- Okay, good evening, everybody, and welcome to the last night of the 2026 budget work sessions. Today
- is Thursday, September 11th, 2025, and I apologize for my tardiness. Here in the NETU Hill Room, we
- have counselors to my right, David Henry, Peter Iverson, Kate Wilt, and Liz Vital. We do not have counselors
- Decker or Hawk,
- virtually or in person. So we will continue to go ahead with our agenda or with our business of the
- night. So option or item number two is the adoption of tonight's agenda. Is anybody wishing to make
- any type of amendments to tonight's agenda? And seeing no heads or head shaking as a no and because
- there is a quorum and nobody is online. We can do a voice vote. Yay. Okay, so all those in favor of
- approving tonight's agenda as presented signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign.
- All right, motion carries. Okay, so this is going to be the last time that I get to say this for the
- 2026 budget work sessions. So again,
- this is not final and councils just like the other previous five nights we've listened to the Monroe
- County Department bring forth their 2026 agendas or agendas their budgets and present to them again
- as a final reminder for this evening every department that will be coming forth
- to the council will have a timer and so you have a time frame and those will be on the television screens
- that are around the NatU Hill Room and once your time is up you will be reminded that your time is up.
- And then again as we've been doing previously I just asked council members to stick to budget items
- related questions. Again this is not final
- However, the public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, September 30th, starting at 5 p.m. And the budget
- final adoption meeting will be on Tuesday, October 14th at 5 o'clock as well. All right, so.
- As we have also been doing, we've been looking to the auditor's office to give an update on some of
- the things that we've been doing here. And so again, we have from the auditor's office, Ms. Carly Woodruff.
- And so I'm gonna give her the floor before we start tonight's meeting. Welcome. Good evening, council.
- I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen with you.
- shows that same document we showed last night. It has a simple calculation for the current deficit.
- This is across all funds that are in budget projection and this information is pulled from Gateway.
- As of right now across all funds we have roughly 8.151 million in deficit. If we do a deep dive into
- our levy funds you can see that the updated deficit amount is
- $11,195,723. These are reflective of the changes from last night's meeting. We've also gone ahead and
- added the cheat sheet information to this document and it shows you what the minimum fund balances are
- per our ordinance as well as the 2025 levy so you can compare.
- Okay, sorry, I'm trying to plug in my computer here. Does anybody have any questions for Ms. Woodruff?
- No? Okay, seeing none. Did you have anything else to add to this? Unless you guys have any questions,
- I think we'll leave it there. Okay, doesn't seem like we do. Look at us.
- all right and so we are going to go ahead with tonight's first um budget presentation which is from
- the waste reduction district which is item number five council i move to open for discussion and review fund
- solid waste management operating with a category requests of personnel at $1,729,850, supplies at $213,600,
- services at $1,236,170, and capital at $75,000 for a total budget of $3,254,620.
- all right we got a motion and a second and we have mr tom mclaskin and teresa goings welcome thank you
- as always we do appreciate the council's time and consideration for our budget every year i do want
- to take a moment for those that don't know that teresa goings
- She's not new to us anymore, but she's our our controller been with us not quite a year. She barely
- missed getting to be here last year in front of you all, but we're happy to have her with us. She helped
- me answer any questions that you may have. As I usually do in the interest of time to ensure we have
- adequate time for Council questions.
- We'll just highlight some of the significant budget items that have changed or are new from the previous
- year. So start with the personnel services category. This year, we do have proposed in the budget a
- 3% cost of living increase for all our employees.
- We alternate between a percent and a flat increase. 2026 would be a flat increase years for us. So we
- take that 3% of the median district wage. And I believe in your spreadsheet shows how that broke down
- between salaried and hourly employees. And I do believe that is in line with what the county is considering
- doing for its employees for 2026.
- the other personnel services line I did want to highlight is our health insurance line. That's a line
- that for a multitude of reasons has the budgets kind of spiraled out of control and then it has been
- over budget for a few years based on what our premium costs actually are. So we're looking to start
- to rein that in and did propose a significant decrease.
- I'm comfortable that based on what we're hearing with regard to health insurance premiums and what we're
- getting from our benefit administrator that we'll still have sufficient funding in that line for health
- insurance benefits for employees in 2026. Moving on to the supplies category, there's a number of small, I guess,
- we've had a lot of. Decreases in there and some increases. A lot of that is, you know, done in an effort.
- Obviously we're all you know, impacted by Senate Bill one and. You know the revenue impacts that's going
- to have moving forward. So you know, we worked with staff to try to really.
- And so you'll see a number of small decreases throughout that category. And the services and charges
- category, I do want to highlight line 3185. This is a new budget line for us. It's a community grant
- program that we're proposing. Our board requested that and, excuse me,
- We were able to find $20,000 in the budget next year that we thought we could make available for a community
- grant. That is something that the statute does empower districts to make community grants to both public
- and private sector entities, provided that the funds go toward things that are in line with the mission
- of the district.
- work to develop that grant program in short order so that we can get that out and get those funds distributed
- early next year so that the recipients have time to spend that money before the end of the year. I did
- also want to note we did have a $5,000 increase in our advertising line and that is specific to you
- might recall or know that we do
- Every year we do something in observance of Earth Day and what we've done the past couple years and
- anticipate doing next year is selling compost bins and rain barrels or making those available through
- a vendor. It's not a revenue source for us, but we did a substantial advertising campaign on that this
- year and it doubled our
- sales totals from the previous times that we've done that so we thought that was really successful and
- wanted to continue that that next year. There are also some changes in line 3942 and 3943 which has
- to do with our hauling contracts for the materials that we collected our recycling centers. We did enter
- into a new contract arrangement with a new vendor
- In June of this year, runky waste and recycling. We've also made some operational changes that we think
- are going to significantly reduce the number of halls that we need to make from our facilities.
- So substantial decrease in those two lines. And then lastly, in the capitals category, we might recall
- we had $120,000 budgeted
- to the box trucks we use for our green business network recycling routes for this year. Next year, we
- have a $50,000 appropriation proposed to get a new administration and outreach vehicle. The current
- vehicle being used for those purposes is about 20 years old. It's still plugging away and doing its
- job, but it is something that we need to look at getting replaced.
- also have budgeted $15,000 to purchase a dump trailer. Every year, at least once, if not twice a year,
- we have to redo gravel at our recycling centers outside the city of Bloomington and thought we could
- save a significant amount of money if we were able to deliver that material to the sites ourselves rather
- than paying a trunky company to do that.
- the operating fund. That's what I wanted to highlight. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you very
- much for that. And I'm going to look over here to my right to see if anybody has any questions. Council
- Iverson. Thank you both for being here. Your budgets look like the ones we've been looking at for the
- past five nights reductions in almost every line. This is a tough time and
- We know what you're going through. My question to you is you'd previously come before us to talk about
- some municipal composting initiatives that you were pursuing. Is that in this budget or in another budget?
- No, we do still have in our other profession. No, it's in our consultant line. We do still have, well,
- The line is total is $27,000, but about $20,000 of that is earmarked for composting initiatives moving
- into next year. And are those still located predominantly in.
- the multi-dweller unit. The current program is focused on apartment complexes, multi-dwelling complexes,
- facilities. We did this year implement what we're called the Organic Waste Task Force that's also looking
- at some neighborhood-centric composting programs that we might try to expand on in 2026. That's exciting,
- great. I'm glad that that survived the cuts, at least this year.
- All right, anybody else on this side have any questions? And looking over here to my left, Councilor
- Woods. I don't have any questions. I just wanted to endorse this budget in terms of I'm the liaison
- and I sit on the board and the board has reviewed all of the figures as presented and fully supports
- this budget.
- feedback thank you anybody else have any questions on this line idea or this budget item all right and
- we are still not joined by anybody virtually we can go ahead and do a roll call vote so all those in
- favor of moving this budget item moving forward signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign all right
- Motion carries now next up is item B. Council I move to open for discussion or view fund 8283 solid
- waste district debt service with a category requests of personnel and supply lines each at zero dollars
- services line at three hundred eight thousand four hundred forty five dollars and the capital line at
- zero dollars for a total budget of three hundred eight thousand four hundred and forty five dollars. Second.
- All right, what would you like to add to this? Well, this one got interesting for us this year. And
- so that everybody's aware, the final payment of our debt service is due in February of 2027. And in
- our workshop with DLJF this year, they explained that
- The state views the tax disbursements as covering the two payments for that year. So we make a payment
- in February and a payment in September. And we get a disbursement in June and December. So the December
- disbursement that we get this year is going to leave us with a significant end of year back. That impacts
- the tax levy that they're willing to assess for 2026.
- And in 2027, they will look for the December 2027 tax disbursement to balance that fund, even though
- we'll make our final payment in February.
- So you do see in there if you see the revenues we do have a significant shortfall in that budget. Now
- thankfully we have adequate cash reserves that the operating fund will make loans to that fund to make
- sure that all the payments are covered and we don't default and we'll probably have a similar scenario
- as we go into 2027 with the caveat that
- Uh, the tax levy for 2027 should be set so that the December disbursement would balance the fund. Okay.
- Thank you. Um, council members looking to my left here and seeing if anybody has any questions. Okay.
- Councilor Iverson. I'm really glad that we're having these conversations now instead of facing a potential
- actions that could potentially lead to a default at the very end of this. And this has been going on
- for a long time. We're not going to default with three payments to go. No. No. So thank you for bringing
- this to us. All right. And seeing no more questions on this item. Again, all those in favor of moving
- forward with this particular item's budget line here, signify by saying aye.
- All those opposed same sign. All right, motion carries. Next up is item C. Council I move to open for
- discussion and review fund 1215 solid waste district non reverting capital with a category request of
- $0 in each of the four categories personnel supplies services and capital for a total budget of $0.
- Okay, and what would you like to add to this? This is something that we do every year. We have the cumulative
- capital fund. It has an insignificant balance of about $42,000 to $43,000 in it, but DLGF advised some
- years ago that it would be in our best interest to go ahead and adopt a zero-sum budget. So the budget's
- on file and that way if something were to happen and we needed to appropriate money out of that fund,
- it would save some time and steps having the budget on file.
- Okay. All right. I'm looking over here to my right, seeing none. No. Got us stumped. All right. So all
- those in favor of moving forward with this item, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. All right. Motion carries. And that's it. That was easy. Thank you. Thank you.
- All right, next up is item number six, which is from the Monroe Fire Protection District. Council, I
- move to open for discussion and review fund 8603, Special Fire General, with a category request of personnel
- at $15,986,485, supplies at $513,750, services at $1 million,
- one hundred ninety seven thousand nine hundred twenty dollars capital at zero for a total budget of
- seventeen million six hundred ninety eight thousand one hundred and fifty five dollars second all right
- we got a motion and a second and we have chief dustin diller and lori robinson here welcome hello good
- evening thank you for having us hold that a little closer okay
- that work all right thank you everyone appreciate the opportunity to come here if you know a few times
- once a few times a year and talk to you about some of the things that we're doing down there at the
- fire district first thing I wanted to open up with is the last few budget sessions we have talked about
- building a fire station in Washington Township as you all know it is now open we are ecstatic
- Thank you for attending that open house that we held and I am so glad that that project is behind us.
- With that said, the Fire District serves roughly 50,000 of Monroe County citizens, about 20,000 of the
- housing units, and 317 square miles which is about 77% of the geographical area in Monroe County. So
- we've got a diverse jurisdiction and
- love what we do. End of the budget on the general fund. First change is we have an actual five percent
- cost of living adjustment and the reason for that is that it's part two of two to try to catch up and
- mirror those salaries with the city of Bloomington.
- last year at budget time we actually were having one of our budget work sessions at the fire district
- the bloomington fire department negotiated a new contract with their firefighters in which they saw
- a 38 increase in salary the timing was difficult we did everything that we could to close the gap and
- we're trying to close that gap further this year so the five percent
- does a portion of that. Another portion of that is an increase in the officer pay. The way the fire
- district pays its officers is they all receive the first class firefighter salary and then on top of
- that they receive a stipend for their rank. Bloomington on the contrary has a salary set for each of
- those positions. So all we've done is take our stipend, take our base pay,
- keep that as close as we can. And we know by doing the math and our firefighters discussing and sharing
- with one another that if we're in the $5,000 mark, the take home pay for a district firefighter is that
- of a city of Bloomington firefighter. So we're happy with where these salaries land. And we'd like to
- get through this second year of those increases so that we can get back to the norm, if you will. One
- difference with the fire budget this time around,
- We have a few fewer fire chiefs. This budget presents a permanent elimination of one of the assistant
- chief positions and a temporary reduction in the battalion chief positions due to vacancies in our current
- organizational structure. We don't have anyone currently ready to fill those positions. There's no reason
- to tax our taxpayers and hold that cash. We want to release that back in this budget. The assistant
- chief position is basically restructuring.
- since the merger. When we merged, there was a lot of front-end work that had to happen, and we have
- wavered through a lot of that. And we have a vacancy that we would like to go ahead and remove from
- the budget. Now, our five-year phase-in through the mergers would have included an additional
- six firefighters this year. We're holding on that for a couple of reasons. One, we've all talked about
- Senate Enrollment Act 1,
- I don't need to go into the specifics, but there's a lot of uncertainties. But two, we've also applied
- for assistance to firefighters grant for up to 12 firefighters, which if we were to go ahead and preemptively
- hire these six, turn around and receive the grant, we would have to hire additional firefighters on
- top of that, which could project a longevity issue for us. So we're holding on that until we get word
- on the grant and we learn a little bit more about the impacts of
- the Fire District on Senate Enrollment Act 1. Part-time there's a reduction from 15 full-time equivalents
- to 12 full-time equivalents. This is part of the phase-in plan and it would have been to offset by adding
- career firefighters and lowering the full-time equivalents. This time we're kind of looking at doing
- that for the same reasons as the battalion chiefs. We're not
- adding those additional firefighters this time around from the career side. However we have so many
- vacancies currently in our full-time and equivalent positions due to the massive hirings last year.
- Last year we had an 11 person recruitment class and a 14 person recruitment class. So we depleted those
- full-time equivalent positions. Those are job share jobs so of the 15 that's actually 30 individuals
- did not have the 20 we need to fill that up so we want to remove three of those full-time equivalents
- for the budget in 2026. Due to these changes in cost in the salaries and benefits there are a lot of
- correlating lines in that first category that you see reductions in there's less social security less medicare
- That is not that we're cutting that out. We simply won't need it with the reduction in the salaries.
- A holiday pay that includes Easter. Easter is not currently on the Fire District's list of holidays
- and that is something that our union brought forward requesting we add. So that would actually bring
- our holiday list up to 10 holidays or I'm sorry 11 holidays from the 10.
- You'll notice that there's a large increase in the perf. Kim, if my mic keeps cutting out,
- just let me know, because I keep hearing it and not hearing it. Budget cuts. It's part of it. And so
- you'll see a significant increase in that perf line. That's the employer contribution. So we had the
- 5% cost of living adjustment, which impacts that line, but also the state employer contribution
- requirement went up a full three percent from twenty point five twenty one point five to twenty three
- or no twenty point five to twenty three point five percent and that's of the entire certified salary.
- Our volunteer contract it's small but I just wanted to bring this up because this is something that's
- always been important to me
- Just like our full-time equivalent positions, we depleted a lot of our volunteer ranks through the mergers,
- the hirings, and the various changes that we made. We are slowly getting that built back up.
- A lot of those positions are non-emergency responders, but we have folks that are coming in and helping
- us with community events, they're helping us with scene support, they're helping us with fire prevention
- details, and it's definitely been a huge benefit to our communities. So again, small increase in the
- budget that we have, but it's something worth noting. That are the changes, the large changes in the
- personnel categories. In the supply categories, you'll see a reduction of 10%,
- the fuel category. That's based on 2024's actuals and 2025's budget having a spread of $50,000 with
- 2025's budget trending in favor of the decrease. Several years back we increased that line significantly
- because fuel costs had gone absolutely insane. Hopefully that doesn't happen again but it's time to
- kind of right size that
- category and get it back where we feel it's needed. Small reduction in hazards materials mitigation
- again based on our actual expenses and without adding those six additional firefighters, the collar
- guard supplies can be reduced as we'll need less class A uniforms in 2026.
