- Good morning. We would like to call it order. Uh, the 2026 meeting of the Monroe County board of finance.
- I am county commissioner, Jody Madeira. It is Thursday, January 29th, 2026. And we are present in the
- Monroe County courthouse in the U hill meeting room. Um, the first order of business is to approve the
- minutes, uh, from the annual meeting of January 30th, 2025. Um, I move approval.
- second. Thank you very much with the motion in a second. Uh, any corrections to the minutes?
- Hearing none. All in favor of approving the minutes. Hi. Uh, now we'd like to elect officers for the
- 2026 Board of Finance. Um, I believe I am
- I believe. For 2025. I'm sorry, 2025. Go ahead. You serve as chair, I can be vice chair, and Treasurer
- Smith can be the secretary. Secretary as usual. Yeah. So you're going to be president, she's going to
- be vice? She'll be president. She'll be president, okay. Yep. That's my motion. I just can't hear you,
- I'm sorry. So it was moved that Jody would be president, and I'm going to be secretary and vice
- So there's just three officers. I want to make that clear for the people who are here. There are just
- three officers. So me, Julie, and Jody. So you move that? Yes. Second it. All in favor? Aye. Next item
- on the agenda is the presentation of Monroe County's public funds investment management policy for 2026.
- You see in item number four,
- the Monroe County Investment Policy. Nothing has changed since last year. Basically, we number six on
- that list lists the deposit accounts, how we can invest those. Interest rate solicitation and eight
- is authorized investments. Nine is final maturity. We do not invest in anything longer than five years.
- has certain up to 25% can be invested. Up to two years, but basically it's it's safety liquidity and
- in an interest or rate of return and I did. Want to introduce Gene Emory.
- from German American Bank and that's what you have a little sheet of. We talked about safety in banks
- and when I was treasurer the first time we went through two bank failures so that was very devastating
- personally but I wanted to introduce Jean Emery who works for German American Bank. She is the public
- funds investor. She has a substantial amount of our money invested with that bank like around
- little bit less than a third, but they are one of the safest banks in the country and for small banks,
- probably the safest bank in the country. Jean, would you like to come up and say hello? I think that's
- important so you see who we're actually doing business with. Yeah, first of all, thank you for letting
- me come here for a few minutes. Just want to let you know we're headquartered out of Jasper, Indiana.
- but we're an $8.4 billion bank. We have been ranked number two in the nation by Forbes Magazine and
- one of the safest and strongest banks by Newsweek just recently. And we appreciate Kathy working with
- us. I love her to death and hope we can continue that banking relationship. Thank you. Is there any
- questions for me? No, I have none. Thank you so much. Thank you.
- And of course, when we talk about safety, we put a lot of our money in Trust Indiana. And when we talk
- about the investment, talk about the interest next coming up, you will see how everything's divided
- out. But I do really try to focus on very safe banks, banks where we really know the people, banks where
- Jeff really knows the people, banks where we feel like
- We feel like family, we feel like it's a community investment if we can, or a state investment, try
- to keep the money here, working for us and working for the people of Monroe County. That's very important
- to me. Excellent. Thank you. Any questions, thoughts, concerns? Excellent. So do you want to move to
- accept that policy? We have to take a vote on this?
- Yes, that one has to be signed. OK, got it. Yes. Move approval of the Monroe County Public Funds Investment
- Management Policy for 2026. I second the motion. All in favor of the presentation of Monroe County's
- Public Funds Investment Management Policy for 2026, say aye. Aye. Aye. Do we need public comment on that?
- have it at the end too yeah we have it at the end so that will have to be signed by all three commissioners
- and myself and that is when we go to look for new banks or we go to bid out businesses banks ask for
- this and I provide that to them so that they have it for their boards of their boards to look at to
- make sure that we're following policy and everything's exactly the way that it should be I know recently
- We had a CD invested at the credit union, which we got them on the public funds list, even though they
- haven't republished it. We'll talk about that in a second. But they had to have a copy. It had to go
- up to their top people for approval before they would offer us a good public funds investment amount.
