference was this little area in the corner here, it's actually the city of Bloomington, and that
- wasn't taken care of. It didn't affect the population much because I think there's very few people that
- live there, but we didn't want to approve a map that had jurisdiction. Contains people who are not in
- our district. Yeah. Yeah. May I ask a question? Yes. Yes.
- yes it's straight it's a
- I think evenly dispersed the best you can for simplicity with the understanding that, you know, here
- we are in 2026, it's going to change again in 2031 or 2032 anyway. So with that, I will make a motion
- to accept this most current one. I guess we'll call it the 4.2% map. That's my motion. Do it. Dawn seconds.
- At this point, I'd like to see if anybody from the public has any comments on the district maps.
- Yeah, sir, coming along. Can we get him to hand him the mic and not have him have to get all the way
- up? Yeah, Jim Perry. The most common structure is not districts, but at large in the country as a whole.
- And we're talking about districts or wards
- which is, I think, the current terminology, but a majority, I think, of governments around the country
- use at-large, and so, you know, the sort of splitting numbers on 4% or 6% or 9% or some other is not
- necessary, if one were to say, hey, let's elect everybody, either seven or nine people, at-large, and
- that wouldn't be an issue. But, you know, that was a change that started in
- American government in 1913, and now we have over 3,000 communities around the country that elect people
- at large. And there are different logics, and I don't have the research in front of me, but there is
- some research on it. But one of the logics is to say that we want people elected at large because they
- have sort of the community as a whole as their sort of point of reference.
- Well, keep in mind, even though we run in districts here, the whole township, the whole town votes on
- them. So in cities, like some cities in Indiana, I think Bloomington, too, is an example. I live in
- District 2. The people that vote for District 2 is the entire town. All that signifies is where the
- person representing it has to live. And I know that the thought process behind
- that at least from my point of view is to make sure that we don't get somebody all in this clustered
- together and that represents the entire town and now township. So, but yet that, so the districts, yes,
- you have to live in a certain place, but the entire town votes on them. So you're right. It does satisfy
- the situation where people have to represent the whole town because
- The whole town's voting for me. My point is simply that there are 3,000 communities around the country
- that sort of opted in the direction beginning in 1913, which is over 100 years ago for at large
- representation. So the sort of the standard in Indiana is an outlier. Yeah, I do understand. Thank you.
- All right, we have a motion and a second, any more discussion? And I'll apply our words, I would say
- very 19th century. Thank you, Jim. All right, hearing no further discussion, I will move to call the
- vote. The motion is to adopt the 4.2% map as presented. I vote yes. Kevin? Yes. Dr. Sanders? Yes. William
- Ellis? Yes. Scott? Yes.
- Don? Yes. Mike? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. All right, now let's take a look at the final reorganization
- plan, the discussion of what maybe our next steps are for next week.
- Are there any committee reports that I have sent everybody my thoughts on them? Did anybody have any
- thoughts based on, not that I'm running things, but that I gave my opinions. Does anybody else feel
- that the ones I feel that are ready to accept, do we want to discuss those and get some of them approved
- tonight and make any necessary changes that are low hanging fruit?
- I looked at the way you scored everything and I agreed. I don't know about everybody else. So basically, William.
- which ones would you like to talk about first? Well, I'm thinking since we just did the voting map,
- governance may be the easiest of those two. And get any public comments before we kind of close that
- to see if there's anything we missed because again, just my opinion, I'm suggesting that we approve
- the seven council members
- and with the township trustee position to be a town employee. And then we would put, you know, the hours
- flexibility or put that somehow into the salary ordinance that when we do that. So the job just gets
- done, but they still have that. They're not having to work a certain amount of time. It's the office
- that would do that. So should we, before diving in, should we?
- consider how do we want to approach each of these as a committee? Are we going to take them one by one
- and then each of us gives feedback and gives our thoughts and we have an open discussion among our group?
- Or do we want to identify particular issues and discuss them rather than going person by person by person?
- We have several different options there.