- Our seminar is in training. We have a new Assistant Chief of Training who just took the position at
- the beginning of this month and we are going to be focusing a lot more on internal certification courses
- in the future. We kind of pivot back and forth. It's good to go outside, get training, bring it back.
- But if we continually are going outside, you just don't have the time to bring it back and execute it
- the way you want it to. So in 2026, we plan on taking a lot of what we've done in 2025 and spreading
- that amongst all of our members. General insurance, we still don't have the exact estimate, but just
- like last year,
- We believe the worst-case scenario for our general insurance is a 10% increase and that's based on estimates
- provided by our provider. Unfortunately we renew all of our insurances January 1st. They don't like
- to give us the actual quotes until 60 days out so we always budget this with our providers giving us
- a best guess in their professional opinion. Workers comp
- That has been a difficult one for me. And the reason for that is when Perry Clear Creek became Monroe
- Fire Protection District, we went from having about 15, 20 employees to having 110. Well, they look
- at loss trends over a five-year period. So initially, our workers' compensation was super cheap because
- they're looking at losses from a 20-person organization.
- time is catching up and we've only got one of those years left on there, and we keep seeing that increase
- because of that. Percentage-wise, we're not seeing more injuries and whatnot. We're basically going
- through this phase of change there with that sliding scale. And then again, similar to what I mentioned
- earlier with the realignment and reorganization of our leadership, there are a lot of things in this
- services category that we've been able to adjust and mitigate after these large mergers as well. So
- there's several lines there that you'll see changes to within there. So I kind of went supplies and
- services clumped together but all in all no true major changes. That's all that I have prepared for
- the general fund.
- Okay, thank you for that. And I'm gonna look over here to my left to see if anybody has any questions.
- Okay, I'm gonna look over here and I already saw a hand, Councilor Iverson. Thank you both for being
- here today. And like I said, with the Waste Reduction District, you can tell we're all in the same boat
- with the number of lines that you reduced or kept flat. So we're all in the same boat here.
- Well, let me make another observation. Your 4B is really healthy. Kudos to you. It's tough to do in
- these environments of uncertainty, like you said. So it's nice to see that big operating balance projected
- for the end. So well done. The first question I had was in the ones in your personnel lines of medical services.
- You know, we're really proud that we were able to get some more, you know, things out there for EMTs
- and help you get to those calls first and everything like that. How is that going? I know we tried to
- get some more vehicles out there to help you guys or help your folks get to those calls. So I just wanted
- to talk about that.
- Yeah, so just kind of talking about the ambulance stuff, you know that really ran into service in August
- of 2024. And from August 2024 to August of this year, we had a total of 1089 ambulance responses.
- 623 of those were true blue ambulance transports. I'm sorry 623 of those were some type of actual medical
- need. 453 of those resulted in a transport. We were canceled in route 196 times. We stood by at special
- events 228 times and we did 42 public service events with those ambulances. That's with one of them
- staff 24-7. We have a second one that we stand up
- for sporting events, high call volume times, nights and weekends, and then we have the two additional.
- One of the coolest things that I have seen us do with these ambulances, obviously the 911 stuff is super
- important right, but every local high school contacted us this year to have our ambulances at their
- sporting events.
- We're there every Friday night at Edgewood, Bloomington South, Bloomington North football games and
- the interaction that we've had with the community in those locations has been probably the most rewarding
- to me of the whole ambulance project. Obviously we've had a handful of calls that were very meaningful
- but just seeing people see us there and be happy that we're there is pretty cool.
- So yeah on that medical services line that is actually for our physicals. So our firefighters are required
- to do annual health care physicals because we're hazardous materials technicians and that small increase
- there is for additional personnel. We actually have a group that we have been contracting with the last
- several years out of Indianapolis. They're used statewide they're called public safety medical. We pay
- them to travel down here and then members of our organization cost us about a hundred and fifty dollars
- per physical so we're able to get our auxiliary members our board members our volunteers and everyone
- in in that medical services line so thanks for bringing that up. Well it sounds like a good return on
- investment from you know just it's amazing to think about if we didn't have those ambulances out there
- trying to respond to those calls. My final question to you is on the PPE line. I know last year you
- came and talked to us about how important that is for the first responders and I just want to make sure
- that you know we've got folks outfitted as appropriately as possible. We actually just completed a very
- large gear purchase. We found that we have a new quartermaster and
- several of our firefighters were lacking their secondary pair of gloves which meant if they went on
- a fire they were using contaminated gloves on that second fire so we just purchased a hundred sets of
- gloves and he has been issuing those out over the last several days so we get those out into our members
- but no this budget line in the cumulative fund is significant towards the progression of our
- PPE replacement. We are bound by an FPA to replace that gear at least every 10 years. What we're trying
- to do is replace one of our firefighters gear every five years. So they have a five year old set that
- becomes their backup set and a new set of gear with the latest, greatest technology. So this cumulative
- fund definitely takes care of our people as far as PPE. Great. And Madam President, I just realized
- that I skipped a budget up ahead. So I apologize for asking about the
- Yeah. I won't talk about it then. It looks like the same thing on the sheet. Councillor Henry. I'll
- stick with this budget. Thank you. Thank you Chief for being here and again it was good to see you this
- morning at services for September 11th and I just thank all the fire service in our community. This
- is a solemn day for the fire service as well as
- of our country here. So I want to focus on just the overall structure of what you've done here to preserve
- what you have and to acknowledge that some of the positions that are not being filled are not layoffs
- or reduction in service to the community, but are really just structural on paper here as to how you're
- moving some stuff around. My question is really, if we're holding staff as is and you're working through
- that, what, if any, impacts do you see on the overtime
- wine.
- to cover down if we're kind of basically freezing or readjusting staff here. So our actuals for 2025
- are pretty outrageous in the overtime line. And the reason for that is truly the lack of full-time equivalent
- firefighters. Traditionally, we have those individuals as floats, if you will, so that when individuals
- are off, we can shift them around and provide that coverage in the stations with minimum staffing. But
- we've lacked that this year due to those massive hirings on the full-time side. So our overtime line has been
- unusually high this year because we are filling a lot more shifts with overtime and not full-time
- equivalents. And the hope is that, you know, the way you structured it for this year with. When budget
- season's over, we are going to focus very hard on recruitment retention. Thank you, sir. All right.
- Looking over here and seeing if anybody has any questions. Councilor Wilts. Yeah, thank you.
- appreciate all of the things that you all have been doing in the community. It has been noticeable just
- as a member of the community. So seeing you out and about more and more has been, it's been really nice,
- really nice. And I do just have a question. Councilor Iverson brought up here four B's and you do have
- operating balance.
- that's perfectly healthy predicted for next year. Your expenses though are more than your anticipated
- revenues in at least one, maybe two of the funds. And I'm curious how you see that trending. Is that
- something that is unusual or how are you managing that? Hi, Lori Robinson here.
- over the past three years we worked towards not expending all of our budgets and maintaining a little
- bit of a percentage each year so that we could build our operating balance not only for such a time
- as this when you know taxes are taking a shift but also for the ending of our grant that we had so we
- knew that at the end of a three-year grant that we were going to have to
- recapture all those costs of our firefighters so that we didn't have any layoffs, which is the last
- thing that we would want. So we focus on keeping our operating balance at a higher level for both of
- those reasons. At the end of this year, you can see that we may end up the year with about 5.9 million.
- At the end of next year, we'd be at 3.3. So we are utilizing the operating balance that we've saved
- over the last few years to help pick up the additional cost of these expenses.
- You anticipate that maybe shifting as we figure out the new landscape for revenue and that kind of thing.
- Absolutely. We don't believe that living off of the cash is going to be more than a one-year thing.
- We'll have to make adjustments for 2027's budget if things don't look a little brighter. Well, I think
- it's already been said. We're in the same boat. So I was just curious how you were looking at it.
- Thank you. Cool.
- Any other further questions on this? OK. So all those in favor of moving forward with the department's
- line item or budget here, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right.
- Motion carries. Next up is item B.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 8691, special fire, cumulative fire with the
- category requests of personnel at $0, supplies at $0, services at $1,401,932, capital at $0 for a total
- budget of $1,401,932. Second. All right. And what would you like to add to this item?
- Okay. Hi, I'm Dustin Dillard. So hey, our cumulative budget is pretty short and sweet. We use that to
- replace all apparatus, all cumulative capital equipment that we have. We use that to
- to build fire stations, remodel fire stations. But there's some exciting stuff in this cumulative fund,
- to be honest with you. One, as Councilor Iverson mentioned, the PPE line, we've gotten that where we
- need it to be in 2025, and we've adjusted that for 2026 for the expected cost increases of that necessary
- equipment. But something really cool, as we enter these days of uncertainty, our cumulative operating
- balance has been built up substantially.
- and we are going to utilize some of that to pay off Station 21's mortgage, Rescue 22, and Engine 22
- for a couple of reasons. One, we've got the ability to do it because of the cash reserves that we've
- built up and two, it's not only going to save interest on those loans over the next three years but
- it's going to free up money in the cumulative fund for us to rely on if cuts are deeper to that general fund.
- in 2027. So that's part of the cash discussion that we're having was freeing up funds elsewhere and
- this budget does that as well. So it's pretty straight and narrow for a nine line budget. So that's
- all I have. Okay thank you. Looking over here and seeing if anybody has any questions? No? Okay.
- on this. Okay, all right. So all those in favor of moving forward with the 2026 special fire cumulants
- of fire fund budget request signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion
- carries. Next up is item C, rainy day. Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 0061,
- rainy day with a category requests of personnel at zero, supplies at zero,
- services at zero and the capital line at $1,700,000 for a total budget of $1,700,000. Second. What would
- you like to add to this?
- So again, this one's pretty straightforward. We've got one line for apparatus purchase. That apparatus
- purchase is actually for two pieces of valuable equipment. One is Marine 21. It is the fire suppression
- and EMS watercraft at Station 21 that provides coverage to all of Lake Monroe.
- not just the surface, but the residential areas, the four winds, the marinas, and all of that. The boat
- that we have now is approximately 25, 30 years old. It's not necessarily designed for Lake Monroe. It's
- a flat bottom jet drive boat. Every time we take it over to Cut Right to extract the hiker from Hoosier
- National Forest, we're pulling things up into that jet and requiring some form of service. So this piece
- of apparatus would be
- 50 to 60 year haul with outboard motors that we can replace or run with one down so they're double outboards
- if one goes down we still operate with one it also has a small motor and a fire pump similar to our
- identical to our fire apparatus so our folks can repair that piece of equipment
- This is just a lot more functional piece of equipment and a lot more common sense for our applications
- and our maintenance capabilities. The second piece is a fire engine. We have not bought a single piece
- of firefighting equipment since the merger. When we had that
- code of many callers is what I call it come in with equipment we have really needed to evaluate the
- fleet what apparatuses have been well taken care of which apparatus is needed service and over the last
- several years we've gotten those in fairly stable condition but it's time to start replacing some of
- those and this rainy day fund does that so again the rainy day fund has been funded one it initially
- started several years back I think it was 2016 2017 when we all got these surprise surplus
- plus revenue funds from the state of Indiana, and it was required to go into a rainy day fund. We established
- our rainy day fund then. We have not spent a dime out of it since. So these are saved up funds. Again,
- what I'm happy with with this is when we went through the merger, those of you who are a part of that
- process attended those meetings, you know that I tried to tell people we're going to minimize the amount
- of loans that we get. We're not going to bond. We want to use that cumulative to not charge interest.
- And we're doing that outright with both of these pieces of equipment.
- 1.7 million dollars with a loan over five six seven years that's a sizable amount of money another way
- that we're kind of we feel more comfortable going into next year is knowing that we don't have those
- debts okay thank you for that and already saw a hand raised over here so council Henry thank you and
- thank you for that I just I just want to maybe double stomp or echo what you just said about the
- that the use of this fund as opposed to borrowing money on a bond on interest that we're paying into
- the market and then using it to buy the capital purchase. I mean, this is incredibly responsible what
- you're doing here. And I think this is a message as we think about our comments this evening, as we
- start to wrap up our six days about how we're using bonds versus the rainy day and the cash we have.
- So thank you for that. And that's it. Councilor? I don't have it in front of me. What's the cash balance
- on this fund?
- 3.5 million. I'm looking over here to my left to see if anybody. All right. So all those in favor of
- moving forward with the department's 2026 rainy day fund budget request signified by saying aye. Aye.
- All those opposed, same sign. All right. Motion carries. Well, we appreciate it. And I always appreciate
- seeing station 22 right now.
- street from the house and we appreciate everything y'all do. We will relay that to them and real quick
- before I go just a couple things. We're going to be at fall festival with the fire safety trailer
- tomorrow for Kids Day. Saturday, we're going to be at Kroger South with the Hoosier Hills Food Bank
- raising funds and getting non-perishable food donations. Bloomington Fire Department will be at the
- Eastside Kroger doing the same thing. So if you can make it out to either of those, that would be wonderful.
- And then Sunday, we're at the Wonder Lab. So lots going on this weekend. What time are you there on
- Saturday? 10 to 2. OK. All right. Thanks for bringing the crew. Thank you.
- Yeah, so it's nine eleven. We always get dinner and go out to the memorial and we go in the morning
- to the service and we go in the evening. And also one of our firefighters was eating downtown tonight,
- saw my truck and said, hey, I'm going to stop in and see you work. So he's back there, too. First time
- ever. Thanks. Well, thank you. Have a good night. All right. Next up.
- on the budget train is item number seven, which is the Youth Services Bureau.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1114-0166 lit special purpose YSB with a category
- request of personnel at $2,084,483, supplies at $67,900, services at $135,650, capital at $20,000 for
- a total budget of $2,308,033. Second.
- All right, and welcome. We have Judge Harvey, Vicki Thevenau, and we have Vanessa Smith. Welcome.
- Thank you. And you can go ahead. OK, good afternoon. I'm Vicki Thevenau. I think last year I told you
- it might be my last budget hearing. I wasn't right, but this will be my last budget hearing. And I just
- want to remind the council and the public of a few overarching things that I want to be sure we don't forget.
- First of all, YSB generated over a million dollars last year in per diems and we project we will again
- produce over a million dollars. This money all goes to the county general fund and is used as needed
- by the council. So that is money that is not part of this budget. Second, the lit special purpose budget
- which is what funds us and with the exception of
- grants, that is our only funding source. That was why it was initially started and it's beginning to,
- a lot of people, a lot of different agencies are starting to take money out of this and I just want
- to remind us all that we need to keep an eye on it. We need to be sure that we do projections regularly
- so it's sustainable because we would not be able to function without it.
- So just a friendly reminder, I also wanted to point out that YSB has been fiscally conservative always.
- You have not ever seen us come in for an additional appropriation in my tenure, and I've been the director
- since 2016. We come in to appropriate grants, but we haven't ever asked for more money. So it was really
- hard for us to cut much, because we also flatline most years.
- But we decided, did all of you read the email from us today that came this morning? If you didn't, I'm
- going to talk briefly about that. We really reviewed to see needs versus wants. And what could we sacrifice
- or where else could we possibly cut for tonight? Because I know it's something that needs to be done.
- So we have asked that we give up for twenty twenty six the Monroe County Childhood Conditions Summit
- that we've this is our tenth year for twenty twenty five. We are going to have it. We're excited about
- it was Judge Galvin's baby. And I have asked him about how he feels about this. And he knows that this
- is a proposal this evening and is supportive of the necessity of these kinds of things. So we have asked
- to beyond what was submitted originally that
- that we cut funds of, well, totally it would be $12,000, but four of those were asking to put in our
- part-time line item, part-time hourly. And that's because we have to meet the needs of the youth. And
- the needs of the youth include we also have to give our full-time people vacations and days off.