- So that would take us to the next one. Yes.
- Okay, so the next one is report of cash on hand today. And I wanted to show you this paper and introduce
- you to our banker, our personal banker that works for us. And that is Bridget. Hi, this is Bridget David.
- Every day she comes in and she checks all the banks. And she writes this little handwritten sheet of
- paper out.
- And this is my Japanese Kanban system for making sure everything's fine on every single day.
- So say hi, Bridget. Hi, this will be my third year as the financial banking manager and I hope to continue
- to do a great job. And I do work worker to death because I check every, the climate that we live in
- with scamming banks, we check everything every morning and we check every, make sure that all the checks
- are cleared and that before they clear,
- Obviously that they're cleared and before they clear we check them off with the bank to make sure that
- they are legit checks that we actually produced and it just so happens that. People from the auditor's
- office were sitting behind us, you know they they make a check we sign the check.
- They sign the check the check goes out a person presents that check for caching say that checks just
- wasn't say $100,000. So the $100,000 check comes into the bank that has an operating account that check
- does not clear until Bridget says yes, that's a legit check. And the reason why that happens. It's called
- positive pay the reason why that happens is people can
- make it make a digital copy of our check send it to the bank for presentation with the right routing
- number in the right account number and it be not be a legit check so it has to not only clear the protocol
- here when it's written by them signed by me written signed by them then signed by me then presented
- at the bank for a legit deposit and then okayed by her so there are several check gaps that we can stop
- it at any time to prevent fraud and that's what we spend the majority of
- our time and her time really doing it. It's become a, we write thousands of checks here. It's a lot
- of work, but it's very important work. And that's how other counties have lost money in the state of
- Indiana lost money. So any given day you can come down and you'll see this, it'll be sitting in a folder
- on my desk for every day of the year, for every year that I'm treasurer, you can see how much we had
- money, how much money we had on that day and where it was invested at. That way the next day something
- looks different
- When she pulls the bank, she can say, oh, my goodness, something's happened here. Then we go back and
- start investigating. Within that 24, 48-hour period, a lot of banks have that. You have to let them
- know something if something doesn't look right. And so we really worked our operating account to death.
- And I kind of feel sorry for our operating account banker, because that's a very tough job. And so then
- there's two parts of money that clears. So Kyle, would you come up and say hello, please?
- You guys probably know Kyle Sturgeon. He's worked here many, many years and started in the Auditor's
- Office. He came to us as a surveyor and worked. Kyle was 06. So a long time. So 20 years, I guess. So
- he has my full trust. He manages our ledger, which our ledger matches, has to match every day with the
- Auditor's Ledger. And that's a very,
- intricate process, a lot of research goes into that to make it work out because we don't just write
- checks. A lot of stuff's electronic transfers, all the money coming from the status electronically
- transferred into our bank, a lot of money goes out electronically transferred, and we have multiple
- bank accounts. So he runs that matrix of matching the ledger to the auditor's ledger. So I appreciate
- all the good work that he and Bridget do. It's separate.
- So we have what's called dual double-sided entry accounting. That means you run two sets of books. Otter
- runs their set of books. We run our set of books. And on our side, we have credit and debits. And on
- their side, they have debits and credits the opposite direction. So it's very complicated. But if you
- do it every day, it works perfectly. And in the past, when we've had issues, it's because, well, the
- main issues were checks were written that were not
- you know, written on top of each other, rewritten and rewritten, and then there was multiple ones. So
- we worked very hard to balance every day. He does a great job. He works very closely with the auditor's
- office. It's kind of a marriage between the two departments. Thank you. So on this investment report,
- you'll see that 32.4% of our money is in money market accounts. We do have two of those.
