and lovely departmental budget updates. I would like to note for the record, a little loud in here,
for the record, we have counselor Deckard online, hello, and we have a quorum of council members present.
We have Henry, Iverson, Wilts, and Feidl, and we will go ahead and get started.
Does anybody wish to add or remove any items from tonight's agenda? Okay, so we just need a motion.
Council, I move to approve tonight's budget work session. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second
to approve tonight's agenda as presented. Any questions or comments from council on this item?
Seeing none. All right, and so because we have a council member present online everything we do tonight
will be a roll call vote. So maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes.
Motion passes unanimous. Okay.
Thank you. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of everything tonight, I just want to give a special
thank you to all the departments that have done the due diligence for you and your staff and staff and auditors.
for working throughout this entire process. I understand there's been some issues with DOGF and Gateway,
but as the world turns, we are adapting and adjusting accordingly. So many thanks to you all for doing
that. This year, I am going to keep us to task and we will be as efficient as possible. And I want to
remind everybody that this is not
This is not the final approval of 2027. That actually comes, the public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday,
October 6th, starting at five o'clock. And the final budget adoption for the 2027 budgets will be Tuesday,
October 20th, starting at five p.m. The public will be able to make comments at that time, or during
those meetings at that time, but there's no public comment during our budget presentations.
As I mentioned, and you all received the president's letter as well, I want to make sure and emphasize
there's a lot of work that has been put into developing the 2027 budgets. And so we want to highlight
that. However, we do ask and I ask very humbly that we keep everybody to task. And so you all have received
your time limits. We ask that you stick to your time limits. When you hear or
On the screens, I know it's small, but you'll be able to see your time. And then when you hit to five
minutes, you will hear the following. Okay. And then we will also highlight the five minutes. And then
when you get to one minute, you will also hear. Yes. And then you will see this as well.
I know it might seem a little silly, but I just want to make sure, and to be respectful of your time
as well, and staff. We don't want you all spinning. You could be anywhere in the world, but you are
avoiding the hot world out here, and you're in here with us. So we appreciate that, but we will be efficient.
OK. Other than that, we will go ahead and get started. So I will start.
with our overview of revenues. And so I'm going to ask the auditor to give a brief anticipated 2027
review of what we're looking at before we get started. Yes. Thank you, counsel. I appreciate this opportunity.
First, I just want to draw your attention to these binders that we created for all of the counselors.
You received the same information in the email format that it's in these binders. We just did the physical
format for some of the counselors, okay? All the counselors, but some prefer that method. So I want
to draw your attention to the second document.
And it's also in your email. And Carly has it populated on the screen there for the public. This is
what we plan to present to you every meeting as time allows for us to do so. You know, sometimes we
have a very quick turnaround, you know, between the time that we are making the adjustments to the budget
and the next meeting. So as time allows, we will have this updated for each meeting.
A couple of other things before we start going through this document, just very quickly, as Council
President highlighted, we've had some gateway issues. We're using a new budget system, Budget 2.0, through
the Indiana Gateway, and with anything new, you know, there's
sometimes some hiccups involved and the DLGF has been great about working through those. Unfortunately,
we are at a standstill right now on the 4B section. Our rate controlled funds are not populating the
levy they should. So I haven't gotten a response today from the DLGF. I'm confident they're working
on it and I'll give you an update tomorrow.
For now, we have this beautiful spreadsheet to work from. You can reconcile it to the DLGF budget forms
that we have, for example, the maximum levy, et cetera. Everything's on here. The revenue has been added
to Gateway. It's been audited. That is correct, and that will tie out here as well. The June 30th numbers
can be reconciled with Lau, our financial software. So everything is in there now, and this is where
we are starting from until changes are made.
So if you want to look at the simple calculation, that is the overview of all funds that we budget during
these budget sessions. So it doesn't include the grant funds and things we're not viewing at this time,
but includes everything else. So you'll start with the maximum property tax levy. Then we're adding
in that major bridge fund levy, which is
outside the max there, miscellaneous revenue, and then we're taking out the tax cap impact, the estimated
number that we get from the state, the Department of Local Government Finance. Then you have your total
estimated revenue there in that darker green. From there, we have the requested budget adjustments from
the Gateway Form 1. This does not include the advertising amounts that we put in to kind of inflate
that budget, so we have maximum flexibility.
Before the COLA amounts, the 2% COLA, we took 40% of those budgets and added that number in just to
give you maximum flexibility to be able to move budgets around. So this number is without that 40% increase.
We then removed the rainy day and bond appropriation. One, we don't know what we're doing with the bond
yet, right? So we don't have the revenue represented nor do we have the proposed budget represented
yet. That will come later.
And rainy day we don't intend on spending that right. So it it kind of unfairly inflates that budget
and then the deficit as well. OK. From there we're taking out that rainy day and bond appropriation
to get the total estimated expense. And then finally you have that simplified difference which is you
know the where we
either have a plus or a minus. Here we are positive. We're not starting with a deficit overall.
Now again, I want to remind you this is all the revenue and all of the budget. So we need to look at
a fund by fund basis, but this is where we are overall. So if you look on down then, we have a deep
dive calculation within the levy funds. And this shows you just those levy funds. It includes the rate
controlled funds and shows you
you know, where we are as far as those funds. And this is kind of where we need to concentrate and ensure
that we are going to have positive balances and that we have a sufficient operating balance to get us
through. So I'm happy to entertain questions, but this is what I want you to be familiar with. Obviously,
gateway is the best source once it's up and running properly anyway. So. Very much for that.
And to note for the record, we have Councillor Hogg joining us as well. Does anybody have any questions
on this item? Yes, Councillor Iverson. So for members of the public who are looking at their screens,
they're seeing here our levy funds have a negative $11.1 million. How is that, how do you reconcile
that with the above simplified budget?
Yeah, so the levy funds, obviously, we're just looking at the levy funds there. It's not accounting
for all of the other sources of revenue that we're looking at budgets for as well. So this deficit in
the levy funds, it's also not, it's representing just revenue versus expenditures, right?
taking into consideration the current cash balances. So for example, I know that the highway department
is planning, they're in the middle of a major project and they intend to go into some of their reserves.
It's been planned and so that deficit to me is not concerning. It's been planned, they've discussed
it with their liaisons and it's just been in the works. So we need to look at that
look at that that way as well. If there is a sufficient reserve that we intended on using for a special
project, et cetera, you might have some wiggle room there. Does that answer your question? I think it
does, and I think it's also helpful to note that the non-LEVI funds has the similar negative number
at the bottom, and the same explanation goes for that as well, right? It does.
We're gonna provide that information to the best of our ability, but I don't tend on presenting on all
of the other funds. It's just there as a tool, if you'd like it. Understood, okay. Yes, Councillor Hawke.
