- Good evening, everybody. And welcome to night two of the 2026 County Council Budget Work Session. Today is Wednesday, August 27th. And here present, and then at U-Hill Room, we have a quorum. So we will go ahead and go get started with tonight's meeting. To my right here, we have in the room, counselors David Henry, Iverson,
- Wilts and vital and I don't see either counselors Deckard or counselor Hawk online or virtual so again we got a core man so we will keep rolling all right um does anybody have any items that they would like to amend for tonight's agenda I know we had to make some schedule and changes but other than that is there anything else that anybody wants to look at
- Okay. Seeing none, Council, can we have a motion to adopt tonight's agenda? Madam President, I move that we adopt the agenda for this evening's budget work session. Second. All right, there's a motion and a second. And because we don't have anybody as of yet on line, we can do this by voice vote. So all those in favor of approving or adopting tonight's agenda, signify by saying aye. Aye.
- All those opposed, same sign? All right, motion carries. All right, next up, again, as the same speech as we gave last night, again, this is item two, or night two, rather, of several nights of the 2026 budget. I want to remind everybody that this is not, if you watched last night,
- and this is going to be the common thing throughout our season here. This is not final. This is a simple discussion, and council members will ask department heads and electeds as they are presenting questions related to the budget. Again, last night went a lot longer than we all anticipated, and so I'm gonna ask
- As I asked last night for our council members here to really help us stick to task. Again, anybody that is presenting, you will have your timer courtesy of TSD on the screens here. And once time is up, we are going to try to cut it and proceed to move forward so that we can get through the night so you can go out and enjoy the beautiful weather and not sit up in the natural room all night. Again, the public hearing that is scheduled
- the public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, September 30th at 5 PM. And the final budget adoption will take place on Tuesday, October 14th, starting at 5 PM. That is the time where public will be able to go ahead and make public comment on those particular items. Again, we are able to make decreases during these discussions, but we are not making any increases. And given the circumstance that we're in, again,
- I also want to say that we are asking the questions because due to, you know, SEA 1, we have things that we have to do and it's unfortunate that we are in this position. So I really hope that people don't take anything, you know, that the council is doing as a personal thing. We are really trying to make sure that we do what's right with the dollars, the taxpayers of Monroe County. So again, council, I ask that you all help
- us the task and make sure that we stay on target with our questions. If it is not a budget related item, then again, like I did last night, I will politely say that is not related and we can ask that in an email or at a different meeting that is outside of budget hearing or budget work sessions.
- All that being said, I'm going to look over to the auditor to give a brief overview of what we did last night and moving forward so we can set the tone for tonight's meeting. And before we do, we have counselor Trent Deckert that just joined us, so welcome. And yes, Auditor Gregory. Thank you, good evening council. Okay, we
- did some good work yesterday. We are still on a deficit, but we're down from $9,397,098 to the new deficit total of $8,661,869. So overall, between moving things around, there was a $735,229 reduction. So we have a lot more work to do, but we're making
- we're on the right track. I want to draw your attention to we're going to share the four B's here just up for the levy funds just very quickly and go through and to show you where we're at if we can start with the general fund. Does Carly have permission to share? Okay great. So looking at the general fund here we have in the adopts it's column there
- we have $23 million plugged in as the proposed levy. You'll see that we have property taxes. The amount plugged in now for the general fund for property tax levy you can see is $23 million. We have the property tax impact which is
- very high as we know it's 1.7 ish total but that is relative to the levy we choose so that will fluctuate as we make changes and however you choose to adopt the tax rates and then you can see here if we proceed this way with the budget we have we are not going to make our minimum fund balance so we truly do have work to do so we're looking at you know 13 point nearly seven
- of your anticipated balance if we continue the way we are our minimum fund balance is 15 million from our policy that we put together so um we haven't yet done much with the other funds however we can still go through if you'd wish or if you wish to do that on another night we could do that as well i'll look to council president morning
- Yeah, why don't we go ahead and do that. Okay, let's take a look at the election fund, please. Okay, so this is another fund. We have a minimum fund balance here of 750,000. So this is a fund where I believe we can potentially make some reductions. Traditionally, the entire budget
- approved is not utilized. So this is one where we could probably make up some of that revenue to assist us. And as you know, like this is the way that's plugged in, it's assuming we're gonna utilize the total budget for 25 and then the anticipated for 26. So that's where we're at. And if we could go to a reassessment now, please.
- Reassessments, minimum balance, this is a little bit above that. This is just to support the budget. They've been utilizing their full budget. They've had more appraisals, as Assessor Sharp has explained, just to appeals and so forth, so likely necessary, but we'll hear from them soon and can assess that further, but that's specific to that department, this fund. Okay, next levy fund, please.
- Humebridge is a rate controlled fund. As you can see, if everything, if the budget is fully utilized, we'll end the year at 1.7, fairly healthy. Okay. Again, another rate controlled fund. This is anticipated to have a great operating balance at the end of
- However, I know a lot of that's earmarked after we spoke with Ms. Ridge yesterday. So she has a couple projects that are coming into play here soon. Okay. Health fund is going to populate here in a moment. All right. I have this currently set at the minimum fund balance per policy.
- Health fund is where, again, we need to do a lot of work. There are other funding resources for this department, so I think we need to take a hard look at other funding sources available, particularly the Health First Indiana Fund and other lingering grant funds, et cetera. And then the last will be community of capital development.
- Another rate controlled fund just with the budgets proposed. Looks like we'll end the year around 2.2-ish. So again, decent. And then finally aviation will be our last. And this is another one.
- where we have some some work to do if there's other funding sources. Just there are certain funds within the frozen levy and so it takes away from the capacity of the general funds when we are overfilling the other levy funds. So we can also pull up that levy cheat sheet if you'd like to see like the 4B levy and OK.
- So this is that cheat sheet that we spoke about earlier this year, a month ago or so. The working levy is kind of what I have in mind to balance us. Obviously, this is up to you, and we need to move things around. The current levy is what we have in the 4B now, which, as you can see, is over our maximum levy. So it just doesn't work. So just some ideas. We can play with this. We'll update it as we go.
- So as you want to make changes, just let me know and you can watch it live. Okay? Are there any questions or anything else I can show you at this point? Council, does anybody have any questions for the auditor related to the 4B form? Yes. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, you're good. You're good. I'll go to Iverson and then I'll go to Hawke.
- So this is a little different than the way we've done things in the past where the four B's are not on an Excel spreadsheet presented by a council member, but rather through the Gateway program. And as the public is watching you go through the different funds, is that something that they can access by going to Gateway on the public site or they can only access that through these budget hearings?
- Once they are approved, it's publicly available on the public site. Until then, as we're working through, I think they need to be actually submitted for the public to view those. So they are available as we're going through the sessions. We made information available on the calendar link for the public as well. And I'm happy to share this with the public if there are any interested parties as well. This is so important that we just were going through a lot of numbers.
- And if the public has access to these, it's really going to help with not only transparency, but also comprehension of what we're doing. Yes. And another thing we can do is export these. It's just these are kind of working internal documents until they're published. So my preference is that we kind of just show them publicly as we go. And just another note, we are utilizing root documents, which I find to be very important. So we can see what we're actually doing moving forward. So thank you, Council, for agreeing to that this year. All right. Council Hawk? Yes.
- previously we had established what was an ideal amount to have for your carryover balance but that was established by a dollar amount and and I would think it should be as a percentage of of your total budget or something so that number would change so what do we think the dollar amount is that we're
- hitting trying to hit for general and actually for any of them but for general I mean I bare bones in my mind is this 23 million um however it's in the past our philosophy was to do a certain percentage of budget but we heavily relied on reversions which we can't really do anymore you did the work last year and we're not having as many versions as we have had in the past now there's still some
- I mean, there's flexibility there with certain budgets. However, majority of departments are utilizing budgets. I mean, we were looking at percent expended from the general fund and pretty much where we should be this time of year. So about 30% remaining. So we've done the work, but it changes the way we proceed with budgeting. So that's why I'm kind of hooked on these dollar amounts rather than a percentage, because again, we heavily relied on reversions.
- I want to see if anybody else has any questions over here. Nope. Okay. You have another one. You can go ahead. Okay. I'm sorry. One final note I failed to mention. You did establish that minimum fund balance policy. So at the very least, we need to make sure we're meeting those for those operating balances. However, obviously more is better for the departments. We have some flexibility. Okay. All right.
- So the last 4B I looked at, unless you've changed it, and I'm not saying it hasn't changed today, but we were down to like, we got down to like a 12 million carryover. Then when we made an adjustment, it might've been like a 13 million carryover, which is how much less
- for carryover for this year than it was for last year because that just continues to tell you how much you're spending down of your revenue and you can't keep going down 10 million a year or what I made that number up, but however much that difference would be every year.
- I don't have last year's pulled off. I can definitely get you that information and quickly, but with the edits made at the session last night, we're away from that 12 number and we're at 13.7 ish. So better, but not where we need to be. Our minimum fund balance for the general fund is 15 million, which is still below my comfort zone.
- Does that answer your question? Right, I thought we had, I thought we were hitting for more than 15, but if you look at 15 to see where that, where we are from this time last year, what the changes are, you'll see how much you're spending down, spending down, spending down, and that's not sustainable. Councilor Decker. I wanna make one distinction just to make sure I have this correct in my head.
- the carryover balance that we would prefer through our policy and that you would prefer to be a little bit higher. That is separate than rainy day funds that we maintain, correct? Absolutely. All right. So essentially it's a good housekeeping pad for another pad. Am I saying that right? Sure. Rainy day fund is like
- the savings account, for lack of a better word. It's completely separate from other funds held separately. So general fund, the operating balance should be able to get us through at least half of the year. Brandy day fund balance at this point is not to put you all on the spot. Oh yeah, it's over 10 million, but we can pull that up. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Any other questions for the auditor?
- We appreciate that and we look forward during this budget season to continue to do so. All right. So moving on, we are going to get into our first night or tonight's first presentation, which is extension services. Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1000 dash zero zero one one general with a category requests.
- of personnel $134,551. Supplies $7,916, services $240,410, capital $0 for a total budget of $382,877. Second. All right, welcome. Hello.
- Good evening, Council. My name is Adi Ikuonwa, and I'm the County Extension Director for Purdue Extension here in Monroe County. Thank you for having me. So we're asking for two line item increases in our longevity line item from $1,200 to $1,600. And we're asking for the extra $400 increase because of the increase of year service for our county staff. And then our second ask is our annual ask, which is an increase in our contractual services, a 3% increase
- last year and that is for 219,910. And just a reminder that our contractual services and agreement that the county has with Purdue that states that with you guys financially supporting us, we will provide services in the area of agriculture, natural resources, 4-H youth development, health and human science education, and community development. Thank you.
- Okay, that was easy. All right, so now I'm gonna look to council members to see if we have any questions here. Looking over here to my right and seeing if anybody has any questions. Councilor Everson. Thank you for joining us tonight and thank you for having your budget ready. We're certainly appreciative of that. I'm gonna start in the thirties, down the threes in your budget.
- One of the things that we keep talking about with almost every single department is the last two items, training, travel, and postage. And one of the things that we are looking at as we're facing this $8 million hole that we're in is ways to make that up. And I'll just keep my comments or my questions of training and travel line. You're requesting $15,000. It looks like historically you've used about half that.
- Why the increase to $15,000? It is the same. We're not increasing. That's what it has been. I'm sorry. First question of the night. I guess my question should be clear that before last year, you're using half of that. So are you finding that you're having to do more travel? Are you finding that you're going to have to go to more trainings this year?
- Our increase was due to adding the addition of our second 4-H educator. So with traveling, gas prices increasing, that's why we increased our line item to 15,000. Okay, we had an additional educator on staff. All right, I'll leave it there. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else over here? Councilor Henry. I know we don't have a year to date, but how much of this year's appropriation have you spent
- gas and travel with the other person? About four to five thousand and we still have travel coming up this year. We still have professional development conferences that we that we have which also comes out of that line item as well so it will still be expanded down.
- Summer is slower because you guys all know we have fair. And so our summer is slower, but fall, we usually pick back up. And so we'll increase with our traveling and professional development. So we'll be using more of those funds as the year progresses. So similarly, the three-year average for postage was looks like about 1,600. You had 3,500 in postage. What's the postage this year so far, what you're using from? What we've used so far? Yeah.
- I was go ahead. I'm sorry. I say probably around like 2000. All right. I'm looking over here to my left. Yes, Councillor Fido. So I am looking at the Citizens Academy for 1000. And so it looks like there hasn't been anything expended that I can see for the last three years. Is that a reasonable
- Oh, sorry. Is that a reasonable thing you think you could cut or maybe even eliminate? Do you need that money? We did Citizens Academy this year. This was the first time we did in a couple of years. OK. But yeah, it didn't cost us up to $1,000. So we don't mind. That's the money that we can't change that. That's more of you guys. So we don't mind cutting back some of those funds. But we hope to do it again next year. So we don't want to eliminate it completely. What might be a reasonable cut, you think, to make that happen?