- I'm okay with either way. I'd like to do, you know, subcommittee by subcommittee. Oh, definitely, yes.
- And then if anybody's got any opposition to the way that the subcommittee has presented their findings,
- then bring that up per subcommittee. So in other words, we'll look at governance and anybody on the
- committee who has input or wants to discuss. Any amendment. Any amendment to that or, and then open
- it up to the public.
- Do that for each of the subcommittees. Right, we won't be able to get through all of them today, obviously.
- But we have, again, this is not just for us, but we have next Monday and next Wednesday. And Wednesday
- will be, I'd say when we get the final one approved. Pulling up subcommittee reports. So the main two
- issues on the governance report are going to be the composition of the board, whether it is a seven
- or nine member board,
- And then also the question of the conversion of the elected trustee's office to an employee on a salary
- position of the town, correct? Correct. Or was that, the township report was in this finance subcommittee
- report, wasn't it? Well, but the governance would depend on, I think, this one. I'm looking for the
- subcommittee report now.
- To make sure everyone in the public understands the governance options, they presented two possibilities,
- option one and option two. Option one begins with the seven member structure on January 1st, 2027, and
- keeps that structure in place. Option two uses a nine member transition board during 2027 only, then
- moves to the same seven member structure on January 1st, 2028. So the question is whether or not we
- want to create two
- single year temporary seats to make sure that representation is as broadly spread out across the considered
- area as possible in that first transition year. What would be the benefit of that? Well, I think not
- a whole lot of representation to the to the township right now on the board after the election in November.
- If the reorganization takes place. Matter of fact, you've got two members versus five members.
- Yeah, I think that that's the balance that we need to think through, right? I mean, because the complexity
- is higher with the nine. And as you pointed out earlier, there's the challenge of figuring out what
- happens to those, the two extra, how is that decision made? But in terms of that broad representation
- that you mentioned, having the additional two
- for that temporary period does make it, at least from an optics perspective, and maybe from a practical
- perspective as well, make it clear that it isn't just the existing town council members that it will
- have a year with, I don't want to say free reign, but a year where they would really dominate any discussions
- around policies
- things that have impacted the now township. Especially when you're asking voters to vote on it, that
- there appears they've got no representation. Not that the whole board wouldn't represent the
- whole reorganization, but that's the way it's gonna appear before the election. Yeah, I think that would
- be my, that's a good point because I think that, yeah, if we're asking the voters to approve this, you know,
- The larger number makes it not look as though voters are being asked to diminish their representation
- temporarily. Especially when it brings more population to the table, the reorganization does. So there's
- at least three districts out of the five that are made up of not majority, awfully close to majority
- of township that aren't getting represented because
- There's no way for him to be represented in the current. My understanding though is that anybody in
- currently anywhere in Richland Township or the town of Eltsal can run for the Township Board because
- we are all Richland Township Presidents. But it's too late to declare, isn't it? It's too late to declare,
- but the idea that the Richland Township Board is only the people from the township and not anybody from
- the town is not technically true. But this is mostly township. This is mostly township. This is all township.
- and then this is bean blossom. So you'd have five members representing this, and the majority of the
- population would feel like they're not getting represented. I understand. Go ahead. It's unique about
- the upcoming elections. Well, it's not unique, but it does change things a bit. Two of the existing
- board members will not be running in the next election. Is that correct? That is correct.
- people vying for those positions that will be entirely new board members never have served, I believe,
- on this board. So I don't know if it helps with the argument of how much township representation there
- will be, but since everyone will be voting for these people, everybody in the township town, it won't
- be the old block of town board members
- that will exist after the only, theoretically there only could be three on there that was old block
- town board members. And so the makeup of the board will be new exactly where they live and how technical
- you wanna be about how represented everybody is. I'll not argue all that, but it will be a different
- board moving forward no matter what.