- We have sometimes a high census that requires, we always have to meet our ratio, so sometimes it requires
- a third part-time person to be present. And we believe that takes priority over a summit. So that was
- the amendment today that we proposed to you.
- And last, good news, we found out just before we came over here that we were given our Runaway and Homeless
- Youth grant from the federal government again. It was renewed. I was a little worried about that. And
- we have $182,000 that funds two positions that we'll be able to have for this next year. So, I know,
- sigh of relief there. Vanessa Schmidt is gonna go into a little more detail about our budget and then
- Judge Harvey will wrap up.
- Thank you. Good evening council. So like Victor you mentioned in the ones in our personnel category
- the only increases you'll see to that are due to the coal raises in addition to the seven step increases
- for the full time positions. And like mentioned the four thousand dollars that we're asking to be placed
- back into part time so that we can meet the needs of the youth meet ratio and you know provide time
- off for those that are full time and have benefits and become ill.
- And so those are the only increases that you will see in our O1s. In our supplies category, there are
- increases to our fuel and food lines. Those are due to inflation. Therefore, we tried to make other
- reductions in the supply lines that we were able to. Those are only increases in that area.
- in the services category in the 03s. As mentioned, the budget amendment you received reduced the overall
- MC3 funding by $12,000 in addition to other line reductions. With that 4,000 going back into part-time,
- we were able to decrease the 03s by $9,000 overall. And then in the 04s, you'll see no changes in our
- capital line items. And again, as Vicki mentioned, those per diems are returned to the county, into
- the county general fund.
- We were allowed to keep those capital items and promise that by the council many years ago for our computer
- and furnishings line because when residents break computers, when they break furniture, we are not able
- to wait to come for additional appropriations to replace those items. There are often safety concerns
- such as cameras, door locks, things like that.
- So outside of those COLA and STEP increases, the only increases that we're asking for are to the part-time
- line, fuel and food. We have scrutinized our entire budget and offset those costs wherever we could,
- including that MC3 summit, which was a hard decision, but we do believe it's the right decision. And
- just to kind of add on to Vicki's introduction, we were able to educate in 2024 over 35,000 children
- about the dangers of running away, safe place program, and the
- YSB services that we offer in addition to around 11,000 adults. And we were able to provide direct service
- to over 320 youth in 2024. So as always, we just want to thank you guys for your continued support to
- help us meet the needs of youth in crisis.
- I get to be a cheerleader right now. First of all, one thing that Vicki did not mention is that today
- she had an audit from DCS with no problems. And that is another one of those very important things that
- they, the staff work tremendously hard. And in the short time that I have been at the helm on the juvenile
- court, all I have seen is Vicki being very worried and then not having any problems afterwards because
- she's so conscientious and because her staff is so top-notch
- I do want to also just point out the value of the services that US or Youth Services Bureau gives to
- this county. I think you probably know that The safe place obviously is an important piece These young
- people are at risk on a variety of levels The truancy termination project is extremely important has
- been very successful. It's grown from a one
- one school pilot to, I don't know how many kids you serve in that program right now. A hundred last
- year. How many in the first year? So few. I mean, I recall, but it was just kind of off the ground,
- but it has been extremely successful and really diving deep into the reasons that children are truant
- and getting them back into school.
- They serve young people who don't have any place to go in terms of DCS, maybe a short-term stay, maybe
- on probation side, that ordinarily and otherwise would be out of the home or at least away from families.
- So their success is dependent upon staying in the community.
- I've just been extremely impressed with this program in the short time that I've been here at this in
- this role. I think the county owes a tremendous debt to Vicki Tevinol having this being her last year
- at this role. She's tremendous and has done a fantastic job. So thank you.
- It's hard to follow. It's really hard to follow. And it actually kind of makes me a little emotional
- because hearing the fact that you have to cut MC3, because I know people who have gone to that. I know
- my daughter actually was presented a couple of years ago as well. And I know that there are some
- family members and some students who have gone through YSP and have used the services and still
- are moving through and are up and up because of the care that you all have presented to them. So I just
- want to say thank you for that. In addition to that, if this is your last official budget, which it
- sounds like it is, then definitely another round of applause goes to you because it's clear through
- listening to Judge Harvey.
- Every time we hear something about YSB, it's like we see your face and you are just so amazing at your
- job and what you do. So I definitely appreciate it and well deserved. When is your last? Do you know?
- Haven't announced a date. It'll be early next year. OK. Well, you keep us in mind when you announce
- it because we definitely want to make sure we give you another kudos before your official send off. So yeah.
- My question to you before I look over to my other council members here is, is there any way, so because
- you're doing the summit this year and then next year it's basically it will be no more. Is there a potential
- of maybe like partnering with other people to like keep it afloat? It is my hope that we could collaborate
- with either IU or other
- local agencies and do a joint venture that would accomplish the same goals, allow us all to come together,
- do the same level of education that we've done and have youth presenters and all of the things that
- that summit has provided and do that in just a different way and then the result isn't the county only
- funding it. It would be a joint effort in the community.
- So maybe it could even grow, who knows. But yes, I didn't, yeah. We had to cut it out for 2026, but
- I didn't want it to die. And we're just starting to brainstorm, because we just made this recommendation
- for next year. Remind me how long it's been going on, the Childhood Summit. It's 10 years, correct? 10, yeah.
- And in these discussions, too, I had the same concern. And I think there's room for smaller focused
- groups, too, throughout the year. We still have some training budget here, partnering with different
- agencies on just a smaller group basis. We have a fantastic space over at YSB. We can bring lots of
- groups in on smaller levels and still hopefully provide some of the really valuable training. So I don't
- think it's off the table. It's just in the form
- that it's now in the cost, I think, because they've reevaluated.
- I guess the only other thing that I would add to that, I'm just brainstorming off topic here, because
- we're always talking about city county collaboration and creativity. And one thing that I know in mind
- is that the city has the Commission on the Status of Children and Youth, and they have the whole council
- chambers that I know that people have used before for summits. There was a summit there this morning
- for young black males from
- And so I just, I'm really hoping that there is a way that if the powers that be could really kind of
- get together to really continue to do that, because I just know that that is something that's passionate
- for you all. Definitely passionate for me to continue to see how we can make that happen. So I'm willing
- to think of all the ways that we can brainstorm to make sure that
- we can continue to do that. Well, we might invite you to a little brainstorming session then when that
- starts next year. Okay, pencil me in. All right, now we'll stop yapping and I will look over here to
- my left to see if anybody has any questions. Councilor Rolts. I don't have any questions about the numbers.
- I appreciate the work that you've put into this. But I think that
- you know, this isn't the first or the last time we're gonna be looking at a budget in lit special purpose.
- And I think it's something that we need to say out loud, which is last year, we cut the rate and said
- at the time, we needed to take a look at it and possibly reinstate this year
- And it's my opinion that that is something we should do. This isn't the time to get into that necessarily,
- but since we've opened a budget funded entirely by Let's Special Purpose and given what else we are
- going to be looking at tonight, I just wanted to get that out there and just put my thoughts out so
- that maybe we can follow that up
- with whatever needs to be done. I know doing the tax, the income tax rate change requires certain things
- to happen before October 1st, and it's September. So you're looking at me like I'm crazy, and I was
- hoping I'd be getting like thumbs up. October 31st. Oh, beautiful. We can just kick back.
- I think we should. I think we should be looking at that for this year. Just coming. Right looking over
- here and seeing if anybody
- quite an emotional day. It's really wonderful to see you here. It's really wonderful to be able to go
- through this budget and talk about all the wonderful things that you all have been doing and most certainly
- will continue to do. My one regret is that Marty Hawk can't be here tonight. She is after the judge
- is your number one cheerleader and she would really relish being here tonight to sing your praises.
- So when you make your announcement and you throw a party for her,
- Let us know. I have two questions for you. One is about the numbers and one is about vacancies. I'll
- start with the numbers. I understand that we want to move funds into your part-time line, but as I'm
- looking at the budget, what line is the summit in?
- It's normally it's not a line item It's been paid out of both professional services and travel and training
- depending on whether it would you know We have to pay the Convention Center. We have to pay the audio
- visual people So there was never a line item for it We spent twelve to thirty twelve to fifteen thousand
- dollars over the last ten years every year for the summit It came out a different line item. So we took
- six out of travel and training and six out of professional services
- via our email today in addition to what all we had submitted so that would be the answer to that yellow
- one three and three oh two eight so it would it's uh three zero zero one three for professional services
- three zero zero two eight for training job correct
- Yeah, I have it on the screen as well for you. I need a lot of help. She's great. She keeps up. Yeah.
- My second question is on vacancies. I know we just got an email from you requesting to fill a position.
- How are things going over there? The clinical coordinator? Yeah. That's a tough position. It requires
- an LCSW and usually by the time people pass that test and are doing it,
- not very long after they want private practice because it's more lucrative. We actually have done some
- interviews and are feeling pretty good about filling that position. And you will find that we get counselors
- often fresh out of school, not always, and they want to do a couple years, three years with us to get
- their hours to take their LCSW test because they need clinical supervision.
- So the turnover is going to be, in our clinical team, probably consistent. Our direct care, we are so
- blessed. We have a handful of solid people who have been there for a lot of years, seven, eight, nine,
- 10 years. The direct care people live with these, I mean, they're with those kids eight and a half hours
- a day, or afternoon, or night. And if we don't get the part-time people to give them their days off,
- the benefits that they earn
- it's easy to burn out in those positions. So we're gonna have, and we also hire part-timers, some of
- them are students, graduate students, or kids that graduate, eventually they finish their degrees and
- move on, but they're good with kids. And we try to be very diverse in both ages, all the things, because
- we need kids to be able to relate to somebody on staff. So we will have turnover. You will see me asking
- to fill positions from time to time, because it's just that kind of business.
- Did that answer your question? It did. We just want to make sure that you're not overwhelmed by the
- vacancies, but at the same time as someone who is married to an LCSW. Yeah. I understand. They also
- serve on our license for the emergency shelter, which was contracted by DCS. So that's a very important
- position for us. So we will ensure that that gets filled. Anything we can do to help. Yeah. Thank you.
- All right. Anybody else have any questions?
- All right. And just for the record, Councillor Trent Dekker is joining us. So. All right. So seeing
- no more questions, all those and wait, hold on. Oh, I've got some motions. Oh, that's right.
- That's right. OK, go for it. Council, I move to reduce line zero one. Excuse me.
- That's not right. Let me get my numbers right. Council, I move to reduce line 30013 professional services
- by $6,000. Second. Okay, we got a motion and a second. And any further discussion on this? All right,
- seeing none, all those in favor of reducing line item 30013 by $6,000, signify by saying aye. Aye.
- All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries. I'm gonna do this a little more expediently.
- Council, I move to reduce line 30028 by $6,000 and simultaneously add $4,000 to line 17801 part-time.
- Second. Okay, and we got a motion and a second. And are there any further discussions on that?
- Okay, seeing none, all those in favor of this motion signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. All right, motion carries. And so as we've done before, when we have these amendments, I'll
- look to Kim Schell to see what our new grand total is before we move forward. In the personnel line,
- we have a new total of 2 million.
- $88,483. There's no change in the supplies. New total for the services line is $123,650. No change in
- the capital for a new budget total of $2,300,033. Okay. All right. And so,
- All those in favor of moving forward with the department's 26 lit special purpose fund request signify
- by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Have
- a good night. Next up on our list is
- Item number eight, which is court services. Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1000-0225
- County General Courts with the category requests of personnel at $3,521,682. In the supplies category
- at $32,000. In the services category at $757,404. Capital is at $0 for a total budget of
- $4,311,086. Second. Great. We got a motion and a second. And we are joined by Judge DeKoff and Liz Abraham.
- Welcome. I brought my deputy court administrator, Jama Chandler. Hello. Welcome, Jama. First exposure
- to budgets. What a time. Don't scare her away. Well, I can. OK. And our budgets this year in the salaries,
- we did the 3% COLA.
- I just want to remind you, if you look at it, it looks like it's bigger than 3% because back in February,
- I did come before you after I went to WIS and they got increased. So it looks like more than 3%, but
- I did take the total for this year in the 3%. So I just, it's there. Okay. And in the twos and the threes,
- I went through and looked over the last five years and made a lot of reductions. I'm barely changed.
- I think anything in the increase, but I deducted quite a bit after looking that I had room to
- decrease. So I did do the decrease. And in lines after talking to both Kim and Carly, I found out lines
- 2-0, 3-0-0, and 3-0-0-0-4 are being removed per council. So when I look at those, I have to already
- have one at a zero in the two. So that's not a problem. But in my threes, the repairs equipment vehicle,
- was it 2000? So
- I would move that we reduce that to zero since that line is going away. And I move that 2,000 up then
- into the office supplies because I can take it out of there. So it's just a movement, not changing any
- amount in that. Everything else, like I said, stay the same or basically went down.
- And so basically what you're saying. And so in that three, zero, zero, zero, four, reduce that to zero,
- but taking what we have there and move in that to the office supply line. Yes. To zero, zero, zero,
- one office supplies. Okay. Okay. All right. And does anybody have any questions on this particular budget?
- Looking over here to my right. Councilor Henry.
- Thank you for the work on this one. The line item we've talked about with just about everybody is the
- training and travel line, the 30028 for you. The three-year average on the travel looks like about 6,800
- over a three-year period, and then it's 12 and 60 this year. Can you walk me through the travel line item?
- There are certain requirements that we have to meet to satisfy our being able to get the adequate amount
- of numbers that we're supposed to get. We have it at 12,000. We discussed lowering it to 10,000 as opposed
- to 12,000, but we believe that at least $1,000 a judge is appropriate simply because there are conferences
- we have to attend.
- and things that we have to do to make sure that we're keeping up with the law or changes in
- the problem-solving courts or whatever it may be. So there are things we go to that, for instance, the
- annual conferences next week, the Supreme Court will cover the cost of the hotel for the actual two
- days that we're there and that type of thing. So we've looked at it, but we do try to be judicious about
- using it. Yeah, it looks like it was about 8,000 last year, so down to 10,000.
- probably makes sense, especially if there's covering of the hotel rooms and some of this. So, yes. Okay.
- That's it. Okay. Councilor, everything. I have a question on juvenile detention line in your threes.
- That's three, two, two, one eight. You reduced that by a significant amount. Why? When I looked over
- the numbers, not even to discuss it with Judge Harvey, since that affects her, that over the last five years,
- It has drastically gone down. I even had to get my cheat sheet here. When I looked over the last five
- years, you don't have to hurry. You've got 20 minutes last year. I still had with my due retention.
- I only use $69,000 and change last year out of 300,000. The year before that was 82,000 out of 300,000.
- The year before that was 107,000 out of 300. So as you see, it keeps going down, down, down. So after
- talking to her this year, it is a little bit higher. I could be 100,000 plus this year. It just went
- up. So that's why we decided that we could lose 100,000, and we should still be fine. Yeah. Yeah. And
- that's wonderful. That was quite a reduction, and I just wanted to know why. I've been watching that
- line. Yeah.
- Okay. And I'm going to look over here and see if anybody has any questions. Counselor Decker. We don't
- often get good news in these parts. I suspect you have similar sentiments, but I don't want to speak
- for you. But that reduction is a reflection of something good, right? Out there in the world.
- Thank God. I'd love to hear. I'd love to hear some good words for three seconds, maybe.
- I don't lean down very well. I get to be a cheerleader again. This is a reflection of a couple things,
- primarily our JDAI program, juvenile detention alternatives initiative. It's a statewide program. Many
- counties are part of it. There's a lot of work that goes into intakes, assessments, and working with
- young people to keep them out of detention.
- While you know the number on detention stay is lower the work is high. But we have a fantastic team
- Christine McAfee is here she's our coordinator. So that's one of them it's a balance because we are
- always and I appreciate.
- Lisa's statement like it could be higher. We don't have any control over the activities of young people,
- but it is also consistent with the culture that I think was started with Judge Talaferro.