- you thought I think maybe 500 maybe half of that I think we would be able to manage so we can cut it to five you think yes ma'am perfect and so the auditor's hand go up I just wanted to note for the council that I do have the budget pulled up expended to date so I can let you know if you have any interest in carrying specific lights counselor will oh yeah I've won more sure so when I look at the educational supplies I see that
- those traditionally haven't been utilized either in the past three. Any sort of lessening of the $816 for the 2026 budget for that you anticipate. Yeah, we have personal development. Memberships that we pay and that usually starts in the fall, so we'll be having to pay for that in next month or so. Even though you didn't use it the past three years, is it only so every so often?
- No, we use it every year. We have a professional development fund, professional development membership through Purdue that we take those funds from. So in 23, I see nothing expended, 24, nothing expended, as well as 25, $12 expended. So I guess I'm a little mystified as what, if you've been using them, does that appear somewhere else maybe that you're taking that out of? From my understanding, we take it from educational supplies.
- Councillor Wilks. Yes. So this is getting this is. But I'm looking at two lines that that might be able to give a little bit office supplies.
- than professional services, which is 30. And not because those are very big, but because it looks like you haven't spent down the budget as much. So would you be able to perhaps lower those to like maybe 5,000 for,
- the office supplies and closer to like 600 or the professional services. So for office supplies, by looking at the past, we have hit five to 6,000. So I'm worried that cutting that would get us short. Okay, well, maybe we could say 6,000 since you're saying you hit five or six.
- seem doable? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Other one was professional services. What is that typically for? I think I was mixing up my apologies Councilman Liz. I think I was mixing up the extension services with the educational supplies.
- The professional development fund, or membership, that's where it comes from. So my apologies, I was mixing up the two of them. So the membership I was referring to comes from the professional services, not the educational supply, so my apologies. Somewhere then as a result of that? What are your suggestions? Well, I don't know. What we're talking about, where were you talking about this that shouldn't have come out of? The membership, I thought,
- I was confusing educational supplies or professional services. So the membership that I was referring to was coming from professional services, not educational supplies. Okay, so then can we lessen the educational services by a significant amount? Do you need that in there? I mean, can we do it to 500? How about four? That's like half, right? Or do you think you'll be using it? And you can always come back and ask for a transfer maybe. Okay. Would four be okay?
- We'll do 400. OK, thanks. All adds up, as you can kind of tell. We're trying to get the add ups here. Yeah, understandable. Just as a reminder, we'll have to do every little line item by line item right now, of course. But again, I know we're going through and trying to do this, but I just wanted to say that as well. Moving on, because I'm looking at our time here. I had a quick question for you.
- just as a budget kind of thing here. And I know that the city of Bloomington has their own like Residence Academy and then the county has Citizens Academy. Has there ever been any kind of talk of joint enforces so we can kind of combine the powers that be and can have a cost savings where, you know, the city and the county can do a joint Residence Citizens Academy? We have not had that conversation, but that's something we can definitely facilitate with the city. OK.
- I'm just curious because it's like we have this here and they have that here and you know although I know the intentions what we do is slightly different and what they do is slightly different but it's all in the same so I just was
- curious about that. Okay, I know Councilor Iverson had another question. I do not have another question, but we have had three lines that have had changes to them. And if it's your desire, I'd like to make those motions now so that we can make sure that we're keeping track of these. Okay, I wanna, before we do that, I wanna make sure, Councilor Hock, did you have a question? Yes.
- I just wanted the question is that I hope that you won't consider combining because we're not just a little bit different. We're hugely different. And when we have people who attend these meetings, they say they didn't understand the difference. They didn't really know the difference. And they learned about how county government works so different from the city. And it's set up that way by the state. We don't change it.
- So it's much appreciated. That's one thing. And the second thing is for whatever changes are made, I hope it won't change our ability to continue doing that good work of bringing in all the young people that we have grown by leaps and bounds in the 4-H projects and leadership and establishing new groups. It is the best money per dollar that is spent on
- youth services that we have in this entire county. And for people listening, for them to understand 4-H is available in the city or the county, it is available for every young person. And so I thank you for helping lead the way with that. Thank you for your support, we appreciate it. All right, now we've got the lesson on 4-H. Councilor Decker, yes.
- Thank you for all your work on this and a million different other things as well. And as someone that helped out with Citizens Academy, I am always in awe of all that, but I had a quick question and I'll just float this. If, if training travel, if training travel, we were to bring that down just a little bit from that 15 to that 10 with you having the ability to come back. Could we try that?
- we do like 11 or 12, possibly. I understand 15 is a lot. So we're definitely willing to budge on that. But can we do like 11 or 12? Let's try 11. OK. Let's try that out. And I appreciate your willingness to do that and tell everybody that complains about it to come yell at Decker if they want to. We'll make it work. I think that that could do some savings here to help. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilman. OK.
- Anything other questions related to this budget? Kate, did I answer your question? Sorry, I don't know if I answered the question. It's okay. No, you sort of. So it's okay because you said you will be using it for something else so that I'm fine with it. Thank you.
- And now, Councilor Iverson, did you have some motions that you wanna make? Thank you, Madam President. I have four motions to make, but I'm gonna make them one at a time so that our council staff has the ability to catch up. I did just get looked at. Council, I move to set line 20001, office supplies, to $6,000. All right, we got a motion and a second to put the office supplies line at 6,000. Any discussion on the motion?
- All right. All those in favor of moving that line item to 6,000 signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right. Motion carries. Council, I move to set line 20012 educational supplies to $400. All right. We got a motion and a second on that. Any other discussion on that? All right.
- Seeing none all those in favor of reducing that line item to 400 signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign none all right most do we need to do a roll call okay all right so maybe please have a roll call vote on that councilor wilts yes councilor henry councilor hawk yes councilor crossley oh wait
- We're taking a roll call. My answer was no. Sorry. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion carries 6 to 1. Council, I move to set line 30027 Citizens Academy to $500. Second.
- All right, we got a motion and a second on that. Reducing that line item to $500. Any further discussion on that? All right, all those in favor of reducing the item to 500, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries. Council, I move to set line 30028, training and travel, to $11,000. Second.
- All right. We got a motion and a second. Any discussion on that? All right. All those in favor of reducing that line item of training and travel to $11,000 signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. No. All right. May we please have a roll call vote. Councillor Hock. No. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Deckard.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- All right, now to the bigger topic in hand. Moving forward, can we please have a roll call vote moving forward with everything? Okay, I would like to state for the record the change of the categories. Yes. Personnel is 134, 551, supplies is now 6,400, services is 235,
- nine ten with the total budget of three seventy six eight sixty one.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Council I move to open for discussion and review the twenty twenty six combined dispatch budget in the personnel lines three million nine hundred three thousand five hundred eleven dollars and thirty seven cents in the supplies line forty thousand dollars in the services line eight hundred seventy four thousand seven hundred forty five
- dollars and thirty eight cents in the capital line two hundred ninety three thousand dollars for a total budget of five million one hundred eleven thousand two hundred fifty six dollars and seventy five cents all right and joining us here this evening is bloomington police department uh police chief mr michael dekhoff welcome good evening counselors my name is mike dekhoff i'm here tonight to present the
- combined budget for the Monroe County Central Emergency Dispatch Center. I have with me the Assistant Manager Karen Davis because she is far more knowledgeable about this than I am. We have an opening at our top position in the dispatch center which we are currently in the process of doing a hiring process on.
- And so that is why I'm here to stumble through this budget and hopefully be able to answer your questions. So I will start with the 911 fund. Um, as you're probably aware, dispatch is made up of a couple of different funds. Um, and the E911 fund is one of those. The 26 request for that fund is 622,000.
- $294. It's broken down into contractual which is $595,294 which is less than last year's request and that is because as we move farther along in contracts they sometimes get cheaper and there are things that we did not have to renew for the 26 budget that are in the 25 budget so that's why there is a decrease
- in the contractual line item. The other line item in this E911 money is training and travel. The 26 request is for $27,000, which is the same as it was in 25. I'll stop there with the E911. Any questions about that? Questions?
- So next is the PSAP Lit which is the bulk of the funding as you're aware there is a PSAP Lit committee that meets and votes on the percentage to fund dispatch. They have met and set that rate. This budget has also been before the Dispatch Policy Board and they have voted to support this budget and I also presented this budget last week at the City Council budget hearings
- As part of the Police Department budget and they didn't actually take a vote. They just did the hearing and I presented so There is a increase in the 26 requests The total amount requested is two million seven hundred and eighty one thousand four hundred sixty two dollars Which is an increase from 25 of a hundred and ninety six thousand four hundred and thirty two dollars and I will take any questions
- First of all, I want to apologize because I've been locked out of the computer for whatever reason. I've been on it all day long, maybe it says it's tired of me. I remember going over these numbers, so I'm just kind of going by memory here, but the salary lines, it looked like it had nearly doubled from two million to four million something. Is that right?
- So the city did a pretty comprehensive compensation package for employees and dispatch was included in that. And so there were raises that were implemented, and that is probably what that is. Well, it's rather gigantic, I would say, to double. I mean, it looks like a double the amount, or did we, is it more people or?
- or that actually doubled. So we're in the process of hiring people. How many vacancies do you have now? 15. You have 15 vacancies. Yes. Okay. And in speaking with you in the past, I think I spoke with you about it. You certainly don't want all 15 filled at once because it takes you a time to train them and you don't want 15 new people showing up. And so,
- It would seem to me that we would be better off not to pass a budget with this higher amount and let your cash that you have fill in as you are able to replace those central dispatch workers. And I say that because we know that very soon, because it's going to be on us before we know it, 2020 is going to be here.
- perhaps there's already an agreement been made between the city and county. I'm not aware there has been but we know that this funding is going to be going away and it will all be combined in with the 1.2 that the county will have and the 1.2 the city will have and what's going to happen with the cash balance in there I have not heard and I you know I'm just looking at this to make certain
- that we are not budgeting for more than what is necessary, considering just like with our budgets, county budgets, we let our cash over at the end of the year help project our spending for the next year before we put dollars in place. And the reason why I'm saying this is because this is tied to a rate that's going to put those dollars in place, which is just going to grow the bottom line
- except that if everybody gets that kind of raise and that number of people, and we've got to recognize it may just very well be the county picking up that entire budget out of that 1.2, it gives me pause to try to figure out what the plan is. And I'm not expecting you to know what the plan is because I'm not sure anybody knows what it is.
- I think you're correct but as you stated earlier the city and the county operate differently the city and the county budget differently the city budgets for every position the county may not do that and since the dispatch center falls under the police department's budget that's why we have budgeted for all of the positions. We have five we are getting ready to offer jobs to so hopefully that 15 will go down to 10 and in 26 we anticipate doing two hiring processes and hopefully being able to fill the remaining 10 positions.
- What has helped, I can say it's helped on the police side as well as the dispatch side is the fact that we've raised the salaries and we have a lot more people interested in those positions. So that seemed to be what was holding us back. And I understand that as you, let's say if the average number you would want put in,
- place in a given year if you wanted to budget for that. And also if you needed more, you can always just do an additional like we do here routinely. But those are just my thoughts. I wanted to share my concern. And when I first looked at these numbers, I was concerned about it as well. So thank you for your time.
- Okay. Moving along to Councillor Henry. Mostly comment. Thanks for being here. I have the privilege of being on that committee with Councillor Wilson. Just reiterating for the public, the incredibly stressful work of the dispatch center and the fact that attrition is a reality, given that they are the ears of our community with every issue that comes into it. So I appreciate the
- the need to provide the space so that we can get the hires in there. I mean, you're always understaffed in there. I also appreciate the comment, of course, that beyond 2028 is very difficult for us to think about. But we have what we have right now. We have the conditions you have in that dispatch center. I'm thrilled to hear there's five folks in the pipeline. May we get a few more over the next few months. So I'm glad to hear that. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you.
- All right, Councilor Williams. I just wanted to echo some of the comments of Councilor Henry in that this is a very different animal than our other budgets and even the ones over which we have the non-binding approvals that seem different. This is really a very
- cooperative effort and it's really driven by the city and their approach. So I, you know, have, I'm perfectly comfortable with this budget. I'm very uncomfortable with the future, but there's nothing we can do about that right now. But this is, you know, we've looked it over and it looks fine to me. And good luck with hiring. Thank you.
- Did you have anything else? I have nothing else. Okay, that was easy like the button. Is there anything else that anybody has any questions on? We all got some sleep. All right. I think so. Councilor Hawke has one more question. And you perhaps should know the answer to this and I perhaps should be getting it from Angie Purdy from the commissioner's office because I know she's
- heavily involved with this to know what, because we know when the money comes in, then it gets distributed with the PSAP according to what is budgeted. But if it should come in higher than what is budgeted, it doesn't necessarily go into this fund. It goes into this sort of a holding account so that if ever it's needed,
- if there's a shortfall, then the city and county split that shortfall right in the middle according to the last interlocal I have seen. So I'm wondering, have you seen or participated with a more recent interlocal or when was the last that you remember seeing? When was the last interlocal?
