Good evening, everybody. On a cold Monday evening, we are starting our meeting now. Today is Monday,
November 10th, 2025. And here in the NatU Heal Room, we have council members present, David Henry, Deckard,
Wilt and Fidal. And I do believe that we're supposed to have
Councilmember Marty Huck joining us virtually. She said she would be running a little bit late. Okay
so we'll keep an eye out. And then I know Councilmember Peter Iverson will be absent. So we will go
ahead and jump into our business of today. We are having it today
because tomorrow is Veterans Day. And so in honor of the holiday, the county buildings will be closed.
So we are just doing our business a day early. Next up, we will go ahead and get into our Pledge of
Allegiance. So all of us that are able to stand, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice
for all. All right. Thank you very much for that. Before we start going into our agenda, I did want
to take a point of privilege to say, to have a couple of remarks.
for a woman who was a trailblazer in our community who recently passed away, who is all on our hearts
for a lot of different reasons. And her name is Charlotte T. Zitlow. Charlotte T. Zitlow was a trailblazer
and a fearful leader and fearless leader all the way up until the very end of her passing. And I wouldn't
be remiss if I didn't say a few words
and just wanted to say thank you to Charlotte for all the things that she's done for this community,
for this county, for this city, and we owe it to her to continue the work in her honor. So with that
being said, I just would like for us to, if you all can join me for a few moments of silence.
All right, thank you. And may her memory and legacy live on. All right, next up we will get into tonight's
adoption of the agenda. Are there any council members that would like to make changes to tonight's agenda?
All right. Oh, do we have anybody? All right. Actually, I do. Okay. Council, the board of commissioners
have requested their item 7A ordinance
2025-39 terms and conditions for the Selva Thompson site be pulled from tonight's agenda. Second. Okay.
Are there any other amendments to tonight's agenda? All right. And seeing none and not seeing Councilmember
Huck virtually as of yet.
We can go ahead and do voice vote. So all those in favor of amending or adopting tonight's agenda as
amended, signify by saying aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay, motion carries. All right, next
up we have public comment.
And these are for items that are not on tonight's agenda. So if you are here present and then at you,
he'll room and you would like to speak on items not on tonight's agenda. Now is your time to do so.
When it is your turn, you can come up to the lectern here and then at you, he'll room. You can you'll have to.
write your name for the record, then you'll state your name for the record and the timers are all around
you and you'll have up to three minutes to speak. And then if you are virtually, same thing, except
you'll just raise your hand virtually, we will call on you, you'll unmute and you'll also have up to
three minutes. So because we already have a taker here again, you can state your name for the record
and then you'll have up to three minutes. Hi, I'm T. Randall. I'm here as a resident of the semi-square
apartments south of
the convention center, which are owned by the county. In the spring, we were informed that there would
be no more lease renewals at our complex. It seemed like the long-awaited demolition of our block had
finally arrived. However, over the summer, the county appeared to reject the notion of an imminent
demolition. Now in December, when every other renter in the city is signing leases for the next year,
We're left in the dark as contractors assess the building, inspect the utilities, and schedule annual
unit inspections. All of these point towards conditions changing in our building. I would like to ask
that the residents be given transparency about the future of our homes so that we can make informed
decisions about our housing. Thank you.
All right, next up, if we have, I don't see any takers on Teams via, or just yet, so we'll continue
to keep going in the Net Yehovah Room. Again, state your name for the record, and you'll have up to
three minutes. Hi. Hi. I'm Lynn Coyne, a long-time resident taxpayer of Monroe County, and I would like
to ask how it is reasonably possible that the commissioners could spend
thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars evaluating the North Park land transaction when the
council was not going to approve it. Now the commissioners being reasonably intelligent, responsible
people would not do that, I assume, had they known. But then the council also being reasonably intelligent,
responsible people would not have let them do that
So I'm quite confused in terms of how my county government functions. I mean, all but Ms. Hawk, you're
all Democrats. Presumably, you go to the same political functions, maybe even the same social functions,
or you see each other here in the courthouse from time to time. How did we get to a position as a taxpayer
that you are spending money on a project that was dead on arrival?
