Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Tuesday, September 30th, 2025 meeting of the Monroe County Council.
We are calling this meeting to order. And here in the NetU Hill room, we have to my right here, we have
counselors, Henry Iverson, Decker, Wilt, and Fidel. And I don't see counselor Hawk online or in the
room just yet. But again, we'll announce when she's here.
So we have a quorum, so we will go ahead and get started. And for all those that are able to stand,
please do so for the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
Okay, thank you very much for that. Next up is item three, which is the adoption of tonight's agenda.
Council, does anybody wish to amend tonight's agenda? Yes, Councilor Everson. Council, I wish to amend
the agenda to move all of item 12 to immediately follow item seven. To amend item 12 and add item G
quote, the reduction of certain capital lines, end quote. And am I going too fast? And rename the current
12G to 12H. And to table indefinitely, item eight, the discussion regarding the minimum cash balance
resolution. Second.
Okay, we got a motion and a second. Are there any other discussions on amending tonight's agenda? I
need to reread that slower. If you want us to keep on. Anybody else have any questions or comments on
this? We all got tonight's information in front of okay.
All right, and thanks, council staff, for getting that ready for us. Okay, so there's no further discussion.
All those in favor of adopting tonight's agenda as amended, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
saying sign. All right, motion carries. Next up, this is before we begin tonight's public hearing tonight,
I want to make sure that we are setting the ground for tonight's public hearings.
we will open a budget and anyone who wishes to make a comment will be given the opportunity at that
time. Those present here in the NetU Hill room can come to the lectern here or if you are participating
virtually you can raise your hand via Teams as well to make a comment. We ask that you are going to
limit your items to three minutes and after your three minutes are up we will politely say that your
time is up and then
We will move on to the next speaker if there is a next speaker. Here in the NETU Hill rooms, TSD will
have a monitor of the timer and you will see how much time that you have left as you are chatting. Also
via Teams, you will see that countdown clock as well. Following the public comments of each item that
we have tonight, the council will have an opportunity to also make a comment on the budget.
Once council is finished with comments, the public hearing for that budget will be closed. I want to
make this sure that we get that again, so I'm gonna read that one more time for the people in the back.
Following the public comments, council will have an opportunity to make the comment on a budget. And
after council is done making their comments, that item is closed and we will move further.
Does anybody have any questions or comments about those things? Looking to the right and looking to
my left and seeing none. Next up on our list here, we will have item number four and we will go ahead
and get started with the first reading of public hearings. Our hearing of ordinance 2520 or 25
twenty twenty five dash thirty four waste reduction district twenty twenty six budget. So I open the
twenty twenty six race waste reduction district budget say that three times fast and I call on counselor
wilts to read the ordinance into the record.
All right. Okay, ordinance 2025-34, be it ordained by the Monroe County Council that for the expenses
of the Monroe County Solid Waste Management District,
For the year ending December 31st, 2026, the sums herein specified are hereby appropriated and ordered
set apart out of the several funds herein named and for the purposes herein specified, subject to the
laws governing the same. Such sums herein appropriated shall be held to include all expenditures authorized
to be made during the year unless otherwise expressly stipulated and provided for by law. In addition,
For the purposes of raising revenue to meet the necessary expenses of the Monroe County Solid Waste
Management District, the property tax levies and the property tax rates are herein specified and are
included herein. Budget Form 4B for all funds must be completed and submitted in the manner prescribed
by the Department of Local Government Finance. Disordinance shall be in full force and effect from and
after its passage and approval by the Monroe County Council.
Funds, fund code 1215, non-reverting capital projects. Adopted budget zero, adopted tax levy zero, adopted
tax rate zero. Fund 8210, special solid waste management. Adopted budget $3,254,620. Adopted tax levy
$2,355,620.
$1,848 adopted tax rate 0.0248. Fund 8283 solid waste district debt service. Adopted budget $308,445
adopted tax levy $217,259 adopted tax rate 0.0023.
For a total adopted budget of $3,563,065, adopted tax levy, $2,573,107, adopted tax rate 0.0271. Okay,
thank you, Councillor Wilts for reading that.
If we have any members of the public that would like to make comments on this particular item as presented,
again, you can come forward to the lectern here and then at your home and you'll have up to three minutes
to speak, or you can raise your hand via teams. Seeing none. And for the record, we do have counselor
Hawk that has joined us all seven council members are present. All right.
Next up, I will look to any council members to see if anybody has council comment on this budget Yes
councilor wilks I just wanted to note for everyone that the Monroe county solid waste management district
is actually now the Monroe county waste reduction district and
I was just informed that the ordinance reflects the former name because that's what the Department of
Local Government Finance still has on file. So it aligns there. But I thought just to be clear so everyone
knows they did change their name. Thank you. Does anybody else have any other comments? Checking my
list. Okay. All right.
without any further comments from council the public hearing for the twenty twenty six waste reduction
district budget is closed thank you all right next up I'd like to open the twenty twenty six Monroe
fire protection district and I'd like to call on councillor Decker to read ordinance twenty twenty five
dash thirty five into the record
order and by the Monroe County Council that for the expenses of Monroe Fire Protection District for
the year ending December thirty first twenty twenty six the sums herein specified are hereby appropriated
and ordered set apart out of the several funds here in name and for the purposes herein specified subject
to the laws governing the same.
such sums herein appropriated shall be held to include all expenditures authorized to be made during
the year unless otherwise expressly stipulated and provided for by law in addition for the purposes
of raising revenue to meet the necessary expenses of Monroe fire protection district the property tax
levies and property tax rates as inherent specified are included herein
budget form four B for all funds must be completed and submitted in the manner prescribed by the department
of local government finance this ordinance shall be in full force in effect from and after its passage
in approval by the Monroe County Council all right. In fun code. Zero zero six one rainy day adopted
budget one million seven hundred thousand.
zero dollars adopted tax rate zero dollars or pardon me 0.00 in fun eight six zero three special fire
general adopted budget seventeen million six hundred ninety eight thousand one hundred fifty five dollars
with an adopted tax levy of nine million seven hundred ninety
thousand three hundred sixty nine dollars adopted tax rate zero point two five seven seven in eight
six nine one special cube fire adopted budget one million four hundred one thousand nine hundred thirty
two dollars adopts adopted tax levy one million three hundred four thousand seventy seven dollars for
an adopted tax rate
of 0.0333 for an adopted budget of $20,800,087 with an adopted tax levy of $11,094,446 and an adopted
tax rate of 0.2910.
Thank you very much for that. Is there any public comment on this item? Again, if you have public comment
on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the night, you heal room or you can raise
your hand via teams and then we'll come back to council. Wait, this is just just one second, Marty.
I just want to make sure that you are here. But before we go back to council comment, we're going to
go to public first and then we'll come back to
Oh, no, no, no. It's OK. It's all right. So not seeing any. Counselor Hawke. OK. My statement is not
just particularly about this budget, but just in general. I thought the new legislation said that when
we read this, and of course, this is just the first reading so we can fix it next time, is that we had
to also read in what was presently and what it is
proposed. I believe when you look at the legislation, unless for some reason they took that out and
that's something that we're going to be required to do. But if you can check into that before our next
reading, please. Ms. Harnequin. I'm looking right now. Okay.
I'll just yell at it. It'll start. Thank you. Do you mean we're supposed to read in the previous budget
or the fund balance? Well, I don't have it all memorized, but we're supposed to read into what it is
for this year and what it's proposed to be for next year and showing the difference in the tax levy.
Okay. I don't have it all memorized.
But I know it was supposed to be so that we had to acknowledge as we were passing a budget exactly how
much the changes were. And hopefully somebody will check into that. Maybe they took it out of the letters.
They're looking. I just wanted to get an idea of what you meant. But you mean 20, 25 numbers compared
to 26 numbers.
right? And just whatever that legislation says, and by the way, just for you folks, I'm not saying that
about your your proposed budget. I'm just saying in general, I think that says that's what we have to
do. But we can fix it before. Because this is just the this is just the first reading, right? Yes. While
we're waiting,
I'm going to circle back to public comment. If there's anybody here in the room that wants to make a
comment, or you can raise your hand via teams. Hold, please. All right. If you want to keep going, I
can keep looking. It might take a minute. Okay. Because we can always come back and reopen.
if we need to. Okay. All right. So we'll keep going on that regard. So if there isn't anything of council,
now we can come back to council to see if council has any other comment on this. And seeing none. The
public hearing for the 2026 Monroe Fire Protection District budget is closed. Okay.
Next up, I would like to open the 2026 Monroe County government budget, and I would like Councilor Henry
to re-ordinates 2025-36 and to the record. Thank you, Madam President. Just as a point of clarification,
Michelle, does that include the reading end of the home-ruled funds as well in this document? Yes,
it does. All right. Buckle up, everybody. I know. There we go. And same. Be it ordained by the Monroe
County Council.
Let me start over. Ordinance resolution number 2025-36.
Be it ordained by the Monroe County Council that for the expenses of Monroe County for the year ending
December 31st, 2026, the sums Heron specified are hereby appropriated and ordered set apart out of the
several funds Heron named and for the purposes Heron specified, subject to the laws governing the same.
Such sums Heron appropriated shall be held to include all expenditures authorized to be made during
the year unless otherwise expressly stipulated and provided for by law.
In addition, for the purposes of raising revenue to meet the necessary expenses of Monroe County, the
property tax levies and property tax rates, as Heron specified, are included herein. Budget Form 4-B
for all funds must be completed and submitted in the manner prescribed by the Department of Local Government
Finance. This ordinance shall be in full force and effect from and after its passage and approval by
the Monroe County Council.
The adopted tax levy is zero dollars the adopted tax rate is zero point zero zero. For zero one zero
one general. The adopted budget is fifty seven million. Eighty seven thousand and twenty dollars the adopted
thousand one hundred thirty nine dollars and the adopted tax rate is point zero two one five five. For
funds code zero. Zero point two one thank you let me go back and where did I do that point is it two
one five five. Great it's gonna be a long
The adopted budget is $1,451,190. The adopted tax levy is $335,000. The adopted tax rate is 0.0030.
For fund code 0124, 2015 reassessment,
The adopted budget is $968,615. The adopted tax levy is $810,000. The adopted tax rate is .0073. For
debt service, 0180 fund code. The adopted budget is $8,502,000. The adopted tax levy is $8,774,000.
and $57, and the adopted tax rate is .0791. For self-insurance, fund code 0203, the adopted budget is
$11,305,500. The adopted tax levy is $0.00. The adopted tax rate is 0.00. Did you say it was
for self-insurance? I did say self-insurance. Thank you.
For fund code 0254, local income tax, the adopted budget is $4,513,360. The adopted tax levy is $0.
The adopted tax rate is 0.00. For fund code 0256, public safety local income tax, the adopted budget
is $4,734,976.
adopted tax levy is $0. The adopted tax rate is 0.00. For Fund 0256. Did I do that already? Awesome.
For 0616 Convention and Visitors Bureau, the adopted budget is $3,216,600. The adopted tax levy is $0.
The adopted tax rate is 0.00.
For fund code zero seven zero two highway the adopted budget is six million eight hundred nineteen thousand
eight hundred thirty seven dollars the adopted tax levy is zero dollars the adopted tax rate is zero
point zero zero. For fund code zero seven zero three highway special the adopted budget is zero dollars
the adopted tax levy is zero dollars the adopted tax
for zero seven zero six fund code local road and street the adopted budget is one million five hundred
fifty five thousand and six dollars the adopted tax levy is zero dollars the adopted tax rate is zero
point zero zero for fund code zero seven nine zero cumulative bridge the adopted budget is two million
$932,166. The adopted tax levy is $2,362,187. The adopted tax rate is 0.0213. For county major bridge
fund code 0792, the adopted budget is $3,660,059. The adopted tax levy is $3,692,996.
The adopted tax rate is 0.0333. For fund code 0810 health, the adopted budget is $647,913. The adopted
tax levy is $350,000. The adopted tax rate is 0.0032. Council Henry, sorry to stop you. I think you
said 8010 for health.
and it's a year was it what zero eight one zero yes they're sorry did it again zero eight zero one yeah
great got it. For fund code. One three one zero park non reverting capital the adopted budget is one
hundred thousand dollars the adopted tax levy is zero dollars the adopted tax
The adopted budget is $1,681,574. The adopted tax levy is $850,000. The adopted tax rate is 0.0077.
For Fund Code 2391, Cumulative Capital Development, the adopted budget is $3,878,283. The adopted tax
levy is $3,850,000.
$692,996. The adopted tax rate is 0.0333. For funds code 2402 economic development, the adopted budget
is $0, the adopted levy is $0, the adopted tax rate is 0.00. For these funds, the adopted budget total
is $116 million.
$54,099. The adopted tax levy is $44,770,000. Sorry, I'll repeat. $44,770,375 with a cumulative tax
rate of 0.4037. For the Home Rule funds not reviewed by the Department of Local Government Finance,
fund code 9500 extradition and sheriff's assistance. This is cut off, Kim. Is that assistance? The adopted
budget is $538. 9501 surveyor corner perpetuation is $100,049. Fund code 9502 local public health services
is $2,072,287.
For fund code 9503, Monroe County 911 fund is $622,294. For fund code 9504, Monroe County Convention
Center debt is $0. For fund code 9505, auditors and eligible deductions, the amount is $347,103.
For Fund Code 9507 Community Corrections Fees, the amount is $275,846. For Fund Code 9508 User Fee Jury
Pay, the amount is $36,500. For Fund Code 9509 User Fees Juvenile Probation, the amount is $7,079.
For fund code 9510, user fees adult probation, the amount is $110,288. For fund code 9511, user fees
project income slash job, the amount is $0. For fund code 9512, supplemental PD services, the amount
is $925,636.
For fund code 9513, clerk's record perpetuation, the amount is $151,021. I'm sorry, $151,027. For fund
code 9514, user fees, diversion, prosecution, the amount is $102,411. For fund code 9515, user fees,
court alcohol, drug, the amount is $266,630.
For fund code 9516, local health maintenance, the amount is $65,713. For fund code 9517, emergency planning,
right to know, the amount is $25,950. For fund code 9519, misdemeanor community corrections, the amount
is $128,500. For fund code one, sorry,
$9,521 alternative dispute resolution, the amount is $17,700. For fund code 9522, sales disclosure county
share is $66,114. For fund code 9523, convention visitor capital improvement and maintenance, the amount
is $100,000. For fund code 9524, county offender transportation, the amount is $2,500.
For the Fund Code 9525, Local Health Department Trust, the amount is $61,121. For Fund Code 9526, User
Fees Problem Solving Courts, the amount is $22,544. For Fund Code 9527, Westside Economic Development,
the Richland Township TIF, the amount is $2,235,287.
For funds code 9528, 46 corridor economic development Bloomington Township TIF, the amount is $503,201.
For funds code 9529, Fullerton Pike economic development TIF, the amount is $133,000.
For fund code 9530 plat book the amount is $500 for funds code 9531 Convention Center operating is $531,300
for nine for fun code 9532 user fees cable franchise the amount is $535,226.
For Fund Code 9535 PSAP Interlocal, the amount is $2,781,462. For Fund Code 9543 Public Health Emergency
Fund, the amount is $20,000. For Fund Code 9544 Identification Security Protection, the amount is $18,000.
For Fund Code 9548 Park Non-Reverting Operating, the amount is $300,000. For Fund Code 9551 Recorders,
records perpetuation. The amount is $357,714. For Fund Code 9552, Stormwater Management, the amount
is $2,390,284. For
Fund code 9559 County Elected Officials Training. The amount is $18,000. For fund code 9580 Lit Correctional
Rehab Facilities, the amount is $594,429. For fund code 9588 Federal Award Title IBD, the amount is $58,132.
And finally, for fund code 9589curryprofileTIFF, the amount is $25,689 for a total of $16,010,050. And
you can breathe.
All right, thank you so much for reading that into the record here. If we have anybody from the public
that would like to make public comment on the Monroe County government's 2026 budget, again, you can
come forward to the lectern here and then at you Hill room you have up to three minutes and then you
can also raise your hand via Teams.
And so I see that we have both. So I'm going to alternate back and forth. So I'll go to our public commenter
here. So again, you can come in, state your name for the record. Again, you'll have up to three minutes.
And then I'll go from here in the Nightingale room to teams as well. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you.
I am Dr. Lisa Hannah Robinson here to give comment as a private citizen.
In the name of transparency and doing what is right for the health and safety of Monroe County citizens,
I am here to remind council that the $3 million shortfall in the county budget should not be remedied
by cutting any part of the $1.1 million health department operating budget that is tied to the levy.
This is wrong. Also wrong is the clawing back of $750,000 of COVID-19 funds.
These funds have to be used for capital improvements and it is not allowed for these funds to revert
back to the general fund. Slashing the budget of the Monroe County Health Department is dangerous and
puts lives at risk. Public health encompasses disease prevention, vaccine administration, and emergency
preparedness. You are jeopardizing the health and safety of Monroe County citizens.
The tax levy of $350,000 for Monroe County is frankly pathetic and sends the message that health is
not a priority of the council. The second message I have tonight is that the cancellation of the IU
Health contract with the Monroe County Health Department has nothing to do with Lori Kelly's leadership.
Understand that Lori Kelly inherited a department in disarray post-COVID from the prior administration
who left abruptly.
during covid there was complete perceived cooperation between council and health department. In twenty
twenty four point six million dollars in covid funds were dispersed. In total dispersed now when large
sums of money are not flowing through the health department and we we are under intense pressure to
clean up our books. IU health in their own words desires to now provide public health services to the
region not just Monroe county. And their nonprofit status depends on it.
Monroe County was an experiment. Could taxpayer dollars fund contracts to provide public health services?
And the answer is yes. So now IU will step away for a period of time and people will blame this on Lori.
As you propose slashing our budget by $1.8 million, this will ensure we will have a very low balance
by the year 2027. Then more political games will be played and someone will step in and say, we need
to save the health of Monroe County and make it a priority.
There is no reason why the citizens of Monroe County need to suffer while political games are being
played. Your constituents are counting on you to make the right decision. Their lives depend on.
Thank you. Thank you. All right, next up, I see the hand raised via teams. Again, you can unmute yourself.
unmute yourself. State your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. So looks like we
have Jeff McKim. Good evening council members. My name is Jeff McKim and I want to begin by sincerely
thanking you for the incredible amount of work you've put into this year's budget.
I know it's been a long and difficult road, and I truly appreciate the seriousness with which you've
approached the task of reducing spending. Your ongoing efforts to trim supply budgets and identify smaller
savings are worthwhile and appreciated. But unfortunately, those kinds of reductions alone will never
be enough to bring this budget into balance.
The reality is that Monroe County budget is overwhelmingly driven by personnel costs, not supplies,
not services, not capital projects, and not by fund balance policies. The deficit you're facing is almost
entirely the result of rising personnel expenses compounded by declining revenues in part due to the
impacts of SEA-1.
I do want to acknowledge and commend the progress you've already made in reducing overtime costs. That's
a meaningful step in addressing personnel related spending, and it shows a real willingness to make
hard choices. But to truly get a handle on the deficit that's eroding our financial stability,
We have to look beyond overtime and squarely at the broader drivers of personnel spending. These include
several factors, the growing number of positions funded by the general fund, the generous rate that
is already approved and those currently planned, and significant increases in health insurance costs.
I understand that eliminating positions is a difficult and painful step, one no one wants to take, but
there are a couple of other responsible options before you. First, you can fill positions more slowly
through a hiring freeze. I very much hope you approve that measure tonight.
Second, you can moderate the cost of living increases planned for next year. While I understand the
desire to reward hardworking county employees, Monroe County simply cannot afford to lead the market
in raises right now. The most fiscally prudent step would be to pause raises entirely for the moment,
but even scaling back to a 1.5 to 2% adjustment would keep us competitive with other public employers
while making progress towards closing that gap. And then hopefully you'll work aggressively with the
county commissioners to raise in the escalating costs of the self
insurance plan, which continues to be a major driver of the deficit. In the end, there's no path to
fiscal balance that doesn't involve addressing personnel costs, whether in the number of positions,
salary levels, or insurance expenses, or some combination of all three. And I know that means there's
no path without pain. But I urge you to make the difficult choices now the ones necessary to stabilize
our finances and protect Monroe County's long-term health. Thank you again for your service and for
the hard work you've already done.
Thank you. Looks like we have another public commenter here and then at U-Hill room again. You can come
forward to the lectern. You'll have up to three minutes, state your name for the record and you can
proceed. Okay, my name is Janae Trimple and I'm a former employee of the Monroe County Assessor and
Auditor and a resident of Monroe County. I first reported fraud and multiple state code violations that
the Monroe County Assessor is committing back in March. Nine which are provable with documentation.
Tonight's budget is being based upon fraudulent assessed values, fraudulent tax rates, and fraudulent
tax levies. I made the auditor aware of this back in March as well, who was required by Indiana State
Code to report any reported fraud to the State Board of Accounts and she did not.
I also made some of the members of this council aware, along with the commissioners and the legal department.
And according to Monroe County Ordinance 295-3, all board members, committee members, officials and
employees are required to report any and all suspected fraud to the commissioners who are then required
to report that to the State Board of Accounts. And no one has done that. So again, tonight's budget
is being based on fraudulent values and the Monroe County taxpayers are being lied to and taken advantage
of. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. Is there anybody via teams that would like to make public comment on Monroe County
2026 budget? Again, you can raise your hand or if there's anybody else that's here that would like to
make public comment. Again, you can come forward to the lectern here in the NatU Hill room. Last call
in the NatU Hill room and then last call for teams.
and seeing none. Was there a person that, do you have public comment? I thought I saw somebody's hand
raised in the back. Okay, nevermind. I don't wanna make sure I missed anybody. I wanna make sure everybody
has an opportunity to speak. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anybody. So again, I'm gonna
go back to council since there is no more public comment. Yes, councilor Huck.
First of all, I want to say a huge thank you to former council member Jeff McKim, who has continued
to make sure that he's done everything possible to review our budgets just as though he was still sitting
here. And his advice is much appreciated. And of course, I miss his presence here.
But I'm just going to say it's rare that you see someone who has served as long as he has and just continues
to serve. And he's doing that for the benefit of not just everybody here on the council or the people
over there, the staff, but for the people of Monroe County. And that's what his goal has always been
to just be a good representative of the entire county. And I just want to make sure we
that we recognize that not not all would proceed to spend their personal time. Continuing to do county
business much appreciated. Thank you counsel for your comments- anybody else on this side that has any
questions or any comments. It's you know head shakes I'm a look over here to see if council has any comments.
this agenda item we will move into the amended agenda will there be public comment on the follow the
items the rest of the items on our agenda um i mean if council will or would like to do so sure i just
want to make sure that that that people know yes or no i mean i
you know, because I kind of feel like maybe people would be holding their comment for a specific topic.
But if I didn't, you know, I didn't understand, so I just wanted to ask. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. I think,
again, that is up to me. And I think, depending on the conversation here, just so we can get through
this part here, I'm sure there are lots of comments related to lots of things on this, our agenda.
would like to listen. So, but again, do we have any other comments related to 2026 Monroe County budget?