- I know that Corporation Council Margie Rice has talked about, we need to look at that. You may be aware that the police department is looking at a new location. And what I would like to do is bring dispatch back under the roof of the police department and not separate. I think that will help us deal with some of the issues we have with dispatch.
- if we have them under the same roof as us. So I don't really know where we are on like looking at the interlocal and renegotiating it, but I know that Margie Rice has talked about, we probably should because I think it's been about 10 years since it was looked at the last time. Right, it's been a long time and we should know what it says and I don't, so I apologize for that.
- I had it memorized for a bit. So when you're saying under the same roof, you mean same location. So they would be moving from the transit facility where it is now. That would be my wish. But again, I'm not sure how much space we will have in the new location and how that will play out. And so if that happened, then are you saying, well, these are more questions. We can talk about this later. I'm just trying to figure out how, budget-wise, how that's going to affect the county. Yeah, I don't know yet.
- Okay. No more questions, which I'm not going to keep going. But thank you very much for that. So may we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilkes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor Hawk. No. Councilor Crosley. Yes.
- Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Final? Yes. Motion passes 6-1. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night. All right. Next up is item seven from the Planning Department. Council, I move to open for discussion and review Fund 1000-0079, County General Planning.
- with the category requests of personnel at $753,232, supplies at $4,500, services at $29,252, capital at $0 for a total budget of $786,984. All right. And welcome to Ms. Jelah. Oh, no. Sorry, Seth. We've got to, OK, see. Look at me jumping again. All right.
- We got a motion in a second, and now we will welcome you. Hello, welcome. All right. Thank you very much, counsel. Good evening. I did want to take a moment just to explain our department just for those of you that are new to our department or for the public certification. So we do have eight full time staff members in our department on the side here. I added the years of tenure. So even our newest planners or newest employees have been with us for three years. And I think that's a lot thanks to the coal increases
- as you've been able to support in the past. So most people interact with us because they come to apply for a building permit. Either they can meet those requirements and get their permit, or they need to go through a planning process. Both of those options we collect fees for, so I'm gonna go through that quickly.
- But before I do, we do a lot of things that are unpaid, but they're critical functions to county residents. So we offer planner of the day services eight to four, Monday through Friday. We have a planner on staff that answers calls. So between just this last fiscal year, we fielded 2,100 phone calls and emails.
- We also do what's called use determinations and predesigns. This helps people understand the scope of the improvements that would be required for any proposal, determine whether the property they're going to be buying is zoned correctly for the use that they're intending. So we could be preventing people or encouraging people to do certain developments here in the county, and that's a cost savings to everybody. So that's 61 use determinations and 130 predesigns as well.
- In terms of enforcement, since just March of 2025, we've had 35 property complaints. By far the largest percentage is due to vehicle parking signs and lighting but we also have quite a few complaints for unpermitted uses and activities.
- So we've been able to send out over 64 letters, conduct 37 site visits, and two stop work orders just since March this year. So we do quite a bit of work behind the scenes that not necessarily factor into our overall revenue, but are very important. So in terms of fees that we collect, just through our permitting software, we were able to collect just in this last fiscal year,
- We have 97 million, or sorry, 97, I wish, $97,000. And I'm just comparing that from last year and then the year before. I really wish, well, I don't. People would be very angry with us. And just last year that has increased by $12,000. And then I have it from even the year prior, which was $91,000. And I'll be sure to share this PowerPoint with Kim as well so you guys can look back at these numbers.
- of permitting fees that we've collected this year we have seen an increase so forty five thousand five hundred dollars and that's compared to the prior two years which we were right in that same range but we're a little bit higher than the prior two years and that's fees collected by the building department
- that are on behalf of the Planning Department only. I will say we're gonna be talking with the Planning Commission about a fee change since we've passed the County Development Ordinance. We've kind of seen what amendments needed to happen, what's working, what's not working, and now we're ready to assess the proper fees, I think. So we'll be taking a hard look at that this next meeting.
- So just in terms of total revenue, this last fiscal year, $143,204, and that's compared to from 23 to 24, 129,000, and before that, 134,000, so a little bit higher than prior two years.
- So here's just the budget change highlights and I have some further proposed cuts proposed listening to your hard conversations, want to be respectful of everyone's time so if you have other ideas I'm, I'm open to hearing any of them.
- bring to you a budget that reduced in the 2000 series by $2,106, and in the 3000 series, we reduced by $2,850. Some of that was just making sure that we're using the right budget line title. We also talked with technical services and maintenance and fleet, and we were realizing we had some duplicates, so we wanted to cut down on any of that. Further proposed cuts, I think we can comfortably cut office supplies.
- I have it as 3,000. I think we could cut that down to 1,200. And then professional services, I'm comfortable with that moving just to a placeholder, $1, and coming back. Those are really one-off services. For example, this year we used it for our permitting software to integrate better addressing, but I think that in the future that won't really be a reoccurring charge. And then I know you guys are looking seriously at training and travel, and Councilor Henry asked me to look up where our
- I think we're moving that down to 17,000. I think
- One of the higher years, we typically are less than that. But I wanted to make sure we had that, just in case. OK. Well, first of all, thank you for listening and doing some of that while you were waiting to come up. I really appreciate that. And that means a lot that you did that. And you already did a lot more before coming here. So I definitely appreciate that. And you've given the highlight of what it is that you all do.
- Thank you. Any questions? I'm going to look over here first. No. OK. And then I'm going to go Henry Iverson and then Hawk. Thank you.
- Madam President, thank you, Director Gellin. Appreciate it. And especially, just echoing Jennifer's statement, yeah, it helps when folks come in with cuts or thinking through it. Yeah, I think this is maybe more counsel holistically than just your own budget on the travel and training, but I think that a night and a half in,
- It sounds like we've got a philosophy. I think I heard that phrase the other night of where we're aiming for training and travel. I think knowing where people are going every year is useful. I really appreciate you letting us know that because that indicates that's a good cut versus if the conference was elsewhere. Can you maybe just refresh memory about what staff does at those conferences and what the training and the things you're doing, the planning certifications we need for y'all?
- Sure. So how many folks go? Yeah, that's a great question. So this
- alone, we added two more people to the certification for what is called the American Planning Association. We've added two more accreditations, which is great. So in total, in our office, we have four out of the eight of us that have accreditations. We're required to have 32 continuing education hours every two years, so 16 per year. And those conferences help us get to those hours. One of the main things that we like about this accreditation
- is that there's a very, very strong ethics criteria and that anyone in the public can essentially report any of us at any point if they think there's any kind of ethics conflict. And so it keeps us very much in line. We learn a lot about the public process, what's even considered possibly a conflict of interest, even
- what is a conflict of interest. So we really appreciate having that opportunity by the county to support us in that accreditation. I think it makes us a better department for that reason. So that cost of those accreditations do come out of our, I think it's out of our, I'll have to double check. It doesn't come out of training and travel, but they are kind of expensive. It's 4,000 in a year for all of us. So,
- Yeah, that's what we do. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's just I think, you know, as we're developing the philosophy of where to cut travel, I mean, it's what folks are bringing back. And so, again, being on Planning Commission, I really appreciate having good staff that have been trained on the ethics, because it is a gray space that we can step into as a board or commission, as a government, and having folks accredited and trained on that is really important. So as we ask about training and travel, you know, what's the quality or the nature of it, I think is important on why I would adjust or not.
- I'll also say just at the conferences we also learn about the latest like GIS techniques, transportation, alternatives, things like that. So we learn quite a bit. All right, again, Iverson and then I will go to Hawk. Thank you. First comment, then a question. I'm so happy that you're continuing to use SPIA Fellows. I've had the privilege of working with your SPIA Fellows and they're always a delight. So I wish we could give you 10 more.
- But I'm glad to see that in there. My question is down in the threes. You have a new line for vehicle maintenance. Could you talk a little bit more about why you're setting that new line? Yes, so we actually let me just pull up my notes real quick. I'm going to stop sharing. We actually moved that line and we had it prior as.
- it was repairs slash equipment slash vehicle. And when we talked with Richard, who's awesome, he was saying that he actually covers quite a bit of those costs. So he then asked, I think we ended up with the budget line of vehicle maintenance instead because his department would cover
- a lot of our vehicle issues. So that vehicle maintenance cost, I think that's when I asked him what that needed to cover, he said anything from like if we needed floor mats in there from doing different inspections that are quite dusty, quite muddy, or if we needed to do something above and beyond for our vehicle, then it's just like oil change or our vehicle got hit a couple of times in the parking lot one year, so yeah.
- and it's a quite a reduction from what we had budget in that repairs line so that's also appreciated thank you for again having attention to this detail of trying to reduce where you can council hawk i was just reviewing your 2025 adopted budget and it is always a bit confusing when you see it
- less and a lot of that has of course to do with the health insurance being moved out of there. But what I wanted to ask you was how much training is available to you to do online and can you reduce even more because 70,000 is still a lot of money for travel.
- 17,000 yeah so we could do quite a bit online, we did do that in the year I think if you go back to like covert times we definitely were way more online than we are in person.
- done it myself for several years to get those credits is that you miss out on the networking and meeting other people in person that help with just other problems that you may be seeing outside of the conference sessions. I actually find that the conversations outside of the sessions can be sometimes just as helpful. I understand that and I understand how much you can learn just sitting across the table having
- uh a meal with somebody and you're learning a lot on that and um but I also know that 17 000 slow money I do know that some of the other counties are requesting to see the exact uh for instance the ticket price if it's a plane or or the hotel price and whatever and literally looking at that for every department any
- training or travel that's being spent and that might answer a lot of questions for us and keep us all from getting in trouble. So that's something we might. Okay. Anybody over here have any questions? No. See no questions. No other further questions. Again, thank you very much.
- and hearing the proposed changes, I'm sure Councilor Iverson probably has some amendments that he would like to make. I do have an amendment, and Ms. Nestor-John, could you pull up your PowerPoint again? I think if we can pull up that slide where you made your proposed reductions, we can have one motion instead of three. All right, there we go, perfect, thank you.
- Council, I move that we make the proposed cuts as displayed on the screen right now in Fund 2001, 30013, 30028, with the respective values shown on the screen. Second. Okay, we got a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on this item?
- you're good all right excellent any discussion on what we see in the proposed changes okay and seeing that um i'm gonna just say that we should do a voice vote so all those in favor of the proposed changes as displayed signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign
- All right, that carries. Thank you. And then overall, we got to come back to moving this forward. So can we please have a roll call vote on moving this forward? Okay, to recap, the category changes. Personnel is 753,232. The supplies is 2,700.
- Services is 25, 253 with a total budget for planning of 781, 185. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawk? No. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes six to one.
- And again, thank you so much for that. Really appreciate that. Next up, moving along on the budget train is item eight, which is the surveyors office. Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1000 dash zero zero zero six general with a category requests of personnel two hundred eighty seven thousand two hundred fifty seven
- Hold on, let me try that again. $287,257, supplies $550, services $10,501, capital $0 for a total budget of $298,308. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second, and we have our surveyor in front of us. Hello, if you want to sit, you totally can do so. I'm standing there and I'd much rather sit than you.
- Make yourself at home. Looking at the dice. Yes, so I'll jump in. I will say it's really challenging to kind of make cuts that will be. Well, I think any cut will be significant to your goal, but I did my absolute best and I'll just kind of go through this. I do have a proposed reduction, but it's
- not staggering amount. So with that said, I kept personnel the same. I do want to talk about the part-time office manager. We have kind of came close to that amount in 2024. As you can see, that amount is at only 6,182, but they've been with
- office for 20 years and they also have a full-time job so they wanted to kind of take some extended time out of the office to like have a larger vacation and I was very amenable to that and so there is probably about two and a half months in there where we're not getting that normal time in the office also unfortunately she's looking to retire in the near future so I do think 2026 will be the time I need to double staff that position to do that cross
- training so I kind of left it there as I always state to the council my goal is not to spend this down and I know you're not looking for reversions but you know if there's extra funds there I'm gonna let them revert back with that what I could offer is to
- reduce the 200 on drainage board and postage. Really with the kind of way that we run the drainage board, the stormwater kind of picks up. I can't even really see any cost and that's kind of a legacy line so we could reduce that. I would ask to keep the 350 for office supplies. We do do that.
- We luckily we have a lot of operating services provided to us so usually that only goes to like paper and maybe some pins but I would be reluctant to want to let that go because I have to kind of use my funds appropriately. I don't want to mix the conversations too much so I'll get into that on the next budget.
- As kind of advised by council administrator we cut the travel and training by 2500 which is a 25% cut. Being able to listen to the last conversation that travel and training.