And I'm sure other folks are just as confused as to how we got to this point. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. Are there any other takers here present in the Net Hill room that would like to speak on
items not on tonight's agenda? Once going twice.
And looks like we have council member Hawk present with us virtually. Hello, council member Hawk.
All right. And because we don't have any takers here in the room and virtually via teams, we will go
ahead and proceed.
with our agenda here, and so next up is item five, which is department updates. This is a chance for
county government to talk about their updates. So if it is, and it's for items not on tonight's agenda.
So if you are a county government, a department head, or an elected official that would like to speak
on something on tonight's agenda, or not speak on something on tonight's agenda, give us an update.
Again, you can come up to the lectern here in the NatU Hill Room.
And you'll have up to 10 minutes. And if you are virtual, you will be able to raise your hand via Teams.
Hello? Sure. Oh, yeah. But we can maybe pass you. OK. Either way, we'll still need to have mics for
presentations.
You'll have up to 10 minutes. Trying to figure out how to share.
You're so kind. That's it. All right. Thank you so much for hearing us tonight. We come before you tonight
to make a request. So first, I'd like to describe our multi-year search for a new facility site from
2022 to 2025.
The search for a new facility site began because the current jail was failing and it was unable
to sustainably meet constitutional levels of care. Now phase one took place in 2022 and it consisted
of initial property reviews. The commissioners and council at that time reviewed four properties. The
Fullerton Pike site was chosen but it required rezone by the city and the city unfortunately denied
that. Phase two took place
with further property investigations in 2023. At that time, an additional four properties were reviewed,
including the city owned Hopewell property and the Thompson property. Now, the city said no, as we know,
to the use of Hopewell and Thompson was given priority, but it presented five significant usability
obstacles. And that's shown on the slide. Estimated costs are given where available on the slide as
well. These included removing a 10 acre dirt mound at the cost of five to six million.
purchasing an additional piece of property at the cost of $1 million, relocating Duke electric poles,
which would cost 2 million and encounter a 2.5 year delay. And we would need city approval to build
a road over a sink or quarry hole as well as to complete a tree study. Um, and the money for that would
be unknown. Now do the time issue alone associated with Thompson. Uh, staff was directed to investigate
North park.
And of course, this was appeared to be the last viable option and was eventually deemed the best location
by both the council and commissioners. We signed a twenty twenty four purchase agreement to purchase
the North Park property in October.
and the council approved that in ordinance 2024-54, which fixed the terms and conditions for the purchase
in November of 2024. A property on Vernal Pike subsequently became eligible in late 2024, but the only
way to obtain sewer connection was to voluntarily annex that property and involuntarily annex all continuous
property at an estimated cost of $875,000. To date, we have spent over $4 million on design work for
North Park and property reports and surveys for other locations.
appropriate for the purchase of the North Park property, and there is currently no other property being
considered or known as available. So with all of this in mind. We wanted to.
for the purchase of the appropriation has effectively returned the project to the beginning. And that
is going to incur a minimum of two additional years for completion. And again, we've spent over $4 million
to investigate properties and there are other properties as well that we looked at convention where
the convention center is currently going. There's property in Rockport road. There are a number of properties
we walked but without doing other work.
We do not have an alternate site as North Park was determined to be a best available site. The council
had previously approved, as you know, a portion of the economic development income tax and a corrections
facility income tax in order to pay for this project. And this project was moving along based on collaboration.
based on working with the council and the board of judges and the sheriff and the clerk and the prosecutor's
office and the public defender's office and all along the way, a lot of public input. Every site we
looked at, we included public input.
and that was the Broadview neighborhood, Thompson property, the Fullerton property where there's only
one resident in the area we met with. The Vernal Pike, we had two meetings. Ellisville, we had two meetings.