All right. Then I will go ahead and the public comment or the public hearing rather for the 2026 Monroe
County government budget is closed. Okay. Next up is the
ordinance for 2025-37 Monroe County's 2026 salary ordinance and I will read that information here and
like to hear it here it goes okay an ordinance adopted Monroe County Indiana salary schedule and compensation
policies for county elected officials ordinance 2025-37a whereas
Indiana Legislator adopted Indiana Code 36-2-3, which established the Monroe County Council as the governing
fiscal body of Monroe County, and whereas Indiana Code 36-2-5-3 grants the Monroe County Council the
power to, one, fix the number of officers, deputies and other employees,
to describe and classify positions and services adopt schedules of compensation and hire or contract
with the persons to assist and the development of the schedules of compensation whereas Monroe County
Council wishes to establish a salary schedule and compensation policies now it be ordained by the Monroe
County Council of Indiana that this ordinance affixes the salary for elected officials of the county
from the period of
January 1st, 2026 to December 31st, 2026, whose salary is comprised of funds payable from any county
fund or budget as provided by Indiana Code 36-2-5. These salaries are hereby solidly fixed and
follows the maximum level of salary as shown on the elected official salary compensation grid. All payments
made pursuant to this ordinance are contingent upon the strict compliance with and the adherence to
the benefit compensation fiscally related and state
and federally mandated requirements of Monroe County personnel policy handbook. It is the intent of
county council that this language will encourage compliance with personnel policies which may have a
fiscal impact on Monroe County government. For elected officials, Tom worked on or after January 1st,
2026 and prior to midnight
December 31st, 2026, shall be calculated and paid within the parameters of the salary ordinance and
personnel policy handbook, regardless of when the payment is issued. Elected officials shall not receive
compensation above the salary range authorized for their position in the elected official compensation grid.
The county auditors shall not issue pay warrants for pay that exceeds the authorized amount specified
in the salary ordinance. The salary amounts listed are an annual appropriation amount. Calculation of
the biweekly salary rate may result in a slight variation and will not be adjusted at year end. Elected
official base rate schedule. To establish a more equitable system of setting salaries from rural county
elected officials not set by state,
The county council has established within the annual salary ordinance a base rate for elected officials
with the schedule of amounts to be applied. The base rate schedule is outlined in section one of the
elected officials salary grid for elected officials whose salary is set by state. The state mandated
salaries are amended annually on July 1st.
The sheriff is excluded from this base rate schedule as his first salary is paid pursuant to Indiana
Code 36-2-13-2.5 or Indiana Code 36-2-13-2.8. It is the intent and the direction of the Monroe County
Council that all salaries paid by county council, which are tied or related to the Monroe County Sheriff
as it is mandated by the state of Indiana, shall be automatically amended
at the same time as the state mandated salaries on July 1st. The county council recognizes that this
is an exception to the general rule for county set salaries, which are generally modified on January
1st. Additional information regarding payments of certifications, supplementals, and or per DMs is outlined
in section two of the elected officials salary grid.
presented to the Monroe County Council Red and Fool for the first time on the 30th day of September
2025. Yes. And that's it. Thank you. Okay.
If now we'll go to the member of the public. If you have public comment on this item, again, you can
come forward to the lectern here in the Night U Hill Room. You'll have up to three minutes or you can
raise your hand via Teams. Okay, and seeing none in the Night U Hill Room or hand raised via Teams.
We will go back to the county council for discussion. So I'll look over here to my left to see if anybody
has any comments. Seeing none, I'm gonna look to my right. Yes, Councilor Iverson. In keeping with some
of the earlier comments, I think a lot of credit for this elected official base rate schedule goes to
council member Wilts. We worked, she worked really hard on this and it's proved enduring.
to you for creating this grid and ensuring that we're not having big debates about what we should be
paying different elected officials every single year. This has really been a good solution and an enduring
one. So thank you. Council Monson and I work together on that. All right. Anybody else on the right
here have any questions or comments on this item?
Yes, Councilor Hawk. Well, this is, we're still working on this. So this still seems to me that for
anybody listening or watching the paperwork, this is still a work in progress. It appears to me. Yes,
because it's a first reading. Yep. Absolutely correct. Okay. Yes, Councilor Decker. I would just add,
just to clarify and add to what Councilor Hawk said, if I could,
everything that we are doing from now until probably everyone here's term is done is going to be a continual
work in progress with the way the budgets have shifted that has always been the rule anyway that the
minute you're done you're automatically fixing things that got a minute or left off but with the changes
to the state that means that every county council that i guess is paying attention
will continuously be in a constant process of trying to figure it out. And we signed up for that. And
so nothing is ever final till, I guess, your term's done. You can't do anything else about it. All right.
And seeing no other, yes, Councilor. Just to be clear, however, the elected officials' salaries that we set
We have to have that finalized. We can't be changing it next year because you cannot do that with the
elected official salaries. If we should follow some of the advice that's been given not just tonight
but in the past to put a pause on the pay raise or something in order to make these budgets work and
was wait to see what our revenues situation might change. We can always change that.
for the county employees. We cannot change it for the elected officials. Next year during the year,
but we certainly can for our county employees. That is correct, which is why we will
So without that being with that being further I'm going to go to item. I'm thirty or ordinance twenty
twenty five dash thirty seven B and I'm going to look to counselor fight old to read into the record.
Clarify this is multiple multiple pages right yes okay. Three pages well that's multiple well. The whole
thing okay well I'll start and somebody tell me when to stop if I go too far.
So the 2026 Monroe County Government Employee Salary Ordinance and Ordinance Adopting Monroe County
Indiana Salary Schedule Policies for County Employees Ordinance 2025-37B. Whereas the Indiana Legislature
adopted Indiana Code 36-2-3, which established the Monroe County Council as the governing fiscal body
of Monroe County, and whereas Indiana Code 36-2-5-3
Grants the Monroe County Council the power to one fix the number of officers deputies and other employees
to describe and classify positions and services. Three adopt schedules of compensation and for hire
a contract with persons to assist in the development of schedules of compensation. Whereas the Monroe
County Council wishes to establish salary schedule and compensation policies.
be it ordained by the Monroe County Council of Indiana that this ordinance fixes the number and salary
of employees of the county from the period of January 1, 2026 to December 31, 2026, including all officers,
deputies, assistants, and other employees whose salary is comprised of funds payable from any county
fund or budget as provided by Indiana Code 36-5.
This compensation is limited by the following lines and maximum levels of salary shown on the salary
compensation grids. All payments made pursuant to this ordinance are contingent upon the strict compliance
with and adherence to the benefit salary fiscally related and state and federally mandated requirements
of the Monroe County personnel policy handbook.
It is the intent of the County Council that this language will encourage compliance with personnel policies
which may have a fiscal impact on Monroe County government. Any Monroe County employee, including those
employees under a contractual agreement or whose salaries are determined by a state prescribed rule,
order, guideline, or mandate shall not receive compensation above the salary grids outlined within this
ordinance.
The county auditor shall not issue pay warrants for any payment that exceeds the authorized amount specified
in the salary ordinance. The annual salary amounts are listed as approximate annual appropriation amount.
The calculation of the annual appropriation amount may result in a slight variation and will not be
adjusted at year end. Salaries paid on or after January 1, 2026 and prior to midnight December 31, 2026
shall be calculated and paid within the parameters of this salary ordinance and the personnel policy
handbook, regardless of when the work is performed. Specifically, this salary ordinance is applicable
to dates encompassed within claim one as outlined in the 2026 pay schedule. Hello, Monroe County personnel
policy handbook, any item not covered with the salary ordinance shall be governed
by the Monroe County personnel policy handbook. Job description classification definitions. Beginning
calendar year 2022, council approved using the updated classifications and levels for Monroe County
government job descriptions. Compensation levels have been updated using alphanumeric letters A through
E. The listing of all classifications is outlined in section A of the ordinance notes. Now do I read
the grid itself?
I read the grid itself, okay. So this is the elected, 2026 Monroe County Government elected official
salary grid, account line. No, I don't need that. Oh, I don't need that. Page two, sorry. Sorry. So
the next verbiage. Yes. Okay, all right. That's what I wanted. Well, it was there. And Councilor Feidl,
can you pull your microphone a little closer? Oh, sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Thank you. Is that better?
Yes. Just because I printed it doesn't mean you read it. Apparently. Okay.
That was shuffled in there. I apologize. Full time hire date compensation step increase schedule. Employees
will attain a new salary step increase level on the first day of the pay period, which includes the
anniversary of their most recent full time hire date. The salary step increase schedule is outlined
in section B of the ordinance notes.
The salary step increase level given to other county employees will not be given to jail slash correctional
center employees covered by the collective bargaining agreement. Knowledge skills and abilities KSA
compensation procedures. Employees who have gone through the review process and approved to receive
knowledge skills and abilities KSA status may receive compensation at either the three or eight year
level based on
the salary grid applicable to the assigned job description classification and level. An approved KSA
status will remain with the original requesting department for the determined period of time. Departments
may request an employee's KSA status be transferred when an applicable position becomes vacant within
their department. An employee's KSA status does not automatically transfer with the employee and is
subject to review.
an employee's approved KSA status only adjusts the salary base rate for that employee. An employee's
approved KSA status is not included in the years of service pertaining to longevity and or vacation
calculations. A listing of approved KSA hires with term dates is outlined in section C of the ordinance
notes. Longevity scale.
Employees who have an official hire date and have begun work with Monroe County government prior to
November 1st, 2023 shall receive a longevity payment for complete and uninterrupted years of service.
These payments will continue until either there is a break in the employee's service or the employee
ends employment with the county.
An employee who has an official hire date and begun work on or after November 1st, 2023 is eligible,
excuse me, ineligible to receive longevity payments. To determine longevity, the effective date for
longevity is the employee's most recent full-time hire date of the employment with the county. All records
must be verified by the Employee Services Department that involve any type of interrupted service.
Longevity pay for eligible employees is based on a schedule outlined in section D of the ordinance notes
of complete and uninterrupted years of service. A break in service will result in the loss of longevity
pay if the rehire date is on or after November 1st, 2023. To be eligible for a longevity payout, an
employee must still be employed on the day after his or her anniversary date.
Elected officials do not receive county longevity pay employees whose salaries are determined by a state
prescribed rule order guidelines are mandated do not receive county longevity pay. For excuse me probation
officers would be an exception to this rule and would receive longevity.
The annual longevity payment given to other county employees will not be given to jail slash correctional
center employees covered by the collective bargaining agreement as longevity is provided for by the
consideration of the collective bargaining agreement. Prior years of service credit beginning January
1 2017 county council approved allowing complete years
only a prior years of service for each term, a full term, excuse me, a full time Monroe County government
employment be applied when calculating the rehire of an employee's salary. Step increase level. Months
of service, which are less than one full year, shall not be counted nor combined to achieve a complete
year of service. For example, an employee who worked for one year and three months shall be credited
with one year of service.
For probation officers who have transferred from other county positions, the start date for probational
salary increases will be governed by the start date certified by the state for that employee's position
as a probation officer. For a probation officer who has prior years of service, either in other counties
or states, he, she will receive credit for said time as determined by the state for that employee's
position as a probation officer.
Said start dates and prior years of service will be verified by the probation department, documented
in the probation officer's personnel records, and will be tracked by both probation and the council
office. The council administrator and personnel administrator must verify all prior Monroe County government
service with employee personnel records and or with a PERF report before being applied to the returning
employee salary.
The Council Administrator will notify the elected official slash department head if the prior service
credit total has been verified and granted the Council Administrator will maintain a spreadsheet of
employees with confirmed prior service credit for future use.
any additional information and or explanation of the Monroe County government salary schedule
and compensation policies is included in this salary ordinance for the purpose of clarification and
transparency. C-section ordinance notes. Monroe County policy, or excuse me, Monroe County Council policy
regarding salaries tied to state mandated salaries. Annual salaries for the Monroe County Chief Public
Defender, Chief Public
Chief Deputy Public Defender and Monroe Circuit Court Commissioner are all tied and or related to the
salaries mandated by the state of Indiana for the Monroe Circuit Court judges, Monroe County Prosecutor
and or Monroe County Chief Deputy Prosecutor.
the state mandated salaries are amended annually on July 1st. It is the intent and direction of the
Monroe County Council that all salaries paid by the Monroe County Council which are tied and or related
to the above mentioned salaries mandated by the state of Indiana shall be automatically amended at the
same time as the state mandated salaries.
The Monroe County Council recognizes that this is an exception to the general rule for county set salaries,
which are generally modified on January 1st. Additional detail, including Defense Services Standards,
Standard G, Supreme Court Compensation Information, Indiana Code 33-39-6-5 and Indiana Code 36-2-3-17
are incorporated by reference.
Monroe County Youth Services Bureau. Due to the requirements established by Indiana Administrative Code
for personnel employed at a child-caring institution, the Binkley House Manager, the Prevention Coordinator,
and counselors employed at the Monroe County Youth Services Bureau will be compensated at a minimum
of the one-year salary for the PATC classifications.
This compensation level meets the current minimum requirements for exempt employees pursuant to the
Fair Labor Standards Act. The starting annual salary level for these positions shall be reviewed annually
to ensure ongoing compliance with state and federal law and adjusted when necessary. Gotta turn the page.
presented to the Monroe County Council red and full for the first time on 30th day of September 2025.
Okay, and I'm gonna go to Ms. Turner King. Looks like she was waving me down there. Sorry. It dawned
on me while Council Fiddle was reading that, that we probably should add some sentence to the section
about KSAs that indicates that that process is suspended by council resolution and that council code
rescind such accordingly. So I can add that to the next reading if you're okay with it.
it should match with what we're doing. Yes. Yes. The KSA pause is already in place. I just think we
should acknowledge it in the salary ordinance for transparency. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Councilor
Feidl, for reading that. So if we have anybody on the or members of the public that would like to speak
to this item again, you can raise your hand via Teams or you can come forward to the lectern here and
then at you Hill room and you'll have up to three minutes.
Seeing none Are there any questions or comments from council? I'm gonna look to my right and see if
anybody has anything Okay, and look into my left to see if anybody has anything Okay seeing none
Then I'd like to remind everybody that the budget ordinances and salary ordinance will now be placed
on the October 14th, 2025 agenda for a second reading and vote. So nothing is set in stone, but we'll
see everybody back in a couple of weeks. All right. Next up, since we changed the agenda, we are going
to move to our amended items and counselor
I'm going to look to Councilor Iverson for that. Sure. Council, as a reminder, we amended the agenda
today, so I'm going to start reading item 12 here. Particular 12A, which is fund 1000-00068 County Council
Commissioners.
Council, I move to amend to open budget 1000-0068 County General Commissioners and make the following
amendments. Increase account line 13,000 Commissioner to $69,129. Increase account line 10400 Commissioner
to $69,129.
Increase Account Line 11-0-12 Commissioner to $69,129. Increase Account Line 18-1-0-1 FICA to $42,804.
And finally, increase Account Line 18-2-0-1 PERF to $78,417.
All right, we got a motion and a second. I'm going to look to Ms. Kim Schell for this item. During our
budget session process, this went through. Councilor Feidl then pointed out that all three
of the commissioners' salaries were not increased for the 2026 grid amounts. So this is correcting those
three salaries
which then includes the FICA and the PERF amounts for the twenty twenty six budget year. Okay. All right.
Thank you. And thank you to Councillor Fido for catching that. Does council have any questions or comments
on this item? Yes. Councillor Hawk. Yes, I understand. We there's a need for making the correction.
It does not mean that I will support the salary ordinance with this included in here.
but we have a lot of work to do tonight, so I don't want to weigh in on that now. Okay, thank you. Anybody
else over here to my right that has any questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, I'm going to
look to my left, seeing if anybody has anything. And seeing none, if public comment, if anybody has
public comment on this item, again, you can come forward to the lectern here in the Night View Hill
Room, or you can raise your hand via Teams.
and seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor
Hawk? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right, thank you. Next up is item B.
Council, I move to open fund 1000-003 County General Treasurer and make the following amendments. Reduce
account line 30004 repairs, equipment slash vehicle to $0 and simultaneously create account line 38010
repair equipment and set it to $600. Second. All right, Michelle.
Yes, this is one of those cleanup items that we were doing with consolidating account lines. This one
was missed. So this is just following the precedent that we've set in other budgets. Okay, thank you.
And look into my left to see if anybody has any questions on this item.
Yes, Councillor Decker. I only just have a technical suggestion on the technical. Is there any way that
we just combine the next two technicals and have Councillor Iverson do that in one heap? So we've been
getting rid of all this house cleaning. Just might, maybe we might do. Okay. So you're saying combine
C with D and I think that's the last one, but. Yes. Yeah. So C and D. Okay.
Yes, Councilor Hawk. Right. I would like to, before we do the item C, I want to make sure that the sheriff
understands that because there were some of us that thought we ought not to do that. I thought we agreed
we weren't. I see Kim Schell's hand. Yes. But we are not on that item. I know what you were saying.
When we get there, I'll explain it.
right yes we're sent we can combine those when we get there we can definitely do that because that is
also a valid point um that we talked about before so yes i hear you all right but because we are still
on item b does anybody else over here has any questions related to councillor iverson's motion seeing
none all right if you have public comment on this item again you can come forward to the lectern here
in the night you hill room or you can raise your hand via teams
Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor
Hawke? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Wilkes? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes.
Motion passes unanimous. Now Councilor Iverson will combine item C and D. Council, I move to open fund
1000-0005 County General Sheriff and make the following amendments.
Reduce account line 30025 maintenance to $0 and simultaneously create account line 33050 service maintenance
slash repair fleets and set it to $1,000. At the same time, I moved to open fund 1000-0009 County General
Prosecutor and make the following amendment. Reduce account line 30004 repairs equipment slash vehicle
to zero dollars. All right, we got a motion in a second, Michelle. OK, so with regards to the sheriff's
request, I spoke with Chief Deputy Parker. This is an account line that they're using strictly for the
deputies. The account line that I believe Counselor Hawk was referring to was the maintenance line that's
in the jail. That line has not been touched or anything.
Deputy Parker said, this is fine. We actually reduced it at the last meeting from $5,000 to $1,000.
And he was fine with that. And so this is, again, this is writing those combination or several count
lines into one accurate number. So that's where we're at on that. Okay. Okay. All right.
And then with regards to the prosecutor one, I'll pull that one up here just for a moment. With that,
that account line along with another account line was combined into 38010. So that one was just missed.
So it just needed to go to zero, so. Okay. And, Councilor Hogg, since you were
question. Does that answer your question, but I just was concerned about the sheriff. Okay All right.
Um that was a similar question I had earlier. Um so anybody else over here to my right that has any
questions. Or comments. Seeing none. I'm gonna look to my left. See if anybody has anything. Sorry Um.
All right. Seeing none. If anybody has public comment on these two combined items again, you can come
None, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Hawk. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes. Councilor Iverson.
Yes. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Feidl. Yes. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Motion
passes unanimous. All right, next up is item E.
Council, I move to open fund 1161-0000 Local Public Health Services and reduce account line 10104 Assistant
Registrar to zero, reduce account line 18001 Self Insurance to $264,000, reduce account line 18101 FICA
to $75,110, reduce account line 18201 PERF to $139,420, then
Open Fund 1159-000 Health Fund and increase Account Line 10104 Assistant Registrar to $45,318. Reduce
Account Line 18001 Self Insurance to $85,000. Reduce Account Line 18101 FICA to $16,039 and reduce Account
Line 18201 PERF to $27,301.
Okay, Michelle. Instead of saying reduced in $1,159, it should say increase. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Council, I move to amend my motion for fund $1,159 to increase those account lines to those amounts.
And Madam President, if you want me to reread it, I can, or if that's sufficient, we can do that.
I think that that should be enough. That's OK. OK, all right. So any other further discussion on this
item? To my right, yes, counselor Henry. Madam President, thank you. And as one of the council liaisons
to the Health Department, I have to admit I'm at this point lost in the sauce when we get between the
movement of positions back and forth as we've been doing here for well, the whole year, frankly.
I just maybe have a point of information so remind me which fund we're moving to. Is this out of HFI
into county? That's exactly right. So 1161 is the titles local public health services, but we commonly
refer to that as health first Indiana and then 1159 is that general fund the health fund. Thank you.
Here's my comment and I'll be brief. So I had the good fortune today of going to some of the Association
of Indiana counties annual
conference. It was a French lick and asked in our county council meeting with peers if other counties
are experiencing this challenge of how to provide. Public health services under H. F. I. verse. Their
own local funds are not alone as one would imagine. Though it but also intriguingly it
there are other counties that don't seem to either acknowledge that this is a problem or they're having
issues as people present at their health department. And that may speak to their rural character.
Of course, counties that are larger seem to be experiencing the diversity of concerns here. But what
I walked out of that meeting with was there's still no consensus on how to approach this. And it really
is on the state to start providing guidance to our counties about how to provide these services under
HFI. I mean, we have this bolus of funding that comes to us
public health services and it's sequestered in a way that we can't really tap it.
I think at some point we're going to have to stop at the ping-ponging, though. We're going to need to
come up with a solution locally that if we wait for Indianapolis to say you can use HFI for this and
not for that based on the way the code is passed, we might be in for a long wait is what I was getting
out of our council at AIC today. And so I wanted to say that. I also wanted to say I know it's not customary
to comment on public comment, but we all wear many hats in the community. And when a board of health
members speaks in a personal capacity or in a
I guess sometimes I want to drop the Victorian behavior of etiquette in this room and actually get to
what's going on. And what's going on is we have a serious challenge in how we deliver public health
services in our community with the money we have. But the answer can't be to keep coming back to county
health funds to try to do that. We need to figure out a way to use what the state provides us. If this
is the temporary solution for now, fine. But I don't think we're done with this. And so I guess I appreciate
yet again us looking at this.
it's not finger pointing. We are in this together, one government, health department, county departments,
county council, to try to figure out how to deliver the solutions. But it is not a heart issue, it's
a head issue, this is math, and there's laws that are preventing us from doing this correctly. So I
think we just need to honor that every time. It's nothing personal, this is not our fault that we have
to do this. But that's my rant on this, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yes, Councilor Hark. I just
wanted to add, I'm on the,
of the Indiana County Council Association legislative group and we did make it clear that we support
increasing the money for HFI to the extent that the state can but then you look at what's going on with
the state and they're cutting their budgets five percent and ten percent. So I think we should not just
count on that being our salvation.
need to just look at what we have now and go from there. Yep because if I held my breath waiting on
that I might be six feet under. Okay looking over here to my left I'll go to Councilor Decker and then
I'll go to Councilor Wilts.
Yeah I appreciate very much this discussion and I appreciate very much what counselor Henry said and
that he went down there today to talk amongst our colleagues and try to get a sense of where folks are
at. If anyone from the state were watching and I'm starting to think no one watches maybe I was wrong
but if they were watching one thing I would say is there used to be a belief it was not on my side of
the aisle but back in the day it was a belief that
local government had a pretty close to accurate and if you kind of kept your ear to it step back just
a little bit local government a lot of times would get it right one of the things the state could consider
is to continuously stop having unfunded mandates where we have to have legal look at something for 9
000 days and then health administrators who should be putting shots in places
And people should get their shots and vaccines right that they would be able to do that versus figure
out if they're if this is that or this is that but that whole thing is like inverted and so if I had
my druthers and since the state's not listening I can say this among friends I'd send them a bill.
for all the things that we had to figure out for all the attorneys in that bench we had to pay and all
the time that I kept people or we kept people up there in that booth watching us because we can't afford
to do it and we actually accounting with resources or some resources to figure those things out this is not.
we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. It's untenable. We also
need legislators to tell us what they think and to be honest about it with us. You're either fixing
these things or you're perpetuating these things. There's not Democrat or Republican anymore to me.
It's you're either fixing these things or you're perpetuating what makes it worse. So that that's my
observations on all this as I start to get fired up again and
Thanks. I want to come back from the forest and actually look at the trees for a second. Please. Because
I just want to make sure that I understand what we are doing with this particular move from one line
to the other, one fund to the other. We're taking one assistant registrar position and we're placing
them back into
the county general funded lines so that. That person. Is being paid by what I'm going to recall going
to call unrestricted health funds as opposed to other positions and other assistant registrar positions
which are in the restricted funds known as HFI.
Am I correct? That is correct. So that is telling me that whatever percentage, I don't know how many
assistant registrars we have, but we have three. So one third of our assistant registrar duties are
being paid for by unrestricted funds. And as I'm going to interpret that, and you know, I don't run
anything, but I'm going to interpret that that
Approximately or up to one third of the folks coming in and needing services don't need to necessarily
meet a certain residency mandate. I mean, if we're, I know I'm going, I took it that extra step, I did,
I admit that. But I don't know how else or why else we're doing this. Councilor Henry.