- carried on through Judge Galvin is that we are looking at these young people as children and what would
- we want for our children who may make mistakes or take some action that they need to be held accountable
- for, but really the best place for them is not long-term stay in detention. It's evidence-based. We
- try very hard not to keep our young people in detention for very long.
- It's an effort to keep them out, get them in if necessary to protect the public and themselves, work
- very hard in finding an alternative if they've been placed to get them out quickly, but also work really
- hard not to put them there. So it is an absolutely wonderful thing because it's reflective of the staff
- of the probation department and just how hard they work for these kids. Thank you, Judge. One thing
- I'll just say,
- Just to fellow counselors, this has come up before, and I'm so sorry for being late tonight.
- But on occasion, when we look closely, we always all talk about solutions. But occasionally when we
- look closely at our current court system, there are things that work tremendously well. We will look
- at those things, focus on those things, photocopy those things, replicate those things. And I really
- am happy to hear something good out of this and appreciate all that.
- I'm pleased to present that to you. All right. Looking over here and seeing if anybody else has any
- questions. Okay. I think we might have a amendment by Councilor Iverson.
- Reduce line three, zero, zero, zero, four, repairs equipment vehicle to zero and simultaneously set
- line or add, excuse me, $2,000 to line two, zero, zero, zero, one office supplies. Second. All right,
- we got a motion and a second. Are there any other further discussion from council members regarding
- this item? All right.
- All those in favor of this change signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay, motion
- carries. And I'm gonna give Michelle a moment to give us a new grand total. There's no change to the
- personnel. Supplies, 34,000. Services, 755.
- $755,404 with a new budget total of $4,311,086. Okay. And President, I have a second motion here. We
- missed it. It's the training travel. Oh, okay. So if we may, Councilors, I'd like to make a motion to amend
- account lines 30028 train travel from 12,060 to 10,000 even. Okay, we got a motion in a second. Any
- other further discussion on reducing the this line item to 10,000?
- All those in favor of reducing this line item to 10,000, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. OK, motion carries. OK. And so another official. Oh, wait. I saw another hand. I actually
- have a question that I have come up with. OK. Can I change the subject and ask them a question about
- a different line? Sure.
- about the part-time line, and I should know this, because I've met with you all, but it's, I think,
- at 50, is that correct? I'm looking at multiple documents. And I'm not remembering if we've talked about
- part-time, why it's set quite so high.
- given the utilization over the past several years. In the past, I just covered two of my part-time bailiffs.
- And our info coordinator spot comes out of part-time. And it takes all of the law clerks for all of
- our judges throughout the entire year. We never know semester to semester how many we're going to have.
- I think we have like five right now for this semester. So oh, seven. Sorry, seven. Jamie's in charge of that.
- So that's why that is higher. We're not needing any part-time bails right now. We're full, but we do
- have a gentleman that has retired and said anytime if we need him to that he would come back if we get
- shorthanded. So that's why that's there. Does look like you've not fully utilized it though. Is that
- something that could be reduced?
- I mean, if we can reduce it, it's one of those if it gets to a certain level, I come back for an additional
- or we would have to either tell the judges that they need to lose a law clerk or I have to tell my info
- coordinator, we have to cut our hours. Well, I'm not suggesting that it's just that if the need hasn't
- changed from previous years and the utilization, what I'm looking at over the past several budgets is
- that in 2024, you spent about 26,000.
- In 23, 35,000, no, 28, I mean, it was up in 22 to just 39,000. So a lot of that. I'm just. Okay. After
- I talk to Chica, how about we try 40,000 and let's just see how it goes from there. Cause I said, some
- of our interns do pay. Some have started doing volunteer, but we never know, but we can go 40 and we'll
- just monitor it next year and see.
- Awesome. Okay. So I do you want to do that? I don't know. You do it. Darn it. Oh, come on. Um, so given
- that I move that we, um, take the part time line down. Um, so the part time line one seven eight zero
- one down to 40,000. So reduce it by 10. Second.
- All right, we got a motion in a second on reducing that line item to 40,000. Is there any further discussion
- from council members? If you want to give me just a couple minutes, I'll figure out the new FICA. Otherwise,
- I can come back. That's fine. While we are waiting, and we don't have any jeopardy music, does anybody
- else have any other questions related to
- this item, no? Since we do have a minute, can I just say something? Yes. I would like to just say that
- when Judge Harvey was up here talking about her team, I would also just like to recognize that what
- Judge Harvey presides over is a very difficult docket. It's a very time consuming docket.
- Um, it takes a lot of wisdom. It takes a lot of commitment and, um, she continues to promote the philosophy
- of the Monroe County, um, court system. And I believe of this County as far as caring for people and
- helping them improve, especially when they're children and realizing how important that is. And I don't
- think she gets the recognition that she should for the kind of commitment that that
- that that docket requires, and she does it in an exemplary, caring, very wise way. And so you acknowledged
- that, and she acknowledged her team, but she does an amazing job for the children of this county. And
- I just wanted to, since we had a minute, just be able to say that, so thank you. Yes, kudos.
- The SIFICA amount would be 221,653. Okay. And so all those in favor of reducing this item to 40,000
- signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries.
- And then I'm gonna look to Kim again to give us another toe. I'm gonna make a motion with regards to
- the FICA. Gotta do that, yep. Council, I move to edit line 18101 FICA to, what is that number? 221-653.
- 221-63. 653. 653. Second.
- Okay, we got a motion in a second to reduce the FICA or to have the FICA line item to be 221,653. Any
- further discussion on that? Okay. All those in favor of this motion signify by saying aye. Aye. All
- those opposed, same sign. All right. And now I'm going to give you the ayes.
- The new personnel line is 3,510,917. Supplies, 34,000. Services, 753,344. No capital change. For a total
- of 4,298,261. All right.
- now we will vote overall on this and all those in favor of moving forward with the 2026 county general
- fund for court services signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign all right motion carries
- next up is item b
- Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1114-0225 lit special purpose courts with the
- category requests of personnel $162,085, supplies $450, services at $333,353, capital at $0 for a total
- budget of $495,888. Second. Okay.
- Okay, once again, the personnel, I did the 3% COLA for that. In the supplies and the services, I again,
- looked over my five years and I reduced some, but then I shifted, I reduced it by about five, but then
- I went and I increased my GAL line up 5,000 because hopefully Judge Harvey isn't going to panic back
- here, but as of this morning, my budget in there, I only have $94.87 in there as of right now.
- She's not freaking out back there, is she? No. We'll get it taken care of. So that's why we're increasing
- that to $5,000 for next year. So I'll do my magic and we'll get that taken care of. Yes. OK. Looking
- to my left to see if anybody has any questions on this. No. Looking to my right, anybody? Shocker.
- So all those in favor of moving forward with the 2026 lit special purpose fund signify by saying aye.
- Aye. All those opposed same sign. All right. Motion carries. Next up is item C. Council I move to open
- for discussion and review fund 1170-0225 public safety lit courts.
- with the category requests of personnel zero, supplies zero, services at $301,616, capital is at $0
- for a total budget of $301,616. Second.
- Go ahead. Okay. This budget pays for the ASI guards in the justice building and the Curry building.
- So it's just their salary. So I increased it by 3%. Again, this might look like it's a little different
- because last year we inadvertently forgotten. If you recall, I came back before you to get this year's
- corrected. So this is what the new total will be for next year. All right. Any questions on this item?
- Look to my right. None. Looking to my left. None. Okay.
- all right all those in favor of approving the 2026 special public safety lit fund signify by saying
- aye aye all those opposed same sign all right motion carries next up is item d council i move to open
- for discussion and review fund 2200-0000
- Alternative dispute resolution with the category request of personnel zero dollars, supplies at $500,
- services at $13,200, capital as at $1,000 for a total budget of $14,700. Second. Okay, and this one,
- again, it's just can only be used for ADR, which is our coordination mediation in this fund.
- When I am proposing and asking if I can do at this point on my contractual, I've talked to Kim show
- about this too. It's currently a proposed 12,000.
- If we can increase that to 15,000, there's plenty in this budget. My cash balance is at $118,599 as
- of this morning. I've talked to Judge Stafford over this because that line right now is at, I have $241
- left in that line. And I'm actually coming before you next week on September 16th County Council and
- asking for a $5,000 additional appropriation. But that's the limit that I can do with the advertised
- amount. Okay.
- That's what I was gonna ask. Okay, all right. Does anybody over here to my right have any questions?
- And look. Councillor Decker. Is this any automatic court-ordered mediation or is this just very specific?
- This is one that comes, I've got it here. It's $20 from every divorce case that goes to this fund. So
- it's divorce cases. It's for mediations, parent coordination services and co-parent counseling.
- Anybody else have any questions? Kate has a suggestion. Are those fees regulated, like the amount?
- By statute, they tell us what it is and it's collected when they file. Okay. All right. I think we might
- have an amendment. We do have an amendment and that's in line 3006, contractual, correct? Correct. What
- was the dollar amount change again?
- I'm going from 12,000 up to 15,000. Great, thank you. Council, I move that we set line 3006 contractual
- to $15,000. Second. All right, we got a motion in a second. Any additional questions or comments related
- to this item?
- Okay, seeing none, all those in favor of increasing this line item to 15,000 signify by saying aye.
- Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries. And now, Michelle, for a new grant total.
- There's no personnel, supplies is 500, services 16,200, capital 1,000 for a total of 17,700.
- Thank you. All right. And all those in favor of moving forward with the department's 2026 alternative
- dispute resolution fund budget request, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay,
- motion carries. Next up is item E.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and review Fund 2511-0000. Jury pay user fees with a category
- request of personnel at $0, supplies at $0, services at $36,500, and capital at $0 for a total budget
- of $36,500. Second. Okay. What would you like to add?
- Okay, this one is set up by state statute. Also, it's $4 from all criminal cases goes into this budget.
- And as of today, I had $101,000 still in this budget. I've just kept it exactly the same. It looks like
- we might have spent very much this year, but I've checked into trials this morning and I have a five
- day murder trial coming up, a five day level one felony coming up, which are five days, two trials that
- are level threes at five days each and two trials that are each gonna be nine day trials.
- still yet this year. So that's, that'll take a hit. So I just, I'm, that's why I just want to leave
- it in the fund, can only be used for jury trials anyway. So. Sounds like there's a lot on deck. Okay.
- All righty. Looking over here at someone left and seeing if anybody, Councilor Decker. I just like to
- always occasionally have a comment for the public's knowledge that, um, jury trials cost money,
- lots of money. And so,
- The less is more sometimes in that regard, probably on your end from a multitude of directions. But
- for folks in the public, every time people don't agree and it goes before someone wearing a robe with
- that distinguished title, that costs dollars. And we're paying for that already with whatever happens
- out in the street and everything else. I always like to remind the public because there's a very real
- component to all of this.
- And I'll just add on the fiscal side, the 4B is really healthy. The operating balance that you're ending
- up with is sufficient. So I think you'll be fine. OK. All right. And seeing no other further questions,
- all those in favor of moving forward with the 2026 jury pay user fees bond, signify by saying aye. Aye.
- All those opposed, same sign.
- Okay, motion carries and the last item for court services is item F.
- Council I move to open for discussion and review fund eighty eight ninety five dash zero zero zero zero
- county 4d incentive with the category requests of personnel at forty nine thousand seven dollars supplies
- at zero dollars services at zero dollars capital at nine thousand five hundred dollars for a total budget
- of fifty eight thousand five hundred and seven dollars second and what would you like to add on this item
- This is what pays 25% of commission rate per salary that we get reimbursed. And you'll notice there
- is no change. And as Judge Eacom contested, his salary is based on the judge's salary. And this year,
- the judges or next year, the judges did not receive a salary increase. So that meant his salary stays
- the same also. All righty. And looking over here to my right and seeing if anybody has any questions.
- Looking to my left. OK.
- All righty, so seeing no questions. And for the final sign, all those in favor of moving forward with
- the 2026 budget, County 4D's incentive fund budget request, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. All right, motion carries. And that concludes core services. It's Tuesday. See you soon.
- All right.
- We, I think, are going, before we get to the last item of the evening for the probation office, or department
- rather, I'm gonna take a 15, a little over a 15 minute recess. So I'm gonna ask, very kindly, but being
- very stern with this, seven o'clock on the dot,
- Um, there's a song, um, with that too, but, um, seven o'clock on the dot. We are here back on the day
- is at seven o'clock to finish out this, um, budget presentation night. So we will recess until seven
- o'clock be back. And it is seven o'clock on the dot and we are back and we are on the last department budget.
- presentation this evening, which is the probation department.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1000-0226. County general probation with the
- category requests of personnel line $3,200,685, supplies at $0, services at $4,000, capital at $0 for
- a total budget of $3,204,685. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. And we got the dream
- team at the table here.
- Please go ahead. Thank you. Before I get started on the courts, the county general budget, I'd like
- to just give a little bit of an introduction to all the budgets. So yes, we'll be very short. So thank
- you very much.
- introduce the budget team. So, you know, Judge DeKalb, our presiding judge, me, Linda Brady, Chief Probation
- Officer, Anthony Williams, who's Deputy Chief Probation Officer, and Becca Streit, who's also Deputy
- Chief Probation Officer and our Community Corrections Executive Director. And on Teams, our
- Office Administrator, Melissa Wallace, is listening in. She's the one who pays our bills. The Probation
- Department, the funding summary is we have 26 budgets. So, a lot.
- but we're only going to do nine tonight. Most of the probation expenses are personnel, with 90% of our
- annual spending being on personnel. Our funding sources tax-based at 58%, and this is for this year,
- user fees 16%, grants 26%. I'll briefly summarize our 2026 submitted budgets. All budgets with personnel
- were prepared as directed by the County Council's letter with guidance from our
- extraordinary county council liaisons Kate Wilson, Peter Iverson, and also Michelle, Kim Schell was
- very helpful with us pulling our budgets together. So thank you. Some budgets with personnel may have
- small increases in longevity for employees who qualify. There will be a few step raises in some of the
- budgets, but overall with all the budgets with Judge Deakoff's guidance we've worked to reduce appropriations
- in all budgets
- including user fee budgets, not just the county general or tax-based budgets. And so when I introduce
- each budget, I'll explain the budget lines that were cut prior to submitting the 2026 budget request.
- Otherwise, budgets are generally flatlined at the 2025 appropriation levels. We will also talk a little
- bit later about significant grant cuts for 2026. So as we already said, we're 26% funded by grants and
- the cuts we'll talk about.
- The goal of all of our user fee funds is to achieve a sustainable budget. And all of our past and current
- county council liaisons know that we've been struggling for years with trying to keep all of these user
- fee funds sustainable. We'll describe what we're doing with each of the user fee budgets to keep them
- sustainable
- we talk about each individual budget. For this year for 2025 we've already made cuts to our part-time
- probation officer assistance not refilling positions when the part-time staff members leave and this
- was to keep the community corrections user fee funds which is known as project income and other fee
- accounts from being depleted to dangerous levels this year.
- We formally employed 14 part-time probation officer assistants, and now we employ only four. So we're
- really down. But we have reassigned our full-time community corrections field officers to help with
- those duties in the day reporting program and the drug testing program, primarily conducting observed
- urine drug testing. We've also made many other cuts this year in 2025 spending from our user fee funds
- to keep them sustainable.
- we're going to be able to do that for twenty twenty six. Did want to mention staff turnover- we
- sessions because since COVID we've experienced unprecedented turnover specifically for public safety
- officers which are probation officers and community corrections officers. As of today we have a full
- staff I know Judge DeKalb is probably going to punch me for saying it but for seven weeks. I also want
- to advise you that there is going to be a change for us with our travel training requirements next year.