And of course, we listened to residents, we addressed their concerns. It's unfortunate to hear a lot
of misinformation circulating in the public, from the Chamber of Commerce, from city officials,
regarding things like transit where a plan exists, but we're not going to implement anything until the
project's done. Treatment, which requires council funding and is an uncertain endeavor in the current
political climate. In addition, the current jail facility cannot be remodeled. See the RGS and our QAW
reports on the current building. The city wants us to work with them. Well, that sounds great, but,
Where have they been for five years? They didn't support the Fullerton site. They established unrealistic
and unnecessary restrictions regarding Bernal Pike property. And I'm sorry. No to Hopewell. I'm sorry
to interrupt you, Commissioner Thomas. But on our agenda, we do have next steps listed and understand.
At least in my mind,
First of all, thank you for taking up us on our offer on showing up and talking about this. I was thinking
that your department or your update would, again, those are for items not on the agenda. And technically,
because next steps, and it sounds like next steps are on the agenda, I personally would like to pause
this and wait until we get to that particular part. Because I think that was the idea.
Um, I know you have mentioned that you had a department update. I did not know what that department
update was about. Um, but because this is technically on the agenda, I'm going to ask if we can hold
on to that until the end where we have this on the agenda. Can we strike a compromise? I would like
to talk a little bit about some things that were said at the last meeting. Um, and, and, um, I would
like to go because we,
I'm going to try to join via teams after my appointment. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make
it or not. Okay? Uh, Commissioner Madeira is going to do the same, so we're just trying to get this
information across. It looked like a council item, so we.
just assume that we could share this information, at least to get you teed up for your discussion later.
Yeah, I get it. But my email to you all were to be to extend the idea for you all to come back and have
the dialogue so that we could put that on the agenda, which is what we did here. So if you want to just
briefly maybe talk about some things that were highlighted, and then let's table that until we get to
the actual next steps, because that's the meat and potatoes that
I personally want to get into compromise achieve. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate the
the opportunity to do this because we cannot be here. So as we saw at the meeting, what was difficult
for us to work through was that we heard a number of different reasons from different council members
for their no vote. And so some folks talked about the size of the facility.
And again, as we mentioned, Vigo County just recently completed a jail and they're already under federal
order to build another because their first one is too small. We are following consultants recommendations
and the sheriff's department recommendations. The location, obviously there are a lot of places in this
community that we've looked at. But one of the issues that continues to come up, well, it's a buy,
is it a single floor jail? Does it have co located? Facilities with it with the other justice functions.
How can we protect staff and what the sheriff has told us over and over again, and what we've heard
from consultants is.
you have to do a single floor jail. And so that leaves a lot of properties out, especially if you're
colocating. And colocation is also a safety issue, as we know. You've gone ahead and you've completed
those two taxes. We had the money. We're on the runway. We're on the path. And then the legislature.
And most of you mentioned that. And I appreciate that. The legislature is in flux and just threw us
a curveball. We get it.
But one way around that is to say, hey, let's go ahead and ask our attorneys to do an extension on purchase
agreement for North Park. And let's continue our vote on appropriation until we know what the legislature
is going to do. So with that, we did come up with five questions. We're going to send you all an email with this
on it, so you'll have it. Yes, Kim, I will send it to you too. We'll send it to all the council, Kim,
staff, everyone, so you'll all have it. This is what we're asking of you, and we are asking you all
to answer these five questions, but you have to do, our only caveat is you have to work with the same
departments we've been working with, the sheriff,
board of judges, prosecutor, public defender, et cetera. We put a deadline on it because the week after
this deadline is when we have to report to Ken Falk any progress we've made or not made. So it's a very
simple request, and that's what we're doing. The ball is in your court, right? If you have every right
to say no to the purchase agreement, the appropriation,
But the ball is now in your court because we've spent years doing the work, collaborating with the community,
collaborating with all of these departments to try to get everyone's needs met. And it has not been
easy and everybody's given up something or a lot of things in the process. And so that's why we're asking
just these five questions to be addressed. They're very simple, straightforward,
and we ask that you do that. Now, again, I will try to get back on later tonight, as will Commissioner
Madeira via Teams, and we can walk through any of this. I apologize for stepping on toes. Did not mean
to do that. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to hearing from y'all. Thank you so much. Thanks.
Thank you. Before you go, because I keep hearing the phrase, the ball is in our court.