Okay, I'm gonna do my level best to try to channel the Board of Health and the Health Administrator
as it was explained to Peter and myself or Councilor Iverson and myself. So you're on the right track
with why we're doing this. The why we're doing this is I think where Councilor Decker and I were going
toward the state. But here's the issue, right? So HFI being funding core services of public health in
our community has done so for a few years now. We were able to put the registrars under that account
to do that work because it was core public health work in the community.
The way that the new legislation is working is saying that, and this is why the language that Councillor
Iverson read is important, to be able to extend vital record work that may extend beyond the geographic
boundaries of Monroe County in the state of Indiana. What does that really mean for citizens? Well,
if you were born here and you moved away,
And you don't live here anymore. If we're funding that registrar through HFI now, after July 1st, they
can't work with you. And when they go online to use our online systems, like I think VitalCheck is one
of those systems, if our registrar is funded by HFI, that's their paycheck, and they get a out-of-county
human that even was born here, we can't
Use that dollar amount to fund that labor. So now the result is what Council Becker said. That's the
unfunded mandate on Monroe County that once upon a time was considered a core public health service
in the state of Indiana funded by ID OH. That's the mess.
I think for me, what I'd like to get to is a place where we get that data that you're asking for. We
don't really know yet from the health department just how much of their work is out of county humans
right now. And to get that data is going to take some work. I mean, because we're making a guess here
to provide services. We're saying one out of three can handle the out of county people.
But we're gonna need to get granular. I'm not sure if that's a 40-hour week yet. I don't think we know
that. And hopefully the legislature fixes this before we have to start tabulating by like piecework
how many birth and death certificates we're processing here. So it has to come home into the county
budget for now as an unfunded mandate. I think that's about as clear as I can make it. I mean, yeah.
Thank you for taking us down that trip there. All right, Councilor Iverson, that's all your hand up.
Thank you. My question is for Kim Shell. I think one of the the negative four B's that we've seen was
this 11th. I'm sorry. I'm thinking of the wrong fund. I retract my statement. Yep. Nope. Got my numbers
mixed up. Thank you. Okay. So does anybody else have any? Yes. Councilor Hawk.
If we had had the list, here's what needs to be under 1159, period, because we can't put it over in
1161. I think that they thought they were giving us that message, but it was not coming through loud
and clear. We just knew they were unhappy. That doesn't fix the situation. So anyway, at least this
is a step in the right direction. We certainly are not going to say we're not going
we're not allowed to give out birth certificates or death certificates. Of course we are. We just have
to figure out what, where to put it and get it done. I think this is the only way we can. I mean, legally,
until the state decides to change something, it was made clear in that email to us that that is exactly
the situation.
we had all of that information like a long time ago. It saved us a lot of time. Right, exactly. Yep.
And I'll continue on my quiz with Santa's hashtag. Thanks, Indiana. All right. That being said, because
they're making us do with what we have to make do with, and that is the common theme of the night and
the overall theme for me, unfortunately, during this entire budget.
So that being said, if there's any public comment on this item, again, you can come forward to the lectern
here in the night, you know, room or you can raise your hand via teams. And seeing none, maybe please
have a roll call vote. Councillor Iverson, yes, Councillor Deckard, yes, Councillor Fiddle, yes, Councillor
Wells, yes, Councillor Henry, yes, Councillor Hawk, yes, Councillor Crossley, yes,
Motion passes unanimous. All right, thank you for that. Next up is item F. Council, I move to make the
following amendments with regards to the passage of our overtime resolution, which is resolution 2025-41.
There are six of these. Number one, open fund 1107-0000 aviation and create a count line overtime and
set that line to $1. Number two,
Open Fund 1000-0001 County General Clerk Reduce Account Line 17101 to $0 Number 3 Open Fund 1000-0009
County General Prosecutor Reduce Account Line 17101 to $0 Number 4 Open Fund 1119-0000 Clerk Perpetuation
Reduce the count line 17101 to zero dollars. Number five, Open Fund 1155 Extradition Prosecutor. Reduce
the count line 17101 to zero dollars. And finally, number six, Open Fund 1215-0062 Election Fund Election
Board and reduce the account line 17101 to zero dollars. Second.
Ms. Schill, what do you have to add to this? So with regards to the aviation department, there was a
discussion on the overtime resolution to add them, but there was not a discussion on what to
put in as an amount. So I just put the dollar because you can create a line. But if you don't put anything
in there, it will not show up into the budget for the next year. So if you're going to move forward
with more than a dollar, then I need to also know that so that I can take into consideration FICA and
perf. But that will need to be added to that line. At this point, by adding just a dollar, there's no
change to FICA or perf.
And then the only other one that I want to say that is with regards to the extradition, if you set that
one to zero, that wipes that entire budget out. So if she does need to come back because that's the
only thing in there is overtime, FICA and perf. So if you take care of removing all of that, then
she would have to come back and ask to have that line created again for 2026. I would recommend just
leaving that one as a dollar or something, but that's totally up to you guys. Otherwise, that budget
will no longer exist for 2026. OK. Thank you. And Ms. Turner-King. And to piggyback on what Ms. Schell
was just saying,
It's fine if you leave the prosecutor's line at a dollar. We'll just have to amend the resolution that
you passed because the overtime resolution says all account lines will be zeroed out. Yeah, I looked
to my left here. Yes, counselor. Well, sorry. Yeah. I wasn't here last week. I did watch the meeting, but
I'm a little confused about extradition being overtime. Can someone explain to me why that's that? What's
that mean? Is it because people are paid overtime when they have to go get people elsewhere? Is that
one of those? Okay. I would. Interesting. There's no other overtime line in
the prosecutor's budget? Yes, but we have zeroed them out with the ordinance that we passed. Okay. Okay.
I'm trying to keep up. Sorry. So all of those were automatically zeroed out.
from the resolution that you all passed last week? Correct, yes. Got it. But these are bonus? Well,
what happened was the ordinance passed, then in order to give you an accurate accounting of what account
lines are being zeroed, these are the account lines that need to be zeroed out per your ordinance.
So that's why I'm bringing this to you saying this is. What is getting zeroed out as well as hey, I
need to have an account line for aviation with $1 and then explain with extradition. If we wipe that
out totally, then it's gone. What is extradition budgeted at now? $538 so $500 for overtime, $38 for FICA. And
Is it specifically called out as an account line in the resolution? Yes, it's it's called overtime.
The resolution refers to the overtime line. So any overtime line in in on all the funds that is correct
and because it says the word overtime, that is correct. I get it so. Have we checked with the prosecutor
to make sure that they can
do what they need to do without overtime? I mean, is there a way to do extradition without overtime?
I would think there might be, but I don't know. Our security is here, so if you'd like to be put on
the spot and answer Councilor Wilts's question.
Absolutely. Eric Oliphant, Monroe County prosecuting attorney. I appreciate your concern, Ms. Wilt.
I think that we can live without this extradition. We haven't used it in a long time. It's essentially
to pay a sheriff's deputies over time. So actually not even somebody in our department to go fetch somebody.
But we typically contract this out. So we don't, we're willing to live with this change. So thank you.
Yes, Councilor Decker.
One thing I want to make sure of, and this is a theme that I'll come back to a few times tonight, I
would like to make sure that as we do these things, we're quantifying roughly some number on this because
I don't want us potentially to take action that doesn't turn into actual savings that actually helps
the bottom line. I mean, all this can't be just
an exercise in pain, just have an exercise. I do want to get a rough ballpark what that is. I don't
know if the auditor's team has thoughts on what these things will do, but I don't want to chop down
every tree on the lawn if two will get it for me or one. And I know that I'm not going to get it all
here, but I just think knowing that running forward will help us a lot. So are you wanting to know what
moving these to all zero is going to cost?
essentially what it benefits this process. I mean, if this is $20.35, I think I used that joke last
week, $2.35. That's one thing. If this is another amount, it's another. I just want to make sure that
we're not losing that in the process. If you want to give me a recess of about five, six minutes, I
can do it quickly. I don't know that we need to recess. But I think us keeping track at some point here.
Let me do one thing real quick and I was thinking that the prosecutors itself. So just to clarify on
number five, the 1155 fund, is that now zero? Did we get back to zero or are we doing the dollar? It is zero.
Just to show one of the reductions is the prosecutor's office. It has $3,000 plus then there's going
to be a negative, I'll need to take out $230 in FICA and $426 in PERV. So that's $3,656.
That's just the one department. I would have to check everybody else's with regards to that. I'm going
to look over here to my right to see if anybody had any questions on this particular line. I know we're
all anxious to get moving, but I want to make sure we are good to go on these.
If there's no further questions or comment from council, I'll go to public comment. Again, if you have
public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the Nattie Hill room, or you
can raise your hand via Teams. All right, and seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. I switched screens.
Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Fiddle. Yes. Councilor Wilkes. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor
Hawke. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. And
that is all under that particular item. I am going to look at the auditor because before we
started our meeting. Ms. Woodruff went and passed around the theme of budget season, which is the 4B
conversation here and what's or what lets us know rather where we are in terms of deficit and whatnot.
So I'm gonna pass it back over to the auditor before we go into the next item for any updates that she
would like to give us on this.
Financial director Carly Woodruff is preparing to share her screen and going to go through this with
you She is updated and is ready to speak on it Trying far as I can Okay, are we able to see the screen?
Yes. Thank you for zooming in
So right now we are roughly at 4.4 million in a deficit. That is looking at a simple calculation. So
this takes the entire amount that is anticipated to be received in 2026. And we subtract out the amount
that is anticipated to be expended, otherwise known as the budget. This does include that 3 million
that is appropriated in rainy day.
It also does not include the tax cap impact. Also on this same document, we do a deep dive calculation
into all of the levy funds where you can see the
amounts on a fund by fund basis for the levy funds. These also have headers that show what lines are
pulling these from on the 4Bs. So if you want to go into the 4Bs, you can double check their numbers
are correct. We're pretty sure they are, but we always like a good review. And then in addition to that,
any funds that aren't displayed in this list can be reviewed in the same method.
And if you notice the levy funds, do you have a larger deficit than the overall budget? Okay. All right,
Council, does anybody have any questions for the auditor's office on this item? I'm going to look to
my left here. Yes, Councilor Decker.
And correct me if I'm wrong. The one that we're watching hard is that simple calculation up top that
you put, that 4.406346 that doesn't include anything done tonight, right, so far? It does not reflect
any of tonight's changes. But theoretically, anything we're doing here starts to move that down, hopefully
not up. Okay. Yes, Councilor Wilts. I just want to make sure I understood or at least heard you correctly.
does include the rainy day appropriation, which we hope not to have to spend, but it's budgeted, and
I appreciate that. But it does not include the tax cap impacts, which forgive me, how muchish are we
looking at? That's going to be reflected in column D, so it's roughly 1.757 million.
Oh yeah, thank you. All right, I'm gonna look to my right here to see if anybody has any questions.
Yes, Councilor Everson. So one of the things that we've been talking a lot about are our minimum fund
balances. And if you scroll over just a little bit to the 4B line 18, which is the estimated end of
year cash for 2026, none of those are negative, which is a good thing.
And all of them are within the minimum fund balance. Am I reading that correctly? That is correct.
All right. So in one sense, that big $4.4 million deficit is what we're going after. But in another
sense, our 4Bs are looking pretty good right now. And we're within the fund balances that we set for
ourselves back in June.
Just to remind you, those are the minimum fund balances. The county should never go below. It doesn't
mean it would be healthy to stay at that level. Good clarification. Yes. Anybody else? Councilor Hawke.
Yes. I'm always concerned when we're talking about just the minimum fund balance because what we really
need to be looking at is our revenue for this coming year minus
or whatever you have to. We've got a revenue coming in and we've got projected budget. And we're five
million in the deficit for general. See, I mean, those are the two lines that you look at. The total
revenues and the total expenses. I rounded off the total revenues at about 52 and took that from 57.
That comes up about the five million I was talking about.
from seven foot. Try to make it easy. Those is what we ought to be looking at is what is our revenue
for this coming year and what is our expenses that we're approving for the coming year and everything
we go over that like for general it's five million we're taking it out of the cash
because we're spending down what the reserves would be. So there's been a lot of talk about what the
minimum fund balance is, but those are things we have to look at to see if we're in deficit. Did you
all have a response to that? I thought I saw. She's right. Carly or Ms. Anybody from the auditor's office?
Yes, if you look at the screen in column I, we went ahead and did the deficit calculation on a fund
by fund level. And you can see that the general fund does have a $5.146 million deficit as of right
now. If I may just add. So through this entire process, we've been showing you the two different methods.
The 4B goes on a fund by fund basis, which we really want you to dig in and review those.
However, this gives you the overall view of the county and the deficit so Then we dialed it back and
just showed you the levy funds as well. So Maybe more isn't best, but we've trying to give you everything
so you can review and Just make it make sense, I guess the way that is best for you Yes council Iverson
I want to piggyback on something that Councilor Decker just raised. We're going to be doing a lot of
work tonight, and that top number for the simplified deficit will change as we work this evening. Is
it possible to check back in periodically throughout the night? I'd prefer not to do that. That's how
mistakes are made, and we give inaccurate information publicly, so we can have that for you tomorrow,
though. Okay.
Anybody else have any questions on this item as presented to us by the auditor's office? Yes, Councilor
Wilts. So I've kind of calculated three different ways of looking at it, and I'm not going to share
that math because it might be embarrassing. But what I'm seeing is anywhere from 3.1 million to
almost $6 million as kind of, depending on how you look at it with all these different comments, the
deficit that we have to attack. Yeah, and that's totally right. I mean, you can look at it as like all
of the funds, which is the simple calculation. You can look at it at a fund by fund basis or just the
levy funds. I mean, there's not a wrong way. Yeah. Well, not that we presented. We're done.
Yes, Councillor Hawke. Move your mic. It's not picking up. The green light's on. Yeah, for some reason
it wasn't picked up when you were talking. Okay. I'm going to call your attention to the fact that CUME
CAP is on there. Well, now, if it's running in the deficit, remember, that's a rate control fund. There's
a big difference between the rate control funds and the levy control funds. So whatever that rate,
the .0333, brings in for CUME CAP,
then that's where it's going to go. And so it's rather confusing to include that as a total of the deficits,
because then it makes it feel like as if we're more shaped than we are. Is that in the 4.6 up top? Because
this is what we're looking at, the 4Bs.
to follow that. Okay. All right, so we don't have any further questions on this again. We will probably
come back to this as we go through this evening, but I wanted to give an opportunity to the auditor
to. Present that I don't. Yes, one final comment as we go through. If you'd like to pull up a 4B and
present that as we're looking at different budgets, we're happy to do that and answer any questions
along the way.
Okay. Thank you. All right. Next up on our agenda is item G, which is the reduction of capital account
lines. Council, I move to reduce the following account lines because they've been moved to the 2025
general obligation bond. In county general fund,
one thousand dash zero zero zero one clerk account line four zero zero zero two to zero dollars one
thousand dash zero eight zero three parks account line four zero zero zero one to zero dollars one thousand
dash zero three eight zero jail account line four zero zero zero one
to zero dollars in aviation fund eleven oh seven dash zero zero zero zero account line four zero zero
zero two to zero dollars account line four zero one two zero to zero dollars account line four zero
one three zero to zero dollars account line four one five zero to zero dollars account line four one
one zero four to zero dollars in the reassessment fund one two two four dash zero zero zero
Account line four zero zero zero three to zero dollars. It's OK. Account line four four three zero zero
to zero dollars.
And lastly, in Motor Vehicle Highway 1176-0000, account line 400001 to $0, account line 400002 to $0,
400003 to $0, account line 41104 to $0, and finally, account line 45310 to $0. Second. OK. Michelle,
what would you like to add to this?
There was a discussion with the commissioner's administrator and the auditor with regards to certain
capital lines. Then I received that list. And so as far as I know, and I confirmed with Angie Purdy,
these lines have now been placed into the bond with whatever requests that they were asking. OK.
because it was our understanding that capital, anybody that had capital in their budget lines should
have, or could have been swept into the geo bonds. Right. I think that the idea, my understanding was
a long time ago that budgets didn't have capital lines, but they've slowly been coming back. There are
a few things that she, that did not creep in.
I want to say to the bond because the bond is very specific on what it can take in. So not all capital
lines have been removed, just those that are that can be captured in the bond. Okay. And so the other
question I have for this before I move on to everybody else is,
since that has, then this can play into the deficit. Oh, heck yeah. Okay, okay. So that could come out
of our general because it's already in there. And so what I'm saying when it comes out is trying to
make that lower, that amount lower, get it, got it good. Okay, sounds interesting. And then council.
I was just gonna say, I do know that because I looked it up that for the general fund itself,
It was like $75,000 and a dollar. Out of those three things there. A dollar means that somebody had
an account loan and it wasn't zeroed out? Got it. Correct. Okay. I'm going to look over here first because
I thought I saw Councilor Wilts. Again, so that I'm catching up maybe from last week.
So you said $75,000 is all from the general and then like I'm assuming there were other. It's not. Was
it all in the general fund? Or that we were just those three departments. Were picked up and put placed
into the geobond. OK, so if somebody else has a capital, this is literally just $75,000 that were
doing yes for the general fund but then you had the aviation which is a levy fund you have reassessment
which is a levy fund right okay yeah but what's the total then i don't know okay that's what i'm saying
i only was able to pull because i didn't get this till late in the day yeah right so yes
or during our conversation we were presented the 2025 do bond so I'm more than happy to pass that over
to you since you weren't here so you can make what you can with it I would like to look at but I can
ask another question my understanding was that there was already about six million in the bond request
is that right
It wasn't exactly that amount, but it looks like, according to this sheet, it was $5,873,960, but not
quite at $6 million, but real close. Okay. And that conversation is coming back around on the 14th.
Okay. I just am concerned about
to save money now by spending more money overall by bonding for so much stuff. And I see. No, no, no,
I get it. Yeah, I know. I see Miss Purdy is here. So, yes. Yeah. Um, Councilor Iverson asked me to come
forward. Um, so the bonds that was presented to you, the 2025 proposed bond included already.
These items that you are taking out today, it also included a street sweeper for stormwater.
So the bond, the project list that you saw includes these issues. And what happened, it sounds like
is we failed to tell you guys that
they were put into that bond. So there was a kind of a breakdown in. Bri and I thought we had a good
thing going on. Yes, no, I was just going to add I we presented those in a list of possibilities and
I should have just forwarded the email. It was about as clear as mud, though, so thank you.
Councilor Iverson. I have some totals, if you'd like to hear them. For the general fund, it's $75,001,
like we said. The aviation fund is $102,000. The reassessment fund is $10,000. And the motor vehicle
highway is $5,502. And I'm, so take those with a grain of salt, as Ms. Schell pointed out,
some of those do impacts our deficit and some don't. All right. Anybody else over here have any questions
related to this item? All right. Last call. All right. All right. So if there is any public comment
on this item, again, you can come forward to the lectern here in the night, you know, room or you can
raise your hand via teams.
seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote. Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor
Wilkes? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Hogg? No. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson?
Yes. Motion passes six to one. Okay.
Thank you. And before we get into the meat and potatoes of the other parts of our agenda here, I'm going
to ask for us to take a quick recess, a five minute recess, literally a five minute recess.
So maybe six, since it's seven oh four. All right. So if everybody can come back to the dais,
at seven and be ready by 710 so that we can move through a packed agenda here that would be greatly
preferred. So again, come back 710 and let's get ready to roll. Thank you. We are going to go ahead
and get started because I said we should start back at 710 and it's 712. So by my calculations for two
minutes over. All right.
So let's get back into this agenda here, which is item H, which is the other 2026 budget reviews. Council,
I open for discussion a possible 5% reduction in the supplies category across all funds. Second. We
got the motion and the second.
Yes, counselor hawk. Okay. Well, it looks like as if. Like there'd be a big saving of five million something.
But we have to break it down by the funds. Because you can't think you say $5,000 and fix your deficit,
because that's not correct. So I don't even know which funds are included when it says across all funds.
are they including? Kim Cap of the including tip. Who was included in this? I mean, if I may, I want
to make sure I understood the question. Are you looking at the simple calculation that? If we're if
we're looking at the total and it makes it look like it said, oh, well, there's a reduction five million
something. Well. We need to know where.
the two eighty ones. It's the five percent reduction in the amount of two eighty one seven thirty three,
which that says reduction in the supplies category across all funds. OK, no, but regardless of the dollar
amount, what I'm trying to figure out is which funds and how much it is for the separate funds. I just
looked at number. And. Yes.
And I think Michelle is gonna pull that up so we can see that on the screen and for the public to see
it as well. I just did this like,
little bit ago while everyone was taking a break. Let me see if I can get it any quicker. Okay, so what
I did was I ran just a cumulative budget. So for general fund, this is the supplies.
General Fund has $1,389,297 in supplies. A 5% reduction is $69,465. Okay, so Councilor Hogg, does that
answer your question as to which areas it's coming out of? Right, I mean, I have other questions, but yes, so.
it's probably going to be more important when we get to the next ones. The next one, she said. Yes,
I'm going to go to Councilor Henry and then Iverson. Thank you. And yeah, my question does relate,
I think, to all of them, but the line of thinking here. So is the reduction, the 5% reduction after
all the cuts that we've made already, or is it before?
this is all before I have not changed anything because you know everything was not approved until tonight
so this is all before so all the edits we've done over the past three weeks like we're presuming no
it includes everything up until tonight that's what I'm asking so that what that would infer then and
again this first item might be smaller but when we get to items down wind here gets
more difficult to say that some departments have already made the good effort to reduce are going to
get hit again. And other departments that did not make the effort are seeing their first 5% cut as of
this. Unless we say it goes back to what it was to begin with and then make the 5% cut. However,
there were, I'm sorry not to over talk, but however, on that point, some departments made more significant
cuts to begin with, you know, beyond 5%.
And so they would be gaining back, in theory, 45% where others would be. So I'm just trying to get a
sense of the point in time where the cut is happening. It sounds like, Michelle, you said it's from
everything that we've done up to this point, and then 5% on top of that. Correct. OK, that's it. That's
all I got right now. Yes, Councilor Iverson. And just we're getting some questions about where we are
in the agenda. This is a 5% as a discussion about a 5% reduction in the supplies category.
The next discussion is going to be services. The discussion after that is capital category. The discussion
after that is training and travel. So I just want to kind of road mapping for people that we're talking
about supplies now. Then there'll be another discussion on services and then there'll be another discussion
elsewhere. And then I had a question for what's on the screen. Yes. Michelle, what you have on the screen.
five percent reduction. Would that apply to grant funds or other sources of revenue that come in from
outside the county? No, this is only the funds that council is like read in tonight's ordinances. So
anything that was done presented to you, this does not include grant funds whatsoever.
I'm gonna, before I go back to Councilor Haunt, I'm gonna look over here to my left. Yes, Councilor
Williams. All right, so. I see that fund 1000 is, you said the general? Yes, this is general fund. Okay,
so what's 1107? I don't. Eight-gation. Okay, so they don't really align with the numbers that are on
the code. No, and that's the problem.
SBOA and the county we use fun numbers that we recognize DLGF has a different set of numbers so that's
why I'm not gonna say what I'm thinking. Thank you. We've complained I know that a lot of county officials
have complained the auditors because they talk one number we talk a different one. Brain can only handle
so much. Yeah. So okay so you've got
general aviation would you mind telling me the others on there. I'm sorry I don't know all but I can
help you so fine. 1114 is lit special purpose. 1119 is clerked perpetuation. First part of the situation
clerk that's not clerk perpetuation. 1122 is
the community corrections for probation. 1135 is cumulative bridge. 1152 is emergency planning right to know.
1159 is health. The levy fund, yeah, that's when we all know. OK, the next one to 1161 is the local
public health. HFI. 1168 is local road and street. 1170 is. Public safety.
Yes, public safety let. 1173 is. Highway motor vehicle highway restricted. An 1176 is motor vehicle
highway. You don't remember 1178 it's a.