- First of all before you
- worry we have no travel training coming from county general or public safety lit. Our travel training
- is paid from grants and user fees and a relatively small amount of travel training and special purpose
- lit but there are new department of correction requirements for all agencies that receive community
- corrections grants. All agencies are being evaluated for adherence to becoming what's called an evidence-based
- organization and we have been audited by the University of Cincinnati for this adherence and there's
- been a report that's distributed to our local JRAC which is Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council. The
- DOC is now requiring the agencies receiving community corrections grant dollars must demonstrate that
- they are at least pursuing trying to adhere to their recommended changes. So prior to this new training
- requirement probation officers by
- by the state rules have to complete 12 hours per year continuing education with six of those hours dedicated
- to evidence-based practices. However, based on the new audit from the Department of Correction, all
- staff who supervise participants at a community corrections or probation program, which is our probation
- officers, should receive
- at least 40 hours of ongoing training. So from 12 to 40 per year with 75% of those hours, so 30 hours
- concerning evidence-based practices focused on behavior change and service delivery. So it's a huge,
- huge, huge jump. To increase these training hours, our department is planning to use existing learning
- teams that we have in place already to bolster training hours and content. We'll be making some changes
- to ensure that our learning team sessions
- count towards evidence-based practices of behavior change hours. We'll also be working to find additional
- training opportunities to demonstrate that we are making efforts to comply with the DOC's new increased
- training report requirements. Despite this expected increase in travel the training requirements for
- all of our 55 probation officers we did not increase travel training budget lines in any of our budgets.
- Again reminder no travel training in county general or public safety lit.
- security costs is the last item.
- This is for our high volume day reporting morning session from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. We contract with Crimson
- Security for off-duty sworn law enforcement officers who are able to serve warrants and make arrests.
- They just advised us yesterday that for 2026, they are raising their hourly rate from $60 an hour to
- $70 an hour, which is a 17% increase. The security charges are split between two budgets, special purpose
- lit and public safety lit, 50-50.
- We'll be able to cover the increase in security cost of the same appropriation as we have in 2025 with
- no increases. We already did the math. We'll be fine with the same appropriation. And that's summary
- of all of our budgets. And when we get to individual budgets, then we'll talk more specifically about
- those individual budgets. But that's all I have to start with. Do you want to add anything? Okay. Pardon?
- do you have anything else no ready to do the county general which is what you just read okay so the
- county general budget nearly all of this budget is for staff salary and fringe benefits we have only
- two service items in the 30s totaling four thousand dollars in this budget as
- Many of you already know the Indiana General Assembly made cuts to nearly all state budget lines for
- the next biennium. Most state budget lines were cut by 5% and that includes the Indiana Supreme Court's
- budget lines for pretrial services and problem solving court programs. However, the state cut community
- corrections grants appropriation by 10% instead of the standard 5%.
- this is after six consecutive years with the flatline state budget for community corrections grants.
- So the DOC has made the decision to defund all Indiana pretrial services programs for 2026 and that
- was just announced like a month ago something like that. So yeah not not good news. The DOC also kept
- funding for problem solving court programs
- and they flatline funding for community corrections programs which will be the seventh consecutive year
- of flatlining so we all know what flatlining means is that community corrections user fees project income
- has been tapped into to make up those differences in the cost of living increases step increases health
- insurance for the past six years for our pretrial services problem solving court and community corrections.
- So yeah, that's what we are dealing with from the state. Anthony and Becca recently attended a statewide
- meeting for probation community corrections that had Department of Corrections staff, Indiana Supreme
- Court staff.
- They were, one of the topics was supposed to be alternative funding opportunities. From what I was told
- for people who attended, including my team, the only concrete funding suggestion was to quote, work
- with our local JRAC to use opioid settlement funds to alleviate the impact of these cuts. That was the
- most concrete recommendation they had.
- So in order to keep these important county programs in place for 2026, we have added the following positions
- to our county general budget. So we added four pretrial services probation officers who were fully cut
- from the DOC budget for 2026. We added four problem-solving court officers salary match that was formally
- paid from community corrections user fees.
- And then as we go through the county general budget, some lines are less due to employees with less
- experience being moved into those lines and some are more due to step increases. I don't know if you
- wanted to mention. We have been informed by the Supreme Court that there is a distinct possibility that
- for 2026, they are going to attempt to supplement
- what we receive from them with additional funding to try to make up for the money that we've lost from
- the DOC grant. We feel fairly confident that we're going to receive something from the Indiana Supreme
- Court. We just have not gotten a definitive figure from that yet. We've asked them, we told them that
- we had budgets tonight, but obviously we can't push them along too fast.
- But the idea was that since we lost, I think it was 295,000, that they're going to try to
- in 26 for one time only try to supplement what we've already gotten and give us that additional money.
- And we're fairly confident that that's going to happen. We just can't tell you tonight what that amount
- is going to be. But there were a couple of other counties, Marion County being one of them, that have
- opted out of doing pretrial release. So because of that, that would have freed up
- the money that the Supreme Court had given them for their program, it would have freed up some of that
- money. I think there was at least one other county that opted out. That's why we're confident that Monroe
- County is going to receive some money, probably a fair amount close to what the DOC grant would have
- been. We just can't tell you what, and we did try, but we don't have that exact figure tonight.
- let us know obviously that it's one time only and in Marion County not only they opted out they've it's
- done now I mean it's they've ended it in 2025 so I was told by the chief probation officer that 45 employees
- so yeah that's really all I have I think for this budget if you have questions pardon is that it well
- thank you for
- that really sobering information that you gave us. So I would continue with my hashtags, but I'm not
- gonna do that tonight. So looking over here to my right, does anybody have any questions on this item?
- Council Iverson. We're all going through this. I've said this a couple of times tonight, and I think
- you've heard me. This is a very challenging year.
- based on where we've been. And so thank you for your summary. It helps, I think, us all feel like we're
- in the same boat. And so I appreciate that. And also it was nice to be able to work with you because
- we had to make some really, really hard decisions about some personnel lines. And so it's nice to work
- with you on those and trying to find a way forward.
- I also wanted to thank you for raising the topic of JRAC. The JRAC here at Monroe County is fantastic.
- It is just a really great team of people. I know Kate Welch is on that. Just a really great team of
- folks. And I just want to go on the record as saying that 100% the local JRAC should be controlling
- the opioid settlement dollars.
- it should not be an independent commission here in Monroe County. So I really I thank you for saying
- that about the recommendation you got. And I just think that's so important. I think I think that's
- what I'm going where I'm going to stop tonight because we went over this budget with you. Thank you
- for making the reductions that you've made. Thank you. Looking over here to my left, Councillor Decker.
- I appreciate the thoroughness of all of this. I struggle daily to figure out what is happening up north
- that's coming in here. The game has changed so much, I don't even understand what the kids are out there
- pitching. I'm not even sure they have balls in their hands anymore. And I guess, because everything
- that you all do is evidence-based. We've seen that. Every counselor on here has seen PowerPoint presentations that are
- priceless in their detail. And that evidence used to be what the state used to make decisions. Sounds
- like the Supreme Court is still our friend, which thank God for that. You got a friend in the court,
- but I guess, and you don't have to answer this because I don't want to put you in this, but I am trying
- to figure out what is the end goal of these changes against evidence base? What do they want it to look
- like down here?
- Are you talking about us having to do more training or are you talking, I'm not sure what you're?
- The cuts, the cuts. Oh, the cuts. Yeah. Well, we would have no idea why the DOC got 10% cut for community
- corrections grants when they were actually given increases for some certain parts of their operations.
- So I couldn't tell you why that would be. I wouldn't even wager a guess.
- I would say that nobody across the state got received grant money for pretrial release funding. I believe
- the Department of Corrections position is it really does not impact them. So why would they be funding
- it? Because you're talking about releasing people without them posting it.
- Well, I don't know if that's it, but nobody received that money despite the fact that the Supreme Court
- strongly believes in pre-trial release. And it is very encouraging about those of us who do it to continue
- doing it, which is why I believe they're looking at awarding us the money in 2026. But I don't really
- know what the reasoning is
- I think even the DOC staff, they didn't see it coming. There was a particular staff person. Our team
- had attended training at the DOC just right after this got announced. And that was the training at which
- they explained, oh, by the way, you have to increase your training by all these hours. And I'm like,
- I'm not very happy sitting here hearing this when you're taking. And she said, obviously, it's not her
- taking the money away. But she said, we know this is hard.
- we don't know what to say. I mean, it's staff. So they're not in the loop of making those decisions.
- But we have a really good team that we work with at the DOC who tries to help us. But I don't think
- they saw this coming. And really, the goal of pre-trial, the goal of about everything you all do, at
- least particularly on your end, is if I can keep this person
- from having this thing that's happened in their life, from compounding even worse with jobs, time, family,
- all those things. If I can minimize that a little bit and try to get them back to good, and I've seen
- your workbooks, which are impeccable, I'd love to still them for my students, but there's ethics involved.
- But that's the goal of all of this, to try to get this bad to be as minimally bad as possible for that
- whole unit, right? Okay.
- It's really quite simple for anyone watching from Indianapolis, and maybe they should just come down
- and ask more questions. Thank you. Anybody else over here have any other questions. Councilor Wilks.
- I don't have any questions we've gone over this, and I tried to be kind of a conduit for giving you
- a heads up that this was coming, and I
- I'm just at a loss. I mean, I'm not gonna reiterate what Councillor Deckard said, but obviously I think
- we share the same perspective. So knowing that, I do have a question now, because if I talk long enough,
- that's what happens. If you're expecting a one time possible supplement,
- that gets us through one more year. Then are we, we're just back to, okay. But it buys us some time.
- Yeah, okay. Just wanted to make sure I understood that, thanks. Does anybody else have any questions?
- All right. Well, seeing none.
- All those in favor of moving forward with the department's 2026 county general fund budget request signify
- by saying aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries. Next up is item B.
- Council I move to open for discussion and review fund 1114-0273 lit special purpose juvenile probation
- with the category requests of personnel at $897,842 supplies at $2,502 services at $82,224 capital at
- $1,000 for a total budget of $983,568 second
- go ahead okay the special purpose lit funds 10 full-time employees including nine probation officers
- and one member of support staff it also pays for half of the
- community correction security, the crimson security that I already mentioned, where we play 50-50-50%
- out of this budget, 50% out of the public safety lit, and we're not requesting an increase in that,
- just flatlining it to be able to absorb the 17% increase for next year.
- We did submit cuts when we submitted this budget and we based the cuts on spending for the past five
- years plus taking into account 2025 spending. So the cuts which are already in the budget are education
- materials 500, programming and research supplies 1,000, contractual 9,500, phones and pagers 1,500,
- drug testing 1,000, electronic monitoring 2,500.
- hundred cjm vorp victim offender reconciliation program twelve thousand service equipment maintenance
- and repair five hundred and equipment one thousand so all those are all cuts that have already been
- submitted and if you have any questions thank you looking over here to my left seeing if anybody has
- any questions no okay looking over here to my right seeing any
- Okay well all those in favor of moving forward with the 2026 lit special purpose bond budget request
- signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign. All right motion carries. Next up is item C.
- Council I move to open for discussion and review fund 1122-0000 community corrections user fees with
- a category request. So personnel is at $195,345, excuse me, supplies are at $36,001, services are at
- $43,500, capital is at $1,000 for a total budget of $275,846. Second.
- Okay, the state apparently has renamed this fund. They had called it project income and now it's community
- corrections program user fees. So this budget is our biggest user fee budget. It's a complimentary budget
- to the community corrections grants. They're supposed to match each other with match money coming from
- this fund for the grants. The fees can only be used to support community corrections program operating expenses.
- The changes as we already discussed this budget currently pays the COLA step increases health insurance
- increases for pretrial problem solving court and community corrections program. And because of the DOC's
- grant being
- um flatline for the past six years this budget has had to absorb all of those increases for the past
- six years this flatlining is the reason this user fee fund has been depleted to what i would say are
- dangerous levels and this is something we watch very carefully with and we go with our community corrections
- advisory board our local jrack we talk about this at every meeting don't we kate it's always brought
- up uh that we're just
- trying everything we can to cut spending from this budget. So there's a lot of changes in this budget.
- For 2026, as previously discussed, the DOC defunded all the Indiana pretrial programs and then cut funding
- for problem-solving court programs. So for 2026, 12 community corrections employees who are currently
- paid partially from this budget will be paid 100% from the community corrections grant.
- And then for twenty twenty six is fun will pay the salary match for six full time employees which is
- the veterans court probation officer continuous quality improvement pretrial program director community
- corrections executive director one pretrial probation officer one legal secretary and evidence based
- practice coordinator. But in order to keep this fund from going completely
- upside down, we've removed the following positions, and we already talked about this for county general
- for pretrial services POS, one mental health court probation officer one drug court probation officer
- and two drug court field officers cuts that we've made.
- before submitting were fuel by 8,000, supervision incentives by 12,500, contractual by 1,500, phones
- and pagers by 500, special services by 5,000, fleet maintenance and repair by 4,000, and equipment by
- 1,500. And so you'll see a lot of changes. You'll see some one dollar. The dollar amount, if it says
- one, that means they'll be paid
- fully from the Community Corrections Grant for next year. And if they say zero, it's moved to County
- General. That's how do you know the difference? And I think that's it that I have for this budget. Okay,
- Council, do you all have questions? Looking over here to my right, Councilor Iris.
- I'm looking at the the 4b for this and your income and your expenses are just just hanging and if it
- wasn't for that operating balance to carry you through year after year I mean that's that's tight it
- is very tight and it we used to have in the neighborhood of 400 000 in in the cash balance and that before
- so many years in a row of the DOC grant being flatlined. So yeah, you're right. I mean, this is one
- that we watch so closely, and the auditor's office is watching it with us. But kudos to you. I mean,
- this budget is in the green, right? I mean, you're in the black. You're not deficit on this one.
- That's great. Did you want to say? He thinks barely in the black, but in the black. Yeah, I mean, you're
- there. Yeah, we are. Or we're there.
- hanging in another year all right looking over here to my left to see if anybody counselor decker i'll
- just be really quick i i think that for some time on every fund we have had kind of a where you can
- have pad and all these things i do think in the future more and more things are going to look like where
- it's literally matched
- to in, to out, to in, to out. And the realities of all these things may make it that way. It's not pretty.
- It's not ideal. But it may be our life for a long time. All right. Anybody else have any other questions?
- All right. And seeing none, all those in favor of moving forward with the 2026 community corrections
- user fee fund
- user fees fund budget request signified by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign all right motion
- carries next up item d council i move to open for discussion and review fund 1170-0226 public safety
- lit probation
- with a category requests of personnel at $207,989, supplies at zero, services at $299,780, capital at
- zero for a total budget of $507,769. Second.
- This budget is a fairly small budget in terms of our department. It funds one probation officer and
- the problem-solving court, program directors, salaries, and fringe benefits. The only other expenses
- in this budget are one-half of the community corrections security, as we already talked about, the drug
- testing for the entire probation department, and the electronic monitoring, and that's to pay our vendor
- for the daily cost of having the GPS
- ankle bracelets and also for the alcohol testing equipment that people take home with them. So as previously
- mentioned, no increase is requested for the security. We cut from electronic monitoring, we cut it from
- 160,000 to 147,000 based on the last four years of spending and year to date, 2025 spending. So we felt
- comfortable with that cut based on the use at this point.
- And that's it. If you have any other questions. OK. Looking over here to my left. Anybody? Seeing none.
- Over here to my right. Seeing none. OK. Well, all those in favor of moving forward with the twenty twenty
- six budget request for public safety lit signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Same sign.
- All right. Motion carries. Next up, item E.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 2504-0000 court alcohol drug user fees with a
- category request. So personnel at $220,954. Supplies are $8,000. Services are at $36,676. Capital is
- at $1,000 for a total budget of $266,630. Second.
- Okay. This is a sister budget to the adult probation user fee budget, which we'll talk about.
- soon. It's an interchangeable fund we consider with adult probation user fees because we are a unified
- probation department and court alcohol and drug program, meaning all of our adult probation officers
- are also court alcohol and drug program staff certified. So they all receive the proper education to
- be a certified alcohol and drug professional staff. The fees can only be used to support the court alcohol
- and drug program staff salaries and program operating expenses and the fees are set by statute.