- have never taken another employee with the office to the AIC. I'd like to do that next year. It also goes to the Indiana Geographic Information Council. It's not just for my office. We had the GIS customer service slash parcel editor utilize that fund in the auditor's office to attend that conference this last year.
- Also, in Assam, LTAP, Local Transportation Assistance Program, those are kind of where those dollars go as far as like conferences. We also use them for training. We had an online course, ESRI, which is kind of our platform technology at $1,900 for a two-day session for that. Luckily, there has been a group of professors put together what they call INGEDA, Indiana Geographic
- training academy, and we actually sent someone from the health department that's really advancing their GIS skills in that area, and based off their feedback, I really think that's the better of the two, and that's at $855. So it's almost at half the cost, and it's in person. So we do incur the travel for gas, but
- As far as the networking and the connections you make, they're invaluable. And I'm sure just by one of the professors I worked with thought he was a great standout in the class. So, and I think, you know, those connections will last well beyond just going to that training. The dues, the dues, again, a lot of the cost actually is for the Indiana Geographic Information Council.
- we kind of do that across the board there's members and the dues are annual from multiple departments. I didn't print that so I can't itemize that out in detail but it's over 10 people and after we get to a certain number we get a discount as an institutional member so additional members are around 40 bucks but we have to have a certain amount so it it's a nice
- way of investing our dollars for education in that GIS space across the board. Also Indiana Lakes Management Society, the MS4 partnership, the county surveyors, affiliate of Indiana, those are dues they're relatively cheap but again with the two funds and one being dedicated this is the only viable option to pay for those dues. With that
- That's really what I have in the county general. And I'm here for any questions. Okay. All right. Does anybody have any questions for our surveyor? Councilor Pytel. Did I misunderstand or did you say that the drainage board postage online was going to be different? We could just zero that out. We don't use it.
- And the fact that says drainage board, I'm somewhat like a little like I don't want to buy pins for the surveyors office in a line that says drainage board. So I'm going to make that zero maybe. Yeah. I mean, it's $200. I think we're quite all right with offering that up. Like I said, I'm doing my absolute best of I just want to make sure I understood. Thank you.
- I would like to add one comment, but it's not directly to that. Actually, there's the elected training fund, so I utilize that to the fullest extent as well for some of my continuing education. Anybody else over here have any questions for Mr. Randolph? Looking over here to my right, Councillor Hogg. Yes, you just commented on something that I was going to mention, which because we do have that special
- elected officials training fund, which you could use and not have, not try to use what you have down there for training and travel. So is that for, you're suggesting that's for two people or for, or just for you? So far you've only just you? No, I actually don't use that travel and training line at all. I think almost every single
- that's what's so tricky about that. Um let me I think actually the Lake Management Society. I do have to use the training and travel and maybe the MS four partnership, but I don't go to those every year. I actually wanted to take some time back this year because I've
- But to your question, anything at all that is allowed to be used in that fund, I use. So like I would say, and I don't want to speculate, but a majority, if not like around 80, see I'm speculating, almost every bit of traveling training that I utilize as county surveyor comes out of that training line. And I think it's 1217.
- That's, that's high. Uh, I mean, are these out of state travels? 7,000. There's multiple people. So, okay. Um, one. So if you go to like a, uh, uh, IJIC conference, you're looking at maybe about 260 for registration. It's a three night event, but we never kind of get it. So it means two night overstay and then you're per DM and then.
- Um, we usually carpool up there. So just attending one of those is going to be around 114 per room. So five, 600 maybe with some, uh, per diem, which is going to be three days. So that's going to be like another 175. So you're looking at $700 per person to go. So, um, and that's just one conference and we'll.
- you know, pay that for anybody that's interested, that's kind of advancing in the GIS space and it's worth the investment. I had a conversation earlier this year with planning about sending one of their planners, but unfortunately it was overlapping with the time that they wanted to take on vacation. But ultimately in my office, we had two people utilize that this year.
- For IJ only. What's your thoughts on? You don't have to answer now. You think about it. Let me know later. But what would your thoughts be if we would do what some of the counties, other counties do, which is request to see all of the documents of what it actually is going to cost for the whatever specific like. I see nothing wrong with that because that's in every one of my account payables.
- I have all that information. It's something that you turn in anyway to get it paid. It's just not something that the county council looks at. And so I'm just thinking in general, that might be a way for us to feel better about the amount of money spent of local taxes on travel and training. Absolutely. Not just you, I'm speaking of in general.
- so happy to come. I don't want to promise you and then not show up again like I did earlier this year.
- I would love to come and show you kind of the value that we're getting with some of these investments, because they're huge. Like currently right now, our GIS coordinator is the vice president of IGIC, and we'll be moving into the presidency role. So that means we have a direct line with the geographic information officer that is housed in the IoT. We also work with a lot of our colleagues across the state and counties. They're actually replicating things we're doing here, like the
- election dashboard and such. We've got a ward and it was presented and there's been a couple of counties that have been wanting to kind of move in that. I won't go into too much section corner stuff, but there's probably about half a dozen counties that replicated our survey utility. And the best thing is, is we're getting lessons learned. So we're really learning how to mitigate undue expenditures as well. So the value is completely there.
- be more than happy because I'm a huge advocate on investing in our employees' education. And if you send them to the right place, that is how you get it done, I guess. All right. Did anybody else over here have any other questions for Mr. Randolph? All right. Seeing none, I have an amendment. I do.
- Council, I move that we set line 20086 drainage board postage to $0. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Any further discussion on that reduction? And I just want to make sure that I heard you correct. You don't want to set it to one. You want to set it to zero. Yeah, I don't. Let's house click. Let's do some housekeeping on it. Great. Appreciate that. All right.
- Seeing no discussion. All those in favor of reducing this item to zero signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries. And next we will need to have a roll call vote on item A for the general fund of the surveyor. So restating the category totals, personnel 287, 257, supplies 350,
- services $10,501 for a total budget of $298,108. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
- And then we got one more from the surveyors office, which is the perpetuation item B Council I move to open for discussion and review on 1202 dash zero zero zero zero surveyors corner perpetuation for the category requests of personnel at 1 45
- $145,917, supplies at $6,600, services at $22,951, and capital at $0 for a total budget of $175,468. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Anything you would like to discuss on this one? Yes, and so where you see the
- There's a number of different things and I can recap this because per a conversation with the auditor's office earlier, I'm actually going to try to reduce a couple of these funds. But the first thing I want to point out is account 18001 full-time self-insurance.
- is an error. That should be at $13,500 because within this we have percentage of full-time we have a 0.75 of a one full-time person so that what that means is that 18,000 should be 75 percent of said 18,000 which should be 13,500. They said they moved 54,000 into the employee services so I'll leave it upon them to make sure that
- All those dollars are accurate, but it's pretty easy to tell. You can see the budget amount on 2025 was $9,750. Really need to address that. Do you want me to continue or would we like to do that first?
- Open it up for conversation. I'll just jump in real quick. OK. At last night's meeting, he did explain that you needed to adjust that amount because we found that error. We took care of it last night on the general fund side. So we're just fixing now his corner perpetuation. We had flipped the numbers is what we had done. OK. Thank you for that. You can proceed. Would you like me just proceed and then do that then? OK. Absolutely. Thank you.
- So, I mentioned that the revenue that we have been receiving has been kind of less. This is the second year in a row. I'm hoping it trends back up if not, then, you know, we'll have to address that conversation when it comes. I won't go too much but I think this might just be helpful.
- the way that the corner fund is established is from Indiana code and filings at the recorder's office and in a nutshell that's like a reassessment any document with an instrument number or not reassessment refinancing and then liens and that usually during generated a revenue that allowed our fund to actually be profitable if you will and I've been able to kind of
- collect enough funds where there was a limited cash. Due to the dip I had I just have to kind of rethink my budget and so you'll see a lot of reductions in this. So with that said I moved the field assistant from 20,000 to 10,000 part-time from 15,000 to 10,000
- also moved field operating supplies to 4,500 to 4,000, reduce our surveying archive services from 4,000 to 500. Some of these projects just have to go on the back burner now.
- travel and training. I would like to recommend that we can reduce that 5,000 to 2,500 and I'll get to how that works. We reduce the geodetic coordinates from 40,000 to 5,000 because I will not be entertaining any service agreements until
- You know, the revenue ticks back up and we have, you know, the dollars to sustain that. The one reason I feel like we can reduce the travel and training is, um, we had established the new line help. Um, and it's also due to some of the conversations I had earlier where I really just need to make this a tighter budget. Um, I'm also asking to reduce the help, uh, line from 10,000 to 5,000 as well.
- And a lot of the costs that would incur in that can come out of help because that's the way the council would like us to do for that particular program. And the people that utilize this fund are my professional surveyor and my survey technician. And that travel and training is for the kind of same things like to attend IJIC because there is GIS, but really the big cost is the Indiana Society of Professional Land Surveyors and also
- No that's it that's really where the big costs are. We pay for the continuing license out of our miscellaneous so but that allows our PS to maintain his educational requirements. One other thing based off of recommendations from the auditor's office we'd like to change the field clothing line to
- employee clothing in uniforms and kind of ask for that line creation and also appropriated at the thousand dollars that we have. And then do you appropriate the one we have and leave that zero and it just goes away. And one thing I want to make sure is very clear. I've been tracking this, like I said, I would. So I'll probably see about ten thousand dollars in reversions for the field assistant, five thousand for the part time.
- I want to say 25 to 3,000 in my field operating supplies, 4,000 in my surveyor archive services, about 2,000 in training and travel, and about 30,000 in my geodetic control, and about 2,000 in help. So this is just an estimate, so that's around
- 50 to $56,000 that will revert back to this fund just due to the fact that that revenue didn't go up like I was hoping. And I'll continue to monitor this as we move forward. I'll bring up all of the concerns that I might have with council in a time that gives us plenty of space to address them. And I'll just say right now, my concern is if we can't
- if this fund doesn't go back up I might lose my part-time in 2027. All right thank you for that and then just as a clarifying which line item did you say that you were going to move to zero? I want to create a line and okay so the field clothing that would be 20010
- but also create a line that's 22218 and zero out the fill clothing line and appropriate the new line at 1,000 just to kind of go in line with direction from the auditor's office. Okay, I just wanted to make sure we got that. Okay, does anybody have any questions on this? Councilor Wilts? Yeah, I was just trying to find, again, the piles.
- All the influence probably here, I just can't find it. But what is the revenue for the corner perpetuation? We have about currently cash was like 102. Here, I just made it some additional notes on that page. Here we go. Would you like to see that?
- cash at 129, unexpended at 102, so that only really gives us about 27 to carry forward, but with the 56,000 in reversions, and please jump in if I'm misstating this, because I worked with you earlier, I'm hoping to have a carry forward amount of about 75.
- as a conservative number. And also there's about 2,200 coming in from receipts for the remainder of this year. If I may, the total appropriation for this fund is about 175,000 and expended to date is 72-ish thousand. So current cash balance is correct at the 129.
- Yeah so is the revenue then that's anticipated the 68,000. The miscellaneous revenue on the 4b is reflected the 68,000. Right now the 4b reflects a deficit of almost 60,000 in this fund but given the fact that the department does not anticipate to spend their full appropriation we would have to
- increase it by the amount that we expect to revert. But when we were talking, that's still reflected of the 54,000. So you have to adjust that by 40,500 as far as what your projections are showing. So it just makes it a little tricky because I'm not requesting 75,000. That's not ever anything that was intended. It was an error.
- If you calculated that, that would shift the dollars. And I'm getting to a point where we'll have enough to pay for the first half of the year as I think receipts are coming in to pay for the second half of the year. And if that we can't maintain that, that means I'll probably lose all of my ability to have part-time and basically have to dedicate that money to the full time and trim almost every budget line I have because I basically
- operate almost 100% out of that side of that 350 and that travel and training, which I don't dedicate to my office out of the corner fund. Does anybody else have any questions over here? I just want to offer. I appreciate the list of things that you offered for reduction here. I know that we'll have a motion on that eventually here in a second. You talked a little bit about
- when things go so low that changes start happening where part-time and all those things. And I will just say, this is about the fourth conversation I've had today where budgeting and other things may be changing the perception of how life really is. And it's sort of like, when you're a kid and you get the wind knocked out of you and it takes you about a minute to figure out what's happening and then you realize that's exactly what's happened. And I think with budgeting we have,
- and we're seeing it in every municipality, every level. I've heard it from townships, fire departments. I've heard it from councils. And then I have no clue what they're doing on the other side of the border, but of this county and that county and that, but we're just, we're kind of in that. And so I get, and we're all, one good thing is we're all doing it together. One bad thing is somebody put us in this way and here we go.
- Right. And unfortunately, this is even a direct impact from Senate Bill one. This is all based off of the interest rates of the housing market, more or less, in my opinion. And so I'm going to stay optimistic that we can see up which we're in. But if not, I'm just going to have to do what's best for the county and most appropriate for, you know, the taxpayers money. I understand. Do
- You have any questions? Why won't my computer work? I know, I'm trying to figure out how we can get somebody to, yeah. I would, let's see, and you might have said that as I was trying to make that computer work. How many locations, I'm not saying it right, where you've marked the corners, how do I put that, how many have you done this year?