- Sure, but playing devil's advocate, okay, playing devil's advocate, the folks that are running for the
- office in this upcoming election are from the town. They're not from the township. I understand that,
- but I just wanted to point out that an old block will not take the ball and run with it. It'll be a
- new team no matter what. I have a suggestion that might alleviate the concern. If we go with a nine-person
- board, one of the other questions is,
- what happens to those other two. We vote the nine person board. How about two of the members that from
- that nine person, they're gonna be on the plan commission. Those are gonna be, those would be the temporary
- board members. In other words, hypothetically, I mean, I think we have four people running for township
- right now. I thought it was three. Well, there's three that'll be elected, but four running. I mean,
- we have a flute, which is kind of good in a sense. Is that right, Don?
- Okay, so again, what we could do is have that temporary nine. And the top two vote getters, they want
- to be on council to get to the bottom two, they would be on our plan commission and still on the council.
- If we want to do the nine, but they would be the temporary ones. Okay, because it's the elected officials
- that with the exception of two spots,
- who appoint people to the Planning Commission, and it's almost like a parting gift. You know, I don't
- think we should do that. I like the idea of having option two, and at the end, at 28, then their term
- expires, and it's a seven-member award, so... Well, I guess the Planning Commission, that's the other
- thing we haven't... Well, I'm kind of putting the carpet for the horse. I think we would need to expand
- that also. Oh, yeah, no doubt, but first things first. So another thing, too, in consideration,
- You know, historically, we've been a more conservative and Republican-led community. However, remember,
- the independents and libertarian and Democrats still can have a caucus this summer and have those people
- run for office, being, especially now, there's a new aura in the air. So I wouldn't be surprised if
- it happened. So there's going to be a difference. So I think we have an opportunity to get it right.
- And in my two cents, anyways, I think option two,
- Either one's good, I'd opt into just a little bit better. Yeah, I was originally, when I first read
- the Senate Committee report, I was leaning more toward option one, but as I've further considered it,
- I'm leaning more toward option two for all the reasons that have been mentioned by others up here, but
- also in the sense that in that first year of a reorganized entity, there's gonna be a lot of decisions
- that are gonna be made that
- are gonna set the tone and the framework to implement this plan. And I think that actually raises the
- need to ensure that there's a geographically broad set of representation. So that it doesn't feel as
- though that first year's decisions are all being set, whether in reality or just from people's perception
- by the town, the existing town.
- as opposed to the township. And I guess what I'm more interested in is the opposition to the idea of
- the reorganization from the township. Okay, what do we get? Okay, and we can make all the arguments
- about tax and planning and governance and all that stuff, but really what they're looking for
- is representation. They've not had representation for decades
- You can say they've had representation, but I for one don't feel like I've been represented. So I will
- say that right now, the three board members that are for the trustees office, excuse me, they just happen
- to not live within the town limits. The four people who are running for the new board, three of them
- do not live in the town limits, but one does if I'm not mistaken. That is true. And so we could potentially
- have a new trustee
- elected board that has two township and one town person. So... With the three that are running.
- With the four. With the four that are running. And they're all running on the same party, so it's only
- going to be three that go into the fall. So I guess what I was saying is, I want this to happen, okay,
- and I want to eliminate all the opposition front-loaded, okay, and try to eliminate
- And that's one of the sticking points. I'd like to come back for a second to what Mike objected to early
- by the Planning Commission, because I'm not sure I understood it. We are potentially considering expanding
- the Planning and Zoning Board to have two additional seats. Is that correct, William? That was a discussion
- I wanted to have. I don't know. I need to interrupt. I don't think you can expand the Planning Commission
- to nine. No, no.
- we would, the plan commission would just be seven people. Correct. I don't think you'd be expanding
- to nine. No, no, it would not be, it would not be expanding it to nine. We'd be expanding it from the
- five to seven. And the council appointments for those years would be other two people from the township,
- not the town incorporated. So they have dual roles. Yes.