- After conversation with our counsel liaisons, the judges did make a change to the fees for misdemeanors.
- So we appreciate your feedback and the change was made. Because this fund is more stable at this point
- and sustainable than the adult probation user fees, we are asking to move two full-time positions from
- the adult probation user fees to this fund. It'd be an adult probation officer and a legal secretary.
- And Anthony has done the projections and he believes that we can support these two additional positions
- for 2026. And then cuts, we reduced office supplies by 2000
- contractual by 5,000, equipment repair by 68%. So I don't know if you wanna, I mean, this is,
- I asked him, are you sure two positions? And he feels pretty confident with his projections.
- I have faith. Okay, Councilor Iverson. So when I'm looking at Gateway, I'm seeing that it's negative.
- in this 4B. Now, that could simply be that things have been entered in one way or the other. But the
- way that I'm seeing it in Gateway right now is a negative $35,000, negative $36,000. So can we support
- two positions? And you're the expert here, so. Well, no, I'm not.
- I would say our projected cash balance at the end of this year, keeping in mind that we're trying to
- not spend anything out of this that we don't have to. A good example of that is the $12,000 that we
- have currently budgeted in training travel. We've used the grant money to send people this year, so
- I'm not touching that the rest of this year. And with what we have projected coming in, this would kind
- of end the year at about $55,000.
- which frankly is about the same as the previous one that we talked about, the community correction user
- fees. This simply just really saves the APOF, which is in worse shape that we'll talk about here in
- a minute. Did you have additional questions, Councilor Iverson?
- Don't at this point I think for the purposes of what we're doing tonight I'm going to go with your numbers
- and assume that something got messed up on gateway entry, but I so What we're doing tonight is not permanent
- and we can make changes if we need to Okay any other all right and looking over here at some of lots
- to see if anybody has any Okay all ready so
- all those in favor moving forward with the department's 2026 court alcohol drug user fees fund budget
- request uh signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign okay motion carries next up item f
- council i move to open for discussion and review fund 2506-0000
- problem-solving court user fees with the category requests of personnel at $2,692, supplies at $1,500,
- services at $17,352, capital at $1,000 for a total budget of $22,544,000. Second. OK. Go ahead.
- The Problem Solving Court Fund is a relatively small budget. Fees can only be used to support problem
- solving court programs, staff salaries, and operating expenses. The fees are only paid by our drug court
- participants. Mental health court and veterans court participants don't pay user fees. And the reentry
- court does not charge fees if the participant's already in a community transition program because the
- Department of Correction gives us money for those folks.
- We have no full-time staff salaries in this budget. We reduced travel training by 7,000. Just to let
- you know travel training is for problem-solving court not just our staff but also for the judge and
- all problem-solving court team members and such as the veterans affairs representatives, treatment
- representatives, prosecuting attorney, public defender, law enforcement reps. I don't know who else
- but that's
- basically the team members so we try to get them they they really want us to be able to go to the national
- trainees because that's where you learn about what's really going on with problem-solving court and
- so they we get grant money that helps us with that as well. Other cuts we reduce part-time salaries
- by ten thousand dollars which is an eighty percent reduction
- Special services by 500 contractual by 1000 office supplies by 500 drug testing by $12,000 and this
- is due to we have a grant to we're using instant test cups for if the test is negative.
- We just pour it out. If it's positive, then we send it off for confirmation. But these test cups have
- helped reduce costs for our problem-solving court participants. And so we don't need all this testing
- money. That's all I have for this budget. OK. All right. I'm looking over here to my left, seeing anybody
- have any questions? No. Looking over to my right. No? OK.
- All those in favor of moving forward with the Department's 2026 Problem Solving Court user fees filling
- budget request signified by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay, motion carries.
- Next up, item G.
- Council I move to open for discussion and review fund 2508 dash 0000 adult probation user fees with
- a category requests of personnel at eighty four thousand two hundred eighty six dollars supplies at
- five thousand dollars services at twenty thousand two dollars capital at a thousand dollars for a total
- budget one hundred and ten thousand dollars one hundred ten thousand two hundred twenty eight dollars
- 288 dollars excuse me okay
- Okay adult we talked a little bit already about this being a sister budget to court alcohol and drug
- services fee budget and they're interchangeable budgets in our mind and how we use them. These fees
- can only be used by statute to supplement adult probation operating expenses.
- the already talked about moving to full-time positions from this fun to the court alcohol and drug for
- fun which we already did this at this point this leaves only one adult probation officer full-time position
- in this fund. Increases we did put a small increase of $225 in part-time salaries I assume that's for
- math purposes cuts we cut
- supplement by a thousand contractual seven thousand equipment expense a thousand special services fifteen
- hundred and equipment by a thousand and that's all i have for this okay looking to the left seeing if
- anybody has anything looking to my right okay
- All righty all those in favor of moving forward with the department's 2026 budget request for adult
- probation user fees budget bond signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign all right motion
- carries next up item h
- Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 2509-0000, juvenile probation user fees with
- the category requests of personnel at $1,077, supplies at $500, services at $5,002, capital at $500
- for a total budget of $7,079. Second.
- The juvenile probation user fee fund is very small budget. It has no staff salaries and the fees can
- only be used to supplement juvenile probation operating expenses by statute. A few years ago, you probably
- remember if you were on the board that our judges eliminated all non-mandatory juvenile probation fees
- and that includes juvenile probation user fees. So there are no new fees coming in. There's just a cash
- balance there, but no new fees. So we use this
- budget only when needed if other departmental funding sources have been exhausted or if we were having
- a bad month with one of the funds that we can use this for. So we did make some cuts. We reduced part-time
- salaries by 4,000, office supplies by 2,500, contractual by 3,500, equipment expense by 1,000, special
- services by 500, and equipment by 1,000. So just bare bones.
- And that's it. That's all I have. All right. Looking over here to my right, seeing if anybody has any
- questions. Left? Nope. Okay. All right. All those in favor of moving forward with the 2026 department
- request of the juvenile probation user fee signified by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign.
- Motion carries.
- Last item of the evening for the probation department is item I. Council, I move to open for discussion
- and review fund 4916-0000. County offender transportation with a category requests of personnel at zero,
- supplies at zero, services at 2500, capital at zero for a total budget of $2,500. Second. Okay.
- I have to give my annual shout out to former county counselor, Eric Spoonmore. This was always his favorite
- budget, probably because it was the last budget, but also this budget cracked him up for some reason.
- So hello, Eric, and shout out to you. So this has no staff salaries, and the fund can only be used to
- retake probationers who are in violation status from another state. And this fund has never been used
- since its inception. It's a statutory fund.
- the rate set and we did go ahead and cut it by 50 percent. I did talk to Matt Demings about the cost
- to retake or extradite one person and he just said from his experience $1,500 so that's about what we
- have if we have to retake one person which again it's never happened and hopefully knock on wood we
- won't have to do that and that's it. I just yep I did it for you. All right anybody have any questions
- on this item?
- I was hoping you would give that annual check. All right. All those in favor of moving forward with
- the department's 2026 budget request for the County Offender Transportation Fund signify by saying aye.
- All those opposed, same sign. All right. Motion carries. And that concludes your budget. Thank you very
- much. We appreciate it. And I have just a couple of minutes. I would like to say once again that I feel
- very fortunate
- for being part of the county government. Through the years, we have worked with the county council.
- You have supported the board of judges and what we all do in trying to keep the people of Monroe County
- safe, while we are also trying to help them improve their lives, get on with their lives. And as you
- said, Councilperson Deckard, to not make what was a bad thing worse.
- and this is a difficult year. You have a lot of difficult decisions to make and I want to thank you
- for your time. I want to thank you for your patience and I want to really thank you for your willingness
- to look at county government and try to do for the people of this county what is best for the people
- of this county and I truly do believe that that is what you do and it's
- difficult work. It's quite a commitment, but we do appreciate your willingness to work with us, to listen
- to us, to come and see us so that we can all work together, which is what I've always believed county
- government should be.
- to communicate with each other and to try to just be supportive of the people who live in this county.
- So I just wanted to thank you publicly for what you do and especially for your support of us. We try
- to do specialized programming because we believe specialized programming is really what is very helpful.
- to those people who find themselves in those circumstances. So thank you for your time and your patience
- and your commitment. Well, we appreciate that. And we're all on the same team in its heart, just like
- you all mentioned. And so we appreciate hearing that. It's not an easy job. And I think we all have
- more gray hairs than we anticipated this year. I know for sure I do. But we appreciate hearing that.
- So thank you.
- Now you get to enjoy the rest of your night. Nice way to end the hearings. Thank you. Great. Counselors,
- we are at the item, item 10 of our discussion this evening, which is our final budget discussion. And
- so I am looking around to see if any council members would like to open any previous budget hearings from
- the past several nights. Yes, Councilor Decker. Madam President, feel free to call this out if you think
- this is not the best time for it or it won't help the body. But I would like us to reopen the county
- council budget and take a look at that. Michelle, is that enough for me to say it that way? Oh, yeah.
- Can you take us down to the
- items where we ended last night with both line 331 and 33032 that Sophia Travis grant fund dollars and
- BDC. So counselors, if I may, Madam President. Go ahead. Counselors, last night we had talked about
- these two lines and obviously there was an intention in this initial draft
- to recognize needs in the community around our not-for-profit community. And for anyone watching at
- home, that's what Sophia Travis Service Grant funds do, which President Crosley chairs that and has
- served on that for a number of years. Many of us have been on and off over the years. It's the best
- service you get in committee assignments, because you get to see all the not-for-profits doing really
- good work. The proposal
- That we have in there now raise that considerably up to 250,000 and it did it on very tremendous strong
- arguments and with the heart of truly Cheryl Munson.
- Given all that we are asking of departments, I'm going to offer an alternative amendment on that here
- in just a moment. I'll spell that out. But second to that, we also have the BDC line, which we have
- consistently been a supporter now for a few years in supporting them beyond our membership.
- fee with additional dollars we've had some kind of wrangling over the years try to get that out of county
- government to stop stepping on our tail and red tape and many other things and that doesn't matter here
- but for the sake of us showing and demonstrating what we're asking all departments to do and being mindful
- to manage this I would like to offer an amendment
- to the proposed lines that we adopted last night. And so I moved that line 331 Sophia Travis service
- grant dollars be amended down to 190,000. I also would amend in the simultaneous in that move to amend
- line 33032 from 35,000 down to 15,000 even. Second.
- Okay, we got a motion and a second and we heard Councilor Deckard's reasoning for his amendments. Any
- discussion on this? I see Michelle has her hand up. With regards to the BEDC, does the 15,000 include
- the membership fee? Yes, it would retain the membership and then there would be additional dollars to
- support that mission, which is
- that's extremely vital to the community. Simultaneously, the amendment on the Sophia Travis grant dollars
- would raise it above the 4% growth quotient that we had been targeting for a number of years to recognize
- what's happening potentially in the community, but would also, I think, keep us within reasonable striking
- distance of maintaining the budget controls that we're really asking everybody to do.
- And the BDC is like our membership amount is 5925. Okay. All right. Anybody else have any discussion
- on this? Yes, we'll go to Iverson and then I'll go to Henry. So last night, I very intentionally called
- out Councilman Decker.
- I don't know how he felt about that, but asking for what he offered was a compromise. And today we're
- getting it. So I think that today's amendment is offered in a spirit of goodwill and also of fiscal
- prudence. And so I'll be supporting this amendment tonight. Council Henry. Thank you, Madam President.
- I wasn't here last night for this part of it due to conflicts, but I'm kind of here to get into this. I
- I had an impression from past council's work that this particular line item is usually visited after
- we had solved everything else in the budget. The argument that I think starting here given the other
- cuts and things we need to look at in the county budget is interesting to me because if there
- are opportunities to maintain a funding level for this, the Sophia Travis line item in light of
- what's happened in Indianapolis over the past year. It's interesting to start with this one, I guess.
- I would prefer to revisit this later as we work through the entire budget. But as I understand it, then,
- this would not be a 4% but more like an 11% increase. Is that the math that you're suggesting there?
- Yeah. And that's fair, I guess, given if that's the temperature of others on the body here.
- continue to aim for 250 if it takes three years to get there. And I think given that, especially when
- I look at other aspects of the budget, which have charitable activities going on out of the commissioner's
- budget items, out of other items in county government, I don't have the same heartburn at this point.
- The other reason for that is what we were asking for in cuts from departments was,
- outlined in the president's letter to preserve cola at all costs. Some department heads have really
- embraced that and given us some very strong budgets with cuts to supply and other activities. Other
- department heads have not embraced that we are in a new normal. And so if this were cuts coming from
- salary at the expense of, if we were
- taking this grant program at the expense of salary, I'd have more heartburn about it, but it's not.
- It's the residuals we see and the reversions and the padding and some line items that really jumps out
- at me as to what we're after here and what we're cutting. So I'm just maybe offering that if this is
- this year's compromise, I'm going to keep recommending we up this every year until we get it there.
- As for the BEDC line, I brought this up, of course, when we were working on the tax abatement.
- and offered an amendment to at least discuss the rationale behind the now unrestricted pass-through
- of funding through a tax abatement to an organization we've identified.
- the BDC for its $40,000 a year abatement. It passed through from SIMTRA that's going to get by this
- body. And I did have an opportunity to hear council comments last night on CATS kind of tying it together
- here. So I just kind of want a public answer on this because I tried to get it on abatement night. I
- tried to get it through an amendment that was not seconded. Was the rationale behind that to reduce
- this line item in our budget? I never got kind of an answer on it the last time we talked about it.
- I put it in my list of things that I would like to see in the abatement, just to start a conversation.
- And I recently found out that we are allowed to ask for that as part of the abatement. To me, it seemed
- like a great opportunity to support the entity that had obviously been working so hard to bring us
- the jobs, the industry, all of the good things that BEDC does. And yes, in my mind, I thought, wow,
- how convenient because we've had some strife around this particular line item. So knowing that our budget
- was going to be strained, my thought was, hey, this is a great way for the council
- to show support for BEDC indirectly. And yeah, it was my intent to lower that line. If I may finish
- with this, I don't really know what the good number is here then, because I guess the idea of an annual
- review of the budget would mean that we have a conversation about the good work that BEDC does and we
- validate it through a contribution or not.
- kind of takes us out of that conversation now, but we'll never talk about BDC again in terms of that
- opportunity for them to get that pass through except for maybe a more reduced contribution from our
- account line. My worry was always the precedent of setting up an activity that favors one organization
- in a way by law that's lawful, but as future abatements come in, how the council will determine that
- opportunity for other organizations or other mechanisms. It didn't require it to go to an economic
- development organization. It could have gone to any number of other organizations for our identification.
- One could imagine an arts council or somebody that you're like a 1% fund for the county coming through
- with a payment like that. And so I think I only raise it tonight because it's finally an opportunity
- to talk about how we did that and what the long-term implications are for
- that kind of organization getting that funding. I have nothing. I mean, I'm very much supportive of
- the BDC. It's not about them. It's about what we did. So if I'm hearing it right to say we are now reducing
- the item here because we really don't have to give that amount anymore. It's been handled by the abatement.
- I just want that noted, I suppose. But that's my comment. And did you feel like you're satisfied in
- that? That's where we are. OK.
- I will go to Councilor Feidl and then I'll go back to Decker. So I understand maybe that this SIMTRA
- money will not take a place until 2027, which leaves 2026 potentially much less than what it was that
- came from the council. And so I understand that we might be able to find that out when Attorney Cockrell
- comes back
- or maybe Molly could talk about that now. I did email Mr. Cockerill. I'm waiting for a response. He
- should be back on Monday. I looked through the MOU and I don't see a date specific. It just says the
- annual fee. So I think it is fact dependent on when the tax abatement starts. So I'm not sure if it
- starts this year or next year in 2027. I'm understanding with BEDC that they think it starts
- in 2027 which would leave 2026 short comparatively. So that's my concern at this point. Okay all right.
