We will call to order the Monday, September 28th, 2026 meeting of the Elstville Town Council. Chief,
prayer. I have the Father again become before you when he asks that you be with us tonight to make the
decision to defect this little town. Mr. Wilson, always we thank you for the blessings you've bestowed
on every one of the representatives here. We ask that you say in Jesus' name, 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. Roll call, please. Here. Dan Swafford. William Ellis. Here. Trevor Sager. Here. Pamela Samples.
Action for minutes of the 914-2026 town council meeting. So moved.
Motion second all those favors say aye aye any opposed any abstaining Acts to pay accounts payable vouchers
and payroll vouchers. So moved second motion second also favor say aye aye any opposed any abstaining
This is a little bit of an unusual council meeting and that there are no resolutions There are no orders
on first reading their orange is on second reading. There's no old business which takes us to the bottom
third of our
Little synopsis here and we'll start with area 10 agency on aging executive director I'm the new director
for area 10 agency on aging and rural transit. Thank you for letting me speak to you this evening area
10 rural transit has been honored to serve your community and we understand that this service has been
an important and
resource for riders traveling to work, medical appointments, shopping, and essential daily activities.
We know that losing this service will create challenges for many, and we want all of our riders to know
that this is solely due to required funding loss for area 10 rural transit. The 2020 census,
as you may know, determined an urbanized area for Ellitsville.
And because Area 10's rural transit operates with funding from NDOT's Rural Transportation Grant, we
were advised that we would need to stop providing transportation for the urbanized area. The only way
rural transit is allowed to continue serving the urbanized area of Ellitsville is if the operating costs
are paid for and funded by other entities. So I'm here today
to request that the town of Ellisville consider funding public transportation for the urbanized area
of Ellisville. There has been a 2% increase in ridership each year for the past three years. So with
this projected increase in ridership for 2027, we estimate the cost for providing public transportation
for the total urbanized area of Monroe County to be $200,000.
Ellitsville ridership has been consistently 70% of this urban transportation so far in 2026. So we're
requesting 140,000 from the town of Ellitsville to help support rural transit, public transportation
for the urbanized area. I hope you've received my little handout, kind of broke it down a little bit for you.
I'm happy to answer any questions, or if I can't answer them right now, research and get figures to
you if you'd like. Any questions from council? I just want to say we have tried to get funding for rural
transit. The county currently collects a food and beverage tax from Ellitsville, and the county fought
us on taking that tax and using it for rural transit. So until that changes, I mean, I'm just speaking
for myself here,
We can't be in the transportation business. There's just no funding to scale up for that Other questions
from council Thank you, ma'am, okay, I appreciate your time Next we'll move to a presentation from disc
golf club Colin Frank I'll try to be quick. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Colin Frank and
I'm proud to live in Ellitsville. I'm also a proud member of the Bloomington Disc Golf Club. I'm proposing
that we add a disc golf course to the Ellitsville Town Hall Park. I was here two years ago and gave
a very similar presentation, but we've definitely refined things, and this is a much better plan than
I initially had. So what is disc golf? So for those of you who are not familiar with it, it's very similar
to golf. Your goal is to try to throw a disc, or you can think of like a thinner frisbee, into a basket,
and as few throws as possible. It's playable by all ages. So recently, there's the World Disc
Golf Championships. The oldest competitor was 88 years old. The youngest was 13. In our club, we have
a member who's four years old who shows up regularly. So this is a very accessible sport. It's a very
affordable sport. You only need one disc to start. Discs typically sell for $10 to $25. So this is not
a high-cost entry.
It can be played all year round. So we play in winter. We play in the summer. Doesn't matter what the
weather is. We're out there. It's one of the fastest growing sports in the world. So the Professional
Disc Golf Association 2025 reported that there were over 1100 new courses worldwide. So this is something
that is growing.
So what would a disc golf course look like? So typically disc golf courses are nine to 18 holes. People
typically think of wide open holes, but they can be placed in a large variety of outdoor settings. So
on your screen there is a picture of a hole from Ellettville, a disc golf course in, or sorry, Edgewood
disc golf course at the elementary school. Disc golf courses can be designed for a variety of players.
So it can be designed for beginner players, advanced players, or professional.
You can use multiple, that should say, T positions to offer a variety. So you can have a short T to
make the whole easier. You can have a longer T to make it more difficult. And then just to kind of offer
some comparative courses. So Edgewood is the closest course, but it is closed during the school hours,
so it is not publicly available for most of the day. And then you have Carson Farm Park, which is on
the southwest side of Bloomington, and then Crestmont Park, which is in Bloomington.