It's a parks, but I'm not sure which parks. It's either parks operating or parks non-reverting capital.
Capital, okay. What's 1186? 1186, that one is rainy day. Oh, okay. What's 1197? 1197 is storm water.
appreciate that. It's helpful. Thank you. Okay, Councilor Hawke, you had your hand raised and then I'll
go back to Councilor Iverson. Right. And this was just a lot to expect the Auditor's Office or Council
Office to put this together. So if last minute I did speak with her earlier today, but she already had
her hands full. But we need to zero in on
the differences in the different funds, whether or not the reduction there is going to help us meet
our deficit goal. But remember, if you change something in stormwater, that's covered with fees. It's
not covered with property tax or income tax. That's a fee based, even though it gets billed on their
property tax, but it's not a property tax.
And then a lot of the ones, the supplies have you do with the highway. Of course, those funds are coming
in, having to do with the gas tax and the wheel tax and whatever. But we've got to watch if we're talking
about supplies. Does that mean where? So I mean, I think this is a great thing to look at. But so far,
I think the supplies is not
as big of an amount that would make a lot of difference. When we move down here in the capital items,
then we'll have a lot more to talk about. But whether or not it's moving it from a rate control fund
and saving the money at the levy control fund is something we would need to look at. Yes, Councillor Iverson.
So I don't disagree with that. We want to make sure that our reduction amounts are zeroed in on that
deficit, that negative $4.4 million deficit. Tonight's the first reading. We are up against it. We are
adopting this budget in two weeks. So we really need to be able to make some hard decisions.
and one of the the rationales behind doing this having these discussions is that if if we go line by
line in every single budget it would not only take a long time but also the savings would not be up
to where we needed to be to tackle that budget so attacking something that
we're taking a five percent reduction across a number of funds helps us achieve not only the reduction
that we need in the debt but also we hope that as we're discussing this that we're not taking a deep
cut into all these services what we're doing is we're taking as small a slice across the top a haircut
if you will at this point
into the service or into the supplies excuse me such that we can be good fiscal stewards we completely
understand that if departments need to come back and request from council an additional appropriation
in the supplies category then and that's that's what needs to happen and and and we are certainly looking
forward to that but
the the really difficult thing that we are facing at this point is that looming deficit and it is not
in this county's interest that we conclude our business tonight with such a looming deficit all right
thank you councillor henry thank you um madam president um yeah i don't disagree with what i've heard
so far but i think if we're going to continue the
Barbara shop analogy we kind of need to think through this a little bit because I wanted to come back
to I said earlier for the departments that. Voluntarily took the haircut and made the cuts in their
line right. This is now accidentally setting the buzzer a little low and taking a second kind of the
side of their head right I mean it's it's it's so I. I wonder if and I appreciate that going line by
line is also onerous with the timeline but I'm wondering
If there's two other cuts of the data, we can see you know what does 5% look like before we even touched
it right and then what. What does 5% look like on the account lines that we haven't touched because
those are those are kind of two different takes on it because, again, I mean there are departments that.
did the haircut. I mean, they did the work. And so what we're going to hear next is, well, now I'm basically
at 90% of, I have a 90% cut because we cut 85 and you took five more. They will be here to ask. And
maybe we will have a lot more business on Tuesday nights of people asking to get 500 bucks here, 500
bucks there. But I'm wondering, my heartburn is still with the idea of honoring the working department
heads and finance officers that really tried. And now it's five more.
And that's it. Yeah, that's it. So to make sure that I understand what you're saying, which I think
I do, but I want to clarify. You're basically saying, let's look at a 5% reduction for people who have
not made an effort to look at
that's one data set that's one data set to look at you know and then the other data set would be well
what what if we never touched anything it was five percent across the board off the initial okay requests
and what does that look like because I'm not sure I'm not sure it's 280,000 you know how what what north
and south of that look like right now but this could be the median there might be a better number that's
it yeah okay okay yes councillor Wilts
I get what you're saying that I think this might be too blunt of an instrument. I'm wondering though,
because to Councilor Iverson's point, we need to get some stuff done tonight. Can we say 5% across all
funds and list the ones that are meaningful?
I mean, just from that list, there's lots that just aren't going to impact our budget. And yes, I appreciate
that some departments already went through the wringer and gave us their blood. Some were forced to.
We came back and took some too. So I get that, but we will deal with that kind of thing case by case.
We'll go back.
I think we need to do something. And I think in the interest of doing something, we just quickly go
through that list of the funds and general aviation, health, what else? The levy funds? Yeah, the ones
that we really have to get it just like, let's make these about that so that we're not impacting
non-reverting funds or fee based funds or things that aren't going to impact us and will impact operations.
that's my that's my suggestion. It's okay. All right, counselor honk that I see you had your hand raised.
I just would like to see us move on to these larger amounts, because by the time you split up 281,000,
it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be split up with such little amount that not even in funds, it's
going to help us with this reduction we're looking for. So I think it's more important we spend our time
this larger amount going on down. It's like almost $3 million, but then we have to see where that's
coming from. I think the same approach could be used, though, in the subsequent items. If we agree on
kind of a philosophy forward, I think that's where I'm coming from. Okay, so if we put Councilor Wilts'
thought process into moving forward with the other items here, we can kind of, for lack of better words,
kill two birds with one stone.
is that? Yes. And can I clarify the stone that we're using to kill two birds? That's so weird. Yeah,
it is weird. Michelle, would it be a simplified way of doing this that we could see to just look at
the eight levy funds that I'm getting those numbers? So as soon as she gives me those, I can't see like
the number of fingers going like this on keyboards ever at that table is insane.
All right. I have a good idea, but like I said, I don't know them all. We're in the process of looking
at putting that theory to items one, two, and three. Okay. Now, I just want to say I did not get a chance
during that break to run a to do the report for the capital. So if you wanted that the capital numbers,
you'll just have to bear with me for a little bit. I would have to pull those up. So and knowing that,
you know, some of some of those numbers haven't been removed because of tonight's stuff, you know, so
those will change. Okay.
So auditor and Michelle, while you are working on that and trying to get those numbers up, would it
behoove you all to have a little bit of a break to do this type of work? Again, we figure this is going
to be something, again, as we are doing this on the fly, and again, I'm going to say,
as Councilor Hawke said earlier, staff was here really late last night and early this morning, and I
want to make sure that we are giving people an ample amount of opportunity for doing this on the fly.
So I'm going to say we take a quick recess as they are pulling in about two minutes. Okay. Actually,
I think I'm ready for the supplies one.
Okay so no reset we keeping it rolling yeah okay two two okay.
Okay, not every levy fund has all categories. So for instance, HimCab does not have a supplies land.
Yeah. HimCab is a rate control fund. Right. So, and that's, so I'm trying to, let's see.
So what you see on the screen highlighted in yellow are the levy funds. Is Cunebridge a levy fund? Rate
control, sorry. Okay.
was aviation. What is the sum of column E?
Sorry. No, it's not. That's because I'm, yeah. There you go. So that's the total. That's the total of
those five funds. This is supplies. This is supplies. Okay. Okay.
I think we should. Y'all got a comment over here? Would you like to make? Yeah. Well, I thought somebody
had, yeah, 81919. Yes, for the supplies in terms of saving with the 5% reduction.
Does anybody else have any questions or comments on this item? Okay. Council Iverson. Council, I move
to implement a 5% reduction in the supplies category in the levy funds. Okay, motion in a second.
Any additional comment on this item? Yes, I think what we're going to end up doing here in this particular
instance is that they're going to be coming back and asking for additional. So, you know, maybe that's
how we plan to spend this next year is trying to fix this. But I think that 80 some thousand
saved over all of the frozen levy. It's more importantly, moved to other places that might be larger
and not have to go. I mean, 80,000 is a lot of money to me, folks. I mean, a lot of money. But I'm just
looking at all these departments who will probably come back and say, we need those. So I won't be saying
that on everything, but just this particular thing. Understand. OK.
Thank you for that. Anybody else have any other, excuse me, additional comments or question on the motion?
Who seconded? Thank you. Okay, so we got a motion and a second, no additional comment from council.
If you, I guess I'll go to public comment.
If you've got public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here, the NetU Hill room.
You'll have three minutes. And you can also raise your hand via Teams as well if you are online. So
seeing none. All right. Maybe please have a roll call vote. And I just want to clarify, because I was
typing and doing things. So this is a motion.
for a 5% reduction on the levy funds. That is correct. Just the levy funds. I just heard from someone
else. This is just the five levy funds. Levy, levy fund, okay. That's correct. Thank you, Councillor
Hock. Yes, that's correct. In the supplies. Thank you. All right. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor
Feidl. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Henry.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
So we have a motion and a second to open up this discussion on this item. Yes, Councillor Everson. And
I think pursuant to the previous conversation, we should edit that to say, again, we should be looking
at the five levy funds because that's going to have the most direct impact on the $4.4 million debt
that we need to tackle tonight. Let me just make a quick note.
Just a few items to consider. We have some service lines that were required to make payments, like if
you think about debt service, for example, fixed expenses like utilities and so forth, contracts and
contractual obligations. So just a thought. Ms. Ternike.
And I will piggyback on the auditor's thoughts. I would also remind council that a lot of our contracts
are negotiated for multi-years, so those rates are set. So I think a 5% reduction might put the already
in-existent contracts potentially in jeopardy. Okay.
so the five I hear you say five percent I'm just saying for anybody that's watching don't at me um but
is there if if five is a lot is there another number that could possibly be comfortable for that I don't
know that I could speak to a number tonight without trying to figure out what how many multi-year contracts
we have what the contractual amount for 2026 for those are so I don't
I don't know that I can give you a number tonight. Okay. All right. Council, if anybody has any questions.
Yes, Councillor Henry, and then I'll go to Iverson. Thank you. And yeah, I think picking up
on Ms. Turner-King's comment, I'm recalling the clerk's budget with how I think we saw a multi-year
contract listed
the entirety of it in one year, right? We did reduce that to the correct amount for this year versus
next year, and that is a number that we really can't move anymore, because it is the contract. So this
one's a little, this is even trickier than last time, because again, we are looking at now being boxed
in with contracts, and again, with the services category, departments that have made good faith efforts to cut.
during our first few weeks. And as the number goes up, as I'm thinking through, the departments again
have tried really hard to meet us where we were taking the county with making the cuts to preserve the
COLA, which was always the goal. Again, as this goes on, I think the spirit of this makes a lot of sense
because it's just numbers, right? Take a number, cut 5% out, great.
we're now bumping into some other challenges here. I just feel compelled to highlight that. Thank you.
Yes, Councilor Iverson. So later in the agenda, we're going to be talking about exemptions. What services
are exempted from certain reductions or what departments are exempted from certain budgets? And here,
I think we're starting to get a little bit of a flavor of that.
So far, we've heard that multi-year contracts would be impacted by this, and rates that are set by external
agencies or companies that we have no control over, that we have to pay anyway, such as whether these
lights come on or the air comes on, might also be exemptions. But that necks into the savings we can
have too. So this is tricky.
but those two areas of exemption start to form in my mind. Yes, Councilor Huck. Right, I'm just thinking
services contract. Doesn't that cover what we have with the inter-local agreement with the city having
to do with animal control? That is a very good point. That would be a big one and so forth.
So I mean, I think that the theory of this is good. I think we needed to start it two months ago so
we'd see what we were really doing and have a list of peer service contracts. And that's what's included.
And then we know what we can reduce and what we can't. We don't have any control over those animals
that just show up. No? True story. All right.
anybody else over here? Yes, Councilor Decker. Well, I appreciate the spirit of it as well. And if any
of this were pretty or good, they wouldn't have us doing it. Like this is this is awful work. It's awful
to figure out. This is probably some of the hardest stuff I've seen since January 2019 when Councilor
Wilts and I came on here. And I hate this. I hate every bit of this. This sucks. I didn't want to do
this to sign up for it. That said,
when I look at this, and I start thinking about this, and this is probably more magnificent of our problems
than we've had, where we literally, the analogy I always use is you're walking towards the door in the
dark, and you're trying to grab hands and find the doorknob. My question on this with that analogy is,
are we literally here, would it be more attainable to say,
that we alongside our departments in this area are looking instead of the five, but to do two or 1.5.
And again, much like right now where you're filling your way through the dark, trying to find that doorknob
to get out of here and on the other side, we would come back in, look at this, realize some of these
things that Councilor Iverson's talking about, Councilor Henry's talking about around this, but two
more attainable perhaps as we do this. When we move on tonight and we talk about hiring freeze, I'm
going to talk hard about Council saying,
in that here's a goal to do it because again why go through pain if you don't have a number and it may
be that we get to the other side of some of this and we just say to indianapolis and our constituents
i apologize there is no way to offer things for someone that lets that damn horse out again uh the third
time this month and mineral county's got to go out there may be something that we can say there's no
other way to do this other than to have dollars to do it
And so you get your shots and so that you know you have the crossing guard. It may be that we say that,
but 2% maybe that brings that in just a little bit and we roughly together as a county try to fill our
way towards the door without just completely going out that window instead. You want to see what 2%
looks like? Yes, please. Maybe in those areas. To see where it would have. As I'm saying it wrong, no.
The percent would be 278,000. The levy funds. We're trying to cover $4.4 million in a deficit. Like,
oh man, if we keep lowering these numbers, we're never gonna get there.
And it just the complexities are real. This is hard. But at the same time, at some point, I think we
need to do the difficult thing tonight and then work with our department heads to make it right in the
coming years where we need to make it right. I just man, if we just keep reducing these percentages,
we're never going to get to four point four.
So yeah, right. It's five in general, so. So we're looking at a 278, 196 total if we did a 2% as opposed
to a 2.9 million. For all for all for all, right? But the levy fund is that it was the number that was
on the 695.
is the 5%. The 695 is the 5% across. And that's just the levy. Oh, so if you I mean 5% for all funds
is 3,000,000.6. But for the levy funds only it's 695,489.
Yeah, Councilor Henry. Yeah, thank you. So trying to find a space between Councilor Deckard's good comment
about what a 2% looks like versus Councilor Iverson's comment that we have a mountain in front of us.
In this case, because I don't know how this would work, but I made this more of a point of information,
presuming we move forward with it, and we have two weeks from now we revisit this,
help us to have the departments report in how the impact of this because we one thing we need to understand
is the contracts right because like that that's like look this cannot change like you we can't cut it
right and to try to get something about those fixed expenses in front of us that will give us a real
number right it won't be a kind of the five percent haircut for everybody but we'll get a real number of what
the real reduction is once we take out the contracts that we can't change and other fixed expenses we
can't change. Is that as a point of procedure clear because that would get we would vote on it and then
we have two weeks to fix it with what comes back or do we hold on it so we hear back from the departments?
Personally we probably I guess you vote now
potentially what I'm saying is not again don't at me I'm just going through all the things here um is
we vote now and then we potentially could possibly change our mind or if you vote in favor of the five
percent you know it could fail that I think we have a lot of possibilities but I see the auditor has
her hand up and I'm gonna go to you hey
Just one more note I was just conferring with the commission's administrator and there. She brought
to my attention, a few other big ticket items that would be included in this category, for example,
like developmental disability. And that's added back in, we get that.
it's going to take a lot of work to get through them. So when you say that it's going to take a lot of work
what does that look like for you all? I think we'd have to partner with the departments and analyze
contracts to see what our obligations are and eliminate those lines that simply can't be reduced at
this point. And you would be confident that you potentially could do that in the next couple of weeks?
We could ask departments to reach out and give us a list of what can and cannot be reduced. We'd have
to assume that the information that is being provided is accurate. However, I don't think that we can
get through and analyze and audit everything on our own here with your staff table. All right. Yes,
Councilor Wilt.
Hello. Hello. I think I mentioned this earlier. I just think services is a different animal than supplies
and capital because services is what we do. Like I said before, there's just a lot of contracts that
are already signed and we're committed. Honestly, I say I am not going to vote for cutting the services
in this manner.
I also think it's way too much to ask to have people analyzing stuff over the next couple of weeks.
I think today's the end all I think we need to get through this. So I mean, I'm ready to move to capital
and say cut that and then move on and get into the bigger ticket items that I know are waiting for us
at the end of this agenda.
that's my opinion okay all right so do we have a general consensus from council right now that services
or yes services is something that we do not want to touch as of this moment right now and we can move
forward with other items and reduction in the levy speak now forever hold your peace all right
Yes, Councilor Iverson. I disagree. I think we're here to do hard things, and I think that we can come
up with exemptions that fit some of the things that we've been talking about. And if we didn't, if we,
for whatever reason, didn't come up with an exemption, then that is something that we can address fairly
quickly. So the other thing that I will say to that is, let us maybe put a pin in this, this particular item,
and let's move on to other items. Can we just table it? I'm sorry? I'm sorry, just table it, right,
for now? Yeah, so I think what we can do is, because we have some other sausage to grind right now.
Okay, so we got other things that we need to worry about right now. So maybe let's put a pin in this
reduction conversation and services category, and let's look at some other things. And if need be, we
can come back to this item.
right. All right. Council I move to open a discussion regarding a five percent reduction in the capital
categories across all funds or across all levy funds levy funds excuse me I misspoke levy funds the
five levy. All right so we got a motion and a second as a open end of discussion on the five percent
reduction and the capital category across all levy funds keyword levy funds all right
Council would say you. I'm going to look to Councilor Wilson. She says she wants to look at capital.
There are only three. The Health Department doesn't have a capital in the in that levy fund, so it's
general aviation and reassessment. So that's and that's all there is and just know that some of this general
is going to go away. Um, with regards to, um, because yeah, all of that is going to be gone to 75,000.
So that's gone. Uh, the aviation is going to be gone and the reassessment is also gone. That's because
it's capital and those were moved into that bond.
So you already took care of that. So there's nothing left in the levy funds with regards to capital.
Okay. So Michelle is saying there's nothing that's left in the levy funds in relation to capital. And
we have general aviation and reassessment that we can look at or that would have capital lines. No, I mean,
that's it that's it right that's it yeah that's what so yeah so so actually these should all be zero
okay because they've already been done yeah all right um right so there's nothing else to discuss on
that item okay moving on council i moved to open a discussion regarding a reduction of training and
travel lines to one thousand dollars across all levy funds okay
We got a motion in a second. Okay, I'm I'm gonna put myself out there since I, you know, yes, go ahead.
I forgot to list the exemptions. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. Right now the exemptions that we have listed
are fund 1217 elected official and fund 1222 Monroe County E911. Okay.
Yes, Councilor Henry. So making this as painful as I can this evening, I think I'm just going to say
the same thing a little differently. So here's a case where we've had departments make cuts on training
and travel. Some were surgical because we understood they weren't traveling across the country or the
continent, and it was more a regional conference. But of the ones that are required for training for
the purposes of doing their jobs,
the certification ones, plan department, probably thinking about the sheriff's deputies, where we know
that as their employment, you know, having the trainings for the travel matters, this is another case
where a lump cut will definitely put people at the table asking for that extra travel to get to their
certification conference, right? I'm just raising it because that's the consequence of the bludgeon
instead of the scalpel. So that's it.
So, yes, and that's what I was just about to say before you stepped in here is understand that we have
people that have to have for certification and all the other things. And I already know some people
already did, you know, the reduction of training and travel to those people. I greatly appreciate that.
We have had and I think maybe Councilor Hawke had mentioned this
Maybe a couple of a few weeks ago early on, where she had mentioned that other counties had to come
towards council to get approval. I'm not saying that we have to say that, you know, everybody is cut
from going to go do those things.
I'm going to say the hard part out loud. I do think that we do have some people that leisurely will
go for training and travel. And that's not something that is required a part of their job, point blank
period. So if you add me, I'm sorry. That's where we're at. And we got to do the hard stuff. And again,
that's what we're saying right now. I think
I get your point and that's what I don't want to affect is anybody that is required to have you know
yearly annually those types of trainings. I think for us is looking at what we can say we can reduce
and put that line item in and if you are still if you are you know because we have
Those that are elected, we have the election fund and all the electeds can go into that particular fund
and take out of that pool and their staff can go into what we have one item. But I do like the fact
what Councillor Huck was saying is we just need to get a handle on these types of things.
And this is a way for us to get a handle on the training and travel when it comes to what is a necessity.
and what is leisurely travel? What is us getting out on a cold January day going out west versus what
is something that is really a part of your job and will make and break your position when you do that?
So I will say that hard part out loud. People can send me emails and text messages. That's great. But
I am speaking to leisurely and not mandatory training. Thank you.
Yes, Council. Well, I thought it was very interesting when other council members throughout the state
were saying, oh, well, we have them bring all of those projection of what it's going to be per employee
that's going and where it is they're going.
and was it this much for a hotel this much for whatever and if they're just going to Las Vegas because
that's the lovely place to go. Is there some place they can get that training closer to home? Because
folks were not the only one looking at budgets hard and we've really got it better than most counties.
So I just think sometimes if
If the departments know that we're going to see where exactly they're going and what the cost is and
how many is actually going, they might be thinking, making sure, oh, well, this is going to be open
for the council to see every penny and we're going to turn it in. Because otherwise you hear from the
people who've worked in the claims position over the years
you would be surprised we're all there going and I don't think we should be surprised. I'm gonna look
over here to my left to see if anybody has any discussion on that. None. Yes, Councilor Decker. I appreciate
the tough questions because again this is what we've been sent to do and to have. I love
I love the idea around training. We have done for years a lot around training for folks. But we are
in awful times, in difficult times on some of these cuts. And the question I always have, and this is
always a debate over me, going to county counselor training, which probably if people had to prioritize,
they'd say it's the least important of all of those that people go to.
but the question that I often look and evaluate that is that training for my role and what I do gonna
be things I actually need to do my function or is it as I've often noticed a bunch of people sitting
around talking about what's the legislature gonna do and then not really answering any questions. And
I think that in the state a lot of those things are gonna have to be really really addressed because we
nobody's gonna be able to, I don't know how people are at anything right now. And so I like a little
bit more leaning in on this to kind of figure it out because again, it's, well, let me put it like this.
It's these things change or we lose people or what people get and you need people to offer the services
and do those things.
And so somewhere, somehow, something has to lean in hard. We tried things to figure out things that
were alternatives. Minimum fund balance discussions. I'm sure nobody wants to hear me talk about it
anymore. But the reality is those things went in. Everybody said, nope, that's not going to do it. Back
to the drawing board. And so it's this and a few other artful things where we're going to have to lean
in harder, harder, harder.
Yes, Councilor Wilts. I believe that you addressed the elected official exemption for that fund being
that that's an option for folks to use. Is that what you're saying? It's like because anybody, not anybody,
but any department elected official.
I honestly don't see why that should be exempted. Why are we not just applying it to everything? And
if an elected official has a required training, we can. They can come to us and ask to use it. I'll
just cut it all. No, OK, I mean if it's if it's I don't know and then the other one. What is the other
one about the 911? Yeah, mandatory training to be certified in 911 services.