- this year. We're on track for the 75, but my goal was to do 150 until I realized I don't have it funds for service agreements. If you ask me on the spot question. So we just had a review board. I just asked where we were. I want to say we're around 40. I will also say the survey or review board meetings have gotten very interesting and are
- are it's been we we spent two full meetings talking about one corner which ultimately got tabled until the next generations of surveyors come and decide their quadrijudicial decision of which one to hold so that kind of put us back a little bit so we're now staggering our meetings because a lot of the professional surveyors on our board also do things here in the county so they
- you know, might have a petition for the Planning Commission. So I have scheduled those at four o'clock the same day, but now we have to stagger it because we're going to have to spend a lot more time at those meetings to meet our quota. So I have no issues or concerns with meeting our quota. Actually, what we've accomplished on the field
- versus what we've been able to get approved by the board. We're already there. It's just we have to go through that approval process. And now the extent of work we're doing just brings a lot of questions of like, you know, the history of the whole practice of like how the preponderance of evidence on every corner. We even eventually got a
- and had to put amended quarter on there. So if a new surveyor comes, they know they use the amended corner to survey out. And this is on the Owen County line, Owen Monroe County line, that they have to survey out to the West with the amended corner. But the real corner is this one right here. And at one point they're like, let's just leave a gap. And there's like, there's no such thing of a gap in between the counties. And it's like, so, I mean, we've worked with Gary Kent. He's on the board of licensures. He's on the national board.
- board of licensors, work with a lot of different other surveyors across the state, also work with our local surveyors. I think we're doing a phenomenal job of getting everyone on board and I hope in the next 15-20 years when we start tackling the city and things this really does have the opportunity to preserve and protect the property rights of everyone in Monroe County and it's such a large task. It's something that has been under looked and I've been
- Putting all this in a dashboard and you'll see like prior to the 80s. We have no official records except for what was done in the legal surveying books back in the 1800s like.
- perpetuation of this county was on the back burner for too long and that's why I heightened these Sanders that's why we have a professional surveyor that's why we have four licensed surveyors on our board which means five professional surveyors all trying to agree to something which has made it very difficult but everyone
- believes in the vision and in the goal and even after a bunch of descending opinions of what should be approved and what shouldn't everyone's still real happy and cordial with each other and we can have some of the most difficult discussions but at the end of it still understand what we're doing is going to
- better the county as a whole, as these future generation surveyors come in and have all of this evidence available to them. And what we can't do is worry about some of the civil issues with boundary disputes. But what this does do is provide so much evidence that if it has to be adjudicated, they're going to have the information at hand to hopefully make the best decision. Well, we appreciate that. Thank you.
- All right, seeing that we are out of time on this budget, I am going to look to Councilor Iverson for his amendments. Madam President, I have four motions for council right now. Let's start in the ones. Council, I move line 1-8001 full-time self-insurance to $13,500. Second.
- All right, we got a motion and a second to move that item to 13,500. Any discussion on the motion? All right. Seeing none, all those in favor of this amendment signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Moving right along.
- Council, I move to set line 20010 field clothing to zero and simultaneously create a count line 22218 field clothing. Employee clothing and uniforms. Employee clothing and uniforms and set that count line to $1,000. Motion and a second. Any discussion on that motion? Did I get that right? That was a little convoluted. All right, I'm getting thumbs up. All right.
- seeing no discussion all those in favor of the amendment signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign motion carries moving on to the next council i move uh that we set line 30028 training and travel to 2500 dollars second motion and a second any discussion on that
- All right, seeing none. All those in favor of moving training and travel on item to twenty five hundred dollars signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. You got another one. I have one last one, Madam President. Sure. Council, I move to set line three eight zero zero to help or higher ed and longevity to five thousand dollars. So motion and a second. Any.
- additional conversation on the amendment or the amended motion. All right. All those in favor of this item or this amendment signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right. Motion carries. And then I'm going to look to Michelle to make sure she got all of that. And then I'm also going to look to y'all to see if we can have a roll call vote. Okay. So I'm going to restate the categories.
- The personnel line category is now 105-417. The supplies category remains at 6,600. Services, 15,451 for a total of 127-468. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes.
- Councilor Henry? No thank you, pardon. Councilor Hawk? Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Motion carries six zero. All right. Passes. Thank you. And that concludes. Thank you so much. Yes, we really appreciate that. Thank you. Council, I know that Councilor Hawk is having some technical difficulties with her computer. And before we proceed further into our agenda, I'm gonna ask that we take
- a recess, so if we can come back at 7 or 2, that would be helpful so that we can see if TSD would be able to help Councilor Hawke. So again, we will be back at 7 or 2, and then we will promptly start, and we will go for it with the clerk's office budget presentation. All right. All right. Thank you all so much for coming back.
- Well, you could have left, but you came back. So you came back like the boat was supposed to save Jack and Rose and Titanic. All right. Next up, we have item number nine, which is the clerk's office. Council, I move to open for discussion and review. Fund one thousand dash zero zero zero one county general clerk.
- with the category requests of personnel at $2,045,613, supplies at $35,000, services at $165,600, and the capital line at $1 for a total budget of $2,246,214. Second. All right. We got a motion and a second. And we are joined tonight by County Clerk Nicole Brown. Welcome.
- Good evening, Madam President, members of the council. Really quickly, I'd like to begin by thanking
- the president on behalf of every Monroe County clerk's office employee for her presence at last week's meeting regarding current issues in the justice building. As we await updates and results on the impact and the ramifications of the current issues, your support for communication, transparency, and the release of public information did not go unnoticed by my employees who have often felt overlooked, left out, and patronized when it comes to equity in Monroe County government.
- tonight marks my 10th appearance before the council for the clerks budget. And I am proud to announce that in the past 365 days collection efforts by my office total $209,582 90 cents and money will continue to come back to the general fund. And so I am hopeful by the end of the year, it will be closer to
- to 25 to 50 where possible. We stand proud to do our part and work within the same fiscal parameters as those we asked for last year with appropriations and where we have requested in increases. Our increases do not total the 210,000 that I have mentioned to you.
- ahead of this meeting. I will respectfully submit that we took haircuts prior to meeting with my council liaisons. And we just look forward to answering your questions and having a successful budget session. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate that. And looking over here to my left, does anybody have any questions to the clerk regarding her budget on the general?
- Council. So I hear that you did meet with the liaison and make cuts. So liaisons. Yes, ma'am. Sorry, both. And so is there anything that you've been thinking of since that meeting that you might be able to bring forward or yes, ma'am. There are some, again, because I took haircuts, they're not as significant as the original haircuts, but
- Pull that mic over. Your voice is so soft. Is it really? OK. Just pretend you're at home. In the printing and subscriptions, we're prepared to look at 12,500 in the training and travel. Can you give numbers? Yes. Please excuse me. I'm an old woman. 3,0003.
- gotcha okay and say that again about the number make it twelve thousand five hundred thank you three zero zero two eight four thousand three zero eight zero zero thirty five thousand
- I'm sorry, what was that last number? Now, what was the account line? Oh, sorry. 30800. What did I say? But changing it to what? 35,000 instead of. Got it 30,000 right now. OK, 40. Oh, the adopted budget was. You made a request of 30,000.
- That's what I have too. Now 40,000 was, is this year. Yeah. Well, then we'll hold it 30. Thank you. Yes.
- that we've talked about this in the past and I ask about overtime and truly it's not you know it's not personal it's not about like anything except that I'm looking at past usage and it doesn't look like you've gone over 15 in the past
- two years, three years. Like trying to read them, but. So what we've talked about in the past and what I'm happy to remind the council tonight is that my predecessor took a significant number of reductions in force.
- And so we are not back up to where she was in terms of personnel. And so I do try to be judicious and not, I mean, I'm just not offering overtime willy-nilly, but because of those personnel shortages, if I have absences, there is cross training wherever possible, but coverage is difficult sometimes. And there are special projects that, you know, occasionally we are in a position
- to offer over time. I would also remind the council that my staff continue to be paid lower than their court reporter counterparts. And so that is, again, I've tried to be judicious, but where I can, if something comes up and I can offer them an opportunity to earn a little extra money. I'll tell you just this morning, I saw a report that 65,
- percent of Americans believe they are not making enough to make ends meet and my staff, they are hurting and I am, I am doing the best that I can. There was a freeze put on being able to reclassify their positions. The court reporters got their reclassification. We did not have the opportunity to get ours in. I'm hopeful that we will prior to the end of the year, but it does impact my employees pockets directly.
- Thank you. Your employees are eligible to use comp time. Is that correct? Yes. But of course you in the time that I've been clerk, you limited it from 60 hours to 40 hours. And of course where we can, they earn compensatory time. And I,
- and monitoring that with them to make sure that it does not go to the 40. That certainly, if the council is considering raising that limit from 40 closer to the 60, I think that would be helpful. Time off is just as appreciated. No, not just as appreciated, almost as appreciated as money in your pocket. I want to be honest. You know, housing costs do not typically go down. Thank you.
- Just as a reminder, the comp time cap is set by the commissioners. It is not set by the council. Just looking at what you've used with overtime and
- understanding, kind of looking back, I would suggest if you would be open to it at all, changing that to 15,000 rather than 20. Based on usage. So you have been kind to give some increases, some COLA increases, and so
- the overtime rate they would be at now would be more than what the overtime rate would have been when I expended that money. And I'm hopeful that you'll factor that in. The average seniority of your staff by chance? Like years of employment? I have lost a lot. I mean, a lot of them have retired from,
- the ones that I would have inherited from my predecessor. I am trying to bring in younger, qualified, bilingual people whenever I can. And of course those people would like to make a decent wage or take advantage of opportunities to make more. And I would also remind the council that I seem to be the headhunter for the courts.
- So I hire these qualified, amazing people and then lose them because there is a three to $5,000 difference between working in the clerks and working in the courts. And I have expressed that concern to the council, made that plea when reclassifying. And so to retain and recruit and maintain quality staff costs money.
- Anybody else have any questions over here? I'm sitting over here by myself. Do you have anything? So I want to come back to the threes and 30800 postage. We just talked about it. We moved it from 40, which is what it is this year, down to 30, which is what you suggested.
- I'm going to follow Councilmember Wilts' argument and just say based on usage, last year it was $1,146. The year before that was $3,019. Would you be amenable to taking it down even further somewhere around the $5,000 level? That gives me heartburn. You're a strong woman. There are
- mailings that the court is mandated. I'm sorry, the clerk is mandated to mail on behalf of the court. So I'm not just mailing out clerk mail, I'm mailing out court mail too. I don't, I mean, obviously I can't anticipate how many cases the court is gonna hear that are gonna be passed down to me. That's also a line and I think that I explained it when we met together that, you know, should I have
- So if I have not. Underestimated what I was going to need in another area of the 30's. Then if I have not expended. A significant amount of posters, then I will transfer some of that money so that I don't have to come back to you and ask for additional appropriations. So.
- I don't want these to be like bargaining. Yeah. Yeah. So I just remember from discussions and it might've been last year. So I might be behind, but the court, they have a separate postage. They do. And there are things that they mail for themselves, but there are also certain things that it will say the trial clerk, meaning the clerk's office sends out. So I say something's
- the court reporters mail out on behalf of the court. It's just what kind of case it is and what the state has mandated that we mail out. So we work in tandem with one another. They do have their own separate, but so do we. Okay, yeah. I'm hopeful to have made that make sense. It did make sense, thank you. You're welcome. So Nazar,
- I'm such a nerd for budget. I made my own little binders, and then I always go back and watch previous years. I'm so nerdy. If you can't tell. The only question that I had about the postage, and I swear I thought I remember one of the other budget or one of the other departments last year that had made a comment about
- And I know this isn't for you, so I'm going to look to the auditor and see if maybe this kind of conjures up a memory. I thought we heard other people say that they had to increase their line item for postage in the justice building because of something related to what was happening with postage last year. I swear I thought, I'm like, I could be crazy, but I swear I thought I remember
- Because there was something with the postage and the machine or something that people had to, it was like a procedure or something that was happening where it wasn't being paid out maybe by you anymore and people had to do that. Well, I can explain a little bit of that. OK. You're conflating postage with the postage machine, two separate
- And so we tried, the courts and I tried a lease where they paid six months of the lease for the postage machine and we paid six months of the lease for the postage machine. We tried to have that contract. It did not work out for us in that there were allegations of you're running your mail on our postage, you're running your mail on our postage. We think we're, you know,
- 700, we should have this amount of money on the machine and this is all we have. So when the time came to renew, it was just best for us, you get your postage machine, I'll get my postage machine and that way there is no conflating or confusion or allegations that just cause hard feelings from a staff that already feels like they get the brunt of the stick.