- Councilor Decker. Well one thing is I did have a conversation with the executive director of the BDC,
- Jen Pearl, this evening to let her know my intentions on trying to do something in here that
- might potentially affect their organization
- When I said that to her, she offered what I think she's offered every council member here, probably
- 25 times in your career, that she's always willing to come in here and talk about any number of things,
- do a PowerPoint presentation, or continue to just do the job of advocating. And so I think we could
- do that. I think if we asked her to be in every meeting, she'd be in every meeting. But that's neither
- beside the point. Councilor Feidl is correct on
- the whatever goes on with the simple, simple abatement, which I believe also requires them to hit some
- of their targets or that fault. That abatement starts to fall off just as abatements are designed to
- do. Certainly are conditions to be made. Yeah. If they're not, if they're like, if the economy's not
- working for them and jobs aren't happening, it's all goes away. It's not like it all goes away. There
- are provisions and this is not one of those. Right. Right.
- So I guess my point is in leaner times, if there's leaner times, a scale back here for that to keep
- our activity with it, but not to abandon the activity with the BDC.
- We will need that. Now, the thing I will also say, and I just this is I'm not trying to be the old counselor
- here, but an observation from having been a counselor during the pandemic when time gets tough. And
- if my eyes to the clouds or any indication, here's what happens. This is a budget for now. But then when time
- time to get tough like it did during the pandemic. What happens is all the not for profit directors
- that either apply for sewage via Travis funds or otherwise they will start trickling into both our office
- into the commissioners and they'll say things like food banks going to need money or such and such is
- going to need this or we're going to be short and we and other surrounding counties and usually those
- other counties. I don't know what they do. I shouldn't speak to that. We will have to
- revisit things in those kinds of circumstances, either with commissioners, funds, or otherwise. So anything
- we do here around not-for-profit support does not mean it's exclusively limited in that time and season,
- because that's what we saw about five years ago. And then ARPA probably minimized most of those
- conversations, and that is now largely gone.
- Can I ask one more thing? Sure. So is there a history on BEDC getting less during the pandemic? I'll
- just ask that. We've been members and just paid a membership for a long, long time. To my knowledge,
- I think we've only made this payment once, twice. Yeah. So the larger payment began in 23? I guess so.
- I mean, 24.
- Yeah, it's been unclear because we budgeted it, it was not expended because technically it was to go
- through the commissioner's office and the commissioners did not sign.
- So on the expend columns I see here, that's listed for County Council, it lists BEDC as 23 and 24 expended
- 35, 750 each year. 25 I believe has not been expended if I heard right. That's right, 25 says 59, 25.
- Yeah, we do it for 26 and then 20, we did it for 25, right?
- No, we did it higher. This says for 23 and 24. It's appropriated for 25 and it has not been expended
- yet for the full amount. But 23 and 24 shows it was expended according to this. This year would be the
- third. Third year. Yeah. So it's been twice pending expending for this year. Okay. Next year would be
- the fourth.
- So I'm going to kind of go back to Sophia Travis, because I do remember last year, I think it was Cheryl
- and I that were trying to, we wanted to up it last year, and then we decided to bring it back down.
- We collectively, I should say, agreed to bring it back down.
- times are hard. And we literally we haven't heard the presentations just yet. And I can only imagine
- what the presentations are going to be like. People are going to start looking to us for that. And I
- understand if we all think that the 250 is a little high, I definitely would agree with Council Henry
- that I would really like to see how we could get to that level of threshold, help us help
- get to that level. I would also like to see if we could do some type of collaboration with joint grant
- funding. That's a thing that I've been thinking about as well. So with that being said, I would like,
- I mean, the 190 is a compromise. Ideally, I would like it to be higher.
- But because Hashtag Thanks Indiana is in effect right now, we've got to make do with what we have to do.
- It's a thought. And again, even whatever we do right now, if we come back to Council Henry's point,
- you know, if we all kind of think about it and meditate and come back and we can always reopen this
- back up and have another discussion again, whatever happens after tonight. So, you know, the 190 is
- a compromise. I'd like to see it go.
- a little more, but I'm willing to look at other things first. And I would like to see, after we've gone
- through and looked at other opening of budgets and seeing what we can do there, maybe this is something
- that we can come back and take a look at. President, I have a motion. Yes. I'd like to divide the question
- to take a vote on this separately. OK. Second.
- Okay, so we got a motion and a second to divide the questions. So we'll separate the motions, which
- is the Sophia Travis to make that to 190,000 and the BDC line item to 15,000. So any further question
- on that? All right, with this one, I think we need to do a roll call vote.
- And we can do this one first. We can do Sophia and Travis. That's what I was going to ask. Yeah. Okay.
- Voting would be the 190. Is that right? Okay. Thank you. The motion on the table is for $190,000. Councilor
- Crossley. Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Feidl. Yes. Councilor Wilts.
- No. Councilor Henry.
- Motion passes for two. All right. So we got that line item now at 190. And then now the call to question
- for the BDC line item for 15,000. Councilor Wilts? No. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes.
- Councilor Feidl? No. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Motion passes for two. Okay. I think it's permanent yet. Correct.
- Thank you. So we can keep chopping or we could just keep working. We'll have more answers later about
- some of this. Okay. So those now I will
- And Michelle, do I need to look to you to give us a new grand total on that? Okay. No change to the
- personnel, no change to these supplies, no change to this. Oh, change to the service is it has a new
- total of $269,800 for a new budget total of $645,221.
- Okay. All right. And so next up, anybody else would like to open up any other budget? We need to vote.
- We need to vote overall, right? Yes. Wait a minute. There was another step that was missing. Okay. So
- I'll do a roll call vote on this one too.
- Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor Feidl? No. Councillor Wilz? Councillor
- Henry? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes 4-2. Okay. Okay. Councillor Iverson, I see your
- hand is raised.
- So I'm not going to open to specific budgets, but one of the things that we've been talking about was
- a line item in every single budget for training and travel. And this is one of the areas that we have
- consistently gone through every budget and said, asked pretty difficult questions of people, where are
- you going? Are you going far? Are you going near?
- The issue is that line 30028, training travel, is in every budget, almost every budget. And the amounts
- there range from $1,000 all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars. My question is, is this a viable
- area where the council can find an ability to reduce the 2026 deficit?
- Can I ask a question? So do we know what the total training and travel is for the whole county? I do
- not have that number in front of me. It is knowable. I can tell you in a moment what is budgeted training
- travel. For everything in the county, right? Yeah, that's in these budgets that we're looking at. Yes,
- thank you. I can do that. Okay.
- Sorry, hand, hi. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councillor Iverson, for entertaining this. I
- think there is. I think there are probably two ways to get at it. One feels like a straight cut, a percentage
- off all. However, I think just pulling in my prior knowledge or daytime job, every time I've had to
- travel on government dollars, it's always been with actuals proposed. And I think what we have is,
- people who present at large budget to say, well, we think it's X, but we did discover in some of those
- conversations when we asked, you know, last year you went to Long Beach, California, this year you're
- going to Louisville, Kentucky, like there's a huge difference in that cost of airfare and, you know,
- whether or not, as the judge even told us tonight, if the hotel is being picked up by the conference
- or the state, and so it feels like,
- I don't know if it's getting granularity from the departments to say, can you give us an estimate?
- I mean, you know the cost of registration. You know where you're going. You know generally what airfare
- would be to present actual dollars instead of five figure amounts, which end up getting reverted at
- some point. So it's more of a mechanism of going back and saying, can you do that if you really want
- to go this year? Or the only alternative in the time we have is percentage cut to say,
- or to look at a zero-based approach of saying, what was your travel budget in 22? And that's your number
- unless you can prove why you have to attain more this year. There's other ways to get at it. Each one's
- more difficult. Yes, Michelle. So on the screen, through our budget projection, you can't see it and
- I cannot enlarge it. That's the one thing about LAO. So we have an adoption line that that's what we're
- working on.
- The total training travel budgeted for 2026 through all funds is $511,751. Thank you. Then I'll go to
- Councilor Wilks. I don't think
- that given what I've heard about the number of departments and individuals that have required training,
- that we can really make a one size fits all kind of decision. And I don't think we have time to have
- everybody re-budget, you know, and figure out exactly what their costs are gonna be before Tuesday and
- get that all figured out. So I think
- Well, I mean, I guess over $500,000 for travel and training is a lot, but I think there are other places
- in budgets to find a lot. I'm not totally opposed to looking at this, but when I see 500,
- That's not what we're going to save because there's a lot of required. I mean, people are doing this
- to get CEUs and to stay on top of what they do. And I do value that in addition to it being required.
- So I don't know if this is the best place. I would maybe just offer from the liaisons I have that I'm
- intrigued to go back in on those budgets for the liaison.
- role, right? Like to know the departments I have to go back and talk to them about this. I think what
- we saw in presentations were some discussions just like that where we know it's a CEU or a certification
- or it is a benefit of employment that the county's helping provide that office to either do
- those certifications through their job or to do it on the job, right? There are other line items that
- are not as clear what
- or why those are budgeted as large as they are. And I think all of us can think through the offices
- we liaise with to find those. I mean, I think there's some that come to mind for me already that might
- be easier to get at that have multiple lines of trouble that haven't been spent down. So it means we
- might have to do the forensics work. Because otherwise, I think you're right. I mean, how do you blanket
- cut somebody that we know has to go to something this year?
- Go ahead. So you bring up the idea that maybe as liaisons, we should take some if I'm hearing you correctly,
- take a few days here and think through our department's budgets and what can happen in them. I will
- say there are exceptions to this, but with most of mine, I did that pretty heavily. I mean, as you saw
- with like probation, that's what we did.
- So there's gonna be like, I don't think I can go back through probation and change what we spent a lot
- of time going through. I can probably, in fact, I need to talk to the jail because they have that one
- fund that they're not, so I've got some of that and I'm not saying that's, I'm not gonna do it, but
- there'll be some inconsistencies, I guess. I do, because I think,
- would make some progress that way. And I do think, you know, it's the required versus, I don't know
- if leisure is the right way of saying it, but you know, like really, you don't want to crack down on
- those that are required for a certification and whatnot, but I do think that there is an opportunity
- to kind of look at kind of chipping away for something.
- I would look to council and say, if you've not already done it with your liaisons that you have is to
- try to over the next few days, really try to see if there is a plea. But again, we do have other ways
- that we can make significant changes to the budget to kind of hammer some other things out. But this
- is one step of getting to that point.
- So, yes, Council, I understand. And Madam President, one of the other ways that we've talked about in
- all the budgets, and this is a line that's in all the other budgets. And again, I'm trying to look at
- things that are equitable. I'm trying to look at things that are going to impact everyone, every single
- department, not just picking on one or two departments, is the postage line.
- We have talked about this over and over again. We have talked about it in terms of the auditor's office
- picking up the postage for claims. We've talked about it in terms of some departments have postage machines,
- some offices, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, Michelle, do you have the postage line in LAO,
- same as we looked at for training and travel? Yes. So it's in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven funds.
- It totals $193,756. And that's also a lot too. And so I guess the same question goes before council
- is how we've got an $8 million deficit. We've got to figure this out before we adopt the budget. Is this
- a viable pathway to tackling that $8 million deficit. Part of this seems for postage, it would in my
- mind sort of inhibit the county from doing its business. If you are required, maybe some are required
- to actually send them things, you know, I mean, where would that. But I do think
- Yes, like we heard yesterday with the treasurer who said that she kept her postage pretty high. And
- I think she might have increased it because of all the things that she's doing with property taxes and
- mail outs. And so I think that right there, like she made a case for herself. But I do think that there
- are some places where we can kind of go back and revisit that for sure is
- because if you go back and and that's my homework to myself this weekend is to kind of go back and look
- at you know what was budgeted per year versus your actual and sometimes and in previous years in this
- year especially we've looked at where they budgeted 50,000 and then we see that it's like $1,200 that
- has been used and so I can't really justify that
- But I do think that we can justify those where our jobs to send out claims and other things we can definitely
- do. Again, that's a small piece of the pie, but any little thing helps right now. Just like we've been
- telling all the departments, any little thing will help us get to this level. Yes, Councilor Decker.
- One thing, and I hate to keep coming back to this same message that I had last night and now a few times,
- but again,
- It's all these things are questions of values. What do you value more. And so, for example, we had a
- really extended conversation about our BDC funding and our Sophia Travis grant fundings. And we've also
- over the years had very extended conversations about those operating pads, which in
- theoretical concepts, these minimums, this minimum resolution we've done, this is a good housekeeping,
- looks good, it is a beautiful, pretty thing. However, the state continues to chop the forest at the
- bottom of the trees. And so for us, it may be that we say for the community we are elected for, the
- value we choose is in those two areas,
- versus the operating minimum. Yesterday, not to pick on the auditor's office, Carly, this isn't at you,
- but you all have a digitization line that's $80,000. I guess my question is, do I need to send mail
- out or do I need to digitize that? And I bet you everybody and their sister could come in here and make
- a compelling case, but we as a community will have to say, operating minimums, digitization,
- or is it hitting the cola, or is it hitting a lower cola, or is it, what is it doing to do that? And
- that's literally sort of the question. I feel like sometimes we're kind of going after a mice here,
- a mouse there, but the reality is some of these things may not be conveniences to say we're operating
- like that with those minimums. It's just, it literally is what that is.
- We're trying to do a COLA. We're trying to do a minimum. We're trying to do support for not-for-profits.
- There are some counties that don't do that. The biggest complaint I had in 2020 when we went through
- the you need to defund and fund alternatives is you're late to the conversation. We've been funding
- alternatives here for all sorts of things we heard about in courts tonight. And so it's,
- We have lived into those values, but it may be that not every value gets done. I just worry that postage
- is not the one there that's gonna move that much. Councilor Iverson. I was gonna move on. Did you wanna
- speak to this? Only briefly, Madam President. Yes. Yeah.
- I agree with Councillor Decker on it. I think we've defined what the value is to the community. We said
- in the letter that we are prioritizing COLA over just about everything else. And that number's been
- harder to attain since I think we sent the letter in summer. And our peer governments in the county
- have taken, they're coming in at a lower rate than what we aimed for.
- Right? So if we've said COLA is it, and again, some department heads, I think, made a really good effort
- to try to meet that, and I think others maybe did not, that's the value we just telegraphed. And so
- that's really the big decision, right? If we are going to continue to aim for that, then I think Councilor
- Deckard's touched on the right
- cadence of where we go next for the real cuts. And those come through things like, and I'm just going
- to list some ideas, because I think we're in the idea section, right? It's freezing new spending and
- setting the supply line at whatever the last year's supply line was in all accounts. It's things like
- looking at the insurance cost sharing. Instead of an 80-20, it could be a 75-25, which would,
- by the way, generate about a million and five in savings. It would be looking at the overtime, all overtime,
- which would be about $700,000, which is my estimate. I don't know what Lyle says lately. And then there's
- the large capital. We have a mobile unit, a street sweeper that has been presented. Those dollars should
- be moving into bonds to buy those items instead of coming out of the general fund. If we're going to
- gain for cola, those are the bigger fish. I mean, that's a million and a half in vehicles in those two
- or quite a bit, right? Vacant positions have been sitting open for over six months. Why are those still
- budgeted in some departments? So I think if I'm committed to the idea of the coal at all costs, given
- what's going on in the economy, but to get there, there's a lot more that has to move. And those are
- just some of my ideas there, but I'll yield back.
- All right, thank you, Councilor. I want to pick up on one of your big ideas. And I think Mr. Deckard,
- you also I think are spot on in terms of looking at bigger items. Michelle, do you have the numbers
- for the capital categories for each for all departments? And again, we're looking for unity here. We're
- looking for items that affect all departments. So here we go. Look at this number.
- Okay, so this is across all funds and granted some of these funds only have capital item, you know kind
- of thing like for and I'm just going to use rainy day. For example, we have a million in there for that,
- but we have its capital line items are $4,313,532.
- And I will remind counsel that our budget deficit is $8 million. So what I heard from colleagues is,
- how much of this can we move into existing GO bonds? How much of this can we move into a 2026 GO bond?