I think I'll add the possible exemption list there. The auditor, the treasurer, the recorder, and clerk
are all statutorily required to complete. I think it's 15 training hours the first year and then 40
within the remaining three of their term. They could use the elected officials. Every law enforcement
officer has a training requirement. I think it's 24 hours with a breakdown within firearms, emergency
vehicle operations, and defensive tactics, which would include
both merit deputies and the jail. And then attorneys have to do six credit hours per year, but 36 within
three, that's the one I really should know and I'm blanking, which is sad. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, I'll
for the legal department there's four of us but you know we try to go to one training a year and that's
like three hundred dollars individual person so if you reduce it to a thousand there goes the budget
I know we kind of wanted to get through some of the other stuff and then I wanted to add public comment
but sure go ahead yes
attorney that we have to have in law enforcement. One of the things that we try to go beyond that is
one of the things that we touched about when you was going to open public session. We had a point now
that we raised it to a certain level so at one point it's not going to cost us down the road. What I
mean by that if you look across the country and and you look at a police department or county or sheriff's
office that
something tremendously wrong went wrong and then later was sued and then we had to pay. It was a whole
lot more. If you trace it back, it's going to be to training. And for us, that's critical for us to
be training because if we don't stay on top of things beyond what the training just mentioned, the basics,
yes, we have to have that. But looking forward, if you go do your homework and go back and look,
It's very difficult not to fall into a situation where lack of training will cost you at the end a whole
lot more. And the other thing is this, we do try our very best to work with the counselors. I know you're
in a very difficult situation. We know this. So in the Sarasota, we try to meet you more than halfway,
but training is something that we work very hard to get at a level now
Because one of the attractions that we're trying to trying to change and get people to come to us, obviously
will be a pay increase. I got it, I understand around that path. But if we reduce training at our level
at this point, we're going to lose that as well. And I hate for us to digress where we came from.
to where we are right now, because I assure you, a lot of the ages want to come to us because of the
training level and the professionalism that we had at the present time. So I do urge you to think about
that, because you might save a little here, but if, God forbid, something goes wrong, there's going
to be a whole lot down the road. And the last thing I'll leave with this, I'd be very respectful of
your time, and thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to say this.
The other thing that I, and I mentioned this before, one of the things that I, when I go to bed at night,
it worries me drastically, drastically. And I bring it full circle. As God forbid, one day we lose one
of our deputies because of lack of training, because we also got to equip them really well so they can
go home each evening. But at the same time, we got to give them the training that they deserve and need
to make it home. So I wanted to,
make sure that I come up here and share that with you. Because when I saw this, the training part,
I get it. I truly understand it. But in this arena for us, it really truly, truly is a matter of life
or death for us. Because what we do is a job that not everybody could do. And we have to have that constant
high level training to make sure that our people that work so hard to represent and keep this community
very safe,
at the very edge of the training he received. So I apologize for walking up, but I felt that as you
were talking about this topic, I wanted to make sure that, because you're gonna have to make a decision,
and I know it's gonna be tough, but I want you to be well informed of why is it this is kind of passionate
for us as far as training goes, because God forbid one day, I don't wanna stand in front of you and
say, hey, here we are, and I wanted to avoid this tremendously. So I wanna be very respectful to you
and your time, but I also wanna give you the actual knowledge
Why is it that there are certain things? Yes, I get it. It might seem logical to you, but when it comes
to our world, it makes a hellacious difference for us that sometimes, God forbid, we're not be able
to go home. So with that, thank you so much for the patience. And I do apologize for allowing me to
come up and talk to you. Sure. Thank you.
Since we open that up, I guess if there's other electeds that are in the room that would like to speak
to this, I know I've heard from it. So please briefly speak to this particular item. Thank you. Erica
Oliphant, Monroe County prosecuting attorney. I know some of you heard from me tonight.
As Ms. Turner-King mentioned, attorneys have to have a minimum of six hours of continuing legal education
every year, but the average is 12 hours a year because we have to get 36 in three years. Makes sense,
right? The training, the $1,000 would fund one attorney to go to one Indiana prosecuting attorney's
council conference and get their CLEs for the year.
I have 18 deputy prosecutors, so $1,000 gets me one trained person their minimum amount for one year.
And going to Mr. Deckard's point, I know we're worried about people going for fun travel and not practical
travel. But when we send people to the Indian Prosecuting Attorney's Council, we're talking about Indiana
statute updates, Indiana legal updates, Indiana
law and procedure, and we're sharpening trial skills and getting a lot of really practical, directly
applicable skills with those trainings. So they are practical trainings. I understand that we're trying
to save money in some dark, dark times, but we
We'll be here all the time, and frankly, I think we'll probably miss some deadlines where we could get
them a little cheaper. They tend to have escalating fees if you wait to sign up. I would also just like
to note, though the vast majority of our training and travel budget does go to training and the associated
travel, there is also a component that goes to case pertinent expenses.
For example, if we have a witness who lives out of county or out of state, they are entitled by law
to have their deposition taken in their county of residence. So we have at least a few times in the
last year had to send a deputy prosecutor to another state to take a deposition of a witness. You might
be thinking, wouldn't it be wonderful if we did these by Zoom? But unfortunately, we can only do them
remotely if we have the consent of defense counsel, and that is unfortunately rarely given. And they
would give you a lot of reasons for that. They want to lay eyes on the witness and see how they're going
to testify at trial to assess the merits of their case. It makes sense.
I know my office isn't gonna be the only one in a position to need this training and travel line. I
know the public defenders are gonna be similarly situated. You'll probably hear from some others, but
I just wanted to make it clear that this is an important line and having us come to council to ask for
an appropriation every time is going to be, I think it's gonna cost us money and cause us to blow some
deadlines potentially, but it's also just gonna be burdensome
for you and me if I'm here all the time. So I do appreciate the time to speak to you kind of off schedule.
Thank you. Thank you. And I see you walking towards us. Welcome. Hello. Mary Ellen Decoff. I'm the presenting
judge in the New York Circuit Court. I just want to add to what Molly said, what Erica said, what the
sheriff said.
to be able to stay certified for us to stay certified, and that enables us to get granting, get grant
funding, et cetera. Also, judges are required to get 15 hours a year CLE, and if we don't get it, then
we will be suspended from doing our jobs. So it is vital that we have adequate money to be able to do
that. Thank you very much.
Yes, Councilor. I'll go Henry, and then I'll go Iverson. Thank you. So at this point, I wonder if we're
considering exemptions and funds. What an exemption for non-emergency and non- or the exemption. So
keeping it for non-emergency, non-required, the $1,000 cut, but for emergency or those that are engaged
in emergency services or first response and
as a requirement of their work, leaving those alone, what that would look like. But again, this is surgical,
not bludgeoning. I'll come back to you. I'll go Iverson, and then I'll go Wilt. So in the previous three
items that we discussed, we discussed a percentage decrease, which is equity, right?
but here we're saying, well, no, we're gonna reduce everyone to $1,000, which is equality. So I'm wondering
why we went from a percent decrease to a dollar amount here, and would we not be better going back to
a percent decrease? Councillor Woods. Isn't training and travel part of services anyway? I mean, didn't
we already just cut it?
Essentially services. We didn't cut we didn't cut services because it was to you, right? Yeah Training
and travel is within the service category. So let's cut so then We cut training and travel by a percentage
I Don't quite get the equity thing, but but it does make more sense to say hey
if we've already looked at your budget, because we have, we've looked at all of these budgets, and Councilor
Henry in particular was very good about hammering on the training and travel lines. So we've made those
surgical cuts. If we say, let's cut 5% or whatever someone deems reasonable on this side of the day,
I know nothing is reasonable out there, and I get that. I think that makes
more sense and less of a less drastic an impact perhaps and is more maybe palatable. So like a 5% in
training and travel. So we heard Councilor Wilts' conversation there.
Yes, Councilor Iverson. And I like what Councilor Wilts was saying, and I tend to agree. And the reason
is, is when we set the dollar amount, it means we're robbing 17 of 18 attorneys from training. If we
decrease it by a percentage amount, we're just, I don't know, we're robbing 5% of each one of them training.
Can I make a couple of other statements? I mean, I know this isn't popular,
There are situations in which your employer doesn't pay for your training, even if it's required for
your profession. My husband's a psychologist, and when he worked for other places, he had to get his
own training to get his continuing education credits. It's just a different paradigm than what some
folks might be used to.
I don't think it's unprecedented to suggest that we don't pay for everything that everybody needs. If
it's a requirement to work in this position in county government, yeah.
I do training for a living. I'm a trainer. That's what I do. So this hurts my heart. I get it. I also
know that our federal government has cut training and travel because that's who I train. And we do everything
online now. And it's because of this exact situation. It's a lot cheaper to do training online. Is it
as effective? Depends on the-
depends on the teacher, depends on the subject matter, but. So Councilor Hong, just to kind of recap
the conversation, we've talked about instead of doing a flat line item of the thousand, Councilor Wiltsch
just mentioned doing a percentage like we've done with other things. So what, the five percent is what
you're saying, Councilor Wiltsch? I was, yeah. Okay.
So 5% instead of having the flat line of 1000. Some might be more, some might be less than 1000. And
I appreciate the last comment you were making. I don't know how long you.
about but the training that you can get online and folks there's so much available for us at the county
council level and you can go back and get that training and a lot of it is just free coming from the
DLJF and shame on us if we don't take advantage of that and our staff. Right now we had staff went to
AIC and that's lovely but AIC is not really meant for staff.
It's meant for the elected officials. So if we're going to find fault with the other departments or
see what we need to start at home.
Yes, counselor file so I wondered, speaking about the online training, I wondered about what happened
during coven was there an online training mandate then whenever that was all shut down and you couldn't
really go anywhere right I mean has there been a past practice of doing online trainings for see us
or whatever.
it would be just like getting a real estate training that we're required to take and you have to do
so many, you have to answer all the questions, you can only have so much time to pass it and you have
to, they keep track of it and whether or not you passed it with what credit. I've done a lot of training
where you have to verify that you actually did it and
and they can send you the certificate or they keep track of it. I'm just trying to figure out if there
was a practice before during COVID or some other time. That's why I was referring to real estate. We
did before and after, but we had to do that during COVID. Yeah. Thank you. What I'm hearing from those
that just spoke to us is maybe
Our particular type of training is much different than their particular type of training. And they have
to go, they might be required to go to a sunny place in December. That sounds so warm right now. But
even though that sounds like a, what some might think as a leisurely, and I say that with air quotes
again, don't at me. What some might think is a leisurely training travel is something that is required
for your job. And I see some, some knots in the back. Okay. All right. I'm gonna counselor Henry.
I mean, it's a perception reality problem. You know, vendors find venues to take people to. You know,
I, yeah, but it's what's going on in the box, right? And I want to, again, because of the time crunch
and things here, it's, I don't want to speculate on
I mean, I'm guessing we can't do small firearms training virtually. That'd be a guess for the sheriff's
deputy. I presume you have to fire on a range if we're doing training somewhere. That's not virtual.
It's hard to really pick at these bit by bit. But I guess what I would say is, you know,
What I wanted to say here at this point is, can we get a percentage of what this looks like by percentage
instead of the dollar amount so we can actually see a number on screen to say, what does 5% look like?
Is that something we can do quickly here? Thank you, Michelle. The 5% may help us clear this up a little
bit if that's where folks are leaning.
you want this just for the levy funds or do you want yes just levy funds otherwise you're going to be
here for 20 minutes
So I'm going to say this while we're waiting.
because it was put on my heart. And I felt like I was thinking this earlier. And I said it to some.
And I'll say it out loud for the record so people can actually hear it. Councilor Decker said it best
earlier this evening. This sucks. For a lack of better words, this actually sucks. It sucks that we're
sitting here having stress pimples from rubbing our faces and trying to figure out all of these different
things and having everybody
you know, say all the things to us. This sucks that we are in this position, and it seems like,
you know, due to some other things, we got a couple more years of this lovely budget stuff that we have.
This is just the first movie. The sequel and the other part of the trilogy is coming in the next couple
of years. So I say all that to say, I feel as though, at least for me, being on county council for the
past four years,
I truly believe that council has really tried to go and do a lot of good things for Monroe County government.
And the cheerleader right now, which is all seven of us, is in a really bad situation. And we are trying
our best and our hardest, and I was saying another word, but I don't wanna have language yelled at me,
to the point where this is where we are.
While I hear everybody and I hear all the comments and the phone calls and the emails and the texts
and all of the above right now, we cannot make everybody happy.
But I'm willing to figure out how we can make this work because as counselor Henry said earlier today,
and it's definitely has been a thought of mine. We are trying to make sure that we retain people, not
lose people or doge people. And that is what other government entities are doing right now. We can look
up the street to Hamilton County and some other places and they are literally cutting people out of
this. So are we trying to
I understand that people are like, oh, this amount here, this amount here. These larger amounts hopefully
will help eat away at some of this deficit and all the hard long hours and the sore cheeks in the seat
that we've been sitting here for a really long time will, I hope, to pull out.
That's what I will say to that. Again, we can't make everybody happy, but this is the sucky situation
that we're in. And I see Michelle has the Excel sheet. The total amount
of reduction for the levy funds only doing the training and travel would be $10,088 if you did a 5%
reduction. Yes, Councilor Iverson. Hello. Council, I move to implement a 5% reduction in training and
travel lines
in the five levy funds as presented on the screen. All right we got a motion and a second with the five
percent reduction and that amount is ten thousand eighty eight dollars as opposed to what would have
been possible which was three ninety eight six three hundred ninety eight thousand six ninety. All right any other
questions or comments related to. This item. Okay I'm seeing nine if you have a public comment on this
item you can come forward to the lectern here the night you know room or you can raise your hand via
teams. And seeing
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
by to $500 across in the levy funds. We might as well edit this to be 5% as well. Second. All right,
we got a motion and a second and I see Mr. I know you have identified some exemptions there. I think
you should maybe consider adding the courts to that exemption considering they have mailings they have
to mail out and the clerk as well. Yeah, clerks and court are at it. I can speak it out into the record.
I was looking at a prior copy. OK. So we got a motion in a second. Hello.
Okay, so we got a motion and a second. Is there any other further discussion on this item? I guess if
we do much like we've done before, is there a way that we can see what the 5% looks like as opposed
to what was in our agenda? Thank you. And this is just levy, not all, right?
Both ways. I was five years old.
On the screen, there are only three levy funds, general fund, election, and reassessment. So the total
reduction at 5% would be $8,640. Does that have the exemptions in there? One moment, please. Well,
I mean. Literally, it's, I mean.
that's not worth your time. I at least in my opinion, this is looking underneath the couch cushion for
something and a big old budget. This is it. All right, so. Okay, we tried. Um, all right. So yes,
additional 2026 budget reductions, I would like to discuss longevity and what the impact might be of
removing longevity completely. We've already taken the steps to only grandfather and we no longer offer
this benefit to new employees as of sometime in 2023.
I know we just read the salary ordinance that described it. My understanding from my notes, which vary
in their reliability is about a 300,000 plus impact. 300,000, yeah. It's a bigger chunk than things
we've been. And can I ask, because I'll pull up a report.
just wanting the levy funds? Or do you want all funds? Well, I think this becomes more of an equity
issue. Correct. Okay. Okay. So I would suggest that it's all funds. Yes. All right. There you go. Yes,
Councilor. I understand it should be across all funds so that we're treating all employees equally.
I bet we really need a number to see what we're doing with our deficit. And I keep hearing 4,000 whatever
and I just don't understand what I keep looking at the four B's and that's what we're going to be voting
on is four B's. It's five million deficit in general alone. And we will give Michelle a moment while
she pulls that up. And Ms. Gregory has her hand up in the meantime.
I think I have the total amount here for longevity, but I don't have it by levy funds. But it looks
like the total amount would be $341,102. Say it again for me, please. $341,102. Thank you. This is across
the general? All funds. Oh, all funds. It'll be less.
So that's across all levy funds or across all funds? That's from the budget projection, communal budget
report for all funds budgeted. Okay, and I'm going to do levy funds. Okay. 347,000 is what can be saved
in levy funds, but across all funds. Okay. That's like user fees and
And this would end up being a change to our salary ordinance which I have to read
It has been brought to my attention that in certain negotiated contracts Longevity is calculated into
those negotiated contracts. So for example Jail and married deputies as well. Nope. Just just
just correctional officers Yes, just correctional yeah, and it's paid out differently so it's
built in as an increase in their hourly rate. So at what point if we say we want to treat everybody
equally and fairly, which is the reason why it would have gotten in that contract to begin with, it
wouldn't have even gotten there.
then it has to come out from everywhere and any contract and sign is surely subject to the county council
approval of paying for whatever the expenses are. I mean, this conversation nobody wants to have.
And to me, it's a lot harder than how much you're gonna save on postage. Yep. This is really hitting
the people that work for us
But what we're trying to do, or at least I think that's what we're trying to do, is make sure that the
people who work for us have stable employment. Is that what we're trying for? Yeah. The reason I bring
this up specifically, this particular benefit, and have brought it up every year
for the past five years is because it was pointed out to us that we are one of the only counties that
double dips into the concept of longevity. And it's lovely that we've been able to do that. But we offer
step increases built into the salary grids. And that is a form of rewarding longevity.
right? So we were told that by with many years ago that we should not be doing. Doubles and we've been
doing that. Back I guess when we could do that, but this is how new ball game folks. Yeah, and I mean
that is that was the motivation behind. OK, let's stop doing it for new hires and it'll phase out over
time. It was sort of a compromise and I like that. But
here we are. I just am trying to revisit. Yes, Michelle. Across the levy funds, reassessment does not
pay out. There's no employees in reassessment, so that's why they're not included. So there's only the
four levy funds, so there is a total longevity of $277,450. And that's the levy funds, whereas auditor
Gregory gave you the total funds. Yes, okay. Councilor Everson. I think this is one of those things
where if we're going to do it, we need to rip the bandaid off and do it for everyone. Because if we
just take it out of the levy positions, then those who aren't the levy would have the benefit.
I think that's a given. I think we wanted to see this number so we know what we're impacting in terms
of the apples to apples. But yeah, and I mean, but it doesn't solve to Councillor Hawks point, you know,
the contracted folks. And when, you know, I mean, I guess we could revisit their,
Their stuff when it comes back up. I don't necessarily advocate ripping open a contract. Yeah, that's
Turner King As I look at the contract and think about this further Although the jail gets 48 cents per
hour correctional officers get 48 cents per hour as a longevity Unlike other county employees. They
don't have a step schedule. Okay, so
Council. I move to, uh, implement. I moved to set, uh, longevity to zero in all county funds. Okay.
When you do that also, uh, that's going to affect, uh, FICA with, uh, yeah. So you're going to have
to calculate that and I, and we need to exempt the negotiated contracts.
It's it's not included. And should it say all employees? I'm not sure you should say county funds because
one of us grant or if it's some kind of fee fund, whatever. I just think it's removing it from the salary
ordinance. Yeah, and then defunding all associated accounts. I can send all that. OK, alright, let me
let me type that all up so yeah.
Let's bring it back. Can we, Councilor Iverson, can you please restate? Because I also didn't hear a
second. So please restate what you were saying. I move to amend the salary ordinance to set longevity
lines to zero. No, no, no. All right.
Okay. Help me out. Yes. Okay. So what you want to do is you want to remove longevity from the salary
ordinance so that it can't be paid out and then set all funds across the budgets as well as grants to
zero. So moved. Yeah. Can I get a second? We need a second. Second. All right. We got a motion and a second.
everybody um let's just look over here to the right and see if anybody has any questions or comments
counselor hawk yes this is uh extremely difficult because this means that the folks that have been around
for years and been good servants to the county of monroe they're going because they get more in longevity
than the others and so it behooves us to be
very cautious when we are working on budgets next year that we remember them every time we let increases
happen that's going to affect these same folks. And normally I wouldn't support it because we're talking
about people who have been here 20 years. And as a reminder, it hasn't been that long that we added
step increases. I can't remember what the
was it like anything over 15 years started getting step increases that didn't get them before forget
what it was but that there was a cap on step increases yes we're at 25 was it just for 25 yes but but
doesn't mean that we couldn't say we could have a pause on step increases of everything over x if
I don't know if anybody wanted to think of that. I mean, once we if we ever get to the point where we
can't figure out how we're going to get because the state will cut us. That is already. Look like they
already do it or they will. Any other comments over here on this item? Looking to my left. Does anybody
else have any comments on this item?
is there any public on public comment on this item you can come forward to the lectern here in the night
hill room or raise your hand via teams and we already have somebody that has raised their hands via
teams and looks like mr mckim so unmute yourself and you'll have up to three minutes thank you very
much i'll be brief here i i can see the argument for getting rid of longevity we've certainly
heard the recommendations from our classification consultants. But I really feel like you're doing this
in the wrong order. Why are you talking about cutting people's salaries? And make no mistake that from
the perspective of an employee, longevity is salary before you even discuss cutting the growth of salaries, i.e.
the COLA. At this point, you could really cut the COLA, pass the hiring freeze, establish an ED-lit
budget, and call it a day. Thank you very much. Thank you.
it's easier said than done. So yes, we appreciate that. I just know for me personally, I'm trying to
not touch Cola until it is the absolute last ditch effort. But that's my personal opinion. All right.
Any other public comment on this item? Please raise your hand or come to the public or come to this
podium here in the NatU Hill room.
roll call vote. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
budget. Yes counselor Henry thank you madam president I think the order of operations here where we
have. The additionals were discussing and then we're going back to. Agenda items where we can talk about
some instruments to fix the budget in terms of. The special purpose
next item a little difficult unless unless we can figure out a way to amend the agenda here but- to
the public comments point- the Social Security administration for twenty six set the cola for the anticipated
call is somewhere between two point seven two point eight percent. We started off in a good faith effort
to aim for three percent in the corner.
We've had some great difficulty making the cuts to get there. When we look at peer organizations or
governments in the county, I believe City of Bloomington is at 2.7 in their budget. Just trying to get
a handle on what the dollar amounts would be unless we're willing to tap other instruments like the
special purpose lit or the edit. What would matching our City of Bloomington partners look like for
2.7 percent COLA for this year?
So it's not a motion, it's more where we would be in the salaries if we reduced to, you know, it would be a 2.7%
increase for employees this year at the SSA understanding of 2.7% instead of three. I'm not making the
motion, I just wanna see the numbers and what that looks like right now. So,
Yeah, I would definitely like to see the numbers, but I definitely want to tap into that ED lit. Let's
get lit. Um, so that I said it, sorry. It's like, um, so I think that would be a conversation. I'm curious
about that, but then I really kind of want to have a conversation about lit and then maybe we can circle back to.
would be fair to amend the agenda to move on to the other items and then return to this. I mean, because
really, that's procedural. That's where we're going. That's where we're headed. And then we can come
back to the aim, or we can come back to the 2026. Yes. So. I make a motion. I just had a question. Yes,
so I'm going to move on to the next agenda item.
eight was tabled. We then moved to number nine. And that is a discussion and possible approval of resolution
2025-42. Councilor Wiltz, did you have a question? I'm so confused. So basically the idea is Councilor
Henry is wanting to possibly look at potentially doing a
2.7 increase to match the folks at the city of Bloomington. However, because we have the ED lit conversation
that is coming up, because we amended the agenda earlier to kind of bounce around, and now we're coming
back to this particular item, he wanted to look at the numbers. We might have, dependent on the conversation
about what we want to do with ED lit, we might not necessarily have to do
the proposed three to a potential lower amount. So I think that's where. Yes. My question is then if
we still want to have a further discussion under item eight H. Six, which is where we are.
table that so that we can come back to the cola discussion because the cola isn't on the agenda anywhere
right or or is it and I missed it I mean that's other 2026 budget reductions right so we need to keep
that open we can't just move on am I wrong like isn't there something we have to do to keep that item
that open so we can come back to it
I just want to make sure we can. Yeah, so the idea is. We want to come back to the conversation. Technically,
Councilor Henry's point of reduction is a continuation of where we've been for a really long time, but
we are now done with that potentially, and we are now moving back towards item nine.
which is the discussion of the potential hiring freeze, the special purpose lit and the economic development.
There could be a possibility that depending on the conversation with 80 lit, we might not have to tap
into a decrease of COLA. So do we table 2026 reductions or can we move on and then come back?
could table it to later this meeting you could table it to later in the meeting but if the idea is you
want to revisit counselor Henry's cola discussion I always go back he can withdraw the discussion the
opening that discussion now you could have the edit and then if counselor Henry wants to repurpose having
that discussion he could do so I believe my comment was in eloquently
made as a point of information. It was not a discussion. So it wasn't there wasn't a motion. There wasn't
a second. And so it was just him stating, you know, his his point of, you know, the reduction of cola.