So just some benefits of a disc golf course. So it provides a recreational activity for Ellitsville.
It's a low-cost, high-return investment. So a course typically costs $10,000 to $20,000, which we'll
talk about that a little later, which is significantly cheaper than something like a basketball court
or a tennis court.
It provides a social activity for youth and adults. So disc golf is typically a social game, if you
can't tell from all my supporters who came out tonight. With youth, it's really important to
offer recreational activities that they can play with their friends that don't cost a lot, right? So
this is something that gets them out, gets them away from their phone, gets them offline, enjoying nature
and enjoying their community. We also have community events.
There are tournaments that we host throughout the year. And there's a lot of community engagement. So
you can think of like golf scrambles at a golf course. We have fundraisers as well in Disc Golf.
So in 2026, we hosted the Wintry Indiana Frozen fundraiser event or what we call WIFs. And all the proceeds
went to the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. So we do support local businesses and charitable groups.
Other benefits, so it doubles as a walking and biking trail. So here's another hole from the Edgewood
course. So you can see the trail going up through the woods. If someone's not playing that hole for
disc golf, there's nothing stopping you from just enjoying a nice walk out in the woods. It also reduces
crime in the park. So these are typically areas where you don't have a lot of people, which adds spots
where people could engage in illegal activity. So you are adding surveillance throughout your park.
It improves forest health, so part of this project is removing a lot of undergrowth as well as invasive
species. That introduces a lot of disease and decay within your woods. So by going through and removing
that, you actually improve the health of the mature trees. And then to improve utilization of the park.
Speaking a little bit more about utilization, there is a disc golf app called UDisc. It allows you to
track your disc golf rounds, so it keeps your score for you. But one of the really nice things that
it does is it provides reports on courses. So Karst Farm Parks would be the most comparable course to
one that we'd put in here. In 2025, there are 4,200 rounds. UDisc estimates that it captures about half
of all rounds.
When I play, I don't always use UDIS, so this is probably pretty accurate. Assuming that, that's 8,400
rounds a year, which means 24 people per day, regardless of weather or snow or cold, go to Karst just
to play disc golf, right? So that's 24 people per day that would be coming to this park. And then, another
really interesting fact is they show distance that people traveled. So over 300 people traveled more
than 30 miles away. So now, you are bringing new people
to Ellitsville. So why this park? So disc golf courses are fairly large. Here's a picture of the property.
Half of it has already been cleared, and you guys have plans for most of that. But half of it is wooded,
so there's about 22 acres of wooded hilly land that's really not suitable for other buildings or activities
other than trails, but we already talked that this would double as a trail. So we need about one acre per hole.
so we need about 18 acres, you have 22. Currently in Eltsville, there is no course publicly available
during school hours, so this would add a recreational need, once again, and then it would fit in with
all the other current plans, so it wouldn't impede anything out in the open. So what would that look
like? So here is a proposed design for the 18-hole course. So I have actually been out in those woods,
walked up and down, found different areas where we could put holes,
The course would have beginner tees and advanced tees. That way, new players could come out here and
enjoy the woods, but then advanced players would have a little bit more challenging of a course. We
would initially just have one pen placement. In the future, we'd have other spots where we could move
the basket, which adds variety to the course, but it also allows some of that land to take a break from
things like erosion and different things that come with having a course. So what would implementation
look like?
So once again, this is another hole out of Edgewood. Basically, we'd have to remove underbrush along
our fairway. Some saplings would have to be removed, so that's small trees, four inches or less at chest
height. We would not touch mature trees. Mature trees actually help your course. It helps define your
course. We would have to dig a hole for a basket, and we'd have to place the basket, put cement around
it. We'd have to level an area for a tee pad, and same for a sign.
You may be wondering what all that cost. Like I said, typically it costs between $10,000 and $20,000
to put in a disc golf course. Not included in that is all your labor cost, right? And this is a big
cost, and it's something that we really need to consider. What I really want to drive home is that this
is a community-driven project. Like I said, I'm a member of the Bloomington Disc Golf Club. I have many
more members back there with me today.
One of our missions or our goals is to increase access to disc golf. We already have a full set of 18
baskets. We had fundraised for another local course and improved their baskets. We took the baskets
that we took out of the ground, and now we want to create another course. So that lets us avoid almost
80% of the cost. In terms of labor, we have 1,100 members in our Facebook disc golf group.