Yes. Perhaps in this stack of paperwork, it tells us very simply, here's what the total of the levy
fund requests are, and here's what the revenue is.
And so it's probably in that form right there. But when I was looking at it, what you put online, it
certainly did make it look like as if we were going to not end up with a good operating balance on several
of those funds. So if you looked at what our levy revenue is going to be in that max levy, we're going
to spread that out amongst some other funds. The county general won't get all of it.
So I think the one issue I looked at was that health department. So did you discuss that? If I may respond,
I that's a great point, Councillor Hawk, that I should have highlighted. We left with the exception
of the general fund, all of the levies as they were last year for this for twenty twenty six budgets
so that we could move those around together. So
everything extra, any additional revenue has been applied to the general fund. But obviously we're going
to have to move things around. And I'm assuming you're going to have some changes to the budget as well.
So we can address everything together. And is this taking into consideration the directive not to put
anything in the edit fund? It is.
That was like five million or something. Currently, there's nothing budgeted in that edit fund. However,
I'll let the council answer that question. And I will say for the record, I did ask for us to put some
or use the edit fund. And I did have a conversation with commissioners about that. So they're up tomorrow
for their budget.
And so we can have that conversation. But again, I did ask, because obviously we use training and travel,
different things. I know Highway Department is coming back and wanting to do that. I think airport is
as well. There is obviously a need for us to use that in order, I would think, to make sure that we
can give folks their COLA increases that would help us
greatly if we could use that. Yes, Councillor Iverson. Since you brought up COLA, is the cost of a living
adjustment for our employees baked into these numbers? It certainly is. This is the updated version
after the 2% COLA has been added. And just a quick shout out to all of our departments for helping us
get that turned around. Thank you.
So if there is no further questions, we will go ahead and get started. And we will have the first budget
hearing presentation with the public defenders. But I forgot to mention, too, and for counsel, that
each department will get through their entire budget presentation. So if there's any questions that
you all have for them, let's hold on until after their entire presentations are over. And then we'll
ask. But I'll also ask counsel, let's stick to
questions related to the 2027 budget. All right. Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund
1000-0271 County General Public Defender, as well as fund 1200-0000 Public Defender Supplemental. Second.
All right, we got a motion and a second and we're joined by Mr. Hunt and other stuff, welcome. And.
Thank you. Yeah.
I'm Michael Hunt from the Public Defender's Office, and I have with me today Heather Stufel, my executive
assistant, and Don Freeman, who's one of our
system navigators that we're going to talk about so I brought her. We did have that we were going to
bring Judge Holly Harvey since she deals with the system navigators but she is in French Lick at a judicial
conference and so I've submitted a letter that we just received from her for the council when we talk
about that. The other thing is Mr. Joe Lozano one of our board members
Plan to be here, but he got stuck in a deposition somewhere down south. So I will try to be brief The
our effort was to comply with the requests On the budget and we think we have Except in a couple of
places and one being the system navigator positions those were on a grant and the grant has been phasing
out and so this time
for the for twenty twenty seven, the we're asking the council to fund the entire amount, which I think
is 40 percent more than what we funded last year. We do get reimbursed for that also. The letters, I
think both from my chief deputy, Ms. Emmerich and from Judge Harvey explain
the usefulness and the necessity for these positions. They help immensely. DCS, because of their growth,
our caseload in that area has grown immensely and those cases move very rapidly because they involve
children and they involve a lot of paperwork and talking with clients and relatives and
DCS people, and you can see, as Phyllis says, the work involved that helps our attorneys then process
the cases. Other than those, and we can talk about those more in detail, I think other than the COLA,
the step increases, and the qualifications, we've tried to freeze the budget at this year's rate.
and I think I'll ask for questions if you have some. That was easy. Okay. Questions? Yes, Councilor
Iverson. Thank you for being here. My question is in fund location 0271 in your threes. In professional
services, we see a $70,000 increase. It's a new line it looks like. Can you talk about that?
Certainly. Last year, upon the suggestion of, I guess, the auditor, we used to call that special services.
And that is used for depositions and everything. And all they did is transfer it. They took that and
transferred it to a new line and call it professional services. So it's not really an increase. Great.
And you can see that, well, yeah, further down in the red, you can see that negative $70,000.
Thank you. Anybody else that has any questions on their budget? Okay. So may we please have, oh, okay.
Can we please have a roll call vote? Are we going to talk about
because we opened both budgets. Are you going to go ahead? Oh, I thought you did already. OK. OK,
I can. That's the general county general. The other one is our supplemental. And I think the only changes
in that are, again, the normal rate increases. I don't think we've changed anything else in that. And
that's the one that we get reimbursed. We try to keep that
under a million dollars because that's basically what I can count on coming back and reimbursement.
That all depends on how much we spend and so that's flexible and I think a couple years ago that was
problematical but I think we straightened that out and we're counting on and I think we're in line with
that this year to
get about $1 million, and that's roughly what the supplemental is. No questions on that. May we please
have a roll call vote? Mr. Henry? Can you clarify what the vote is again? We are voting to move it.
To pass this on. To move it forward. Yes, thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right. Next up is from the coroner's office.
Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1000-0007 County General Coroner. Second.
All right, we got a motion and a second and shortly we'll be joined by the coroner, Mr. Jeff Hall.
Good evening, Council. So as you can see with this year's budget, it's pretty standard to what it was
last year. The only minor increases were from the two percent COLA increase. And then we did add that
additional part time paid employed position of the eight thousand from earlier this year. I did make
some deductions and a few other of my
items in both the supplies category and the services category and also reduced my Transport fees from
last year to 50,000 instead of 55,000 after doing some reviews. So it's pretty standard all the way
across the board Any questions for mr. Hall, yes Yeah, thank you. Thank you for coming in. So let's
talk about the
the $5,000 off on the online 30020 transport bodies. Just guess, I mean, walk me through that. It's
just the monthly average is a little cheaper than what, if I average it out, it looks like you're going
to end the year around $44,000.
The company that we transport with, they charge a flat rate for a transport from Monroe County to Terre
Haute, where we do all our autopsies. And if we don't have families that have chosen a funeral home
to release those bodies to, then we provide transport back to Monroe County for that same flat rate.
I made it a point this year to really push for getting those bodies released to the funeral homes rather
quicker than bringing them back here to Monroe County, because unfortunately the only place that we
have for them to be stored in is the IU Health Hospital, and that does not
hold many bodies at a time. And so I get pushed back from the hospital if we have bodies just kind of
sitting in the more taking up space. So I made sure to reach out to my deputies and myself and said,
OK, let's really try to push for and get these bodies released to funeral homes, either post autopsy,
which in case we don't get charged for a transport back or if they get to get transported back, then
we make sure that we get them moving out very quickly. So basically, I've reduced the amount of transports
coming back than I had last year.
good. That's good stewardship. I appreciate it. Thank you. Other questions or comments? I think the
timers not working. Um, and obviously like your budget actually decreased from last year. So I was kind
of comparing what we had from this year to last year. And I, I just also want to
say thank you for looking at how we can save those dollars as much as possible without putting a strain
because you have a particular area that needs all. Correct. Yes. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other
questions or comments for Mr. Hall? Paused again. Sorry. No, it's okay. We'll just move forward with
the roll call vote to move this forward.