- Does that make more sense? Yeah, and I see the auditor has her hand raised. Yeah, just a general note. Last year, my office began a new procedure where we are covering the postage for all claims that are mailed out. So when we process claims, we'll put it in an envelope with a check. Rather than the department supplying that postage, we're budgeting it in our budget. So all postage budgets should have decreased a little bit at minimum. OK. All right. Thank you.
- Anybody? Are you suggesting still 25,000 then? Yes. With that in mind? Yes. I guess I'm still new. Bear with me. Sure. So I guess I don't understand why you can't come back if you need it. If you have a need, it seems to me like you can come back. It has been my experience and past as prologue that when you say you can come back,
- and then we come back, it's punitive. It's not, let's remember that we did ask you to come back. It's, I can't believe you're coming back. I'll go on record saying I asked you to come back. I can do that. It just seems like an extraordinary amount of money to leave. Parked. That's just my feeling about it. I understand your perspective. I feel like I've come down a significant,
- Oh, 5,000, right? It was 30, now it's 25. Well, I came in here believing that I had requested 40. Right, that's right. Yeah, it's all about the columns, right? Now that Councilor Hawke is back, I just want to see if she... Sorry, I don't mean to put you on the spot. I know you just walked back in.
- but I know you've been studying the budget like a hawk, so I know maybe you might have some questions. No, okay, we'll come back, it's okay. Councilor Iverson. One of the account lines in the three, the contractual line, went up by more than 10%, it went up by 10%. Why? Again, when, what number are you showing for contractual? 3006.
- It went from 100 to 110,000. So when we spoke, when we met with our liaisons and I explained about leaving some money in postage in case I had to move within the lines instead of coming back and asking for additional appropriations, the suggestion from the liaisons was move some of that money from postage into the contractual and just take care of it upfront. And so we followed suit.
- I really like your liaisons. I really like my liaisons too, and we're very grateful for the guidance that we received during our meeting. Thank you. Hilarious. All right. So, Councillor Wilts. What is the bulk of your contractual? Because it looks like it's fairly, well, no, it does vary. So tell me, what's the bulk of your contractual in terms of what you
- bear with us. Sure. The postage meter lease comes out of contractual.
- me on the spot with all these different- Sorry, that is not my intent. Why don't you get back to me on that? It's seriously- I can do that. That is not my intent at all. I can do that because that always seems to be the line that we're running low on. Yeah. We have contracts with them. We have contracts with Midwest Presort. We did have with storage, which we don't anymore, but that was an election. That would have been an election.
- That was Pitney Bowes we said. I can get back with you on that Kate. Okay. And let you know. Yeah. Yeah. So I do want to remind us, we got, we, this area was 40 minutes and then we got three more items ahead of us. Okay. Wait.
- Sorry, I was having trouble with the computer. I was looking for an overtime line to make sure that we are adjusting that and removing it. But maybe that's already happened. Did you do that? We talked about it. It was talked about while you were out of the room. We are still in the question portion, so we haven't done any type of amendments yet. Okay, all right. I would certainly suggest
- I would certainly support a reduction of no. Not just this budget, everybody's. I will lose employees, frankly. You know, I cannot keep employees now. I think I try to compete. I do the best that I can.
- with, and they, every employee understands that I do not set the salary. This would, that would be a hamstring. Thank you. I have to, I just feel now obligated to point out that we can't use over time to augment compensation that way. So it's, I, I feel for your position. I do in your argument, but I can't,
- take that into account. And I, I don't want it to seem as though I am creating projects for their legitimate things. Then again, I am at least seven people down from my predecessor. Are we going to have amendments? It sounds like from the appetite of council.
- and I see that council member Iverson is shaking his head yes so like to hear it here it goes you ready all right we're starting the threes with your recommendations so council I move to start with fund three zero zero zero three printing and subscriptions and set that at twelve thousand five hundred dollars okay all right we got a
- Any further discussion on reducing that line item to $12,500? That seems like it's still really high. I just say call the question. Okay. All right. All those in favor of
- Reducing this item to 12,500 signify by saying aye. Aye. Oh, okay. Aye. Okay. All right. Do we need to make the change for the repairs line and update that account line? Do we need to do that tonight? I think we were still waiting on some confirmation from emails.
- with people. So we'll come back with a list on anyone that we will come back with a list. Okay, we'll skip that. Let's go back to your recommendations. Council I move that we set line 30028 training and travel to $4,000. All right, we got a motion in a second to change the
- training and travel from 5,000 to 4,000. Any discussion on this? Okay. All those in favor of reducing the training and travel line item to 4,000, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries. Next one.
- Council, I move that we set line 30800 postage to $10,000. Second. Let me explain. I think we've got multiple council members on record saying, if this is not enough, we are on record saying, please come back. We're asking you to come back. So that's above the heartburn level. And it's, I think that's why I said that number.
- Okay and Councilor Decker. One thing I would like to say on items like postage items similar to I believe what's going to happen to repairs equipment things like that anything that this could be my Mitch Daniels moment but anything that we could make safely universal among departments and by that I mean do a way of
- that we could do this cheaper but guaranteed that when the clerk walks in there or or judges or or anyone that it's not a you know what contest. I would like to figure that out and I think probably commissioners that are watching any way that we can guarantee that so people get space services bathroom access whatever it is that there's no tearage of
- Well, you get to do that and you don't. I would love to see that in future budgets because I have to think that we are getting just riddled with copy machine here and this there. Now I'm not, God knows, I don't know half the things going on, but any way that could make that easier on them and then start giving them a little bit more better flow for their budgets. All right. And again, we got a motion on the table to reduce postage down to 10,000.
- So any other further discussion on that? All right, all those in favor of reducing postage to 10,000 signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay, motion Garry's. All right, one last one. We're gonna go into the ones to the overtime line, please. Council, I move that we set line 17101 overtime to $10,000.
- There is a motion and a second to reduce over time to 10,000. Any discussion? May I speak to that? Yes. Go ahead, Council Hawke. As long as that line is there, any other position they have open, even if it's just for a week or two, whatever, and they have some additional money left in there, they can move it down there to that line. As long as there's a line there, they can spend and they will. And I don't mean just you. I just mean that's what happens.
- So unless we want to support over time, we need to start getting rid of the overtime line. That's my thought. Thank you for that, Councilor Decker. I'd like to offer an amendment to Councilor Iverson's motion. Maybe it's accepted or not. I would move that to 15,000. I think that's a nice compromise. I accept that.
- So there was an amendment to the amendment to have overtime line item be at 15,000. Any discussion on that? I sure don't support it, but what? Other discussion? Oh, Councilor Becker. I would just say that I think in theory, yes, it'd be good to figure out ways to remove overtime.
- But that's going to mean if we're treating everyone equally, it's going to mean equally across departments. And there's other giant behemoths in that big old justice building over there that are doing that. And again, this is what we're talking about where we've got, we make tiered systems and then we act like we don't have them. That it's going to be a job. It's going to take commissioners doing that too with us and us and everybody else to get that balance between groups. So anyway, I said enough.
- Thank you. Any other discussion on this side from this? Well, I wonder how many departments actually have an overtime line. Can somebody tell me about? We got rid of them all once and then they keep sneaking back in. Like every time you turn around there's one. Okay. She's looking something up, right? Yeah, she's looking.
- Councilor Wilson, you have something to say. So we know that one of the biggest users of overtime is the sheriff's department in jail. And I'm not sure between the two how it spreads out, but it's a lot. And if we're gonna take some steps about overtime, they have to be affected too. And that, you know how difficult that is. That's all I'm saying. And to your point about treating people fairly,
- You know, I don't know, I am very comfortable lowering it down. I wish there was a way that we could be very communicative about when you transfer. I mean, we'll just keep an eye on it, we do. But we're not trying to handicap your ability to compensate your people. Counselor, for exactly the reason that you said
- If there is a significant increase in arrest over the weekend, who do you think processes those for the courts? Is that when you're using overtime? It could. I mean, that's one thing that could. Our criminal division, we are already down one person in my criminal division. And so I'm saying any increase in any other area of the justice building directly impacts my office. And so as you said, if you're
- We can't treat it like, you know, you married over time, but you do not. I see the auditor had her hand up. And then I'll go back to Michelle to see if she had. And then I'll also come back over here. Sure. So typically, the departments that have overtime are those that could have emergency circumstances, like 24-hour facility type deal. But looking here, the clerk's office has overtime, highway department, sheriff department.
- All right, prosecutor, jail, animal control. So it's really those 24-hour facilities. And then, I mean, during election time, I'm sure that's utilized. But typically, it's not. The current expended out of that appropriation for the clerk's general fund budget is at the unexpended balance is almost $17,000. They've expended $3,000 to date.
- I'll go to Ms. Turner-King and then I saw Councilor Hawke had her hand up. I think to Councilor Hawke's point, it's not required that departments come back to request a transfer into the overtime line, but there's nothing that says council couldn't pass a resolution to require such so that council can track those transfers. Councilor Hawke.
- Yes, because if it's in there and it's in the same category, they can move it up and down. And they could just do that with a letter of transfer. That happens in-house. But if we passed a rule that said no transfers allowed into that overtime line, will she come specifically?
- we ask it just like an additional appropriation, at least it'll be there for whatever amount we pass, if it's 10,000, whatever it is, but they can't backfill it with every bit of any extra money that they've got in the personnel line. That's true for them, it should be true for everyone. I understand that's the point. I mean, at what point
- Do we is there anyone willing to put forth a motion that says that there would be, I'd be happy to do it unless I'd rather somebody else do it so it might pass. Yeah, I'm also happy to draft a resolution to that effect.
- We can, but obviously this is going to be in another council meeting where that because right now we're in budget. And of course, I mean, that that that's a very valid point. And I understand that. But we do have a motion on the floor. And so I want to remind us to get back to that so we can move forward. So that was to it was an amendment to Council Iverson's amendment to
- have that to 15,000. He accepted counselor titles. Yes. We're saying from 20 to 15 is what we're voting on. Yes. Want to know how many departments or was that already answered? Already got that. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So for this one, I'm going to ask if we can do a roll call vote, please.
- We're voting on the 15. Thank you. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Feidl. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Hawke. No. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Motion carries 6-1. 5-1. Big pardon.
- Um, but again, that is something that we definitely need to have a conversation on at a regular, um, county council session. All right. And we have no more amendments. Okay. So may council, I was in, didn't have any more somebody else have. Yeah. I would like to, I move to, um,
- change line 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 1. Office supplies because of underutilization from 35,000 to 20,000.
- Okay, we got a motion and a second. Any question on reducing the office supplies line to 20,000? And I'm gonna ask to zero. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, I thought she said to Yeah, it's, yep. It's about that time. All right.
- So all those in favor of reducing the office supply line down to 20,000 signify by saying aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay, motion carries. Are there any other amendments to this item? Again, we got a few minutes left and we still got three more items to go.
- so all right can we please have a roll call vote overall for or yes for the account or the general so for the clerk general fund category restating two uh personnel two million forty thousand six hundred and thirteen supplies twenty thousand services one hundred and forty two one hundred one hundred forty two thousand one hundred dollars um
- capital one dollar for a total budget of two million two oh two seven fourteen no counselor iverson yes counselor hawk no counselor dekert yes counselor fiddle yes counselor wilts yes counselor crosley yes motion carries motion passes five one
- And next up is item B, which is the record, yep, that one. That one. Council, I move to open for discussion and review fund 1119-0000, that's between 0000, clerks record perpetuation with the category requests of personnel at $100,027, supplies at $2,000, services at $50,500,
- capital at $0 for a total budget of $152,527. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Clerk Brown.
- The clerk perpetuation fund, the clerk is statutorily mandated to maintain the records of the clerk in the court. This is a fund that we monitor carefully and diligently and only spend what we absolutely have to out of that fund. We do pay a salary out of that fund. And so we respectfully ask that you approve our request for the perpetuation fund. Thank you.
- any questions on this item look at council hawk just a comment you see that that overtime line is still there and they just have a one there but they can move any other additional dollars up there that they might have uh just mm-hmm councillor welts um you have a part timeline here it looks like you've
- used it is a how many part time people do you have. That that line. I don't know if you remember our stone belt client. Oh, yeah. And so I have not filled that position since she passed away. It is something that I do intend to fill. I have just have other needs in the office first, and I would like to continue to have that line. Thank you.
- The position that's being paid is phones clerk, right? Yes. How many of those are there? Because I saw that also funded in the other. Correct. There are two full-time, one part-time. Oh, not in the perpetuation fund, sorry. You asked how many people were in phones. I meant overall. Yeah, yeah, I meant overall. And then, so the part-time one is in the county general? Yes.
- Thank you. Councilor Iverson. Same question I have to the other fund. I'm in the threes in your contractual line. What do you use the perpetuation fund for in terms of those contracts? That money has just been there. Should we need it for anything that would pay for the maintaining of court and clerk records?