- And Mike, your objection to the idea of having the two temporary seats, seats eight and nine, also be
- on the Planning Commission is because that's not the normal method for appointing people to the Planning
- Commission? That's my understanding, yes. I think it should be a council appointment at that point,
- not put into your reorganization plan. That should be a decision made by the new council. And unfortunately,
- that new council
- Um, we could recommend that they do that. Uh, but there's two, I believe by our ordinance or I don't
- know if it, I think it's by state law Darla Eric, you can correct me to two of the people I'm planning
- have to be from the council or is it a town employee? One of the, I mean, they're a government
- representative. Okay.
- Is the crux of the question, how do we choose which two seats are temporary? Is that really what this
- hinges on? That would solve that. But also, to Mike's concern, five seats are still going to be, even
- if we say these two seats are for, again, just speculating aloud, the bottom two vote getters, or however
- we figure this out, the council will still be appointing five of those seven members without us any
- recommendations just in the normal cycle of things.
- Correct. Since you've mentioned my name, I'd like to say one more thing. After listening to Kevin,
- you know, I was pretty sure it should be a seven member board, just my own opinion. And now I'm thinking
- it actually should be a nine member board to answer the question, am I going to be represented if I'm
- in the Ritsland Township? And it's one of the things
- that we've put up in the front of why they might want to do this. I mean, I've said it a hundred, if
- not more times. No, I'm just talking about to get us over the hump, to make sure the township is assured
- that immediate representation in that first, as Scott said, that important year when things may come
- up that needs
- you know, broad thought and everybody's input. So I think I'm leaning towards, I think the problem you
- have, which it should be solvable, is how do you figure out which two people, you might have a couple
- volunteers after the first year, but which two people would drop off, so. And am I understanding it
- correctly that actually we only have three, that would be obvious,
- that would be elected. The other question we have is then how do we select the fourth? So I'd like to
- take pause for our conversation and allow a couple of minutes for the public. I appreciate that. I don't
- think we'll get governance done today. Well, I was on the governance committee, so I just wanted to
- add some color to your guys discussion and say that
- I know it can get complicated and confusing, seven versus nine or whatever, but that was exactly the
- intention of what we put forward. I do live in the township, and that's what I see is the beauty of
- this process and maybe a very big positive is right now, go to school here, my kids play sports here,
- frequent downtown, et cetera.
- I don't have a way to be a representative because I don't live in the township, or I don't live in the
- town, I live out in the township. So that was a big part of our discussion and how could we, ultimately
- they all get to a seven member board, which I think is the right size. And it would be, as you guys
- spoke earlier, the five districts, two at large. I think it all gets to one place where it makes a lot
- of sense. How you get there and quickly get there to offer representation didn't have easy answers.
- We threw out other options or other proposals. They all led to special elections with cost money and
- take time and are confusing and add even more of a cloud to it. There was no direct answer to get equal
- or close to equal representation from the township and the town board without completely starting from
- scratch for election or something else that we were told just legally wasn't really possible or fiscally wasn't
- wasn't possible. So I wanted to add that color for anyone else as well. That was mostly what we talked
- about is how could the township get representation and get it faster. Unfortunately, there's no magic
- bullet or magic pill that does that quickly without running into a bunch of other confusing mechanisms
- and costly deals. So that's why we presented these two options.
- If there's another option out there, I don't think people would fight you on there, but we didn't see
- one and I don't think there was one. So that's how we came up with the seven and the nine. I know it's
- not perfect. I know it's not confusing, but that's the color and the heart behind it. You guys basically
- had our conversations over again in 10 minutes. But did want that out there for the public and for comment
- as I asked questions, why didn't you do this or why didn't you do that?
- our main concern is how does the township have representation as quickly as possible. I wish it was
- a little bit better, but I didn't write the laws or the rules. So there you go. Well, thank you. Don
- one and to those from the township. First of all, I'm leaning. I understand we need the nine board temporary.
- That's kind of on how to choose those. How about the three people that get elected for township board?