Um, and you know, again, as our sports analogy, um, I'm a girly girl, but I love sports. Um, so I'm
picking up the ball and I'm dribbling it. Uh, since you threw it to us now, you know, we're team county
counseling and we're now trying to pump fat or pump, you know, do all those sports analogy things that
they do. Um, so I guess how,
is the ball in our court and collaboration when you just told us that we have to work within the deadline
that you're giving us, and we must work collaboratively with the sheriff, board of judges, prosecutor,
public defender, clerk, probation with these things. I guess
I hear you when you say the things related to our city colleagues and some of those I definitely agree
with. I think I'm a little frustrated and tired of sometimes elected officials talking and we need to
do. We can walk and chew gum at the same time and we can walk it like we talk it, at least that's the
motto I try to live by. But that being said, I do believe
that because they also threw some stuff at us in the city, that this is an opportunity time for us to
have collaboration with them. They spoke up and they said some things. Now it's time for them to be
called to the carpet as well. So because the ball is now in our court, as you have mentioned, but then
you give us these things to work with.
How do you think that we can make a compromise much kind of like how we did with this conversation?
How can we compromise in that? I bring the city if you want to have the city there, invite them. But
there's a minimum base of who has to be there, and it has to include the sheriff and the board of judges
and others. So that's whoever else you want to invite. You can invite the chamber. You can invite.
you can buy it. You can buy it. You can buy it. You can buy IU. You can buy whoever you we don't care,
but we just have that minimum requirement of please. Because here's the thing. We feel like we've been
set back to step one. And we can go through and rehash 23 years of steps. But that's not going to change
anything. That's not going to achieve
Again, well within your purview as council members to deal with the budget and to vote no. But now we're
saying here's what we need back from you so we know what to do next. And then we then we move on to
the next steps together. But for right now, just rehashing everything like we've just done in two minutes
is not going to change your vote.
It's not going to change how you view things, but we need to know where you all stand because we heard
a lot of different reasons for the no vote. And so this is our way of saying, look, we just need the
temperature red in the room and we need that clarity. And then we'll all together figure out what to
do next. But we're kind of stuck because we've done the work
you've been there as a council, not you personally, all of you, but you've been there as a council all
throughout this process and we've moved forward. And now I going back to step one doesn't seem to make
sense because we would end up, I think in the same place, but we also feel like there is some lack.
There's a lack of consensus among council members about what you do or don't want. And that's what we're
looking for first.
your clarity on what you do or don't want. And if you want to invite whoever to your table to have that
discussion about that will bring you that clarity, great. Whatever you need, whatever you want. But
we had to set a deadline because we do have a January 15th check in that we have to make on our agreed order.
So we're not trying to be obnoxious about it, but we're letting you know that that's, yeah. And so wouldn't
the January 8th, that's your meeting. Yes. Wouldn't that be something that I would think, and I'll look
at council members as well to kind of see what their thoughts are. Wouldn't that be something where
I would think that we would have a joint meeting where all of us could sit down and have that type of
conversation? Sure. If you want to do it before the 8th, great, that's fine.
But yes, I know, Tom, is that the essence? But yeah, so we just put that as sort of like that's really
our baseline last date. Yeah, that we can. Yeah. And I think if you wanted to change the forum to totally
fine as well. Yeah, totally cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully get back on the meeting of the end
here and we talk about it. Why is that a deadline?
because of Ken Falk's settlement agreement runs January 15th, so that would allow us to come to a consensus.
Or not, I mean, I'm just trying to, there are many places that could go, right? One could be revisiting
the extension of that, given that the county has been compliant with the order for so long, and that's
due to the good work of the court system. So I hear that there's a sort of deadline, but I'm not sure we,
I'd like to get to a place where we agree on, I think, facts before we get to deadlines and timelines.
I have a lot of disagreement with what I've heard. I think there's some premises that we need to really
talk about whether we agree on the same words here. I'm not sure I even agree that there's a deadline
if anything is sitting out the ACLU and discussing
potentially the extension of the agreement because we've done a great job living within the agreement.