I think the safest bet is to probably move to table further discussion on the 2026 budget until after
whatever other items you want to discuss. So moved.
you're going to be able to do that. Well, you probably should identify what other items you want to
discuss. Council Yes, Councilor Decker, Madam President, I move that we table additional budget discussions
until after we've had a discussion on and I would if I might recommend the hiring freeze resolution
item nine discussion regarding economic
Okay. Somebody seconds. Second. Okay, we got a motion in a second to move around. Is there any discussion
on this item? Yes, Councilor Feidle. We're leaving off number 10, the lit special purpose tax. My inclination
of the motion was it comes after the additional budget discussion. Thank you. Because it's not directly
compressing that. Thank you. Correct. Thank you. Okay. So we're still having the discussion. Yeah.
that's been moved. All those in favor of adopting what Councilor Deckert said signify by saying aye.
Aye. All those opposed same sign. All right motion carries so let's get into the conversation of item
number nine. Council I move to open for discussion possible approval of resolution 2025-42 a resolution
to temporarily freeze the hiring of full and part-time staff. Second.
All right, we got a motion in a second. Mr. King. So I in your packet, and I could try to get it up
on the screen, but I would have to join the meeting is the amended version of the hiring ordinance from
last week.
yesterday I sent you a packet that included all of the departmental responses that I got in response
to an email that I sent asking for information and then I included in the email to you seven potential
talking points that you probably would want to consider and I don't know if you want me to tick through
them individually or or how you would like to have this discussion open it up so
Is there a way that we can have, well, you're trying to join the meeting so you can post or share your
screen. In the meantime, as Ms. Turner-King is working on that, since the motion is open to have the
discussion here, what is the council's discussion on this item?
I'll just go down the line, Councilor Iverson, and then I'll go down the line here. So from my comments
on this topic last week, or yeah, it was last week, the issue of exemptions still is a tricky one here.
And in the six points that were included, I think that's
probably what we need to tackle. Should this pass that procedure of what should be implemented to assist
us in determining what positions may qualify for an exemption? And then should we repurpose PAC to be
a body that hears those or does that come directly to council?
Should we use a process that's similar to how we fill vacancies? So I think a lot of that work needs
to be done. And I think that's pretty paramount because I did hear from a former council member who
shall remain nameless who said that when this happened during the Great Recession that there were quite
a few folks, departments who came forward wanting to have their vacancies filled.
and council approved every single one of them. So I think we need to learn from that history and acknowledge
that history and get to the point where we are fairly evaluating department needs to fill vacancies.
I'm gonna come back over here. So I'm gonna go Councilor Hawk and then I'm gonna come back to Decker
and Wilts. Yes. I'd like to make it really quite simple.
it's a hiring freeze except for the jail and the youth services shelter because they have to have so
many people on staff because that's a 24-hour operation and then anything beyond that then you know
everybody's gonna yell and scream they're gonna cry a lot harder when they don't get the raise and no
I don't think you can afford a three percent raise.
Thank you very much. This one has been particularly on my mind, by the way, doing anything affecting
employees coming in going out what they get paid is always hard. The hardest thing for me. And this
was this year, absolutely sucks to repeat counselor crossly speaking, repeating me. But when I look
at this, I believe what I said I think earlier in the meeting
is that if you're looking at this, the council does have to make determinations on that and go through
that with the department head, which really is a time suck for everybody. And I get it. That said, when
we did do this before, council generally said, yep, yep, yep, over and over because the revenues were
there. This time, the revenues are not there and it's problematic. And so when I look at this,
I see this as an opportunity for all of us to kind of go through that together. I also think that if
you're going to go through the pain of this process, that the council should be realistic about why
you're going through the pain and it's about money and having some control over the growth of the county
because the state's revenues are not growing with us. That is dramatically changed. So when I look at
this resolution,
it is exceedingly hard for me to vote yes on this but if I do vote yes and I will tonight I'm saying
in my mind is one counselor
would like to see this turn into a cost saving for the county that we manage with departments as best
as we can and that it has a quantifiable amount to it and that is not easy but for me i think the council
has to set a target amount that makes this worth the while of preserving
a cola, preserving employment for those who are here and remaining here and preserving services for
taxpayers. To me, it would be worthwhile for the county to approach this with the mind that we would
want this to come at a significant benefit to the county about a million dollars. I'm just going to
be real honest on that because what we're facing now is battling back
from a deficit that is in millions, not minutes. It's millions, literally. We've heard tonight a lot
of things about everything that is important. And I agree. And back in the day, when I was more good
time Charlie in this role and we had the revenues, we could support a lot. But now we're literally trying
to save the ship from taking on
water that the state says well now that's the only amount of water you can so to me that's the criteria
i have to have a demonstrated significant significant need for this county to fill it otherwise we have
to fudge it along and that sucks but this all is going to suck if we don't do it right
I agree that this is necessary and this is difficult. And I think also to Councillor Hawke's point,
I think we can simplify this a great deal. It occurs to me that it gets very mired and mucky when council
as a body has to make
thumbs up, thumbs down decisions on departmental business that of this nature. I mean, do you get it?
Is your position worth this or that? My suggestion would be that there's a hiring freeze. And if a department
head feels that that particular position is integral to functioning,
as a department or an office, then that department head can find the equivalent FTE to remove from their
office or department if they want to fill the position that has been vacant so that you've got some
parity there. And it might be FTE, it might be salary equivalent. We could work that out exactly, but let
the department had determined, make that hard decision, frankly, rather than coming to us with, I mean,
we would have to be involved, but rather than making us suss out the value of X position in this department
versus Y position in that department and all of that, I agree with setting a goal for saving money.
I think thinking about this in real terms is important,
Um, the practicality of it is, you know, we have to have a certain number of people at YSB. I do, I
do remember that. And I think obviously there's some, some public safety issues that, that, um, maybe
warrant either exemption or discussion. Um, but ultimately I would like to put as much decision making
in the hands of the department heads while still freezing the overall addition, you know, of or replacement
of FTE. Yes, counselor. So could you with that in mind, could you freeze the total FTE in each department
and let the department do the work of deciding what that's going to be?
that not all FTEs are equal. Because of differing salaries. So I kind of have backed off of FTE as the
unit and maybe in dollars ultimately have to be the unit. If it's about saving money. And I guess my
other question is with this because we have people that will come. I just want to get a clarification,
Ms Turner King.
Does this include grant positions? That would be the first talking point that I suggested you guys talk
through. So the first talking point would
Should grant positions be handled differently? If so, how? Should departments be allowed to move personnel
into grant positions? I think in the packet that I sent you for departmental responses, this was one
of probation's real concerns. And I could pull up the responses if you want, but I mean. What was the
general consensus? Like, yeah.
related to specifically grants or overall? The grant. I think the general consensus was there is a fear
if they do not provide the grant services or have the employees to provide the grant services, then
they could be in jeopardy of losing the grant funding. Understandable. Okay. So the first talking point
of the day for this resolution is would we make this grant positions exempt from this freeze?
And I would think that we would say yes to that. But the floor is open. So, you know, anybody that would
like to make a comment on this, please do. And Council Hawk. Yes, I'm just reminding you the trouble
we're in right now is because grant dollars went away and employees were moved to grant dollars. And
now they're being moved back to general. And it isn't like as if we I mean, now that
that exploded the number of employees in County General, as well as the number that was being covered
under the self-fund insurance. So I mean, just be careful what we're doing with grants. Yes, Councilor
Iverson. In reading what the probation department wrote, it's actually the other way where
if a position is vacant inside of a grant, then we may not be able to fulfill the obligations of the
grant, and then we will lose that grant. And examples of grants that we currently have that we could
lose include problem-solving court, pretrial services program, juvenile detention alternatives, and
community corrections programs. We're talking about drug testing, JDAI, mental health court, reentry court.
So, I would personally be a fan of excluding those. Yes, Councillor Henry. I think it is worth maybe
mud stomping Councillor Hawke's comment, right? I mean, of course, if we have grant funding coming into
the county and that is a contained bucket of money that is tapped for that FTE, that's funded.
But we have had some challenges with the way, we've talked about HFI especially, about moving people
out of a funded program into county general, or the county, the health fund, right? And it is maybe
reasserting or being very clear that if the grant goes away, the person goes away, which I think we've
had some movement around. That was definitely not the case when I was an employee of the county like
18 years ago, right? I mean, I understood if the grant went away, so did I.
Now that position's funded differently. We're funding it out of COAG, I think, right now. But I don't
think we need to put it in the language of the resolution, but it should be abundantly clear that if
you're funded on grants, it's as good as the grant. We can't keep bringing people in at this point.
Yeah, I think maybe I'll say it this way. I think the hardest thing lately, or at least from my seat, has been
When we do have department heads come to us and they plead their case about the value of the program,
the necessity of what they do in the community, we know that. This is dollars. I mean, we literally
don't have the money tree behind the desk here. I mean, this is not, there's a lot of pain here. So
it's not coming from a place of malice to cut these programs. We literally don't have the resource at
this point. Totally agree. All right, looking over here to my left, does anybody have any questions
or comments on this particular?
resolution here. Go ahead. The language that grant positions are exempted from the hiring freeze. Is
that what I'm hearing? And what's the argument against that, I guess?
like to hear that again sorry but it's it's it's the fight gun purse
to the grant position if we actually can fund it or not, right? I mean, is the grant funding the whole
FTE with the wraparound, or is it just salary? And I think that's what we've bumped into, right? So
there's a condition on that, I think. That's one way to think about it. Is it totally funded or half
funded? And if it's half funded, then we are cutting into other things. I think that, now, of course,
I don't have those off the top of my head right now, but that would be one condition, right? We can't
do half a thing.
that's a fully contained funded thing. So I think, yeah. But you're clear. So for that reason, are you
saying that's why we don't add that into the language? I think we have to add the language that says
that what grant funded means fully funded. It doesn't mean partially funded. I would agree. Or else
we're partially eating into the general. I think we just need to make it explicitly clear for people
how we are looking at that. Yes, Councilor Hall. Well, if we would ever really adopt
What had for years been the plan was when the grant went away the position was dropped and they were
supposed to be notified this is a grant position and you know it's for two years or one year or whatever it is.
But what has happened is the grants gone away, but the person is still there and county generals picking
up the rest of it. So while I love grants, because they've let us operate a lot better than a lot of
counties, we can no longer afford to take the grants
that run out of money and put it over in general. Now, if we would vote on that, and I knew that's what
we were gonna do, I could support that part, but so far that's not what we've done. So my understanding
is that every employee's job description that they sign. I agree with what you're saying. Okay, every
employee signs something that says, you know, if the funding goes away, this job is no longer here for
me. I know, but we don't honor that.
We have not been honoring that. We found. We found good reason not to. There was revenue. We debated
it. You raise those points every time I remember, even when we added that language to every job. I remember
I took hell from people's pack chairs probably four or five years ago that we put that mean language
in there, but we did and we debated it. Now we're in a different time where revenue has shifted. We
have looked up and we see our
up in the air above us and we're trying to write that so that we're not on the ground anymore. So it's
this is you know we do it just like everyone says when they run you debate the values of your community
most those grants people went after because we value it we were able to fund that value now- those things
shift and change. We'll debate this all again.
and five years, 10 years, maybe 20, it'll go the other way, maybe, hopefully, please God. But people
come in here and say, I don't know why you'd ever cut that. And they'll laugh about us. Okay. Yes, Councilor
Iverson. So I think some of this blends into the next talking point, which is, should the hiring freeze
be applicable to all departments? Which is something that
I think is an interesting point that if we don't exempt any department, then if we don't accept any
department, then we simply have them follow the same procedure. And maybe the or maybe the exemption
is that they just don't have to wait to hire. So
like I'm walking. I'm reading. Sorry. I'm kind of going back to the email that we got sent. I guess
the biggest thing is, can we just simplify this entire thing? And how we can, I see the six different
talking points here,
Are we getting into the really nitty gritty willy nilly of this? Or are we just truly saying this is
a real hiring freeze and we are saying that we have grant positions that are exempt from this? And
if you know that grant goes away then unfortunately we cannot absorb that into the county general and
then that position goes away that's what i'm trying to look at and simplify i don't want us to too complicate
this but that's what i'm thinking okay hey hands over here yes i think one way you can simplify it is
kind of within 6b of the talking point that i pointed out and if the process is
It's a hiring freeze. It applies to everyone. And then the procedure becomes departments who are wanting
to submit an exemption. They follow the same process like we do for our vacancies now. So hiring freeze
applies to everybody. If the department wants an exemption, they email council office. Council has 48
hours to respond to determine if they want to talk about it as a whole council to consider the exemption.
And if no one responds in 48 hours, a hiring freeze is a hiring freeze. The answer is no.
No, you don't get to hire. Correct. The default is the default is no. OK, you don't get to hire unless
council wants to consider it at a meeting and then council can decide, OK, this is a grant position.
We want to talk about it. This is, you know, a position at YSP. We want to talk about it. And so then
you're not talking about every. You're not talking about every position that's being requested because
the default is no default is no until
we get the email and somebody objects. Somebody objects, right? And then that brings it just like we've
done earlier this year with some other stuff. Got it. Um, OK. Does anybody else over here have any question?
More questions to it? Yeah, OK, yes. Counselor Iverson. I wanted to clarify in paragraph one if you
could scroll down or whoever's got it shared. That's me OK in the sentence right before the red.
It says that that that must occur during a notice public meeting. Now, the procedure that I just described
is not the procedure reflected in this ordinance. This was the draft from last week. Those were just
suggested considering points, maybe. So if you want to do that, then I have to amend the resolution.
Also, did you have your hand?
everybody is staring at their hundred emails that we get every day. And so it's really easy to miss
one. And I know when we first started this, when FSG said put a pause on everything. So I started saying,
no, well, what did we get? We got everybody who let me, Marty Hogg, she won't give me that job. And
let me tell you, somebody else had better be the main whoever it is. But the default is the freezing.
It's opposite for this. The default would be if we don't say anything, it's frozen. They don't. Oh,
opposite. Everybody's a quiet Marty. So basically what we're saying is basically we default. We adopt
it or we adopt this. The default is no, you do not get
to do that. Okay, so if you see it and you want to make an exception for them, then you better say then.
Yes. So it's exactly opposite of what you're saying. Okay, well, I'm glad everybody else caught that.
So again, that's the simplified method and keeping it the kids method is making sure like we just say no,
And then if somebody wants to continue to, or to push for it and advocate for it, then much like we
have right now, they can send an email, somebody can object, and then wham bam, it's on our agenda.
And then they have to state their facts.
I do think that we need to make absolutely certain that we don't slow down the hiring to making sure
we're full staff at the jail and full staff at the youth shelter because we have no choice. We can't
shut down the jail and you can't shut down the youth shelter or at least I don't think we should. They
should be exempt.
I don't think anybody up here wants to shut down those two things. So OK. So we heard that. Does anybody
else have any questions or comments for this? I feel like we still got a lot to tackle and we've been
on this for awhile and we've had this on the forefront here for awhile now. So yes, count.
Somebody I mean, I mean, I'd like to.
I'll talk about another talking point that was OK. Part time employees. Are we freezing? Are we free
specifically? Are we saying there's no summer camp employees for next year, right? This is a park.
I mean, because the parks do seasonal hires for that. So they hire maybe the same people, but they're
let go every fall. It's a seasonal thing. So.
would we be saying our seasonal staff be exempt from this? Is that? Asking, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yes, Councilor
Decker. To me, and that's in the budget now, right? All right, to me, that's in the budget now. That
is something that comes on in a season. And to me, that would be exempt because it would be ramping
up and on and is expected that way.
I think we would have to be explicit, but yes, I kind of, you know. Unless we're in such dire straits
that we are cutting that programming. Which is a whole different discussion. I think it's a whole different
discussion. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yes, I'm sorry. Councilor Henry. Kate took the wheel. I think what maybe
a lot of these points can be summed up with is the idea that.
You know, things are hard. This is different. Departments are going to have to come make their case
in this room. And there are going to be exceptions like this. I mean, one of the part-time mentions
is this idea of the election workers. It's like, well, of course, we're going to have an election.
Of course, there's going to be people hired. The issue is that that department head is going to have
to come in here and make that case. And we're going to have to do a lot more of this.
adjudicating the case against the fiscal constraints of the county, not the mission, not the value,
not the individuals, not the longevity, the dollars. So I guess on all of these, I'm at a point where
you gotta come here. That's really what this is about for the next year. It is a new world. You have
to come here to make your case. And that's the simple method. So that's it. So again, I think
I'm going back to the earlier point is just keeping this simple. That is a freeze. Obviously, I think
we all know that there are things that would be exempt from that, and so they would just come in and
state the case and go from there. Yes, Councilor Iverson. For the untold number of county employees
and department heads watching right now, what would be the next steps in terms of drafting
or making edits to this document? Well, I can edit this on live if you have suggestions on language
you want to put it in there. If you are wanting me to go back and incorporate all of these ideas, then
I am not going to do that on live. So this isn't either, I guess,
Provide me edits that you want me to make and then consider passing it tonight or give me time to edit
it My gut says that there was enough here that we do the latter Then you have any objections of doing
this on the fly right now And we can always go back and and
always open this back up for discussion if we go through this and we have a moment we can always come
back and open this up and amend it later yes counselor so what's the critical path preventing voting
now because if we don't we have two more weeks right we go we just continue with hiring so i'm just
trying to get to the critical path of what is the blocker that gets us to vote and if we have to amend
we is it really
And I don't mean to be that shrill about it. I'm just trying to wrap my head around what is really in
the way here that can't be amended in a future resolution. I just think that it's just to keep a simple
method. We put in, look at what we have on the screen here. If there's anything that we need to put
in, let's go ahead and do so. If we hear from people or we come back in a couple of weeks and we realize
that after sleeping X amount of hours,
we can come back and look at this. But I think that we have had this on the brain for a while now. And
I think we need to move because I don't want this to come back. And then we have another discussion
and another discussion. There's too much of that and other avenues of government. So we just have to
do the hard part now. Yes, I'll slip right on. So I would definitely advocate for keeping it simple.
and open to change as needed, rather than getting yourself into a box with 20,000 different exemptions
or exceptions. Because I'd like to remind us, when we passed earlier this year, the KSA and the PACPAS,
that was conversations that we continued to keep coming back over and over again. And then we finally
did it. And here we are. So that is the point that I wanted to make with that. And again, we can always
come back to it.
Yes, Councilor Wells. The resolution references in Exhibit A and I'm able to open the packet. Is Exhibit
A attached? Exhibit A has not been formed because that would be Council identifying what departments
are exempt, right? So that is something that
Okay, it says that council exempts the ongoing hiring processes. Oh, sorry. Exhibit A is we had asked
all the departments, what are your vacancies? Where are you at in the hiring process? All of that is
included in the response packet from the department heads and elected officials. I did not form Exhibit
A because I don't know out of the information council received which
positions are far enough along in the hiring process, the council would want to exempt them from the
freeze. So is posting a vacancy enough? Obviously, I would hope that offer extended and accepted gets
you out against exempt, but there's a range of steps that the departments are in between posting vacancy
and sending an offer.
Would it be okay? Yes. Looking at the agenda, if you do not think that I am going to be instrumental
in the next two discussions, I can pull this off my screen and start editing it and see if I get something
by the end of the night. But the next discussion is about special purpose lit. And I think that I'm
going to have to explain the lit process and what special purpose could be.
we're not going to be able to use it. We're not going to be able to use it for so. What is the point
of the order? The information there? I think Councilor Deckard amended the agenda to continue to item
11, so we're not doing 10 at this point. Um right. So technically. While we're talking about 11, you
could be working on this. I will start editing. We will go. All
Council, I move to open for discussion regarding the possibility of creating a 2026 economic development
lit budget. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Yeah, I think it's time for us to look at this.
and so the floor is open for people and I'll go to Councilor Henry first. Thank you, Madam President.
Ms. Woodruff, are you able to display your three-year grid of the accumulations on the edit? This may
help guide the conversation in terms of what we've been collecting as a county since the tax was imposed
and since the council last revisited how we're going to use this
So if we'll zoom in a little bit here, just to get a data set to work with. Mr. Deckard. Has this been
emailed out to council? I don't think so. This was not emailed. This was a last minute request that
was thrown together. The edit.
Okay, so I just and I appreciate this was the five o'clock thing so I appreciate back when I can work
here. So what we have here of course the receipts on the edit month by month since 2023. There are some
expenditure lines which I guess I have some questions about because it predates my time on council about
when we have actually tapped the edit and used it. There is an expenditure of 272,000 and June 23. You
have the running balance on the side which has been accumulating in the pot.
Let's scroll down a little to 24. We have two disbursements there. The accumulations continue. And then
in 2025, and then we're seeing our September disbursement. Right now it's September. We're looking at
north of $20 million sitting in the edit right now. Now, I think my reason for wanting to get into this
tonight is pretty simple. I think when the previous council talked about and talked about using edit
for the purposes of developing the Justice Center,
And we're well north of that now- there's also of course the changes of SCA one. And- and this is something
to consider because the E. I. I. I. want to actually.
borrow gently and honor Councilor Deckard's comments about the government bank at this point. This is
the government bank of revenue coming in at $974,000 a month and nothing coming out of it to do economic
development in the county. Look at the anticipated for 2026. By December of 2026, we will be sitting
at $35.8 million in this account and that almost buys you a convention center.
Now here's the thing, we know that we have revenue coming in every month. If we do tap this to start
balancing,
our budget, it will accumulate and we'll catch back up. And it's clear that there have been disbursements
out of this fund over the past three years anyway. And maybe I can get some clarity about what those
are from the auditor. But I think the numbers here tell a story that we have a resource here that, as
we are sweating bullets about cuts, there may be a way to put some of this money to use to do economic
development at aviation, at parks, at some of the end. And I will add one more thing, too, not for tonight
but later, that we've had discussions about the bonds.
And why are we borrowing money plus percentage to buy a street sweeper when I have the resource right
here that will accumulate month after month? But, Auditor Gregory, do we have data on the expenditures
from this fund and what they were? It was debt service. Okay. So that's all it was in that large lump
sum of $10 million in change, sorry.
So I would propose that where we are with our deficit would regenerate within five months and and would
be nowhere near the principle that was discussed. By the Council of its previous iteration again I've
yet to see an actual resolution or vote that said a vote that committed the edit to.
I can't find it. It may exist, but it was predating my time. But that's some thoughts about where we
could go with this resource. Thank you, Madam President. You're welcome. Councilor Henry. I just did
the same thing to Councilman Henry. It's okay. It's late. Yeah, the other Henry. Councilor. The motion
I read was to think about creating a budget for this fund. So is the
the consideration here to build in twos and threes and fours, and potentially ones, personnel services,
supplies, and capital. What was the thought behind the motion that I read? Is it to, are we going to
be, I mean, are we creating the possibility of doing that? We did something similar in rainy day. So,
what is what is being proposed here? Especially considering that the spreadsheet before us has not been
shared with Council, and it was only produced at five o'clock today, which was the start of this meeting.
What is being proposed here? Well, Madam President May. Yes, well, first of all, I would say that the
the agenda item that I proposed did not
I mean, it was not a discussion of how the verbatim get put into the agenda. The it was not a discussion
of the budget that I wanted to do. It was the discussion of using the lit period. I mean, and so the
so the open ended question is how. So it was not. So I understand that that's what has been published,
but that was not what I submitted to leadership to be put it here. But I that's fine. We can work through
it. So the discussion is if we if we want to amend
but that's where I'll leave it open at this point. Yeah. Councillor Hawke. Yes. Auditor's table. What
was advertised for? I'll pull it up. I believe it's 2 million in each category. So let me pull that
right now. No, that's 2 million in each category. So eight total.
that was a total of eight million that was advertised. Yes. Yes, counselor Decker. I appreciate counselor
Henry's comments in the chart that he's brought. And anybody that watches these meetings first, I'm
very sorry that you do that. But no, they're very informational. But they'll recall I got pretty passionate
on this one given our previous plans.
that said any any person in government who doesn't look at paths forward and again to draw that analogy
tries to find your way towards the door in the dark to get there safely and not trip on the extension
cords as I said to Councilor Henry earlier today that person is a wise person in government as wise
as one can be when I look at the revenue and I think about a shortfall right now which is seems to be
hovering in the
I don't know, 293 kind of range 2527. I'm not sure. I'm thinking that this could be a path forward until
the SEA-1 ship is righted for its temporary permanent destination, if that means anything. So I think
that there are paths forward here for a small portion of these dollars.
to find a place. And I want to voice that because I've been so. V about all that, but we have options
for reasons. So I wasn't here and I can play dumb. So what are these monies designated for? What are the
Look to Ms. Turner-King to give us that information. What can the monies be used for in this economic
development lit? So economic development lit is governed by Indiana code 63610-2. There are 11 very
specific uses and I can read them all, but I think the most important one is number 11 that says for
any lawful purpose for which money and any of its other funds may be used.