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.
Okay, next up is the Surveyor's Office. Council, I move to open for discussion and review Fund 1000-0006,
County General Surveyor, and Fund 1202-0000, Surveyor's Corner Perpetuation. Second. All right, we got
a motion and a second, and we're joined by the Surveyor, Mr. Randolph, welcome. Thank you. Well, I am
prepared. I would like to
introduce our survey technician Jason George. He's the senior full-time personnel and also the only
other person in the office that has administrative responsibilities. So I'm very grateful that he is
accompanying me today. And with that... Mr. Randolph, I'm sorry, I want to pause for a second. TSD,
can we get the timer going, please? I want to make sure you
Oh, it's going to be short and sweet. Don't worry. You're fine. I just want to make sure everybody can
see it. OK, proceed. It gets complicated because I have two funds and people kind of start overlapping.
Oh, yeah. With that said, I'm happy to be here. I have made a tradition to wear a blazer and once over
my nine years in the leadership role, I wore a tie. So with that said,
I'm going to, we're on general, right? So I'll run through it real quick. You see slight adjustments
due to COLA. Everything else is the same. Supplies $332.
Dues and training and travel total 10,126. The dues we pretty much burned down because those are not
just for my office, but they're for multiple offices for dues within the GIS space.
training and travel. As I always say, I'm not out here to spend things down. We have had a new hire,
so we kind of pulled back on just a little of that, but I do see us utilizing it in 2027 a lot more.
So just because we haven't spent it down doesn't mean it's important to retain that amount for 2027.
Also, that is not just exclusively for my office. That's also for other offices that are moving into that GIS
space. With that, the biggest adjustment has been my request for equal pay to other elected officials
and I just got a couple of bullet points. There's four full-time personnel in the office that do the
public land surveying system and also maintain the GIS system for the county. Also, there is typically
three part-time folks.
our office manager is part time, so I take a lot of the administrative role and Mr. George helps assist
me on that as well. I also serve on boards and commissions that really help define the growth of our
county. And one other thing about the GIS, you know, that's a cost benefit analysis kind of approach. So I
I don't have any metrics or ways to measure that. We have saved the county quite a bit of dollars and
efficiency and other types of resources from our growth and development in the space. With that said,
I'm hoping that you will approve the budget as is. And you can go on to the perpetuation fine. Just
do it all in one all in one. OK, this is new. Sorry.
Again, slight changes in personnel due to the COLA. I have reduced the field technician position due
to the corner fund is revenue generated fund and it's fluent. I'm seeing some upticks on that fund,
but until it gets back to
80, 85, I'm going to continue to just kind of chip away on my overall budget. So that's why you see
the reduction. I'm keeping the part time the same. I'm increasing board members by 1000 from last year
because we have an additional member. Honestly, if you are inclined to open the budget for any reason, I would
probably ask you to add an additional thousand dollars to that line, but I can come back for additional
appropriation. That's no issue. We'll move down to category two, office supplies same, fuel same. I'm
reducing field operating supplies by a thousand dollars. We buy things in bulk, so we've got a good
supply. Again, that's a reflection of the fact it's a revenue
generated fund that's fluent, so doing my due diligence of chipping away, I think we'll be fine on that.
Where to employee clothing and uniforms, it's the same. We actually haven't touched that fund, but we
do need a little bit of field equipment or clothing this year. We may bring in a field technician that's
usually around 200, 300 bucks to get them fully outfitted. So, you know, I would just request that we
leave it the same. I always expand on that one because every office doesn't have that line. Moving to
services, training and travel reduced by $3,000. The way I've been able to achieve that is basically
since this is a non-reverting fund, I should always mention that it's non-reverting. So anything we
don't spend, we'll go back to the corner fund.
But it has to be used for perpetuation efforts. So one thing we do is the Indiana Society of Professional
Land Surveyors. That is also a recognized course from the DLGF. So now that they changed the language
for the elected training fund, I have that plus one. So the reduction is reflective of us being able
to utilize that fund. So just wanted to kind of explain that since I have two different travel and training lines.
Survey archives, we reduced that by 50%, 500 to 250. We got a new plotter, so there might be some costs
associated with that. I was just going to put a dollar to leave that line alive, but we figured the
250 is fine.
Uh, miscellaneous, uh, we reduced that by 450 to a total of 2000 this year. Um, that's actually kind
of reflective of good housekeeping and creating lines that, um, are more, um, um, Relatable to what
the expenses that used to be a catchall. So now that we have different lines, this is kind of just a
reflection of good housekeeping and also chipping away at my overall budget. Um, we got the placeholders.
We all love the dollar placeholders. And then we got the geodetic coordinates. That used to be the line
that we paid our service agreements, but it's also the line that we pay for our corner documentation
program. We have seen an uptick from a new surveyor that came back into the community and started practicing
and is actually going through the program. So that's quite exciting.
Again, if you're inclined to open this budget, I would actually ask to move that line to 2500, but we
can come back for additional or we could probably do some in-house transfer. Again, no issue since it's
non-reverting. That's it. Where was I on time? You did awesome. That was great. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Thank you so much.
Does anybody have any questions or comments? Yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you, Madam President. Thank
you for coming in. I have two questions. I'll start with perpetuation and work my way back to the other.
So on one of our dollar holders, the account line 38002, last year we talked about the higher ed and
longevity. That was a program you were trying to use last year, right? Because I can't recall. We went
from $5,000 last year back to $1.
What happened there? Yeah. Uh, I finished my, uh, my survey training classes. So, uh, so we've, we've,
we've trained the person that was using it and we're going to, there's no reason to hold on to that.
And so do you anticipate the need to, to continue with that training program for others? And it's still
there, but no night, but I think leaving the dollars there really what I think is most important is
that is it shows the,
intention of investing in our employees with that line, even if it's not appropriated. It shows vision
of what this office wants to do and what it's going to continue to do by having that line there. No,
we have no ability to use it. We'll have to come back through a whole other agreement process and things
of that nature.
there won't even be any ability to do it in-house transfer. Well, congrats for completing the course.
And all right, very good. The other line I had just a question about was on the back in the other one.
It was the GIS technician line that was down. You had a reduction in salary from last year to this year.