- We have one at German, American. We have one at First Financial. And Trust Indiana, which sort of works
- like a money market account, but it also works like a savings account. It's a hybrid special one that
- the governor's office developed a few, about 15 years ago. 32.5% of our money is in that account. We have 13.2
- %
- Oh, let me go back to Trust Indiana. Every day in Trust Indiana, Bridget pulls because their rate changes
- every single day. Like yesterday, it was 3.6540. So we have $49,431 at 3.65. We have our CD money. We
- list what it is. Of course, it's structured and it's for a period of time, but Trust Indiana
- changes every day. That can also happen with our other money market accounts. They could say, hey, today
- we're switching your rate of interest. So we got money market, we got Trust Indiana, which sort of works
- like a money market. We have municipal bonds, muni bonds, and treasury notes. We have 20 million in
- that. That's 13.2% of our total money. And then we have $33 million.
- little over $33 million in certificates of deposit. That's 21.9%. The municipal bonds and the muni bonds
- and the treasury notes have a longer period of maturity than the CDs. And of course, the liquid money
- would be the Money Market Trust Indiana, although you could really cash out a certificate of deposit
- at any time. So when we look at all of that, we have $152 million
- investments on deposit right now this is our low point of our money because we've already distributed
- recently to all the other taxing units all the money that we've collected we have cash of fifteen point
- eight million dollars on hand in our checking account and so the total interest that we earned in 2025
- was six point
- nine eight two million so I do want to thank you gene for some of that all that money we also have a
- hundred and sixty two thousand nine hundred sixty three dollars so that came in in early January which
- was for a twenty twenty five investment at IU credit union it was a seven point five million dollar
- CD that's been cashed in and so that money's already deposited it they deposited several weeks ago but it has to
- Track through the month and to get on the treasurer's report to be on the next one. So that is the investment
- report and cash on hand. I don't know if you it's just a report. I don't know if you have to accept
- that. Okay. All right. You want to move the next one. That's good. This is the presentation of the current
- approved depository lists. It is still dated July 1st 2020
- it is still behind they have not updated although they'll send you an addendum of the people that are
- extra on this list but the only person that we've invested that's not on the old list is in iu credit
- union and i did help um our account manager there scott trilling get on that list so that we could keep
- our money local he just couldn't they were just money flush and they didn't need our they didn't need
- to to reinvest our seven and a half million they couldn't give us a decent interest rate so um so that's
- what we worked on
- next so that's just a report then the next thing would be is it okay to go to the next thing okay so
- the next thing is our warrants that expired through the last year and and you'll see a list of them
- there's eight thousand four hundred and sixty two dollars and for the public a warrant is a check from
- from the government just like quietus is a deposit we have you know old terms so these checks
- total $8,462 and we've you know tried to get these people to cash these checks it has not happened and
- so they have gotten stale two years and so there is a NIC code 511 10.5-3 that says not later than March
- 1st of each year we have to prepare this list presented to you guys and the Otter's office and and you know
- put this money back into our account. So it hasn't really left because they didn't get cashed, but it's
- no longer on the ledger as being available in the funds ledger. So now it will be. And that's how that
- happens. Any questions on that? I'm glad none of you guys are on this list, so thank you. So I do see
- there's an old elected official on that list still, but I keep calling him. He just doesn't come back
- and pick it up.
- We can rewrite a check if somebody has lost a check, and we'll happily do that, but then we void that
- check, and that's a process through the auditor's office. So that is really all I have. Do you guys
- have anything for me? I have no questions. No. Thank you so very much. The extra sheet of paper I gave
- you was the
- page one of the 25-page news release from German-American Bank, and it's really nice to have a glowing
- bank in your area, you know, because we do compete with the other banks on interest rates. But the real
- prize is knowing it's very safe and very available for us to use. So, do you want to move to adjourn?
- Actually, I think we need to move to public comment very quickly.
- And so we do have some individuals here in the NatU Hill Room and some individuals online. So if you
- would like to offer public comment on anything heard today, please come to the mic or raise your hand
- on Teams. Seeing none, yes.
- your face. Thank you. Hi, I'm Lynn Coyne. Is public comment limited to things you've already talked
- about? It's limited to the Board of Finance. We haven't started our meeting yet. We're going to start
- our meeting later. Immediately afterward. Not immediately. All right. Seeing no public comment on Board
- of Finance matters, we may adjourn. Thank you so very much.