So if we get to first principles on that, that might be a reasonable thing to talk about that. I know
you don't want to go here right now, but I just think that alone is enough to give me pause about whether
or not that's a deadline or not. Thanks. We have to provide an annual update. And that should be done
jointly because we're not even on the same page on progress. That's right. And that's why we asked for this.
information and it's really not there are no difficult questions here but there is I think a lack of
consensus among council members and it would be nice
to have that consensus so that we can move on. With all due respect, we have had consensus on that vote.
And so I think we need to be very clear about even the concept of consensus. Of course, when a project
changes and implodes on itself, there's an opportunity to start talking about all the things that should
be brought back to the table. That's what the public gave us. So I'm not concerned at all that we're
back to a kind of creative destruction to figure out what we do here. I'm not even concerned that's
an issue. But we did have a consensus point.
I think it's been repeated enough in the media that it has to be corrected. 7-0 unanimous is consensus
period on that particular piece. But a variety of reasons were offered by different council members
for why they voted that way. And so how we respond to that, we can't respond to. We don't know what
to respond to. So in the interest of time, I'm going to look to other council members to see if they
have anything. We'll wrap up because, again,
did not think that this was going to come up for this. Again, I'm a little turned off by this. I know
you had a department update, but I didn't know that it was like this. So we'll finish here and then
I want to pick up because hopefully you two will be able to come back and have this conversation with
us. Yes. Counselor Henry or Decker. Yes. It made my mind.
It's working. You're on. There we go. All right. This and this may be something you cannot answer, but
I had heard this somewhere and I don't know where it was. There's been a lot of information out there
that Mr. Falk was planning an upcoming visit to the jail. And I would you don't have to necessarily
respond to this now, but I would like to I'd like to know how that goes. I'd like to also know what
Mr. Falk's observations are around that once that's scheduled. And I assume that's a party with the
sheriff, et cetera. I can provide an update on that. We scheduled a tour of the current facility with
Mr. Falk for November 25th at 2 p.m. And I sent an email to all council members because Mr. Falk had
indicated that if council members wanted to attend that tour, they could with him at that time.
I appreciate that. I will check to see if I can to it, because I would love to do that. I think that
that is a form of an annual report in many, many, many different respects. And I think that that is
a critical, critical piece with all of this. Thank you. Council members, Feidl or Wilts, did y'all have
anything? I don't have any more at this time.
Council, how about you? Yes. Just trying to make sure I'm muted here. We can hear you. I would like
to throw back a requirement to them because I think there seems to be a total misunderstanding of the
county commissioners and perhaps others who have seemed to have no idea about
what that's going to do to county operations overall for us to try to float this price tag because of
the changes in the state legislation. And I am certainly not suggesting we go to the state and ask them
to double up what would be allowed to do, because even that, it reduces the amount of money
that we have to support all of county government. So it's a big picture. And I know that it's difficult
when you really want something, don't only look at that thing that you want, but we at the County Council
have to think about all of county operations. And so before they meet with us again, I hope they'll
take a look at what the results of those dollars would be.
Now I know that's not their job. It's our job to understand the fiscal issues. But I just would like
to know that they at least understand what they're asking for. Appreciate that. Thank you, Councilor
Hook. All right. Thank you all for your indulgence. Thank you. Sorry we can't be here later. Thank you.
Sorry for interrupting Councilor Henry earlier either too. It's okay. Hopefully you all will come back.
Yes, we will see you later. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. All right. Interesting. All right. So next up, we will have item number six, which are the
consent agenda items. Council, I move to approve the following consent agenda items for November 10th.
the aviation department's request for a category transfer within fund 1107-0000 aviation of $62,766.82
from the supplies category.
and $92,863.39 from the services category for a total appropriation of $155,630.21 into the capital
category. The Auditor's Office requests for a category transfer within Fund 1000-0002, General Accounting
General Auditor, of $18,000
from the personnel category to the services category. And finally, the county council meeting summary
minutes for August 29th, 2025 as presented. Second. All right. All right. It wasn't working there. We
got a motion and we got a motion and a second. All right. I feel like I got a.