Yes. What's the background on that? New hire. Our previous one, we were able to hire at eight year with the what?
knowledge, skills and ability. KSA and it's just they came in with a year of experience working at the
USGS and. We had a higher amount, the minimum though they'll be having a one year. Anniversary soon,
so we budgeted at the one year with the 2% increase cola. And thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you
also for a good budget.
And, you know, I'd love to see the correct cuts there. Indian Geological and Water Survey. Sorry, I
said that incorrect. That's where his previous experience was. It's 5.30. I'm out of words almost today.
Anyway, thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Yes, Councillor Hawke. Yes. And perhaps the legislation
has changed in some fashion, but it was that if you were not a licensed surveyor, and we said your salary was X,
then if you've got a licensed surveyor, it had to be more. Can he legally tell us that they're not that
still in place? Because it was always, you have to watch what you say for the salary because then...
You're correct. We had this discussion before. If Ms. Turner-Keene wants to address it, or I'm happy
to as well.
can work on finding the statute but in essence it says that if you have a licensed surveyor you have
to pay them 1.5 times the amount of an unlicensed surveyor and I'm looking up the statute. I don't intend
we have a professional surveyor in the office so we're already achieving that work. If a licensed surveyor comes
into the office and is elected, I think the council has a whole other discussion in front of them because
that's two licensed surveyors. It also has nothing in that statute that man's date the licensed surveyors
stamp any of the products being done in the office and it also has a provision that they can run their
private firm out of the surveyors office. So I think this has been a blocking point due to a concern,
I won't say a fear,
But a concern, and I don't think that concern really should hold me or the surveyor's position at a
less pay of other elected officials, especially with very similar size offices and operations, but also
like a very high skill set crew that comes to the office every day and works and just our production
should be measured in a way, Marty,
or council, council member Hawk. Basically, what I said last time is, you know, like. We have a higher
standard at the surveyors office, and this is a way to reflect that higher standard, and the council
needs to hold that office accountable and holding them back by 10 percent. I don't think is
the correct thing to do in my opinion. So, uh, uh, county, the old department, if for some reason, um,
our surveyor would decide to move to California or Florida or some, uh, Sunshiny state, and we had a
replacement, uh, and they were a licensed surveyor, we would have to pay one, one and a half times what
his salary is now. Is that correct? It's been so long.
I think the applicable statute is Indiana code 36 to 1215 and it says when fixing the compensation of
County of Fish officers under this title the county fiscal body shall fix compensation for the surveyor
as if the surveyor is registered
and the compensation for the surveyor as if the surveyor is not registered. So our salary ordinance
should have if you are licensed and if you are not licensed. And it says the compensation fixed under
subdivision one, which is registered, must be one and one half times that fixed under subdivision two.
So the not registered. I make this a bit like the same thing as like with an assessor. You had to hit
a certain level.
To serve so I would really encourage you to go ahead. I know you could do it Go get your license and
then there'll be no discussion But I would like to see that happen for you. I think you'd be happy with
it It's just something I think we need to remember I'd like to look at the relevant section of the salary
ordinance. We have an elected officials grid and I think that portrays this issue really clearly and
I'm a visual learner, so maybe I'm being a little biased, but I think Michelle has selected official
grid up. So here, here we see the surveyor at 90%. This is current, correct, Michelle?
This is for 2027. So this is what his budget should be at. And the split then is... No, we'll talk about
that. So the split then should be 55, 995 for the general fund. And then when you get to the stormwater,
it's 18665. So this is the amount it should be.
based on what your current grid is. But if you're wanting him to be bumped up to the 100%, then his
amount that he has here reflects that at the 100%. That would be 75%. That reflects. Right. And the
fiscal concern here is
has nothing to do with your qualifications or who you are as a person. The fiscal concern is if there
was someone who did have that license that we would then be paying 1.5 on top of whatever salary we're
increasing it to. And so there's a very real concern that in the future that would be an amount that
maybe not be sustainable in one of these budgets. I agree. I also agree that there would be a lot more
to discuss if there was two licensed surveyors in the surveyors office.
I also would like to mention that there are unlicensed surveyors that are making the one and a half
right now that I would be if I was licensed throughout the state. Hamilton County is a great example.
Obviously, Hamilton County is always the one you would like to point at. But, you know, I'm not even
attempting to ask that. I'm just asking for equitable pay, equal pay with other elected officials.
I'm a little bit pleased over this a little bit, but I wanted to make sure I understood the. The benefit
OK, so. What other costs savings might there be if there were a licensed elected official in your office?
So you said something about well, it's not like they would be stamping that there's no. Guarantee it's
all going to be
And as much as we want to look at it as office, it's always going to be the person that's in that leadership
role. Ms. Turner-King, if she can identify something or interpret it different than me, it doesn't say,
if you're licensed, that you have to use your seal for operations within the surveyor's office. So the
work we're conducting now, doing full boundary perpetuation surveys and also creating monument records
licensed surveyor stamp is a surveyor product. There is no guarantee if a licensed surveyor comes in
here that they're going to use their stamp on any of the products
that are produced within the surveyor's office, that's going to be based on the person themselves. And
at that point, I think council is going to have to figure out a whole new way to have a conversation
when a licensed surveyor comes in to see if they're actually using their license to help support their
office. Also, the fact that they could come in there and run their own private practice I think would
be a big concern. And then I think it just really
is up to the council to make sure that these offices are meeting those new standards and being accountable
and I personally don't I understand everyone's point about the physical impact if they were licensed
and I've been committed to tell the council if I'm going to pursue that and that's going to be a case
but every year we come to this discussion and you can address it if there is a licensed surveyor because
Outside of that, I just think this is an easy way of keeping me at 90 percent, in my opinion. Going
back to the and I think this was in the general budget, I think. Can't remember. Right. The board. And
you said there's one additional member now to the board. Yes. And how many people are there total?
We have four board members. We pay him 100 bucks a month. OK, so I mean we never get perfect attendance.
We typically cancel two meetings a year where actually we almost hit our quota this month, but or last
month. It's the beginning of this month. Except for we got stuck on a corner for like almost an hour
and it was miserable. So this board is set in place to review.
your work. Yeah, there's a policy 97. It created the Surveyor Review Board. And that's kind of because
we didn't have a licensed surveyor in the office. But now we do. But I still think best practice is
actually I would like to see this be replicated to other counties as we work with the surrounding profession.
And then we all come together and look at
the perpetuation efforts. And we have immense more information and a lot more consensus on if this is
the correct monument or section corner, because this is the framework of property rights. So we are
theoretically or actually preserving and protecting the property rights of every property owner in Monroe
County. That's including the city of Bloomington and the town of Ellisville and Spencer, so on and so forth.
I mean, that's the that's what we're doing and we're doing at a very high level. And I know that it
doesn't it's not sexy work for a lot of people, nor is GIS. So it's like it's really hard to articulate
how valuable the surveyors office is to this community and this county government organization. Counselor Decker.