- We can also use it for equipment that helps us to maintain. And we did purchase, with the commissioner approval, our book scanner for the old books that are deteriorating very quickly. And then we also have a microfilm scanner. Those had aged out. And the warranty, it cost more to have the warranty than to just pay out of pocket
- For the people to come down and they come to us from another state to maintain that equipment. Thank you. Thank you. I'm looking at the office supplies line of this budget. It looks like you haven't been using that in the last three years.
- So again, this is a user driven fund that we only pull out of if we absolutely have to. It is not something that cost you any money whatsoever, which is why we're asking to maintain it at the level that it is. For me, it's a parking issue, right? So we have to we have to park this money and make sure it's there. And so we're money this year. There's no doubt about it, right?
- I feel like you're punishing me for not using it. I don't think it's punishment, I'm sorry. I hear you, but I don't intend for it to be punishment. We are judicious where we can be, and if we can pull it out of a different office supply line, we do to try to keep that revenue-driven fund going. I hear you, thank you. Yes, I see the auditor has her hand raised.
- I'd just like to note that the current cash balance of that fund is $57,842. So obviously, you can only spend the cash that you have. However, we're budgeting way over that amount. How much did you say the balance was again? That's for the entire fund or just for the office supply line? You're tired.
- The cash balance for this fund is $57,842.35. That's as of today. As of today. As of today. And this fund, just to clarify, this fund is? Clerk's Record Perpetuation. Thank you. Yes. All right. Anybody else have any other questions? I'll take one final one before we move on.
- I guess there's a couple of ways to take that. And the way I am going to take it is you're going to pay for your position that you have budgeted there, and that's going to take most of that money. So I'll, you know, fare you well. And I would also, I've said this in previous budget meetings, that with electronic filing, then every county clerk's perpetuation fund dwindled.
- We legislatively are looking to increase some user fees in that fund. We obviously didn't ask for it this past legislative session with Senate bill one, but it is something we have not raised fees in 15 years. And so that has impacted the perpetuation fund as well. A lot of people are looking at fees and how we understand. Thank you. Okay. So.
- looking around to colleagues to see, yeah, Councilor Hawke. So I was trying to follow along here. Did I understand the auditor's office saying that we're being asked to budget for more than what the revenue would show? What's your suggestion?
- I thought I heard you say, look, their balance is this. They're asking for more than that. What's your suggestion? I apologize. I didn't make a clear suggestion. I was simply noting the cash balance that there's only so much funding available. So clearly, they're budgeting a personnel line so that it's going to be pretty much expended by that. Do you have the miscellaneous revenue anticipated in front of you? OK.
- There is anticipated miscellaneous revenue of $83,108 for 2026 as well. I was just simply noting the current cash balance. Sure, we're not setting her up for failure. Right. Because if you think you've got something and then there's no money there, you're going to be disappointed. I learned a very valuable lesson about the perpetuation fund my very first year. You have not had to address anything with my perpetuation fund since that time. Oh, I remember that well.
- But the thing on here that I'm looking at is the employee services budget, but it's being budgeted here for the full-time insurance. So we want to make sure that money doesn't get spent down, then we don't have the money for that because we have counting on it.
- Now that we have talked about this, I'm looking around to see if there's anything that anybody has any amendments or anything. So then I will call, I'll ask for a roll call vote for this item. Councillor Fiddle. Yes.
- Councilor Wilkes? Yes. Councilor Hawke? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Okay and then next up is item C. Council I move to open for discussion and review fund 1215-0010
- election fund voter registration with the category requests of personnel at one hundred fifty five thousand three hundred sixty five dollars supplies at three thousand five hundred dollars services at thirty one thousand five hundred dollars capital at zero dollars for a total budget of one hundred ninety thousand three hundred sixty five dollars okay all right we got a motion and a second and what would you like to add to the
- voter registration conversation. I will happily just take your questions. I understand you're brushing for time. So you're fine. If you, I mean, if you wanted to ask something, you can do the floor is yours. You still got it. You go, you go ahead. Okay. All right. So as it has been presented to us, does anybody have any questions? Counselor Hawk? Yes. Could you show us the four B on that again, please?
- Thank you showed it earlier in the meeting, but. You zoom in again, please. Oh, sorry.
- Could you also tell us what it says? So this is a levy fund, so it will impact the overall levy for the county. Right now we have the 4B set to where it's at $750,000 at the end of the year projected. I believe that is equal to
- the minimum cash balance, but we do have it set to where miscellaneous revenue will be roughly $42,000 with anticipated budget estimates of $1.85, and that'll get us to that ending balance. Sorry, I'm not as well-versed as Bri is on these. Thank you. Budget estimate is?
- Okay. Did you have other questions?
- I'm unsure. Anybody else have any other questions? It's the budget they've requested. It's like, the wallet goes right back. My screen won't stay open. So I'm getting frustrated here. So for the voter registration, the budget requested is 190,365. And the anticipated revenue supports
- What was it, 180 something? Yeah, I agree. This is the election fund. This is the voter registration. Oh, are you saying that one more time? That is the election fund?
- have several departments that are within the election fund oh yeah and so you're looking at one budget of the entire makes sense of the entire election fund just like general yeah can you use your mic miss miss counselor hogg I just want to make sure that we're watching because we know it affects county general whatever we can put in there
- and I would pull it up on my screen if I could. Well, I can't. Give up. Yes. Typical practice for this particular fund has been we count on reversions. And so we know that we can
- not under fund because your operating balance will still be higher because we're not expending the total budget. Does that make sense? The way I have it set right now is to show the operating, what the levy necessary would be if they expended the entire budget for this year, plus their entire budget for next year. So it's showing us the levy necessary to leave that balance, that operating balance at our minimum cash balance. However, that amount of levy will not be needed because typically the budget's not completely expended.
- So does that help? OK. I'm sorry if I missed the question when I stepped out. No, you're totally fine. It's OK. Thank you. All right. Here what we heard from the auditor. Does anybody have any other questions related to that? Excuse me. OK. So seeing no questions, maybe
- Okay. I wasn't, I wanted to make sure. So, um, okay. All right. Councilor Wilts. Hang out long enough. Um, the part timeline here is used for who? We have a bipartisan part-time voter registration. So of course you have to have a Democrat and Republican. We lost our, not lost as in,
- They're no longer with us, but lost us. And our seasoned voter registration workers, Bonnie and Jack, for those of you who remember, they were done after the last election. We are very proud to have acquired two new young ladies, one of them very fluent in Spanish. And it had always been my goal to have someone to speak to our voters in Spanish when English is not their first language. And so we definitely need our part timelines. Thank you very much.
- yeah I I do not get to watch all the election board meetings quite boring most of the but my understanding and please correct me if I'm incorrect is that the election board has not had the opportunity to approve these budgets they have seen them but they haven't approved them I have one
- If I can read into the minutes and I was going to read it into the minutes during the actual election budget. Yeah, we can. They typically don't comment on the voter registration budget. They typically comment on the election budget. Right. May I seek advice from our counsel? Ms. Molly Turner King, I think
- I don't understand the protocol of having a board voting on a budget or not voting on a budget before we see it. If we go ahead and approve this budget, is that going to put things into a whole catawampus thing? Typically, for example, the health board will review the health board budget. That being said, if the election board hasn't approved it and they
- board as a whole would like to make changes to it, tonight's not the final adoption. So the election board, I believe, meets next week. And if they wanted to make changes, they could convey such to council, and there is the opportunity to reopen that budget. Or you could table it so that they could have the opportunity to meet, and you're not reopening it. It's kind of a council preference question.
- I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
- Okay, oh and Councilor Hawke. I did get it open. Let's see how we'll see. I'm looking at the full-time self-insurance and it looks to say if you don't have it funded in this election fund and rather because that's a zero and it says 18,000 in employee services and this is not a general
- these employees are not a part of general fund. You said self-insurance. I am. Thank you. I can answer that. Since this is a multi-user fund, a multi-department fund, we have created employee service line down here. And in that is the self-insurance. And that was approved last night.
- the election fund, which is taking care of three personnel out of the election fund. Okay? In general, wait. No, it's in the election fund. It was approved last night, three personnel in election fund. There was, we've added that location of employee services within the election budget. It was not moved to general fund.
- in here but it's in employee services that now have a budget. Correct. Got it. Okay so the topic of the hand. So it should it say zero or not say zero? It will be at zero because it is being budgeted in employee service location within the election election fund.
- does not and it's not going to affect County General at all no it's not being housed with this must have happened at what quarter of 10 last night I left it 935 that was approved through when East since and Stein was here that was the first that was like near the beginning of the budget yeah it was either the second or third it is
- And to say that it doesn't affect general, I mean, kind of, but it's not out of general fund. It's not in the general fund. Correct. But it's still going to come out of voter reg. But it's not going to come out of the clerk's voter registration budget. It's going to come out of employee services voter registration budget. Correct. Which is bonded how?
- going to say that we need to move on because we still got one more item and then we got another group that is coming in for their budget. So is there, maybe please have a roll call vote on the voter registration. Well, somebody wants to make an amendment.
- It is your will to do whatever. Okay, so then can we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Hawke. Yes, but I think we've got to move that back. Sorry, was that a yes? Oh, never mind. I said yes, be done with it.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Hold on. With the category requests of personnel of $865,123, supplies at $60,000, services at $670,000, capital at zero for a total budget of $1,595,123. Second. Now we got a motion and a second. And scene. The members of the council, again, this is my 10th time presenting
- budgets for the council traditionally in the election budget. I proposed the budget. The members are accompanying me to the budget hearing so that you can ask them if they are supportive. And I have not had a problem as far as election board members supporting my budget. If I may read
- I believe one of the election board members is participating virtually, the other was not able to attend, but submitted an email to my election supervisor. If I could read that into the minutes, I would be appreciative.
- Good afternoon. I am unable to attend the meeting on Wednesday evening. Please pass this on to the clerk to use if needed in the meeting. I support the budget that Clerk Brown has proposed. Unused funds will be returned to the county, so there is no reason not to be sure sufficient resources are available. Danny K. Shields, Monroe County Election Board. Okay. Okay.
- Any questions? Oh, I already see Councilor Hawke's hand is raised. Councilor Hawke. Yes, I call your attention to look down at the line. 1801 full-time self-insurance, it says zero. Look at where the money came from last year. 13,000 was included in this fund, adopted budget for that insurance that's in that line. It now says zero.
- And it's got to have a number in there if we want it covered and paid for in this fund. So what happened in this meeting, either we don't understand that you've got to budget it, where it's going to get paid when it's in these other funds. We don't want it getting paid from general. Now, if somebody made this discussion,
- And somebody decided something else the other night, the other night, and that just means it is going to be under general fund because how else is it going to get there? Is there clear? Can you explain that? Do you mind if I help clarify?
- yes please okay thank you so um counselor hawk we this year um things are being done just a bit differently so this is still in the election fund but it's under a different location when meeting a different department so it's um budgeted under employee services so that when we go to do the sweep from wherever the self-insurance is budgeted into the self-insurance fund employee services can handle that without um bothering
- department to help with the work. Does that make sense? No. Okay. I'm glad they didn't have the additional work for it.
- But if we want the money actually to be paid for out of this fund, it's got to be budgeted in this fund. It is. Yes. It is budgeted in this fund, just not in this budget. So it's budgeted in the election fund, but under employee services. I can pull up that budget and show you. Point of order. Yes. Point of order. I would recommend for the public transparency, the auditor to do that, because this Keystone cop narrative, which is frankly starting to annoy me,
- it is ridiculous. Let's just show us that the public can see it, that we're tracking this and doing this because these kinds of narratives are what is what's killing government. Let's just look at it. And it's right there on the screen. I've got it on the screen right there. Let's zoom in and show it. And then everyone take a look. Maybe we'd all sign a sheet. We saw it. And down the road we go. So here is the election fund. Here is the, it says election fund
- It's under employee services. We're budgeting for three personnel, which is a total of 54,000. It's just under a different location. It's not under the clerk. It's not under the commissioners. It's under the employee services. So it is budgeted. You can see the fund there is 1215 election fund for the, and it's in the employee services for 54,000, which is three personnel.
- And this is just part of moving toward best practice. This is a control that we've put in place so that this, if it's over budgeted accidentally, it can't be transferred through in-house transfer or anything else. So it's there for the intended purpose and will be swept where it's necessary to be utilized. So Councilor Wilks. So yesterday when we had employee services in front of us, I know we discussed this and it didn't really
- occurred to me yesterday to ask about this but we didn't see this fund and and approve it did we that's I think yes we did I just remember doing you you did general and then you there were four of them there was county general there was excuse me there was a lit special purpose there was public safety and then there was a
- election fund and then the other one was yes then there was self-insurance yep we got it okay so so where does it get added into the funding bottom line of the election it is coming out of that fund that total includes that funding which is one million
- 849 488. That is the total to be spent out of the election fund. So employee services budget this year just includes election fund as well and the other funds where we budgeted self insurance. Okay, we again, I thought I saw a hand raised from Miss Turner King. I thought you were
- I was just pointing at the hand on the screen. The election board member, Penny Givens, has her hand up. Okay. Clerk Brown, did you have anything else to add? Okay. All right. So the election board member, Ms. Giffins, has her hand raised.
