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.