Thank you. Okay. Yes. Just one quick comment. I mean, I earlier today I said to somebody. This is the
route that the state ultimately is that you'll end up in this place is property taxes.
that we retire and somebody quickly corrected me and they said no they just want to cut they want to
cut and then you just keep cutting. Alongside them but the reality is. Funds like these are where the
state is pushing us in this measure towards these levels so counselors like us are gonna be staring
more at this.
for a couple of years in this direction, but this County actually had action before then as controversial
as that was these dollars are here. Yes, counselor. What, what ban was, what is the debt service specifically for?
It's okay. It was the 2022 bond anticipation note. I believe it was specific for a purchase of property.
That's my recollection. I can find the bond documents for you. So that's when we said we could use this
money to purchase land for the Justice Center. And so a bond anticipatory note was issued and now we've
had to pay
debt service on that, having not purchased the land. Don't we look great? Fan-freaking-tastic, is that
what all of those in the expenditure column are? Yes, it's either interest or principal. Okay.
Thank you. Okay. Does anybody? Yes, Councilor Iverson.
It sounds like the plan for using these funds has gotten as far as advertising $2 million in each category.
Have plans gone further? Has anybody identified personnel lines to move into this? Service lines? Supply
lines? I kind of feeling left out.
things been discussed, Councillor Iverson, this is the discussion here. Yeah, if I may. Yeah, I would
just echo that. So, you know, this is very much a public sausage making activity at this point. The
fact that the edit has been encumbered as a custom, because again, I don't find a resolution anywhere
that was voted on as sort of customary since it was given to the county by the
City of Bloomington under the previous mayor. You've all made a verbalized its use for the justice center,
right? I mean, I wanted to do this in public. I think to get to this is the discussion piece to see
what the temperature is. If there is positive temperature, then I think we have a good week or so to
use what has been advertised two million per category to go figure out how to use this to close a deficit.
Or we keep cutting, or we have a deficit budget. Or we cut coal. I mean, this is where we are.
And it is hard, I think, to justify to the community this level of takings without letting it flow back
into the economy, which is the design of the tax to begin with. So yeah, Peter, with all respect, there's
no secret meaning here. We're doing it right now. This is the discussion in public. I just wanted it
on the agenda to get it out.
Anybody else? Yes, Councilor. Just just be clear. We wouldn't have expenditures if we hadn't had a vote
to approve the bond anticipatory note being issued. So there has been a vote that that expressed intent
to use this money for the Justice Center land at the very least.
I don't think that you or I even are beholden to that at this point, but I just want to make it clear.
It's not as though we've been spending on things without a public discussion and, you know, ill-advised
as it might have been, I don't know. But I think you're making a very good point. And I appreciate you
kind of getting the numbers in front of us because that's a lot of money.
And it's looking as though even with hoarding this money away, we can't afford the justice center as
designed and presented to us. We could scrape together every penny from this and the corrections lit.
And still, I don't know what we're planning to do unless something big changes.
It does not give me that much heartburn to then turn and spends out of this fund, knowing as you point
out that it is being replaced over time and we've been let it build up as we've been waiting.
Yeah. That is a very good point. And I do feel as though times have changed. And I don't want to keep
going back into those conversations. We know times have changed, which is why we're still sitting here
talking about this budget. And so I think that no, I don't think that we are ready to be in the business
of building a justice center. And I think we were a little bit away.
Therefore, while we are still having this regenerate, why not tap into this? I will be honest, originally
at the first conversation of this being used, it gave me a little hiccup at the moment. Because I really
thought we could do some other stuff. But because we are still sitting here and we got two weeks before
we have the final adoption, as we had talked about earlier before we get to the other conversation,
do we want to use this, or do we want to cut cola? That's kind of the bottom line for me. And I appreciate
this being brought to the forefront. And again, this also makes me realize that we see Council Hawk
just a second. We're in a different day, and this is looking mighty appetizing right now. So that's
what I'll say to that. I'll go to Council Hawk, and then I'll circle back to Iverson.
Okay. Perhaps I've forgotten what the dollar amount was. How much is it for Cola? We don't have that
at the top of our minds if that's what we think we're saving. We have to know. Well, we had it built
in. I want to be fair to the staff like we had it built in because we couldn't have it built in and
then we'd be sitting here talking another long time for that. So what's
Yeah. I don't want to put too much pressure on at staff who is already working late nights and I've
seen the phone calls in the in the messages, so let's not.
Well, one thing I'll just say, I mean, I'm going to look at the clock. It's nine forty eight p.m. in
two hours and twelve minutes. Your federal government will shut down because a bunch of people wearing
suits worth more than our budget cannot problem solve to save their you know what? We on the other hand
have a lot of different thoughts here and we are literally problem solving this one step at a time.
We've talked about postage stamps. We've talked about everything. We have literally made people
get close to tears this evening. And one example that we're seeing here is that no philosophy, no plan,
no thing is greater than trying to figure out how we make sure that deputy back there, those folks up
there, and everybody else that needs a service tomorrow morning that cannot be up to watch gets what
they need. Meanwhile, when they look at their headlines, our federal friends will be giving speeches
on MSNBC and Fox.
So problem-solving looks like that. Have I solved enough for you, Kim? I'm going to go. Iverson has
been bouncing in his seat and waving his hand at me. I'm going to go to Iverson, and then I'm going
to go to Michelle. All right. So it appears to me we have some next steps.
with this fund, and I want to try and enumerate some of those. Number one, because of FICA and PERF
concerns, we do not have a running total for how much we have cut tonight. We have to wait until tomorrow
for those calculations to be done. That's unfortunate, but that's where we're at. So in terms of coming
up with a plan to use the advertised dollars in this fund,
we do have to wait until we know what those numbers are tomorrow because we did move quite a bit out
of the fours tonight into the bond. We did do a lot with some of the personnel lines and that's gonna
be impactful. So I think starting tomorrow, it's gonna be, we're gonna need to have some pretty serious
conversations about those categories that we've advertised because I think it's premature to have
much more of a conversation on this fund because we're at the risk of not knowing the running total
of what we did tonight. Michelle.
around and this is a cola comparison that I prepared back in June and this is the top part here is the
levy funds then there was the rate controlled and everything so I mean do you do you want a bottom dollar
kind of cola so which would be you know all the funds kind of thing it's it would be that right there
So let me. This column I am. Yeah, so the difference from. 2025 to 2026 salaries with the FICA in the
perf is 2,000,477,169. That's FICA and perf.
salaries only is two million point zero three two okay yeah this is the total this is the grand total
difference what if you just did um the levy controlled funds
the levy funds to be a million six about and then the others they could just take it from their existing
budgets but that's at a three percent that's at the three percent so we did like a one and a half percent which is
another number that had been discussed very clearly when we first started with three, we just said three
because nobody gave us any numbers and we just need to move on. But I know, I believe it was council
member Wilts was suggesting one and a half. And so what would it be if we had listened to her wise counsel
back then? I'm not kidding. It would be half that amount. Where's my don't count that? We're just counting half.
have to do just be half. Yeah, it's up here. The awesome number. OK, so the grand total salary increase
difference for the levy funds. 1,000,349,760. The grant the that was just the salary. Sorry, the grand
total that also includes FICA and perf is 1,000,644.
six eighty three. But what doesn't make any sense if we that was for three if we said one and a half
it would be one half of the one six so be about eight hundred thousand. Yes about. Eight hundred twenty
two three forty two.
And remind me again, what percentage is this? This is at 3%. 3%. I don't have, and I don't know why,
but this is flat, what I would call hard numbers. They're typed in. I probably copied and pasted it
from somewhere. So I can't change the percentage to see where it's at. I'd have to go back and reformulate stuff.
of the grand total. So that's 2,000,006. So that's the half of the three. We wouldn't do all of that.
We wouldn't. Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. That's the grand total of all funds, because some
of them are diversion. Some of them are the user fees, that kind of thing.
But if you give COLA to, you know, I mean, across the board, I mean, we give everybody the same salary
grid, so. So they could take it out of their existing funds. If they've got a separate fund, it's not
in the general fund.
then they could just take their raise, which right now it's already been projected as 3% in their budgets.
If we reduced it one and a half, all of those budgets will then be reduced. And so, because then you
have less expenses, we're going to have less deficit. Councilor Wills, did you have something that you
wanted to add to that? I thought I heard you. I had a question. Yes. Councilor Hawk, are you,
suggesting that. Are we still talking about using Edie lit or have we moved on completely to only talking
about Cola? Nope, because we the motion on the floor is we were talking about Edie lit so that we can
get to Cola and some so we went down this part here. So the reason why you might wonder why I'm saying
this because
If we're saying, oh yes, we need to know what we plan to do with the 2%. And that's the reason why I
was looking at what is the COLA and what will we be willing to put in there because we're spending down
a revenue that is going to be a part of the 1.2 come 2028. I know what I think.
So that's the reason why it's important for us to know what we're voting on. Yeah, that's what I thought
you were talking about. Yes, counseling and I think I want to honor what counselor hawk just said there
too because this is this year's version of this.
As you just articulated with the incoming 1.2 and of course we've also had conversations with FSG about
how much of the 1.2 would be obligated to the Justice Center, right, because we've had that conversation
too. This is this year. I don't think we would be visiting this path this way next year with the instruments
and the funding and the revenue that we're going to be seeing and how it comes in.
This isn't sustainable because we just flat out can't do it this way again, and we can't do it this
way again in two years either. So this is a moment in time about how we're using, I think, this fund.
It's not going to be here. It's not going to be here. But if you put it over there, you've increased
the spending over there. The money's not going to suddenly increase.
enough so that we don't have to think about it. I was not saying not to think about it, but it is buying
time with the resources we have. And then we're going to have a new battlefield and a new battlefield.
I think that's kind of my bad analogy at this hour, but yeah. Yes, Councilor Wilks. Is it then appropriate
to not look at the personnel costs for ED lit?
just look at capital expenditures because it's one time. Or I guess you could say services if it's one
time contract kind of thing. I mean, you could get into that, but it seems to me that this is best used
for something then that isn't ongoing. I agree with that. I mean, because ideally, I mean, we're talking
about if we're doing capital investment. I agree with that.
I mean, this is not a sustainable use for salary. But what it is, is if we can move things around and
there's going to be a lot of work in the next week to move those items into the edits so that we use
the general fund for salaries, right? Because right now we're kind of pulling from, I mean, I think
this is the way I'm seeing it right now, is pulling things out of general fund into this to free up
the space for personnel to be left alone. I have some heartburn about the personnel piece.
that make sense? Yes. Okay. Not to belabor this, but I know other governments in proximity to this building
have taken a different approach. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that with us. Yeah. Yes, Councilor Decker.
Well, based on the previous well vetted amendment earlier that I don't think we adopt. No, we did not
adopt. We had a determination that there was in this budget total 3.863
in capital and I guess the question would be. Rather than do what we were saying the 5% reduction in
capital we could take. 2 million in from that capital and put it. My think something horrible. Please
be yes auditor's office help us.
You could do that, but it would not reduce the overall deficit. It would only reduce the deficit in
the funds you're taking it from. What if we just took it from the levy funds? You would reduce the deficit
in the levy funds, but you would not reduce the overall deficit across all funds. That's that simple
calculation we were looking at.
simple calculation accounts for all funds. So if we're using the simple calculation to identify what
the overall deficit is, then moving it from one fund to another would not reduce that number. Yeah,
I thought I saw somebody here waving at me over here. Okay. Um, yeah, I just so
I guess overall, the general consensus is that we think that we should touch this. And then the next
steps would be, I guess that's what I'm trying to look at in terms of next steps. Yeah. I just had a
thought and it just lost my brain, or left.
it's something that I feel like is this not we should probably have a general idea of what we are needing
to do tonight with this particular thing instead of coming back on the 14th on the final adoption or
even want to put this out here but until we know what we've done today from the auditors to
or from the calculations that we should get tomorrow is that something that we potentially possibly
look at having one more meeting in between the final adoption. I'm trying to avoid it but we got a lot
of stuff that was thrown at us this evening and for
folks at the table over here to get us the number so we can figure out what we need to do here. Maybe
that is the better way of doing this. Yes, Michelle. I would prefer that because trying to come back,
give you good numbers. And then, I mean, at the adoption meeting, we would have to be trying to amend
things on the fly, having to pause,
so that we could make changes and you would have to then redo the ordinances and that kind of thing.
So in anticipation of that, I looked October the 8th, the NatU Hill Room is available in the evening.
If you wanna set a meeting for October the 8th, that's Wednesday, October the 8th.
basically the Sophia Travis committee people will be living in the county building for that week because
we got the meeting the grant presentation on the seventh and then we have another meeting on the 10th
on the 10th and so the eighth okay the only other time it's available is on the 13th and I'd rather
not wait till the day before and is that a holiday that's honored by the county
Because the 13th is indigenous people's day. Okay, nope. Okay, I will not be available, because I will
be out of town. So, then.
would be an ideal. And let's keep it simple. Let's keep the kiss method going here. So we come in, we
do our sausage making, we figure out so that on the 14th, this will be a time for us to literally just
kind of go through and do final adoption because we do not want to come here on the 14th and willy-dilly
numbers on that particular time. I would request that if you have ideas of what you want in edit,
I mean, I can't do anything until you guys direct me. What do you want in there? You know? Okay. Yeah.
Okay. What are you looking at? Do you want, you know, are we moving things from the general fund? I
so I need some direction with regards to what do you guys want to move? So
So in that term, and so in that timeframe, in order to give you all the opportunity to get all information
from all seven of us, if all seven of us should send that information, what would be a good timeframe
before the eighth? Well, Friday the third, before the end of the day, Friday the third,
So counsel, we hear that Friday the third, which is this upcoming Friday, gives us an opportunity to
get information to Michelle and the auditor's office in terms of what we would like to see in edit.
So I am putting us to task at the end of the day, Friday, October 3rd. That is your time to shine and
we need to come into this space on the eighth, ready to go, locked and loaded.
Let's put it all out. Okay. So do you want, I'm just trying to think of the agenda ahead of time. What
is it we wanting? Do you want to be able to go back and review the hiring policy that she's been working
on? You know, that kind of thing. Then also, is that yet? The hiring policy and then just revisiting numbers.
So let's revisit numbers, because we know we'll have a clear picture for tomorrow. We'll have the higher
freeze, because in all this conversation, I completely spaced Mr. King was working on that. So we can
potentially have that. And because we have all the know and that we should be ready to go making that
decision. And then the discussion of what we would like to see in ED lit so that we can be prepared.
on the 14th. Does that sound okay for everybody? Does anybody have any objections? Yes, Councillor Hogg.
These folks need to know whether or not to include the raise or not to include the raise, whether they
include 3%, 1.5%, whatever. I was getting there. Give us a number. They can't make these decisions.
We have to make them. I'm sorry. That would be the other thing. With regards to the COLA,
I need to, if you want to change that, I need to know an amount because then I have to go in and create
a grid so that I know what numbers so that I can get, at least to give you an idea of how much is going,
that difference is gonna be, but I need a number if that's what you want me to do. So then that is a
time for, like we said on Friday,
whatever we want to think about in terms of ED lit, that is also something that we can send to you as
well with that. Does anybody else have any objections or any questions or comments on that? Yes. So
we're just individually sending her our thoughts on Friday. We have to,
The phase has to be decided tonight before we leave here. I don't know how they're going to have time
to work on the COLA. They're thinking that maybe the COLA should be less, which I don't know if that's
the case. We might have to do that sooner than next week.
It's not hard to give you a number saying, this is how, you know, I can show you, this is how much it's
gonna cost you to 3%, this is how much it's gonna cost you to two, this is how much it'll one. But in
order to get that done and changed in all of the LOW stuff, I'm gonna have to open it up to the departments
to edit some numbers or something somehow, because I will not be able to make all of those changes on my own.
I have to make a decision now. I say we stay at 3%. There's more than an ample in edits. We've got a
hiring freeze resolution that's edits have been made right now. We are at the deadline. We do not have
the time for our staff to keep going back to the drawing board, going to every single department. Staying
up until 1 o'clock in the morning working on stuff.
we stay at my vote is to stay at 3% and find it elsewhere. One and a half. Okay, not three. All right,
so I'm gonna put it out here. Council I make a motion for us to say that we are going to go with a 3%
cola and that is going to be the determined number that we are going to do so that we can try to get
other numbers moving forward ahead of the next couple of weeks.
We got a motion and a second. 3% is what we've been talking about since the very beginning. We see that
we have it in edit. I really, again, would like to keep us at the three, but I know, because I can hear
the whispers, that people don't think that. So this is our time to shine and say yay or nay. Let's go.
What else do people think? I see head nods. I've heard a no.
this is our time now that we can be silent. This is our time to speak. Yes, Councilor Iverson. This
is about integrity. We told people that 3% is baked in. This was the thing that we were going to provide
this year. This was the thing that we said we were going to do. This is about integrity for me. I'm a yes.
I would be always in favor of more money for employees. However, I would like to know if it was baked
in. I know there was a letter that went out, and I don't have the language memorized, that said there
was 3%. Now, did the language say that is our hope, or what did that language say? That's real important
of how we advertised we were thinking about that 3%. There was no guarantee. Right.
I'm trying to pull that up now. That's okay. I tried to find it and I couldn't find it. I'm sorry.
Let me. Because I know you sent out a letter and it is important of what it said and I think that's
what, you know, people baked in something that wasn't really in the letter, that's a different story.
But if we did promise that, that's a little different story for me. But we didn't.
Okay, so in the president's letter, it says additionally, departments whose salaries are not set by
the state will see a 3% COLA increase in all proposed 2026 salary grids, which will be distributed by
the council office. When completing the salary quest for your proposed budget, please refer to those
grids. The council prioritizes our valuable
employees and recognizes that a cost of living adjustment cola is a vital consideration for both you
and the loyal members of your department. Thank you. Yes, that's not the whole letter. So can we put
it on screen? I mean, because the and I don't this is important. If we're going to
I'm not going to put it all on the table of this. This is what employees were told. So this isn't the
whole part of the letter. We need to look at the supply services and capital category request part of
the paragraph. If you can display the whole letter, it might be useful. And I'll read it while you're
preparing it. By reducing your budget, you are also safeguarding the proposed COLA of 3% for all employees.
It's in the letter.
the caveat has always been we need to make the cuts in supplies and everywhere else to attain the goal.
And we're not there. And so as much as I, look, as much as I appreciate the target, what we're wrestling
with is getting the everything else in line here to preserve the culettes, but we're not there with
the deficit. Now, if we are going to make proposed attempts to use the edits to fill, to cover other
costs in the budget,
sure, but I mean, the letter does also indicate to department heads we have to safeguard this by making
the cuts. Some really did the work. I want to honor that. Others, this has been a bit of a challenge.
That's all now, I'm president. But you have the letter up? Yeah, I mean, yeah. Okay. I wasn't sure where
you were at. I could not hear you sometimes. Yeah, I was just firing away. Yeah, it's all right.
It's late. Yeah, it's that bullet. Yeah, that's where we indicate that.
Councilor Decker. I appreciate those comments. We tried a different approach to COLA this year in budgeting
that in. Some did make cuts early, some made lots of cuts here. Many of us, we've continued to cut,
cut, cut. I mean, we have cut the bucket so much that there are times where
the marginal errors and say, nope, it's another million more. You got to cut. Nope, it's actually this.
We've kept going. To me, the 3% in there, we have been going after those cuts. Department heads have
been going after those cuts. I mean, some of us, when we were sitting with liaison, some of us sitting
with liaison ships that weren't even our own. And they were asking us for advice. We were helping them
cut pre. So I think that, you know, did everyone do that to the same balance? No.
to the same balance. I think they've been chasing it. I think we're chasing it tonight. The thing I
keep coming back to is a little bit of what Peter's counselor Iverson said. The 80 lit those dollars
that the way that they are sitting there, the ample amount that there's enough to pull just slightly
from to me that.
gets you through this moment as we continue to adjust. It helps us maintain the employees that we have.
It helps us to provide the services for the things those folks do. And it gets us close to the end.
I think we are actually closer than we think, thought, once these numbers start getting computed. But
we have pulled longevity out.
this evening. We've done a lot. We're talking about a hiring freeze. This has been the most menacing
this council has been since the 2010 to 2012 era. And friends, I'll tell you one thing is their era,
we're still paying the prices from some of the rhetoric of that era. I mean, it was one of the- in 2019,
some of the first liaison ship discussions I heard were from that era. So while I get
Yes, it'd be lovely to continue to cut, cut, cut. I do think that there's a point where you gotta be
cautious about that employee line, because many years ago, our rhetoric on our people was awful.
And I know, because I heard it as a child of a county employee, and it was awful. And we need that workforce,
because we're not at that counter. So to me, we would hold the line at this,
and continue and continue down the path. And those edit funds are part of it. Some other solution will
be too. We will continue to do it. It'll be a new thing every 20 minutes around here till we get it
all figured out. So we got a motion. There was a second to keep it at three. We can move forward here
again as protocol. If you've got public comment on this item,
you're still here watching us in person- or you can raise your hand via teams. All right. And seeing
not maybe please have a roll call vote. Counselor
Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Henry? No. Councilor Decker? Yes. Motion passes
by majority four to three. So council staff will proceed with the three percent. Thank you.
we got on this thing. Yes. All right. Due to Councillor Deckard's motion, I'm going to go back to item
number 10. After that, we still need to go back to the additional 2026 budget reductions. So we still
have two more agenda items. Yep. Number 10. Council, I move to open for discussion regarding the possibility
of increasing lit special purpose tax for 2026.
second all right we got a motion in a second I'm just gonna go on the record as I said it before I'm
not interested nor am I okay with doing the special purpose tax I definitely think it's something for
us to look into this for the following year but increasing the lit by doing this right now after going
through all that we've gone through this evening I am
Yeah, so that's just my take, but I'm willing to have other people give their taking counselor Henry
you're up next. Thank you. This is an item I had requested to be discussed this evening I some of this
may be man president I agree, maybe overcome by events because we've had a lot of discussion about other
instruments at our disposal here.
I am only raising this back up because trying to evaluate all the things we have at our fingertips to
get to a balanced budget. I don't need to remind the counselors that were sitting here before I was
sitting here that the lowering of the special purpose lit for juvenile services from the .085 to the
.03 was an action you all took in the development of the jail corrections lit.
with the idea that it was a temporary reduction to eventually be increased. And so I think, if anything,
it's really just revisiting that that was a concept that was
And to keep it you know at the tips of our tongue this is something that if it needs to be revisited
you think we just heard indication that maybe it's another year on this but I think it's worth raising given.
the budget cycle we're facing, the budget cycles we are facing in the future about preserving juvenile
services, particularly because we know it's a dedicated lit, but it's not, again, one way or another,
advocating the raise of that or lowering of that that happened before my time here, but it is one of
the tools in the toolkit that need to be at least surfaced in terms of the temperature of the body to
consider raising again. Yes, Councilor Hock. Right.