- They choose them. They choose the other two members that would represent on the council. Before we decide
- that tonight, if we're all leaning towards the temporary nine member, let's think about that over the
- weekend and address it again. No, absolutely. That's why I wanted to throw this out there so we could
- think about how to do that. Yeah. But that's one option. Whatever three board members are elected, they
- can pick the people. All right, go ahead.
- Okay, just quickly, Valerie DeWar, Township resident. I'm all for this whole reorganization thing, so
- that's not the issue. But I'm kind of looking at words, and the word temporary kind of sends a warning
- signal to me. If I were a Township resident that was not sure how I felt about this, and someone said,
- oh, for a few years, you're going to have four people. We're gonna give you two temporary people.
- because that's what I'm hearing if you're uninformed. And then you say, okay, fine, so they get us in
- and then they take away two of our people? I don't know, I'm just thinking maybe you might want to think
- about that temporary word because it might sound like a way to convince and then grab you. Transitional
- sounds really good, Dawn. Yeah, and like I said, I'm just into that whole thing.
- Thank you. We're not gonna make any decisions tonight. So any further discussion on, I think if I'm
- wrong, I gather we're leaning towards the nine. We just need to figure out what to do with the two typically.
- I'm leaning towards the nine. I'm for the nine and I'm for the nine as well. That was option two as
- presented, right? Yes. We just need to figure out what to do with the two that would be going on.
- Right. The transitional. The transitional. The transitional in front of board members. Temporary is
- out of the world. We're not using temporary. Right. I think that it would be great if the elected township
- board from this November election, if they choose who they want to represent on the council and who
- they want to represent on planning, that to me would be great to show. And the ones that they recommend
- for planning, is that temporarily?
- not temporary, it's the interim council members. But keep in mind, planning and zoning and most of those
- decisions, they would still be on the plan commission. So they're still gonna have an active voice in
- the vision. But the planning commission doesn't make a decision. They just make a recommendation. Council
- makes the decision. That is on some things. I mean, but for the most part, you're right. You know, you
- could end up
- You liken nine people, so you gotta take that. Yeah, and that's another thing. How do you do that once
- all the elections are in cycle? I mean, that's a tough one. For nine, if you did nine? Well, how do
- you continue it? And it's not transitional. It becomes a nine-member board. Which, in all honesty, that
- makes sense to me.
- Four at large. Four at large. And they would be four years after, so 2031, they'd still be on, 2431,
- they would be the first one time they would be on the ballot. Well, there's an election in 27. Correct.
- Yeah, there's an election in 27. Why couldn't you do four additional in 27? I mean, the four at large
- in 27? In 27. Because they wouldn't take office till 28, and you'd still have 27. It's a month and a
- half. No, no.
- the election in 27, they don't take office until 28, but all those decisions and the whole reason, are
- you saying that ones are interim appointments, then they all run again, if they want to? If they want
- to, okay, if they want to, or other people can run also. I mean, I don't have an issue with that, I
- just think that- In all honesty, if you're redoing a governance, okay, a government,
- encompassing not just a whole lot more area, but a whole lot more people, you're doubling the size of
- your population, then it makes sense that, I think it makes sense that you do for it large. And it really
- wouldn't, cost-wise, it wouldn't cost anymore because the polling places for the entire township are still
- ECC and St. John's, as far as I know, I mean, so that wouldn't change. They vote there anyway. And if
- we're going to make a permanent nine-member board, that would make sense. They would just be on the
- municipal cycle. Or another thought is if you're going to do a permanent seven-member board, a temporary
- nine, well, whatever you call it, transitional nine, and a permanent seven, okay,
- than do, in the election in 27, do all seven. Well, not all seven, you couldn't, but you could do five,
- five of the seven, at large, and not worry about the districts. I feel we've ranged pretty far beyond
- the subcommittee. Yeah. When we are at our time limit. Yeah. We have a meeting. We'll kick it around.
- Next meeting's Monday at six. Yes.
- Monday at 6 p.m. here in this room. And there is no time limit on that meeting. So we are gonna get
- through some stuff. I'll take the small one if you want the large one. All right, meeting is concluded.