Thank you very much. I apologize for joining remotely, but one thing that occurs to me is the state
of Indiana has clearly written the law to give flexibility to counties for either the elected model
with a license professional surveyor or opposite of that, because I would think it would be difficult
for a lot of communities to find somebody for this very highly technical work. So the option kind of
then falls to us, and I think
Mr. Surveyor, what you're saying is if the county would get a licensed surveyor in your role in the
future, that person might just disregard all the practices you have that they're allowed to under Indiana
law. That would just be a choice of style. Is that right? Essentially, you know, I base lead people
in leadership roles off their track record. So, you know, it's going to be the person that
takes over that role of their license or not, of how they want to conduct the office. Yes, Councillor
Henry. Thank you. I know we've spent some time on it, but it is a big adjustment. I wasn't here when
the grid was formed. As far as I'm concerned, a constitutional office in the state, your office among
the others in this building, you're getting paid less than the other constitutional offices in our county
government.
Quite understood that. How long you been in office? How many terms? Since 2016, so three, so 10 years.
I was caucused in. Oh, I've been with the county for 25 years and sorry, 20 years and been the elected
surveyor for nine, 10 years. Previous surveyors in office. How long? Previous? Yeah.
I'm sorry. You're your predecessor. How long was he in office? He had a tenure from 97 to 2000 and then
restart in 05 and I came back at 05. It's very possible you outlast us all up here, right? The next
surveyor might be looking at a completely different council and can wrestle with that future question.
I was supportive of this
weeks ago when you presented it. I'm still supportive of it now. And it's that equity question at this
point. If for some reason you move on and someone else comes in, we can have that debate that day. But
that's a point in time. So I'm happy to support this as presented. And I appreciate the effort you've
made to control the rest of your budget in both accounts. So thank you. Yes, definitely agree on that
part. Okay.
Yes, I just want to confirm before we vote on things that the salary reflected in this budget is an
increase to 100 percent or is okay. I just want to make sure what we were voting on. Yeah, I'll pull
this over real quick. This would be the split at where it says 100 percent base, so it would be 62
It would be 217 because we round up is basically what it is. And then the storm water part would be
the 2738 and that is at the 100 percent. We have the same math. We have the same math. That's good.
In the interest of sorry. Just in the interest of protecting the general fund. Is there a way to do
the split differently or
incorporate a little bit of the increase into a non-reverting or some other fund? I mean, I don't know
what the logic was with stormwater. I mean, it makes sense, but was there a limit? So council made that
decision. And then over the years, they've been shifting personnel within stormwater at different
percentages. And I was on your side.
not too long ago when I was looking over the budget of stormwater, when we were adding different percentages
of different employees, where a majority of their work is actually within the highway department. And
I do have a lot of duties that are stormwater related, and they're kind of like the non-reverting fund,
the corner fund, they have to be relatable to stormwater. And I think that 25% is fair.
I think more would start fracturing our metrics of how to calculate percentages of employees being paid
out of that fund.
Firstly, if I was sitting over there and it was presented, can we move the surveyor to 30%? I'm like,
do they do 30% of their day-to-day job? And I would say 25 is a reasonable, fair number. Would you say
that 10% of your job is around corner perpetuation work? Oh, absolutely, except for that is a fund we're
trying to keep sustainable.
With the revenue dips, it took me 10 years to get full-time personnel out of there until they passed
a house bill that then quadrupled the fund. And the only reason I was able to create the other positions
is because 25% of the professional surveyor comes out of there, 50% of the survey technician comes out
of there. It really has very limited wiggle room left and, you know,
So yes, that would be an easy way for me to get support. But, you know, I have to be very financially
responsible. And, you know, I'm not taking the easiest path forward. I'm doing what is financially
responsible as a steward of taxpayers money. Appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. And seeing no other questions or comments on this budget presentation, maybe please have
a roll call vote. I'm sorry. And just to reiterate, you're voting on both funds at the same time. Councillor
Wills. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Decker. Yes. Councillor Crosley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes.
Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Hawke. She said no. OK. Motion passes unanimous or big pardon. She
didn't majority. I don't think we heard her. We didn't. Yes. We caught it. Yeah, we caught you. Yeah.
Motion passes by a majority six one. Thank you. Sorry for. No, you're totally wrong. It's a discussion.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
All right, next up is the Parks Department. Council, I move to open for discussion and review.
Fund 1000-0803, County General Parks. Fund 1178-0000, Parks, Non-Reverting Capital. Fund 4113-0000,
Donations Parks. And finally, Fund 1179-0000, Parks, Non-Reverting Operating. Second.
We got a motion and a second. We are joined by Miss Kelly Whitmer. Welcome. Thank you. Are we ready?
We should. TSD, can we please? Thank you. Go for it. All right. Would you like me to talk about all
the budgets? That's right. All right. This should be really simple. We've added and deleted lines with
consultation from financial director Woodruff and we've kept all of our
budget. The county general lines are the total the same. We have not asked for one dime more. Pursuant
to President Crossley's budget letter. Budget 11 78. The bottom line is exactly what it was last year.
$100,000. Budget 4113. This is the second year for it,
Budget 1179 is identical to last year, 300,000. Anything for personnel, that's up to you. That's all
I have. Easy. Thank you. I like it. I'll start. I appreciated you working with your budget this time
around, because from last year to this year, there was a decrease. So yeah, I'd appreciate it.
can read and your letter was very clear. I appreciate that. Thank you. This is a team effort. This is
us helping everybody so we can get to the big finish line, which is hopefully the COLA. So any other
questions or comments from council? Oh, I'm sorry. This is Andy French, our park superintendent. He's
out in this 90 degree weather, so bless him.
It's a hard week. Yes. I hope you are staying hydrated. All right. Any or any questions or comments
from? Yes. Councilor Iverson. I'm going to ask about the new park over on the east side. Where is that
included in this budget? It is not. Oh, OK. Great. Good to know. Go on. Go twice.
Now we may use some of the donation funds since they were from the Huntington Trust for that project,
but other than that, zero. Okay. Councillor Henry. Thank you. And so since I guess the donation parks
fund is new, can you maybe give a background a little bit about just generally how that's working or how that
how that works in terms of the donation coming in, the expenditures, is it reverting? I mean, if we
don't use things, can you walk through some things just for our understanding? It's a non-reverting
account in the auditor's office with
consultation to the state of Indiana said this is how we need to do this. So we created the fund. Any
donation, if you would like to give us a $50 donation for a tree, it'll go into this line. The Huntington
Trust has been the largest donation in here. In order to spend money, we'll have to create lines to
do that. We want the Monroe County Nature Park to be self-sufficient. And this is one way to do it.
in five years and 10 years, you know, we can't tell you what they'll give us each year and they can't
tell us what we get each year. We just hope the best for the economy because it's all in stocks and
bonds and whatnot. So if a donation came to you that didn't fit nicely in an account line, I guess we'd
have to go create one. I don't know what it would be or how it would work. Yeah, no, all the cash that we
Say you want to give us a $50 donation, we just deposit it into this account. It doesn't go into a particular
line. It just is a chunk of money, non-reverting, and then you appropriate that, oh, you can only spend
$1,000 for utilities, and that's all we will spend in that line. So no restricted gifts like you have to do?