In anticipation of this evening, I'd asked to have this, so I just had to look it up myself. I thought,
okay, quit waiting on somebody else to do your work, just do it. When you look at Indiana Code 6-3.6-7-16,
which is from a new county special purpose, additional rate to fund the operation and maintenance of
a juvenile detention center
or facilities providing juvenile services. The very last paragraph there says revenues raised from a
tax imposed under this section may be used only to fund the operation and maintenance of a juvenile
detention center and other facilities to provide juvenile services. So that means we can do a detention
center, which we had pledged, we don't, that's not our
priority and the other facility is our shelter. So for any reason, if somebody thinks that they can
start moving expenses over into this fund that is strictly for juvenile services, I'm going to yell
bloody murder all the way to the state because this is for the kids. This is not for somebody else's
fund to move operations or extra insurance or whatever into
But I will happily support taking them back to the rate that they need to so that our youth shelter
can operate and they don't have to worry about they're going to be able to make payroll. But I want
to remind you that to begin with,
Our juvenile probation officers were not supposed to be included in this and because they were included
in the welfare budget. We had four juvenile probation officers in the welfare budget. But when the welfare
was taken over by the state and they said, no, no, we're not going to cover those because we shouldn't
have to begin with. We were pulling something to get them covered.
And so I met with Steve Galvin out in the hallway, and I said, well, let's look at this legislation.
Well, it says if we do services for this facility, and so in some of the other counties we had visited,
the probation officers worked right there in their facility. And I said, I think we could cover these
if they're working there in the facility. Well, now from four, it's gone to 10,
And it's very expensive, and they're not operating in our facility. But I don't object to them going,
you know, whatever. But I don't want them to think that they're in charge of this money, because this
money is for the kids. And I feel strongly about that. And I hope that you do as well. I'm going to
look to the auditor's office
for help on this because my understanding is maybe right now for 26, that we have a pretty decent balance
in there. However, for next year for 27, this is something that we need to keep in the forefront and
maybe not necessarily something that we need to do as of right now. Am I correct on that?
we provided the analysis that was the consensus like we need to revisit it it's trending down however
carly's pulling information now to share more detail got it thank you madam president yes you might
also want to look at it instead of
raising it back up where it was because that was allowing them to not them. I mean, it was growing funds
for millions more than what was needed. So rather than replace it back up to where it was, maybe just
another smaller percent and do it gradually as it might be needed. But that's always been a very healthy
budget because income taxes have been
And I see it's displayed on the screen. We have the four be pulled up for this fund, and we do show
a projection of this fund ending twenty twenty six with one point one five two million. Obviously that's
not comfort level, but it's definitely not zero.
We heard from folks over here. Does anybody else over here have any questions or comments? Yes, Councillor
Wilts. So I've spoken about this before. I think that we should increase the lit special purpose this
year in anticipation of changes
across all kinds of lit in the future. And I think this is a good time to do this in addition to the
idea that the trend is downward on the balance in that fund. I know that's not a super strong argument.
I mean, it is not unhealthy.
Like you said, the auditor said, it's not where you might want it, but we certainly can implement the
levy at some future point. Doing it now though, prevents us from getting backed into, oh my gosh, Youth
Services Bureau needs a new whatever, and we don't have the money to pay for it.
you know, we have to go to a bond or something like that. I mean, traditionally, that's kind of how
this has worked. I also I have mentioned using this for expanded services for specifically for youth.
I wasn't ever, I don't know, because you keep mentioning Councilor Hawke about spending it, moving it
to other things. That's never been my intent at all. But I have thought that, you know, with the health of this
revenue source that providing other youth services might be appropriate. But that requires looking at
the legislation much more closely than I have as of yet. But I digress. I think we should increase it,
if not the whole way, a little bit because I think that
the timing is appropriate given what's going on with property taxes and then ultimately income taxes
in the future, likely. What was it we cut it by, the percent? I don't remember. I think it was like
.2. That sounds right, but that doesn't, it's a point. What was the cut
Okay. Anybody else have as we're pulling that information? What is your thoughts on this information?
I have it right here. Jeff McKinn 0.08 5% we cut it to 0.03 0%. So let's say if you took it back up,
but not back up to the .085. Because if you remember when we took it to the .085 to begin with, which
was a major jump, and they said then, well, if that's bringing in more money than what you need, then
you could just go in there and reduce it. We never did. We just let it grow, and it was sitting there
was several million. So I'm not objecting to
making them whole. They just don't need to be sitting there with millions. So remind me who is paying
for this? Who pays this lit? Oh, everybody who lives. Right. So anybody who makes income gets charged
whatever this percentage is. Is that true? Okay. Thank you.
And live and work well work in Monroe, right? Or did if they live live in Monroe, OK, but if they live
in Monroe and work in India, they still get paid. They have to do the lit hit. It's here you live. OK,
so it's based on where you live, not where you work, OK? So because this is a discussion and there is
no motion for anything.
to figure out what if there is an appetite to do. We can add it to the 8th discussion since we're already.
I mean, if. Yeah, only thing I would caution is there's an entire process to change the local income
tax, which requires a public hearing 10 days notice before the hearing.
And if you want it to go into effect for January, that entire process has to be completed by October
31st. So I don't know that a discussion on the 8th gives you time to complete that process. Let me ask
her a question. If we were to do it, say, in January or February, when would it be collected? So if
you pass it between September 1st to October 31st, January 1st is the effective collection date.
and I think if you pass it November 1st to December 31st, the collection date becomes October 1st of
the preceding year. Following you following following, yeah, so sorry, technically collected October
26. Is that yes, correct? Yes, what if we waited till January? Would it still happen in 26? Or are you
saying that?
I think it would be in 2727. Okay, thanks. So again, it's 1034. And I'm not saying anything about time.
I'm just saying it's 1034. And this is just a discussion. And we again, if this is something that somebody
wants to go forward on, I personally think
what's even more than to talk about this now and to act on this now. Otherwise, we are cutting everything
close at the end of October. Any direction? I'm going to say if people aren't making a motion, then
I think that's a conversation that is ceased.
and that is something that we need to think about in the forefront going for next year. So, all right.
Pursuant to Councilman Deckard's motion, we are now going back to the additional 2026 budget reductions.
Is there anybody that would like to make any other type of reductions
Please make a comment. Yes, Councilor Iverson. I don't have another reduction, but I also, if there
are no other comments on this line item, I'm wondering if we need to revisit the draft of the temporary
hiring freeze this evening.
table this item till next week? The reduction item? The total reduction item? Is that sure necessary
or reasonable? I don't have anything else. This was I put that on there in case you guys had more reductions
that you wanted to do that didn't come to me. So this was like a totally just in case.
I don't care. I personally don't like. If we're going to have another reduction then we probably should
talk about it now otherwise we're gonna look into building a long agenda for the eighth. And possibly
kicking other stuff down the road- until the fourteenth. And I don't want to do that and I don't think
we want to do that either.
we have in order to give if people go home now and we'll think about what we've done today plus we can
figure out you know the numbers of the the movement of things now some people might want to have a a
discussion of it but again whatever we I would hope that whatever we do now we get ourselves ready for
the eighth so by the 14th it's all good so I
I mean, we can add it to the eighth, but again, we're making that longer, and we're also making staff
do more things longer as well, too. So again, anybody got any reductions for 2026? All right. So seeing none.
We'll come back to the draft of the higher and freeze. Yes, counselor file. So the hiring freeze is
what you want to talk about now. Is that what you're saying? Well, because I know we were saying that
we wanted to go through and look at
the draft that Miss Turner King was looking at. I mean, we can look at it, but again, that's something
that we can also push to the eighth as well too. If that is the will of all seven of us still sitting
here and having that conversation, let's talk about it. Yes, Councilor Williams. I think it needs work,
but I'm in favor of implementing it right away. The main thing that needs to
that we need to do. Um maybe be tweaked tonight is that exhibit a part. Um because we need to give people
actively hiring some guidance. Like where in the process are they to stop? Um Miss Turner King.
display the original resolution or the draft resolution that I just made? I would think the one that
you just made that you were working on, the most up to date. Yeah, we'll go from there. Maybe I drafted
it. Maybe I made it better. I don't know. I didn't touch any of the whereas clauses. Excellent. Good work.
So it says upon passage of this resolution, the council immediately implements a higher fees on all
full and part time staff positions within Monroe County government. No elected official and or department
head shall hire full time or part time staff without receiving advanced written approval and or it'll
say without receiving
approval and permission from the council, which must occur during a notice public meeting. The hiring
freeze applies to all departments and all positions, including transfers within positions, within departments
and between departments. Just to be clear, no department is exempt from said hiring freeze. Two, I added,
was the process for elected officials and or department head to request to hire a position, hire and
or transfer
into a position as an exemption to this resolution. So in the event that an elected official and or
department head wishes to request to hire a position or make a transfer as an exemption to this resolution,
the elected official and or department head shall be responsible for informing the council administrator
In writing that they wish to fill a position and or make the transfer said request can be submitted
via email to the council office kind of like we do vacancies right now. The council administrator will
immediately forward to the elected official and or department heads request to the entire council and
employee services administrator.
If the Council wishes or requests to discuss at a public meeting of the Council the possibility of allowing
the elected official and or department head to continue with the hiring and or transfer their requested
position, providing an exemption to this resolution, then the Council members shall notify the Council
Administrator within 48 hours exempting weekends and holidays after the notice is sent.
If no council member requests to discuss at a public meeting the possibility of allowing the elected
official or department head to continue with the hiring of the requested position, underlined in bold,
then the elected official and or department head shall not move forward with the hiring and or transfer
of the requested position as the hiring freeze would be applicable. So default no unless someone wants
to talk about it. And then it talks about that if
If a person if a department receives an exemption, they have to provide the council signature page to
employee services to document that they were exempt. And then I didn't change this, but it's if employee
services or council office becomes aware that someone didn't follow this policy. That's the consequence.
Resolution effective December 30, 31st or 2026. And then the resolution will be effective as the date
of passage.
However, council exempts the ongoing hiring processes as delineated below. And what I did was I went
back and I looked through all of the department responses and I listed them here. And so you can decide
which ones you want to keep, which ones you don't. So airport operations, they posted and received resumes.
Internal auditor, the position is posted and it's set to close on October 10th.
commercial building inspector. They received permission to fill, posted it, but took it down because
they didn't have qualified applicants. These two, in all honesty, don't matter because they're already
hired, so I'm going to strike through those. Health identified that there's a disease intervention
specialist. Their job was posted on the 17th of this month. They're collecting applications and currently
screening.
Health Services Director posted on April 24th, and they extended an offer on the 15th, completing pre-hire
steps, but I don't really know what that means. Same for the administrative assistant, posted in July,
extended offer. Highways said they anticipated having a truck driver in a part-time hourly line, but
they didn't say when. The public defender has
extended an offer with the applicant set to start on the 20th of October. The sheriff's office identified
two vacant mayor-deputy positions, which they are actively recruiting for and accepting applications
in effort to begin a new selection process. There's a GIS technician where they're conducting interviews.
The mortgage deputy in the treasurer's office offer extended and accepted. Support technician offer
extended and accepted.
Although TSD did not identify in their response that they have a full-time support technician, I think
after they respond, they did submit a request to fill a vacancy. So I put support technician question
mark. That was like within the last 48 hours, something like that. And then YSB has a clinical coordinator.
They're currently interviewing, but have an extended office offers.
There's a counselor at YSB and a part-time direct care staff, which are all in the advertising process.
So some of those, like beginning at H, I, and J, I don't see departments correlated with the, like for
instance in J, it says part-time hourly. What department is that? It's highway. So the truck driver
and the part-time hourly line are both in highway. Okay, and then also H.
H is health. And how would we know that from this? You wouldn't, but I can make that clarification.
I would like clarification on which departments they're in, if that's possible. But then the question
is, do you want to keep the list as is? My suggestion would be like for support technician part time,
if an offer has been extended and accepted and same thing for the public defenders, it seems like they're
through the process.
I would take them off, but that's just me. What's what's the lead in? Right, what's the lead into the
list? ABC? Is that what you're talking about? No, I mean, what does it say? The list is that the Council
exempts the ongoing hiring process processes as delineated below, so they're exempt and they can continue
moving forward with the hiring of these positions and I can clarify that.
Yes, Councilor Decker. Just for historical record, do you think it would be possible on seven to add
a slightly exempt the ongoing hiring processes as dealing delineated? It's not my word delineated below.
Something comma which were underway during adoption, just so that folks don't think that. Which is yeah
Christmas listed a few things that were cool. Yeah.
Okay. Is there any other further talking points? When you finish that, could you go down to the bottom
of the list of the positions again? I just want to see the bottom again when you finish. So to Councilor
Deckard's request, now seven says,
To be clear, this would allow for the elected official and or department head to continue hiring the
following positions. The positions were exempted as the hiring process had been initiated prior to the
adoption of this resolution. Unfortunately, because of the page break, I don't know that there's a good
way to get all of them on. I think that's fine. I just want to see the bottom of the exemptions now.
I missed some of that. I mean, K is an offer and accept it.
N is an offer and accept it, and O is an offer and accept it. And so it seems like those would, I would
suggest considering making those exempt. You mean taking them off the list? Correct. Well no, by exempt
I mean they would stay, because the list would be these are the positions for which you're allowed to
continue the process. And so like when I marked out
Well, those are already there. But if you take them off the list, it's saying the hiring freeze applies
and you have to stop this process immediately. Yes. Yeah. Immediately is pretty strong. That's what's
in the resolution of the part time hourly line. And Jay, what is that? The highway also. It's highway.
OK. And I just want to get their response. There wasn't any information that I saw beyond that.
Just the department, I think, is enough. And then go on down past L. Thank you. Okay. So seeing what
we see here,
Is there other discussion that needs to be added to this? Or are y'all wanting to punt this to the eighth?
Yes, Councillor Iverson. I like what's on the screen, and I would, council, move to approve resolution
2025-42. Second. All right. So for clarity, by approving this, you're not editing that list at all,
we're just leaving
A through S. Yep. Okay. Okay. So there's a motion and a second on that item. Is there any other further
discussion? Yes, Councillor Iverson. I think it bears to say and I know we still have quite a few people
watching in this late hour. This is the in the same category as longevity with me. This is not done
with any type of joy. This is done with a heavy heart.
These are really difficult times. This is one of those difficult decisions that we have to make.
And I just, you know, I think I want to make it really clear that we are doing everything we can right
now to make sure that this community stays strong. And I just, we are doing our very best here. So thank
you for understanding. Yes, Ms. Turner-King.
I would suggest taking D and E out for clarity because those positions have already started, so they're
not in the hiring process. They're through the hiring process. I agree. There you go. Okay. And if council's
okay with it, I would like to clean up A through Q now just to identify the department and the position
and probably add the
or some other identifying mechanism and take out where we are in the hiring process, because I don't
think it needs to be included. Yeah, I think that I consent with that into my motion. So the motion
is to adopt this with the contingency that I'm cleaning up A through Q and putting it in some form.
That's right. Okay. Thanks, everybody.
So if there is any other further question or comment on this item, anybody? Bueller? Passage. All right.
I guess we've got to go to public comment on this item. If there's public comment on this item and you're
still watching, you can raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, can we please have a roll call vote?
I'm sorry. OK, OK. Alright, we got a hand raise. You please unmute yourself. State your name and you'll
have up to three minutes. Hi, this is Kelly Whitmer. I'm the director Monroe County Parks and Recreation.
I just want a clarification. We have after school recreation staff that is in the process of being hired
and they're going for criminal background checks. I don't know where.
they land on that list of yours? That's all I guess that's all I have to say. I mean, if we need to
cancel after school programs or day camp programs, we're gonna need to know soon. Those positions are not
in the list that I had displayed in the resolution as I don't think they were mentioned in the parks
response. Sorry, so I didn't know that the hiring process was ongoing. Well, I thought we were already
hired but weren't and we're picking up some more after school instructors and unfortunately they're
like 17 years old so they have to put their parents to go.
or either get a notary for a criminal background check or actually take off work and go to the Sheriff's
Department. So this has been quite a disaster week for us trying to get these after school kids hired.
And when I emailed you, Molly, I didn't realize that and I didn't realize it would go to someone who
worked four hours a week or maybe four weeks teaching basketball
For clarity, if council wants to include these in that list, how many employees are you talking about
hiring for those after school programs? Is it? I mean, we're in the process. I mean, we're trying to
get the paperwork is arduous. We're trying to get the paperwork in the last two weeks. I mean, we're
talking about maybe, I think we have maybe two more to hire. I don't know where they're edited.
get to the Sheriff's Department for the criminal background check or not. I don't I don't know if they
made it there today. I mean, this is how close we are of getting these kids hired. You know, if not,
we need to tell the parents at Unionville that we need, you know, because without the staff we can't
have the program. So I need to note basically tonight if we're having this program or not,
Okay, how many people do you normally hire to administer the program? She was, I think we might have
six counselors or six instructors, but most of them are all hired. We just have one or two. I'd have
to call my athletic, I mean, my recreation director to double check where she's at in the hiring process.
I mean, we're so close. We're almost at the finish line.
I mean, I can follow your foot. Can you tell the people or conditions? First case scenario, you have
two options. You can include parks, counselors in this resolution now. And I don't know how many like
to put, or worst case scenario, once you have more information that
the process is in place. Ms Whitmer would email that request to Kim and then it would go to full council
if council wishes to hear it. Okay. Um. My only concern is if we have this, are there other departments
that potentially could be doing the same thing and missed a time where we're doing this? However,
We are putting in something that says if they would like to not be exempt from, you know, the hiring
freeze, then they can come to council email and go from there. So this is literally a test. I mean,
I did. We're about to put it forward in the email that I sent to councils or to department heads and
elected officials. It was pretty specific. And the first question was, do you have vacancies? And then
where are you at in the hiring process? I received
I think 21 responses. And so, I mean, if they didn't respond, I don't know about them. And so I don't.
Yes, Councillor Wells. I consider this a response. I mean, it's a clarification of the response that
was given. Can we indicate that the on the underway hiring
of these seasonal parks employees and you can edit as you see fit just like you are with the other positions
that don't have details are on that list. I mean, I'm happy to already getting background checks. That's
pretty far along. So then
it sounds like maybe somebody can amend the motion to include those two or however many positions there
are with this. Again, we're doing this and I understand this is a response, but I also understand if
we're sending out emails and whatnot and we don't get feedback back, then it's really hard for staff
to do what they can. So I think at this time, maybe that's a motion or that's something that we can
entertain where we can amend it. Yes.
I'd like to move that the underlying resolution be amended under Exhibit A to include two additional,
whatever that's called, camp afterschool coordinators from parks. Need a second? Hey, Kate. Oh, I didn't hear you.
Okay, so we got a motion and a second to amend. Is there any questions on the amendment? Yes, Councilor
Pytel. So I like the amendment, but I'm concerned. I don't know the county, all the county employees
that well yet. And I'm concerned about other seasonal employees, if there are any. So I don't know if
there are any in the whole workforce. So I would like to include all seasonal employees, if that's the
case. If not, then I'm fine with what they suggested. But then I think to that point is,
again if people are if we don't know and it comes up again that is on that particular elected slash
department head to send the email and then it's up to us to look at the email respond to it so that
it can get bumped back into council for approval I just don't want to miss it you know in all fairness
yeah so I hope we can not miss those yeah I I
I think it'll all be coming back over and over under this. Yes, counselor. This amendment doesn't apply
to even the parks seasonals. I mean, this is we just added the ones that are currently in process and
they'll have a whole slew of folks that they'll have to come before us with. Yeah. Can I say one thing? Yes.
I just, I'm on the phone with my recreation director. She says we only have one employee who has all
her paperwork and she's supposed to start to work tomorrow. Her parents are supposed to go to the sheriff's
department for the criminal background check. That's how close we are with that one employee. Yes. I'm
going to go to Ms. Turner King. Can I ask Ms. Whitmer a point of clarification?
Are you saying you only need an exemption to continue with the hiring process for one employee?
Because what? Well, I'm on the phone and she said. Everyone else has completed everything except one
employee starts tomorrow, but her parents have to take off work to get to the Sheriff's Department in
order to have a criminal back. She's like, hold this, she's 17. She's 17 years old. One one one position
one person. She's
She teaches that after school, what sport? What sport? What sport? She's teaching flight football. And
she's supposed to start tomorrow. Is she starting before the battle?
complete? No no her parents are her parents are get her parents hopefully get there in the morning and
she's hopefully to work in the afternoon. She's supposed to be there after school tomorrow but parents
are supposed to be at the apartment in the morning. So couldn't we just in the interest of time just
add this position that she's talking about and the other positions and kind of keep it moving?
I feel like, again, we got the amendment that's on the floor here. I want to remind us of that. So I
would assume Councilor Deckard's amendment includes that position. And anything that's after that, once
this goes into effect, should this pass, then this goes on to the department head to bring this back
to council so that council, we get the email and we make do and that's on us to bring it back.
the question. So I started. I just want to show you what I was doing while I was working through that.
Um, I started this the chart to populate, so it'll say department head title, the position. I'll work
with Miss Kim to do the account line. And then I added this other column given this interesting park
situation to identify if it's a full time part time or seasonal position. And so I'm going to populate
that chart.
The other quick question that came to mind, sorry, but some of these are pretty open. So I don't know
when the highway is going to have a vacancy for truck driver. I don't know when they're going to start
the process. Is this a blanket go forth and hire? Or does this exemption expire and then they have to
follow the process after a certain time? Because I don't know how quickly the Sheriff's Office will
get a hiring process going.
one truck driver, right? It's not. Yeah. And that's why I'm wondering, do we limit it? That's why I
added the account line so that we could. But they said they anticipated being vacant. I don't know.
So again, we can maybe go back to the overall there, but the amendment is the two positions to add in
right now. So. I'm going to go to that. All those in favor of counselor Deckard's
amendment as presented. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right,
motion carries. Now we come back to the overall resolution and now we can discuss whether or not there
is a expiration for some of these positions that are listed. However, there is nothing in the pipeline
for these.
So then do we, would November 1st be for those that are open? That's what I was gonna suggest.
December 1st, November 1st. You know, it's tomorrow is October 1st, they got one month to figure it
out. And then just like Cinderella, it all turns into pumpkins and then they can come back to council
for that. Absolutely. All right. Add a line up here.
So in number seven, I added this exemption grants departments until November 1st to hire and or transfer
into the positions below. If the vacancy remains after November 1st, the elected official and or department
head must engage in the process identified above. So if it's vacant after November 1st. Send us an email.
Awesome. OK, so.
I think we've exhausted this, but just in case anybody else has any other questions, does anybody have
any questions or comments? Please, God, no. All right. Public comment. All right. If you got a public
comment on this item, if you're still here, please come forward to the lectern here in the night. You
can raise your hand via Teams. You'll have up to three minutes. Yes, Miss Turner King.
I received a clarifying question, and I don't have the answer to. When we say the exemption
grants departments until November 1 to hire, does that mean a person has to have started by November
1, an offer has to be extended by November 1? What is the will of the council? Personally, I think the
will for me is you have to be in the pipeline. I'm thinking if November 1 comes
We come to November 1st, and that position is still open, and there is no resumes. There is no action.
Then it's closed. But that's me. I don't know about anybody else feeling that same way. So there has
to be an accepted offer by November 1st, or they just have to have resumes and be interviewing? I think
you have to have something in the pipeline.
I mean, all of these positions are already posted. So we are going to have to be beyond interviews or,
I don't know. Say it. Offer extended? Sure. Just to get some sort of, I don't know. OK. My thought is
offer extended because somewhat
start date is beyond the department heads control because now we're getting into whoever the applicant
is accepting the position has to give notice to their current employer if they have one and So offer
extended by November 1st offer extended Okay to I'm gonna put the exception grants departments until
November. Oh, well, I'm just gonna read what I'm gonna type This exemption grants departments until
November 1st to extend an offer
to hire and or transfer into the positions below. If the vacancy remains after November 1st, the process
as identified above governs. Sounds like a plan. Does anybody have any other discussion on this?
All right, may we please have a roll call vote? Crossley, yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.