I currently have over 50 signatures of people who are willing to help put in the labor to put this course
in place. And we already have experience doing this. We already do a lot of the maintenance work over
Edgewood Disc Golf Course and at Crestmont Park. So that leaves about $2,000 left. Usually what we do
is we do some sort of fundraiser where someone can sponsor a hole. So on that sign for the hole, just
underneath it, it would say sponsored by so and so.
We'd offer those for about $150, and that would cover the remaining cost. So to taxpayers, it wouldn't
cost a dime. Future projects. So if this project goes well and the town wants to invest in it, you can
always add more money into things. Sometimes, holes get busy, and you have to wait a little while, so
benches would be a really nice amenity. Some of the land back there gets a little rough, because there
is a creek going through it.
So adding a small bridge in the future would just help with accessibility. Trash cans strategically
placed throughout the course would just de-incentivize any sort of littering. Our group is usually very
well at picking that up, but it would help. Eventually we would upgrade the baskets, do kind of the
same thing. So we'd fundraise, replace the baskets, take the old baskets, try to create a new course.
And then, you can always get really fancy. You can always add things like retaining walls or elevated
baskets or different tricks to the course. So just takeaways, this is a prime location for a disc golf
course. It's 22 acres of woods that really can't be used for other things. It would offer a low-cost
social recreational activity for the community. It fits within the current plans for the park. There
would basically be no cost to the town.
and then it would significantly improve utilization of the park. I'd like to thank you for your time
and consideration in this project. Do you have any questions? Questions from council? I like it. I mean,
I'll comment that. So I don't really have a question. Do you want to weigh in? Well, I would say, I
had a warm up to it and it took,
meetings and we he Collins come over a couple three times and after looking at the proposal and thinking
about our mission to expand our parks and create new amenities that'll Get people out and recreate.
I think this is a good good proposal Again, I think it's a good idea if
as long as it's not costing taxpayers any money. But I'm not so sure this is something that's best directed
to the town council. It's probably better directed to the parks board than rather it is for the council.
I agree with that. And I would say that I'm prepared to utilize some of our equipment for clearing when
this, if this takes off and I, you know, if we're going to have a golf course here,
Again, I don't think any of the three of us and I speak for my colleagues have an issue with this Just
what's the appropriate venue for and what are the the liabilities that we have to make sure that we're?
Come here first and sure in Fill you out take your temperature and you need a vote from a star list
specifically I do not
It's going to go before the Parks Board. I think consensus of the councils, we are completely good with
it. Right. We can get it to the Parks Board. Collin came to the Parks Board about a year ago, two years
down, and we indicated that we were in favor of that. I think we're probably gonna need a little more
formal from you guys at this point to make it happen. Well, we'll be meeting the sixth, so. Okay. Okay.
Thank you so much. There are no other items.
There are no other items on the agenda, so now we'll move to privilege of the floor and having business
for council that's not part of the normal agenda. Seeing no one in chambers and no one online, we'll
now move to supervisor comments with the town manager being first. Okay, I just want to remind everybody
we're gonna have a public hearing on Monday, October 5th to introduce the budget and there'll be first
reading and then on October 19th will be the adoption meeting and
that both meetings are at 6.30. There are special meetings too, by the way. I'm sorry, anything else?
No. Chief? I'd like to take a moment to recognize I got to work the Peden Family Farm Festival this
year. Trevor was there as well. And the fire department.
A lot of people was representative, but it's their 72nd year of having that festival for a bunch of
second and third graders. I just, Joyce and Joe and their family have done that for 72 years and I thought
it was worth mentioning. The thing I'd like to mention too is I'm not sure who has more fun.
if the peons have more fun or the kids have more fun, particularly Joe. I'm not sure. And there's a
lot of older gentlemen and ladies that come and volunteer. Everything out there is volunteer. There's
no charge. It's just America at its best. I agree. Chief? We should be taking delivery of our new engine
tomorrow or Wednesday. And yes, it's blue. And one could always hope.
The goal is maybe the next council meeting will have it come up here But we're hoping that it'll be
in service middle of October by the time we get all of our equipment and the radios and stuff put in
it and which Which unit is it replacing? It's replacing the station engine that's here in town So the
current engine will go to a backup position Anything else that's all I've got. Thank you. I have nothing
So I wanted to thank Elena Allen of Blackwell Construction. She coordinated a house they were going
to demolish to be used by local law enforcement and their canine partners for practice and they had
use of it for about three weeks. So I just wanted to thank them for doing that. No, sir.
Seeing no further business, we're adjourned.