- How much of this can we move into? That's the type of conversation I think we should be having.
- And my other question is, are you budgeting for a want or an absolute need? You know, can something
- be kicked down the road? You have done that with some departments going, if you can get by one more
- year, let's remove it from the budget. You're good. You're fine. Order in the court.
- Is the four million figure that you just stated, does that include like the one million in the rainy
- day and things in like CUMCAP? Yes, things in CUMCAP. There's also the, it's a 490, which is the West
- Side Tif. Right, right, right. So yes, I would have to go through. It's not quite as a miracle as it
- sounds like. Right, I'd have to go through and remove some things that
- but that's the grand total of all the capital, so. Okay, anybody else? Yes, Councilor Decker. And again,
- I will say I'll offer this out to folks as well as a potential. It may be, it may be that if this is
- what this looks like and we're not finding it somewhere else and we'll say something controversial.
- So every department head,
- Email send them my way. Here we go. It may be that for travel to go to what counselor Henry saying it
- may be that we may need to freeze travel.
- I know that is controversial. I know that is something that may not be, but it's it either is that or
- it is not that. And again, as we start to kind of narrow down what those priorities are, we kind of
- have to look at that. And I don't like that. I mean, I literally what I do is educate and do education
- of people who make time for that. I preach this literally. That is one of the three jobs I have. But
- it may be what it is because ultimately you're figuring it out. And again, I just think if we kind of
- go back to even, I know departments have already been up here, but if there's something else that is
- needing to not be what it is, certainly we'll take some volunteer things, but that could be.
- That may be beyond what is absolutely essential for, I must have this to do this and or it will not
- work. Yeah. Yeah. So on this, the timing is tricky because we need to look at the existing geo bonds
- and find what matches those. And we need to look at what can fit inside of a forthcoming geo bond. And
- then what do we do?
- with those capital lines that don't fit those two categories? And again, is it a conversation that Michelle
- raised about wants versus needs? Or is it a one-year freeze? These are the types of analysis I think
- we need to be doing. And I think we need to be doing them fairly quickly. So we have information from the
- commissioners office about the existing old bond balances. I'm not sure that's quite enough because
- I get the feeling that there's some conversation that might need to happen around that. So we've got
- information that we can work with on that. I think throwing things just willy-nilly into a bond, I mean,
- I don't mind going to the three million that we usually do because that keeps things the same way. I
- know that things have changed in how we do it. But just because we can fund longer doesn't mean we have
- to fund more. But that's a discussion probably for another meeting. There are some other things that
- I've been thinking about. For instance, this might
- not be super popular, but we have money from the food and beverage tax. Why are you pointing? Oh, sorry.
- No, no, sorry. Keep going. Keep going. And we have requests that fit under what food and beverage tax
- is being collected for.
- has requested some things, there might be something from aviation. If you didn't get picked up on your
- mic, I'm not just trying, I'm not repeating. Councilor Iverson said that, yep. My bad. Pull your mic
- to your face. Bingo card. I think looking at money that we have, and that's a whole other can of worms
- when we start thinking about didn't,
- Councillor Hawke say something, or maybe it was Henry, I can't remember about that. Yeah. It is late.
- The ED lit. Well, yeah, I'm sorry, Madam President. Yeah, it was the it was in the context of the ED
- lit regarding the inability to fund the as proposed jail lawfully at the rate that to buy the facility.
- So if that is in fact unattainable, sequestered funds in a way that we could be using them for immediate
- economic development. Right. And I'm not as enthralled with that idea personally, but it's an example
- of what I'm talking about. I think we might need a little bit creative. And food and beverage is one
- of those ideas. I did want to explore the overtime discussion. Yeah, yeah.
- Kim Shelley, do you have those numbers pulled up? Because multiple council members asked for it. A big
- topic over the past several nights. So we have, and this is just the funds. It looks like there's about
- seven, eight, eight funds that have overtime in them.
- So then the total for 2026 is $488,741 of overtime. Now granted, you've got like the jail, you've got
- the sheriff deputies and highway overtime in that as well. Oh, sorry.
- I'm going to go to counselors, Iverson, and then Eric. Sorry. Go ahead. It is important that we raise
- the different departments that are showing up in this report, because we do have to be careful about
- this, because there are departments. So we just have to be careful with this. And I know that there
- is work being done on trying to make clarity
- for that, and I think that's going to be part of an upcoming conversation. Council Henry. Thank you.
- I was waving my hand like that because, you know, Peter, they kind of look the same at an angle. I need
- to shave my beard. So, yes, take it a little farther. I mean, and it probably is a little farther with
- also potential for hiring freeze too. We're talking about, you know, if there are first responder personnel
- that are drawing on overtime for the purposes of
- life-saving activities in the community, right? Like that is a different kind of overtime than when
- a department head admits that they're using overtime to supplement the salary of an employee, which
- was admitted to in this room. So those are very different uses of overtime that while they might be,
- and then we might be back to the parsley or the garnish on the plate here, but that's something to consider.
- But then I don't want to leave where Councilor Wiltz was taking this piece, but overtime,
- for first responders and is one thing, hiring freeze for non-essential or careful with that term, for
- employees that are not in the first responding categories as well are involved in the criminal justice
- system is another thing to consider. What does a hiring freeze look like on top of the overtime? Because
- those are qualities, those are qualified categories.
- But so I think the overtime doesn't need to look too, but we have some really clear examples where we
- could cut that. And then ones that are more opaque, I think. Agreed. OK. Anybody else over here have
- any other questions or comments to add to overtime? Michelle, did you have anything else to add to overtime?
- So over time, I will say that on each one of these topics, what I can do is I can print an individual
- report that will show you which departments
- have like over time like we're looking so here's yeah so here's general fund but if you open it up per
- this report you know it will tell you clerk's office you know well auditor has zero but sheriff prosecutor
- so what i'll do is i will simplify this for you so you can see which departments have it and what the
- amounts are on each one of these topics so also we also have been getting
- from the auditor's office. Overtime expense. Overtime reports and comp time reports. And so I think
- we should definitely incorporate those into our thinking. I can't remember if we've talked about this
- in this room, or if I've talked about it with maybe Councilor Crossley. But the idea of all over
- how overtime lines can be used is something we could consider just to maybe get it control over some
- of that and I'm not sure like I need to think through that a little bit because I certainly don't want
- to micromanage but at the same time it it seeming almost necessary looking at some of those reports
- I guess what I'll say. I mean, over time, yeah, over time and comp time, if it's good data, our symptoms
- of a problem, which is we don't have enough FTEs in that department doing things. Or it could be the
- other things we've already talked about, right? So I agree with you that we need a little more granularity
- to get at that. We may discover some well overworked departments in the county versus others that may
- be creative with their use of this particular line.
- So I would definitely have a question about, is there an overtime policy in the policy book, personal
- policy book? Is there one? Yeah. And so who authorizes overtime? Where does that come from? I feel like
- an official or department head. OK. So that's already there. So we know who's making it happen. Yeah.
- OK. All right. Thank you. All right. Anything else?
- on this conversation. On general question, since I'm so new, I'm sorry. Yeah. So are there other categories,
- maybe Kim Shell could tell us, are there other categories like what we've just been talking about that
- are universal that we might need to look at and we haven't thought of? Maybe that's a question I have.
- Harley, would you have an idea about that? That recommend something?
- raising my hand over there. One of the areas where there is a potentially significant reduction is in
- the health department. We haven't mentioned that tonight, but we know that there is a significant change
- to be made. Well, I should say there's at least one significant change to be made there, and there could
- be more. And I think we have a report from the auditor's office
- unutilized and underutilized grant funds in the health department that can be explored. We have so much
- information, you all. We do. It's not for a lack of information. It's time and really kind of analyzing
- it because information isn't everything. So I think that to take
- Carly off the hook a little bit with that question. They've provided a lot to us and it's the auditor's
- job to check the accounts and make sure they're working. And they've gone above and beyond in really
- doing that. But I think we've got what we need there. I'm gonna go to Henry and then I'm gonna go back
- there. Maybe offer one more for the good of the evening. So it might not be
- like Peter and I were just talking about clothing, it's actually office supplies, isn't it?
- It's the staples. So is there a way to pull the office supplies, that line generally, right? Because
- I'm sure that number might be surprising, but that would be my last offer to the... So I might have
- to put you on the spot, Carly, for this one, because I know we've consolidated a lot of different lines
- that were labeled supplies.
- So to me, I hear office supplies, I think paper clips and ballpoint pens, but I think now office supplies
- can mean a lot of different things. And while I totally agree, it seems to be just kind of this catchall,
- it would be good for us to maybe know everything that goes into what we call the office supply line,
- or at least all the different types of things.
- Not everything. That would be awful. For office supplies, the only two lines that were combined for
- that combination, it was office supplies and then comm supplies. What was it? What about other supplies?
- What is? That wasn't addressed in this combination. We focused a lot on the. What is calm?
- I mean, what does that mean? I think it's short for commissioners, but there was a lack of understanding,
- which is why we buy you to cover it. Okay. There are so many duplications. We had to start somewhere
- and that wasn't where we. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So Michelle, are you still looking at them? Okay.
- This is just office supplies line. And just the office supplies line is $189,245.
- I would like some guidance, Adam President. Go for it. No, no, no. No, go for it. I'm actually trying
- to calculate all this sense. I think you're right, Council Member Wilts. We are swimming in a sea of
- data. And I think one of the things that we should do is do what Council Member Deckard suggested, which
- is prioritize
- by the amount that we can chunk out this deficit. So instead of looking at how much has been on paper
- clips, maybe we can be looking at these really big ticket items like capital categories or some of the
- other like the really big items in terms of like the ones that where we can move them out of the general
- fund or we can move them into like, you know, I think that's the next step is prioritizing.
- So ideally, what I think is you start off big. And so we look at the capital expenses, since we already
- identified this evening that that's about a little over $4 million, $4.3, that we can look at, trying
- to look at what we could use in the general bond or the GEO bonds and that list that Ms. or Angie Purdy
- sent to us to figure out what we can do in that. And I just was trying to add up the train and travel,
- the postage,
- the overtime lines and the supplies line we just got, that's over $1.3 million there. So that being
- said, although I know those are small numbers, eventually all that will add up. And so this is like
- the most challenging budget session to date, I don't know, at least for me.
- And because we got a lot that is against us, but we have staff that has given us lots and lots and lots
- of spreadsheets and informations and lots of emails with a lot of data. And we have a meeting on Tuesday
- and we are needing to look at all of these things that we have been given.
- that we've done over the past three weeks as we have gone over budget. Um and listen to the request.
- And so. I would ask. That we take all the things that we've listened to tonight and the previous night
- and really kind of identify what it is that we want to look at again. The train and travel the postage
- the capital
- just saying those are discussions, nobody at me. A higher end phrase, what that would look like,
- the supplies, moving some things around in the health department, that was a big thing to go back and
- look at. And we definitely have to go back and look at that. Again, the state has pulled our hands behind
- our back and made us say uncle, and now we're saying it. And so since we have to do that, trying to
- be creative, and then we also are hearing, we lost a contract.
- that we've had for you know 60 years so I don't know what's happening there and I really would like
- to know more information on that and you know hopefully we can get into that on Tuesday but Council
- we got a lot of homework that we got to do over the next few days and so
- You know, departments have some departments have done you know what they can and some departments need
- to do a little bit more. So if anybody is going to go back and watch this and your department that you
- think that you can do a little bit more.
- help us help you, help us obtain and continue to keep our near and dear county employees. Because obviously
- what my goal as the council president is, I really want to get to the COLA and see what we can do. We've
- already added it to the budgets because in previous years, we've thought about it and done it afterwards.
- And so I really want to see what that looks like.
- that is a big thing for me. So that being said, oh yeah, and self insurance, that is also a very big
- thing. There's 1.25 million dollars. Yeah, that's a lot and it's not getting any cheaper. So yes, Councilor
- Decker. If we had any number that indicated to us
- what the amount is to hit the minimum, those minimum balances. I know the one that keeps saying it,
- what the amount is to hit the minimum balance or is it to hit the budget? I feel like those are two
- things that are maybe interspersing with each other and I don't think it's
- I don't think it's fair to the people of this county nor the community to do that. Again, I think it's
- a beautiful, good housekeeping thing, but we're literally getting in here and saying, not that ball
- point pin, not do this and all that. And I just don't know that we have that luxury for that at all.
- And I'm not saying, here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying reverse years of good stewardship that
- got us through a pandemic, build up a rainy day fund and have that. But I do know this, government's
- not a bank and the money, if the legislature acted with the property tax caps the way that they did
- because people had the perception that money went in and then we were burning it somewhere, then what
- will make that worse is to build up a bank
- that the money's not going towards a purpose. And again, it may be that we get legislation that says
- you can't do that. After four years, they said, you must do that. So again, we're like, it's like over
- here's a 1990 goal. Here's a 1981. This one's conflicting with today's things. It may be that we've
- got to be really, really serious about that because I think it's, I think, I don't want that to get
- lost here. Sorry. You're fine. All right.
- So if we don't have anything else that we need to add, again, Council, I really advise us to really
- do our homework over the course of the next few days, really try to get creative and come back on Tuesday,
- September 16th, starting at 5 p.m. in the Nightingale Room. So coming back and doing that.
- you know, what I would like to say in light of all of this, I just want to give a special thanks to
- all the departments that have come through and given us their department request. I definitely want
- to give major kudos and thanks to the auditor's team, Carly and Bri.
- I would like to thank Miss Molly Turner King, our new person in our office. This is her first budget
- season, and it's been interesting. I can only imagine. And of course, definitely Miss Kim Schell for
- putting or helping with all of this. We again, this we got a lot that we have to think about. And I
- just ask that if we stay ready, we don't have to get ready and come prepared on Tuesday.
- to discuss. I have one other thing that I would like to say, which Carly just reminded me. If you guys
- are thinking about doing stuff into food and beverage and or with the edit fund, that also needs to
- be included in this budget so that we can get it into Gateway and advertise.
- that will have to be a decision on that Tuesday. Otherwise, you would have to come back and do additional
- appropriations after the first of the year. That sounds good. And it is, I mean, I just, sorry, I know
- that it wasn't on my, but I don't want, I want to be able to make that decision without- Pressure. Yeah,
- without thinking, you know, that we have to get
- get the paperwork or we haven't gotten the advertising done in the right way, we need to do it correctly.
- But that in particular, I mean, to mention both of those two income taxes, we would need to consult
- with some other folks who work in this building before we could do that. I mean, and that's, so I don't
- know that we can figure that out entirely. And bond counsel. Oh yeah, yeah.
- And I'm gonna pass the, oh, Carly has her hand up. I just wanna say it's not just those, I didn't mention,
- yeah. It's any fund, so like the auditor's fund that we increased last night, we're gonna go ahead and
- increase that advertisement. So if you want anything, because we exceeded the original amount that we
- planned to advertise.
- If you plan to exceed what is advertised right now, we can get those plugged into Gateway and increase
- advertisements where needed. I believe the deadline to enter that into Gateway is the 16th. So if we...
- 17th. Nevermind, I seem corrected. Because we're having that... I did it strategically. We're having
- a meeting on Tuesday. We have to put everything into Gateway on Wednesday. That is not a lot of time.
- No, it's not.
- And one other thing that I was going to mention, too, that Councilor Woods brought up that we heard
- through YSB is the special purpose lit. That's also something that is we heard tonight that, you know,
- we might need to look at that. And so that's also something that we can talk about on the 16th as a
- whole, too. So it's late, but we still don't go as long as city council. But that being said,
- I was just going to say we got a lot. And so I want to give people their time back this evening to rest,
- reset, and come back to restore and do more on the 16th.
- And with that being said, I appreciate every single last council members up here that have done a lot
- of sleepless nights and a lot of heartburn going through meeting with your departments. I appreciate
- that. Even Councilor Hawke, her absence, we definitely missed her today. But that being said, we are
- adjourned. Thank you.