If there's a restricted gift, we would encourage them to donate to the Monroe County Parks and Recreation
Foundation. That's good. I appreciate that. Thank you. Are you fully staffed? No. Can you tell me what
the situation is there? We have a few people on FMLA. So our staff is reduced.
We have part time staff on the park side that no fault of their own. They have become ill or they have
a family emergency and we've not been able to rehire in the middle of the season because everyone already
has a job. So it has been very difficult. We also know that the council has encouraged departments to
revert money back
to the county general. So we think we're gonna be reverting maybe 50,000 in our hourly line to help
out with the situation. So that's why we're trying to help. Other than that, we'll spend it all next
year. So it's been a lot of unfortunate situations on our side. When you say part-time on the park side,
so you were talking about your program,
seasonal folks or are seasonal folks who take care of the restrooms who do a lot of weed eating, mowing,
opening the parks at seven in the morning, weekend stuff. They've had unfortunate things happen. No
fault of their own. Councilor Decker. It seems like thank you for all this. It seems like five or six
years ago.
We had nothing but nonstop discussions about hiring at every department. And I was just curious while
you were here, is hiring overall difficult right now, just period, or is it worse, better, or what are
your thoughts? This is the worst year that I've been here on hiring. It is really hard to get people
to come in to interview.
You know, we were starting them around $15 an hour. You know, if you stay with us, we'll keep giving
you raises. But I don't know. People may not want to work in 90 degree weather. So it is hard. It's
hard to hire Andy. He's been doing this every single week for the last few months, trying to find people.
We were scouring the county.
So if you, and the thing is that the job only lasts for another month or two, so no one will jump on
board. Councilor Hawk? Councilor Hawk? You gotta pull your microphone. Could you remind us what your
range is for your part-time? Cause I heard you say $15 an hour and literally,
It's hard to even find a high school person to come and do yard work for $15 an hour. I have to pay
$20. And then can't even get people to do it at $20. I believe we up to $15 to $25. And that would be
like, if we found a farmer who has great tractor skills or heavy equipment, we would start them around
$20 an hour, give or take. So it depends what your skill.
skill level is and where you're at. But we want to be fair to the people who've been here a while, too.
But yeah. And we will give raises like if you, you know, if you're here a couple of weeks and you keep
showing up, we'll give you a raise right away. We just don't want to do all the paperwork and and then
you quit in five days.
Any other questions or comments on this budget? Again, much thanks to you and your staff and for all
your due diligence on your budget here. May we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Iverson? Yes.
Councillor Fiddle? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor
Deckard? Yes.
Motion passes unanimous, 7-0. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I wanted to thank the auditor's office.
They've been a big help, especially Carly. Yay. Go team, go. All right, next up is the recorder's office.
Council, I move to open for discussion and review. Fund 1000-0004, county general recorder. Fund 1160-000,
identification security protection.
Fund 1160-0000, Identification Security Protection. Fund 1217-0000, County Elected Officials Training.
And finally, Fund 1189-0000, Recorders, Records, Perpetuation. Second. All right. We got a motion and
a second, and we are joined here by the recorder, Amy Swain. Welcome.
Good evening, counselors and everyone else. I wanted to start off by thanking Michelle and Ms. Aplaca
for their help with putting this budget together. There were some difficulties and it really helped
to have them help us with that. On county general, the only thing for the recorder's office that comes
out of county general is some of our salaries. And so the only difference in that is the 2% cost of
living adjustment.
for the Identification Security Protection Fund that is funded by fees from our office and it is set
out by statute how that money is to be used. There is no change in that fund. The 1217, the County Elected
Officials Training Fund, I did increase that.
Council was at it a couple of years ago. Trainings by the Association of Indiana County State Board
of Accounts are covered by that costs for travel and lodging and registration have increased. And this
fund is used by the elected officials to make sure that they get the training hours that are required
by the state.
within our time in office. And so, last year, or the current year, other funds have been utilized for
that, but I wanna make sure there's enough in the fund to justify this amount, and I wanted to make
sure that there was enough in there for people to go to the trainings, including counselors, if they
desired to do that.
The last one is the Recorders Perpetuation Fund. There's not a lot of change in that other than in the
contractual line. This is a fund that is at the discretion of the Recorders Office, but I'm happy to
present an itemized budget for your review so you can talk about how taxpayer dollars are being spent.
Some other counties, they do a sworn statement and there's a dollar amount and that's it.
I have no problem providing this itemized budget. And like said, as you can see, the contractual line
is significantly higher for next year because that's phase three of our scanning project that we've
been doing for the books and physically in our office. OK, that's it. Well, thank you very much. And
I want to note for the record, because it was in our packet,
that we are in receipt of the recorder sworn statement for fund 1189-000 recorders records perpetuation
for budget year 2027. Just wanted to add that. All right, any questions or comments for Ms. Wayne on
her budget? Councilor Hawke? She always brings us a good clean budget, so it's easy to say yes. Councilor Woods?
I apologize if you just said this, but the equipment line that increases that purchasing equipment for
scanning. Yes, the one that they just highlighted in your perpetuation. Yeah, I'm taking a look at that.
Oh, I see I did increase that line as well. Thank you for pointing that out, Counselor Wilts. Oh, you're
so welcome.
One of the things that I did a couple of years ago was to upgrade our microfilm scanner. It was needed
and we moved the previous one to the archives and then found out that there is a part of that older
scanner that does not play well with Windows 11 and so that will need to be replaced.
so that we can utilize it when people are over in the archives. And so that was one thing, and there
may be other things that come up. And again, there's enough in the fund, but I wanted to plan for that
and anything else that might be needed. Because as we move to the digital records that these scans that
we've been working on are going to produce, I was talking with a couple of title searchers in the office
today, and they said that it would be important
because I would like to move the physical books over to archives for safety sake, since it's a dry fire
suppression system. And now that we have things digitized, that microfilm options would be important
in case the scan is hard to read. One of the things that we can do is to take the books that would be
over in archives and rescan that.
Software called Irfan view where we can use the book I scanner in our office take that software and
enhance the image but in the meantime the Microfilm would be available for the title searchers and whoever
else the public whoever else would use the scanner to get those records in a format that they can see
well Thank you, and thank you for letting me see the archives and
Yeah, it was very interesting. And if any of the other counselors would like to to visit the archives,
more than welcome to show that to you. Any other questions or comments on this budget item? None, maybe
please have a roll call, though. Counselor Henry? Yes. Counselor Deckard? Yes. Counselor Crosley? Yes.