Hold this up, because it's really not loud. Are there any questions or comments from council related
to this item? All right. Now we'll go to public comment. If you would like to make comment on our consent
agenda items, you can come forward to the lectern here in the Net Youth Room, or you can raise your
hand via Teams.
and seeing none, we usually do consent agenda by voice vote, but because we have a council member that
is attended virtually, everything tonight will have to be a roll call vote. So may we please have a
roll call vote. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry?
Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes.
Councilor Crossley. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Thank you. Um, we tabled item number seven.
So we will, um, which is item seven starts our ongoing business. And so now we, um, we titled seven
a, excuse me. So now we'll go into seven B council. I moved to approve the amended exhibit for resolution
2025 dash 45 a committee recommendation for the Sophia Travis community services grant.
All right, we got a motion and a second. Ms. Turner-King. So I'm displaying a draft of the amended resolution
2025-45A. The only thing that this amendment is going to change is the exhibit, which is, I'm scrolling
down, and it's to change the purpose for the New Hope for Families project.
It was previously listed as making homelessness brief for children. However, during a Sophia Travis
meeting, this organization had requested to amend their project purpose, and the amended project purpose
wasn't reflected in the spreadsheet. So now they're requesting to make their project preserving food
access for low-income early learners. OK.
Thank you very much for that. Council, is there any questions? Looking over here to my immediate right.
Seeing none. Looking to my left. Seeing none and looking online at Councilor Hawk. Any more questions?
All right. Everybody shaking heads. All right.
that's cool. All right, so next up, we'll go to public comment. If there is public comment on this item,
you can come forward to lectern here in the Nattie Hill room or raise your hand via Teams. You'll have
up to three minutes. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Feidl? Yeah. Councilor
Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
Councilor Decker? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right, thank you. Next up is item C. Council, I
move to open for discussion in approval of an amendment to resolution 2025-42 hiring freeze for full
part-time positions. Second.
meeting there was a discussion of the hiring freeze and developing a process potentially developing
a form for departments to fill out and a way for that form to be evaluated to evaluate request for positions
to be filled as an exemption to the hiring freeze. So after the council meeting PAC was able to meet
and I don't know if Councilor Wilts or Councilor Feidl would like to give an update as to what happened
at the PAC meeting or if you'd like to
me to continue talking. I can. Happy to. Thank you. Yes. So there were a lot of people at the PAC meeting
and it was an interesting discussion. We did not come to. We didn't vote to.
for anything over to council for approval. So we don't have an official amendment to the resolution
to present to you all. But what we did talk about is the various ways in which the hiring freeze is
untenable for a lot of folks. And everyone seemed to have a situation that
was special. And I think Councilor Hawk actually kind of alluded to the fact that this was going to
happen if we do a hiring freeze and we have a process where they're going to come to us, they're all
going to come to us. So we did talk about the need to fully exempt the items on Councilor Feidl's list
that she just showed me.
So grant-funded positions would need to be exempted. Public safety positions, so the jail positions,
specifically the corrections officers and the mayor deputies, of course. And I think we talked about
that last time. And then the 24-7 operations,
positions that are required to kind of be on duty 24-7. So that kind of reflects the youth services.
And what was the last one? Oh, if the position is mandated statutorily, that would be obviously an exemption
as well. If the work that that position is doing is mandated,
Statutorily, that's a little bit different situation. So given all of those exemptions, in addition
to that, one thing we talked about is instead of making this a flat-out bam freeze, given that we do
not have at this point a specific fiscal goal besides, hey, we need to save money,
And we don't have any way of getting to that specific fiscal goal in terms of a number right now. We
just do not have that information. And therefore, we don't have a way of saying how long we need to
have a hiring freeze. We don't have a way of saying to what point. Is there a dollar amount? So all
of this is leaving the members of
county government who come to work every day feeling pretty uneasy and I don't blame them. In order
to maybe alleviate some of that one of the suggestions that was made during the meeting was to make
the hiring freeze more of a 90 day pause on hiring so that when a position comes open in the processes
started to fill that position there's a required
90-day pause before that position can proceed to advertising. Is that right? Did we say before it could
even proceed to advertising? But they could be getting their ducks in a row. And within that 30 days,
we would have time to get a fiscal impact.
