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.