Counselor Iverson?
Yes. Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Hawke. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Motion passes unanimous seven
zero. Thank you all. All right. Thank you. Have a good night. Happy birthday. All right. Next up is
the last budget for the evening. And it is from the prosecutor's office. And can you mention that David
Henry left? Yes. Oh, yeah. And for the record,
Council Henry has left the building or left the room and eventually will leave the building so Council
I move to open for discussion and review fund 1000-0009 County General Prosecutor fund 1000-0660 County
General child support fund 1170-0009 public safety lit and finally I
fund twenty five oh three dash zero zero zero zero diversion user fees. Okay we got a motion and a second
and we are joined by the prosecutor miss Hamlin welcome hey thank you I'm your last step before dinner
so I'll try to keep it fast.
Good evening. Thank you. I know you guys are putting a lot of hard work and careful attention to the
twenty twenty seven budgets and I'm mindful that you are making tough decisions. So I appreciate you.
We have four separate budgets to present this year to large extent. We aren't making a lot of
Great changes, but before I get into the nuance of those I just want to make a few comments about the
work of our office I did as you know submit a review to try to give you a highlight of some of the work
in our office I hope to keep that going and improve that report each year to keep everybody informed
but Just to start with our filing data as of July 31st. We have filed 1,352 misdemeanor cases and
eight felony cases. This is substantially similar to our filing numbers in 2025, though we may have
some more misdemeanor filings by the end of the year. Our filing numbers, we do have absolute discretion
to decide what to charge and when, but they are driven by referrals that we receive from law enforcement.
So to a large extent, we don't control those numbers.
As of June 30th, we've had 212 cases disposed of through our pretrial diversion program. If this rate
continues throughout the year, we'll have about 50 more enrollments in that program this year than we
had in 2025. I'd just like to highlight our
Arnold Ventures funded study found that our pre-trial diversion program does in fact reduce recidivism
among participants and in fact has better results than if a case is declined for prosecution or dismissed
after being filed outright.
So that was good news that nobody, I think, really expected. So it's a good program. We also have an
informal diversion that we do for people who are referred to us for driving while suspended cases rather
than file a criminal misdemeanor case. Our traffic and infraction director
reaches out to those people, lets them know what has their license suspended and tries to work with
them to get their license reinstated. And so we've had a significant number of people work that way.
Yeah, it is very cool. And it was completely his idea to do that. And I really appreciate that.
Since our last budget hearing, we've had five jury trials. Three of those were in sex cases. Two of
those were homicides. Three of them resulted in convictions. One resulted in acquittal, and one unfortunately
resulted in a hung jury, which means we have to try it again later.
Of those trials, four were in Judge Hutton's court and one was in Judge Talley-Hasman's court. Unfortunately,
we did have one jury trial that was scheduled the week after the Great Toilet Flood of 2026. And so
because the judges had been displaced and were working in jury rooms, we couldn't have that jury trial
that week. So we'll get to that one soon, I hope. But we do have several high-level felony cases set for trial
rest of 2026, so I sort of anticipate we may have at least one a month until the end of the year. Just
to take a moment to talk about workload. In our office, my staff, we work very hard and we work as a
team that supports each other.
I want to thank the council for recognizing that and considering a 2% COLA cost of living adjustment
for county paid staff. They definitely deserve it. But just to give you some human resources insight
into my office, we have roughly 4,000 criminal cases pending right now. If you divide that evenly amongst
all the attorneys, including myself, that's roughly
like 260, 270 cases a person. It's not that evenly distributed, but just know that some of my prosecutors
have substantially more than that on their plate. And according to IPAC's prosecutor staffing analysis,
we need an additional 3.71 attorneys to handle the caseload that we see. I'm happy to provide that to
you if you need it.
In case you're skeptical and you think we're lying about, I would invite you to check on our time sheets.
As of August 22nd, 11 of my 13 deputy prosecutors have substantial comp time banked. Some of our senior
trial attorneys who've been trying those homicides and sex cases have somewhere between
24 and 94 hours of comp time banked. They come in, they do their jobs, they put in the hours regardless
of whether they're going to get paid more or not. I would just be remiss if I didn't say that behind
every criminal case is support staff that are essential to ensuring that our attorneys have
discovery done, background checks, technology, victim assistance, and other various needs to get cases
processed. I would just say that my attorneys work at 40 hours. The council did recently approve two
investigators and our forensic analyst and technology specialist at 40 hours, but all the rest of my
staff works at 35 hours.
to let you know that. But I would also say just a word about our recorder, Amy Swain. She was proactive
to reach out to me about some cases of deed fraud that have happened in other areas of the country and
in New Albany, Indiana. And so she and I are working together on an expedited investigation process
in case those cases do arise in Monroe County. So I just appreciate her being on the ball and bringing
that to my attention.
Now we'll get to our budgets. For county general prosecutor, you know, we're not requesting any increases
in salary or benefits other than those that were directed by council. We did see roughly a 5% decrease
in our victim assistance VOCA grant funding that funds our victim assistance staff. We expected a much
larger decrease, but
we did face that 5%. Supplies and services, we didn't request anything additional, but we did move some
expenses from edit as we were instructed to do. For child support, again, no increases to salary or
benefits except those that were directed by council.
I would just point out one of the positions that you approved to move to 40 hours, the forensic analyst
slash technology specialist, he is paid 33% from the child support budget because he is the administrator
for their paperless process and some of the other technology that they use over there.
For our PS Lit Fund, no changes were requested. This pays for half of our stop grant funded prosecutor
salaries. And we are still waiting on our 2026-2027 funding announcement, but we should be getting that
soon. But for right now, no changes requested. And then as for our pre-trial diversion fund, again,
No changes other than last year we made an error with travel and training. And so we did zero that out.
So I'm happy to take any questions that Council may have. Thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate
that. And it's also good to hear that pretrial diversion works. Thank you. All right. Any questions
or comments?
Is there anything that you can think that you might be able to do to move the cases along faster? Sometimes
you go to my case and it's like they've been sitting around for two years, or even longer. That one
I looked at was even longer. Just typing all this up, just entering all this had to take a lot of time
because it was just over.
What can the prosecutor's office do, if anything, to try to move this along more expeditiously? It would
be more fair to the public, for certain, more fair to the people involved. And certainly, it would not
be as costly because you wouldn't have all this comp time and overtime situation. What can be done?
I share your concern that cases are taking too long to resolve. I would say a couple of things on that.