So we get an idea of what the fiscal impact of that position being open for 90 days is. We'd also ask
for information on a form. So we had a draft form that employee services had started for us for this
process. And I think we looked at a draft maybe last time or talked about it at least in our last meeting.
That might not be the exact form. We still don't know. That's kind of the next discussion, but we would
be able to get some information in that 90 day period. The freeze after the 90 days, if council doesn't
act, then they get to go ahead and proceed with the hiring. We will monetize that savings
for the 90 days. Obviously, that's not nearly the same kind of impact as freezing until we don't know.
But at the same time, it allows our staff in county government to proceed with some vision of what's
going to happen in the future.
a little bit of faith in kind of their next steps. I think there are other things that we need to be
considering as we put this into place, but right now we have many positions in line waiting to hear,
and each one has varying levels of compelling arguments for why they should have that position. This
allows us to kind of compromise on
savings for 90 days, we could, I mean right now we've already passed, we've already passed a resolution
saying that there can be no transfers into or out of the overtime lines. We could say stop moving anything
in the tens if we want to make sure, I mean that's a level of maybe micro scrutiny that
we might not be comfortable with, but if you wanted to ensure that that savings was realized and not
utilized for something else, you could do that. That's all that I had. Did I capture everything, Councilor
Feidl? Yes, I think so, but I think I'd also like to throw in maybe thinking about
requiring that the liaison or liaisons for the departments that are on this 90 day chill or whatever
we're going to call it, or it doesn't have to be 90 days. I think it could be 30 or 60 or 90, whatever
the council would think would be suitable, that the liaisons would be required, I think, to meet with
the departments to
make sure they understand what the issues are so they can report back to the council in full to understand
it better and hopefully open up more dialogue that way as well. Okay. First, I saw Marty's hand up.
So I'll go to her and then I'll kick it back to us here and then at you, Hilary. Right. And I'll try
to say this quickly. I know that during the budget process,
we were concerned about the grant positions that would no longer be covered under the grants that was
being moved over to general. And not all of those were paying for the insurance, which really sent our
insurance costs higher. So I think we have to be very cautious when we're looking at grants to say,
are they gonna be moving positions back into the grant out of general?
from where they've been moved or just some thoughts because we see that if you have them in grants and
then there's a thought they can always, the general can pick up everything else, we found this year
that was very problematic. Councilor, I think I saw Decker's hand first and then I'll go to Councilor Henry.
Thank you. Thanks for all this, and I appreciate two big things right off the bat. I want to say,
number one, I appreciate any department heads
wrangling through this. One of the things that does keep me up at night is anything that happens up
here that causes consternation on what I call the counter positions, meaning the positions who are literally
doing public service across the counter. I don't want anything here more than is absolutely necessary
to create issues for it because I think in years past we've had issues around that. That said, I also
appreciate the wrangling that
was doing trying to figure out a reasonable approach on this, and it sounds like other than a delay
and some concerns, there's some kind of goose eggs on figuring it out. One thing that I would be curious
on, and this does not have to be answered today, when do we have amounts that tell us what you're working
with? When do you know that? You know, I pay property taxes.
And I pay them honestly and diligently. Let me say that for the record. I pay those property taxes on
two different properties. And I marched in here last Thursday to pay my property taxes with the notion
of I've got to do that because I've got to make sure I've done my part so these things get done. And
I know that we get funding from all different sources. And the state is very particular about how you
get a budget.
what you do and what you don't do. And if you don't do it by the right deadline, you don't get to do
anything. Or you do it wrong by this, you don't get to correct it. They can do otherwise, but we cannot.