- Ms. Giffins, you can unmute and you can go ahead and speak. Hi, good evening. It's nice to see you all and it's a long process that you all are putting yourself through. At the last election board meeting, rather than as we talked about a journey and I asked whether or not we should recess so that we could meet to review this specific budget before it went to you and
- I asked to see it at our next election board meeting at this point, not realizing that it was going to come at this stage in the calendar to come to you. I have several questions about what's in this budget that I would like to talk with the clerk about in an election board meeting, not in this particular meeting. I think it's more appropriate in an election board meeting. At this point, because I haven't had a chance to get my questions answered,
- I'm not supporting this. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. But again, to reiterate Ms. Turner King's point, essentially, just like everything else that is happening right now, this is a discussion. They would meet and you have a meeting next Thursday, because that would be the first Thursday at one o'clock, 1.30. And so because you have a meeting at 1.30,
- I would assume that that is on the agenda for y'all to go over and discuss it. I see some head nods at your meeting. Okay. And so because we are still technically in budget season, technically you all could discuss amongst yourself. And then if we choose not to table it and we can continue on with it, we technically could reopen the discussion before we adopt.
- and whatever they did could bring forth, be brought back forth to the council and we can make adjustments accordingly if need be or take it as is. President, I support that course of action. Okay, just wanna make sure. I want to note really quickly that that is under as the clerks update. I have it down as an update so that it can begin discussion just so there's clarification for that. Okay, all right.
- So since we have that on the table and they have their meeting on next Thursday, does anybody else have any questions, issues, concerns with proceeding with this? Let's say you counsel. I think this is probably a really good point to reiterate something you said at the top of this meeting. None of this is final. We are opening for this for reviewing. We are reviewing. No votes are taking place. This is not the final.
- budget so there's there's lots of room for more changes to be made. And typically you've had them before in the past like you've had your meeting and then and I think maybe what has thrown it off is this year technically we've started our budget season a little earlier so by the time you probably would have come to council for this you would have already had your meeting is that accurate? Typically what has happened is the board has been provided an email
- with an attachment. This is the budget that I am proposing. Typically, one or both members accompany me to the meeting. They've had a chance to look at it. They've had a chance usually ahead of coming in here to say, yes, no, what is this about? And I have not had, this is the first time in my time as clerk that a board member has not
- been supportive. The other board member was supportive. I'm happy to answer questions. I would just also for the purpose of this evening, just talk about the fact that in 2018, which an off presidential year, we had better than expected voter turnout. We have adjusted how we look at what we need. I learned a lot of lessons from that. And so
- we do we anticipate a better than expected voter turnout in 2026 so uh that is why i've proposed what i've proposed again this is a budget that has not been controversial because the money reverts back if we do not spend it and i would hope that we would not be penalized for
- asking for enough money in with two elections i will not have time to return to you for additional appropriations and i would hope that the council would be receptive to my proposed budget thank you welcome okay hearing that we've said all of that knowing what we've already known reiterated what we've already iterated um does anybody have any final discussions or questions okay moving forward can we please have a roll call vote
- Councillor Crosley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Thank you and that concludes your presentation. Thank you. Thank y'all have a good night. All right last up but certainly not least is the Convention Center.
- Council I move to open for discussion and review fund one one two seven dash zero zero zero zero convention visitor tourism with the category requests of personnel at zero dollars supplies at zero dollars services at three million two hundred sixteen thousand six hundred dollars and the capital line is at zero for a total budget of three million two hundred sixteen thousand six hundred dollars second
- Hello welcome and if y'all don't mind to introduce yourselves welcome. Thank you for for.
- hanging in there, meeting with us tonight. My name is Mike Campbell. I'm the president of the Convention of Visitors Commission. To my left is Mike McAfee, who is the executive director of Visit Bloomington. To my right is Talisha Coppock, who is the executive director of our convention management company.
- Thank you for hearing our budget tonight and our budget requests. 2025 has been an exciting year for us. We've done some monumental things and got some things moved forward. First of all, I just want to thank this council for approving our budget from last year and allowed us to do some of those things.
- We've been able to collaborate and financially support the Karst Farm Athletic Field Project this year which will bring all weather turf fields that will benefit the community and its residents. It will also allow us to support area youth and recreational sports organizations
- and allow our community to host tournaments and events which bring tourism dollars to our hotels, restaurants, shops, and businesses. Also this year we broke ground on the Bloomington Convention Center expansion. And that was, I know.
- Sometimes I just hear that and I don't know if people are clapping or if that's just me. But in addition to the physical work on the building that we've started this year, we've begun to lay the foundation for filling this space once that is completed. And that's done through our marketing and our direct sales effort. So as we sit here today, merely 18 months,
- from when the anticipated completion of the first phase of this new facility will open. We know there's a lot to do and that will take place in 2026. So as you look at this budget you'll notice increases to visit Bloomington's budget that provide for adding an additional sales specialist that will be focusing on conventions and groups
- And this budget increase also provides for some rebranding of the Convention Center, which I've seen some preliminary work on, which is exciting. We're looking forward to being able to reveal that soon. And then the development of a new customer-facing website. We can point meeting planners, convention planners, and interested associations,
- and groups and state agencies to really see about our community and why they should come here. Similarly, a larger and more complex facility will require additional staffing to operate it, to maintain it, and to
- coordinate the logistics. So the increases to the convention center management budget that you'll see here will provide for this as well as some of the incentives that we will need to be offered to retain clients in 2026 as cranes and construction or operating right next to meetings and events and also allow us to attract bookings for 2027 and beyond.
- I'm happy to say the last few years have had record years for tourism and keeper's tax collection in Monroe County. 2022 was a record year, 2023 was a record year, and then 2025 or 2024 was a record year. So we've had three years of growth,
- and expansion in the innkeepers tax collections, which speaks to the health of this community and in this revenue stream to help provide for that. We are watching national and regional trends in 2025. There are some things that are of concern, but I will say that our community has shown itself to be resilient and that
- bears itself out in the 2025 tax collection. And so we're tracking on pace with what we did last year just based on business volume and collections. So I think we've been planning for this expansion for several years and several years. And so we're actually in very good shape financially.
- to be able to make these moves. And as we look forward to opening in 2027 and what that brings, I feel confident that these will help set us up well and keep us moving forward. Happy to answer any questions. Okay, thank you very much. And does anybody have any questions for Mr. Campbell related to this particular item?
- Councilor Iverson. So I very much share your sentiments that the revenue that's coming in
- shows just how strong the community is growing. And I'm really excited about that. In fact, last night we got to approve a tax abatement for the refurbishment, essentially, of the old GE building, which is going to bring lots of high paying jobs into the community. And we're really excited about all the things that are happening. I think that's going to really help with, you know, bring folks here and inviting people to visit here. I also wanted to encourage you to keep the hard hat videos coming. Those are fantastic.
- Those are fantastic. She's one of our stars. Will we bring her in? So if you don't know what we're talking about, find the CIB on YouTube. And it's a great thing. I might get into the budget. This is a little budget related. Oh my gosh. All right. Let's go. My question is,
- On the line 38128, Commissioner's expense, we set that at $200,000 for this year. $200,000 for this year. It seems like a jump from previous years. What is that fund used for?
- So as we're going into a time where we don't know what we are going to experience with an expansion, this is some uncharted territory. This year we've looked at this website development is one of those things which we need to do in order to continue to push this forward. And so that's an expense that wasn't budgeted for at the time. And so those are things that type of
- dollar amount is for those type of projects. Great, look forward to seeing that website. Thank you. Anybody, Councilor Hawke? And again, if that doesn't, if we don't need it, we don't expend it. And all of these funds come from innkeepers tax. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people might think commissioners' expense means, oh, you get spend it away, but we know better, so.
- We know you watch your money. You watch this money tougher than you watch your own money. You do. I'll be quick. I always when you're before us I always remember back.
- in pandemic times when your discussions and assessments were a lot different, we were a lot more nervous and we, to hear the good things and those record numbers, which I particularly like, I think that we've got to continue to hug the good things and photocopy the good things and juice the good things and that is everything you're doing. So please, please, please keep that going and it gives us hope. All right, Councilor Wilts.
- Thank you for being here and waiting and waiting. Almost like waiting for the convention center expansion. But it finally gets here, right? It finally gets here. All right. All right. I used to end on such a positive situation. I would say. All right. Without further ado, since it doesn't seem like anybody else has any questions, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Hawke. Yes.
- Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Next up is item B. Council I move to open for discussion or review fund 4005-0000 Convention Center operating with the category requests of personnel at zero, supplies at zero, services at $531,300, capital at zero,
- for a total budget of $531,300. Second. Motion and a second. Go ahead and proceed. Thank you. And this represents the revenue generated at the building. And we deposit it to the county, get it back out, claim system. And this will be for 2026.
- the Capital Improvement Board and CBC take over more of a responsibility of the operations in 2027. So this is getting us ready for all of that. Sounds self-explanatory, but looking to my colleagues here to see if anybody has any questions. Councilor Decker. I had a quick question. Escalator is giving you all the Dickens right now. Is that the case?
- Yes, the escalator belt broke and I was two months ago, but that will be paid for through the capital improvement fund. The one we'll be talking about next. But I will say this is a great opportunity to say thank you so much for those ARPA funds because we've been able to repair and replace so many like cooling tower and boiler and various rooms and
- hot water heater, the list. It was really, really important, so thank you so much. Councilor Hawke. Do you have a price tag on a repair of the escalator? $60,000. $60,000? Now I'm looking at the auditor. I know that we're looking at perhaps another meeting with ARPA, but since
- Is there any way we can continue more money for the convention center or is it too late. So we have a couple projects that might come in under budget or they might not be able to fully utilize what has been obligated
- For their projects. So there might be some wiggle room there. And of course, then both the Commissioners and Council would have to agree of where the need is. We have had some We have had some recipients reach out inquiring if there's more funding available. So you'll have to you'd have to
- you know, determine where you want that, where the most need is, but a few projects are over budget as well. So yes, sorry, long answer, but yes, there potentially is funding that will be opening up. But I know that we have a deadline to have the price tag and have it finished, paid for by a certain time. So I thought they were prepared. If it was at all available, that we would take them into consideration.
- Yes, absolutely. Any interested parties that already have it has to be something that's already contractually obligated and it can't change the scope of the project. So yes, but absolutely we can bring those forward to you for consideration. And to kind of bring us back to 26. No, no, no, no, no, no, you're fine. Because that has something to do with it. Just as a side note, we did get an email from the auditor's office about saying that we needed to
- have a joint commissioner council meeting related to ARPA as well. So sidebar, as we're hearing their budget, if that is something and we have findings for more funds for that particular thing, that's something that we can talk about. But yeah, that is correct. Okay, anybody else have any questions on this particular item? No. Okay, can we please have a roll call vote?
- Councilor Wiltz. Yes. Councilor Hawk. Yes. Councilor Feidl. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes 6-0. All right, next up is item C. Council, I move to open for discussion and review Fund 4909-0000 Convention Visitor Capital Improvement Fund.
- with the category requests of personnel at zero, supplies at zero, services at $100,000, capital at zero, for a total budget of $100,000. All right, we got a motion and a yawning second. So please go ahead. So this fund is money that we do set aside out of the innkeepers fund in order to handle any large
- repair or capital improvement needed on the structures in which we operate so currently that's what this Bloomington and I believe there's land as well that we could use that on as well as the existing Convention Center so
- So something like a capital repair and we've had a few of those. It's an older building and it needs some love from time to time. So this is what that fund is for. Okay, thank you. Councillor Hawke. As a reminder, going back in my memory bank, this fund was started because we had some repairs out at Convention Visitors Bureau years ago, like some
- bad hillside in the back. And I said, look, we need to just keep putting some money back every year for things that we might not expect to be coming up. And I am so glad we did that because often we've looked to that money and it's being saved back so that you don't have this last minute, no place to go to for the money. So that worked well. Really healthy fund balance.
- All right, looking over here to my left to see if anybody has any questions on this. Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. All right.
- And that concludes your budget presentation for us. Thank you very much. And Council, that concludes before that concludes. We got a hand that is yours. I was asked to provide the following information and I didn't see it in time. It has nothing to do with the Convention Center budget, but Election Board
- member giddens would like you to know she would have been here tonight in person but she got stung in the face by a wasp and it was unavailable well i certainly hope that she gets to healing and feeling better that is no fun so i'm glad she was able to attend virtually um but i definitely hope that she feels better all right um but
- hearing that and shifting towards what we were about to do. We are recessed until next Wednesday, September 3rd at 5 p.m. and we'll have another, our budget session number three. Thank y'all, good night.