There are some delays that we are never going to be able to get around, and that has to do with turnaround
on lab testing that's required. It also has to do with
pre-trial discovery that has to be done. Defense attorneys hiring experts. We hire experts, especially
in our higher level cases. And they also conduct depositions, which takes time. I mean, frankly, a lot
of it is just the sheer volume of casework that we have. It's really difficult to get through hours
of body camera footage and everything else that we deal with.
But another important point to recognize is that the prosecutor doesn't get to control the court's calendars.
And so in each of the four criminal courts, there's only one trial week a year. And that sometimes is
really, if you really think about that, that's not that much time. Sorry, what did I say? You said a
year. 12 trial weeks. Oh, sorry, sorry.
I thought you said one per year. My mistake. Did I? I didn't mean that. Sorry. Let me try again. One
trial week per month. And so that's each quarter. So, you know, it's four times 12, 48. But, you know,
you have Thanksgiving, you have Christmas, you have other weeks where we don't. And although I did try
a jury trial on Thanksgiving week one year and got a conviction, but that was quite a while ago. But anyway,
You know, I think we're really going to have to have the support of the courts and to a large extent,
you know, recognize that it is always going to be in the defendant's best interest to let a case get
old. And so, you know, it's really just managing those calendars and making sure we're holding those
feet to the fire. Any of us need to be reminded that you handle the cases, public defender does not handle.
cases. So we tend to think of you as the same responsibility face-wise, but it isn't. We have to do
better somehow. Somehow. The whole court system has to do better to move. I agree. I mean, to your point, it does
make our caseload snowball to the point where we're handling way more cases, we're not closing them
as fast as we're filing them. And so it contributes to burnout and overtime and all kinds of other bad
externalities for sure. Yes, Councilor Iverson.
I'm going to start in your user fees budget. It seems like there's plenty of revenue coming in to cover
the cost of the budget, but user fees is constantly something that we're talking about. How are you
thinking about user fees as we're moving into 2027? I base my projection on last year's increase or
decrease and projected that way that I've found is the most correct way or the closest way.
I don't know what you really mean by part of my thinking about user fees. So one of the ups and downs
in county government over the years has been collect more or not collect more, collect more, not collect
more. Where are we on that trend, would you say? Well, our user fees, if you're talking about the amount,
are set by statute. And so we are charging the amount that is prescribed by law.
We do offer fee waivers. Pre-trial diversion is not denied to anyone on the basis of inability to pay.
I review those personally, and I use a grid that's based on 150% of poverty guidelines, which is used
for a lot of means-tested benefits. I think it would be wonderful if we could offer diversion without
user fees.
I know that's not reality, and so we discharge what is prescribed by statute. And of course, our rationale
here is just that we put some personnel lines in those user fee funds, and we just want to make sure
that those are good to go. Yeah, I understand. I mean, in the past, I think that previous prosecutors,
certainly not during my terms, there was this huge
this huge amount of revenue that was just sitting there being unspent. And so during some other similar
dark financial times, they moved some positions into the pre-trial diversion fund to be paid. And we've
been slowly moving them out as we've spent down, spent down some of that that revenue. Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. Councilor Williams. Yes. So you
Following up on Councilor Iverson's question, very roughly, what would you say the percentage of waiving
those fees might be? I don't have it broken down by percentage, but you'll be excited to learn that
I did write down how many I've done. Oh my goodness. So this year we've had 28 applications for fee
waivers and of which 25 were
granted. In 2025, by way of comparison, we had 50 applications and 47 were granted. And that's how many
overall then go through diversion? So in this year so far, it's been 212 cases. And so of those, 25
have been waived. About 10% of folks going through the program are able to have their fees waived.
And just, I guess by point of comparison, a lot of the fees are court fees, right? That's the majority
of the costs for pre-trial diversion are standard court fees, which they would pay if they were convicted
of a crime in court. And a lot of folks who are convicted of crimes in court have those fees reduced
to judgment and never pay them. So not everybody. There are some who can pay their fees. But I would
just say I think we have
a better fee collection for court costs in some ways than the courts do for people who get convicted
of crime. You had mentioned the VOCA grant. I don't remember which budget, which fund it's in, but you
mentioned that it was reduced by like 5%, but it has personnel in it.
What happened there? So VOCA funds, this is like a national problem. VOCA funds, they're funded by some
kind of federal fund. I can't remember if it's a settlement fund of some kind, and that's been reducing
over time. It's been being spent down. And so there are a lot of federal efforts to try to continue
to keep VOCA funds. VOCA means Victims of Crime Act.
Everybody who receives, there are a lot of different entities that receive VOCA funds, including child
advocacy centers, domestic violence shelters, all of these different service providers for victims receive
VOCA funding. Prosecutors took less of a hit than some of those other service providers, but it's a
crisis. OK, so the personnel that were being paid, are they now coming out
more out of a general fund general fund and okay are you looking kim are you looking at where this is
in the where's the other half of the vote oh there's 72 percent of the four positions come out of county
general our prosecutor county general not child support
You want the lines? Yeah, that way I can highlight a four. We've got 13004, 13005, 13024, and 13032.
And if my recollection is correct, I think we paid 67%
of those salaries from County General last year. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to be able to see what
had happened and where. Thank you. All right. So I wanted to save this question because I want to get
something I want to get this on the record and make sure that the public is aware. So I'm going to direct
my question to the auditor.
Because this is an employee-heavy department. There's a lot of personnel lines here. What we don't see
in this budget is our top expenditure, which is self-insurance. So, Ms. Gregory, where can the public
find our largest expenditure, which is self-insurance, if it's not in the budget with a lot of personnel lines?
If it's not listed in the budget, then it is with employee services in their budget. So you'll be seeing
that a little tomorrow, actually. Right. Okay. Great. So I just want people to be able to hear that
answer, that our large expenditure, the tune of $12.5 million, is consolidated into one budget.
And the last thing I wanna say to the two of you is thank you, thank you, thank you for submitting four
really tight budgets and for adhering to the president's letter. It's so easy to work with you,
so thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments on this item? Councilor Decker. Just
while she's here, number one, thank you again to echo Councilor Iverson's comments.
But I also want to say for anyone watching out there, the prosecutor is always a strong advocate for
the folks in her office and in their building. And in a variety of circumstances that have occurred
in the last year, I cannot recall a conversation where she wasn't advocating for her folks in a very
diligent and
good public service way. And so I want to compliment her on that while she's before us and mention that
because we have a lot going on. And that's certainly not in this budget, but upon all of our minds.
Thank you. And seeing none, no other further questions or comments. May we please have a roll call vote.
Councillor Fiddle.
Councillor Hawke? Did you say pass or yes? Thank you. Councillor Wilk? Yes. Councillor Deckard? Yes.
Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes majority five to one pass.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And wow, this is record timing. Knock on wood, which means we
can do this again tomorrow. So without any other further questions or comments, we are in recess, keyword
recess, until tomorrow, September 3rd. Same time, same place. Good night.