And I guess the question I would throw out is, when do you have a reasonable idea? And here's why I
say that. I am very worried that we're, just like the end of that last budget, where we started into
that path of keep cutting, keep cutting,
keep cutting, keep cutting, and then we end up doing this anti-government horse, you know what, that
we hear out on the street when there's actual service that needs to be done. And so I get nervous about
just keep cutting, keep cutting, keep holding, keep cutting, keep cutting, keep holding, keep cutting,
and I think that
That looks good on paper, theoretically, but when services get cut, it becomes an issue. Our federal
government just nearly put us all through a case study of hell on that, where when people don't get
things, things start happening, and it's not real pleasant when people don't get things. So I would
like us to have honest, accurate numbers as close as possible. I know that magically can't happen tonight,
but I really, like there's no need to put people through
wrangling and pressure and or cut services and stress if it's not the case or if it is. Because what
we will do is we'll keep just eating each other and there's not going to be anything left here to do
it. We'll have department heads quitting, we'll have staff not getting hired, services not rendered,
people being crappy at count. We go down all these chains and I'm really worried about that.
Councilor Henry. Thank you. Thanks for all the comments there. I appreciate the 90 day concept, especially
because we do need the data to understand what we're saving in that position for a quarter and what
that savings does due to the general fund. I think that's important. I agree with Councilor Hawke and
that for the grant funded positions that do incur county cost, we need to understand that because it's
not, it can't just be a blanket approval of a grant position if we are incurring the healthcare costs
and wraparounds. Like that's just math.
A lot of this still is cold, but it is the math that keeps me up with all this. I would like to see
if we could possibly use that 90-day period as well to really reflect on
what happens when we won't have the resource? I just keep thinking about the presentation by FSG at
a long-term government finance meeting over the summer that shows by fiscal 28 and 29 negative numbers
in our account lines, right? Because at some point, while all the services are being rendered fiscal
year to fiscal year, there's this other timeline out there of winnowing revenue in the county, and that
revenue has to come from somewhere, and that it could be increasing in taxes in our community, which
no one wants to mention.
It's getting, I think, people ready for a three to five-year mindset rather than dealing with the fire
in their office, which is somebody quit today and we got to get that position filled. I do hope department
heads can use that 90-day period to reflect on, well, what does three years out look like? Because we
may be at a point three years out with diminishing revenue that that position might not be being filled,
which means those FT hours are going to have to spill over onto other people's laps. The message from
India is clear. It's do more with less.
So we might be buying time with this for a year, but boy, I think two years from now, with fiscal 29,
the revenue's gonna look very different, and we gotta start getting in that head space. I know that
probably hurts people here in the county, but look, we balanced the budget on the back of the edit,
which of course has triggered the commissioners to be here to ask for all sorts of things related to
the jail. We're not gonna be able to tap that too many more times. It won't even be available to us
as a tax feature, as an option three years from now. So it's just the math of it.
That's it. That's what I have right now. It's just the math. Yeah. I guess I got a clarifying question
related to the pause. And I think Councilman Wilts had said something. Within the 90 day pause on hiring
or hiring the position, you said something about
If the council to get a fiscal impact during this time frame, if the council doesn't act, then we will
go ahead with the hiring. Can you clarify that for me, please? I'm not sure if I can clarify it, but
I can respond. My understanding is that what we would be doing is implementing this default of
you submit the email request to the council office, hey, I have a position open, I'd like to hire. That
starts a 90 day, you can't do it for 90 days. And during that 90 days, here are a couple things we need
from you, namely just some questions answered. During that time, I think that we would have the opportunity to
say, hey, just like we've had the opportunity all along to say, hey, when they submit that, we have
48 hours right now. This gives us three months to really think that through and, OK, do we need to have
them come to council? How much more information do we need? Let's talk this over so we can invite them
to come to council if that's necessary. Find out what we need to find out.
And if we don't take an action preventing them from hiring, then after 90 days, they would be able to
hire. OK. That's the part that I needed to clarify. Sorry. It took so long. No, no, no. Yeah, I appreciate
that. I guess, yeah, and listening to what Counselor Henry was saying, I guess this is food for thought because
As I'm thinking about this and I think about all the grilling hours that we went into trying to kind
of reduce a lot of things, if we do this, then what was the original intention of us originally doing
the higher phrase from the beginning? Because I think that is in my mind. I know right now, I just am concerned
because I know we might not have a necessarily dollar amount. This is X amount of dollars of the amount
that we want to save by not going forward with hiring with these positions. But I think that I'm not
necessarily working on a specific dollar amount. And I'm just kind of looking at overall general picture,
because this budget season has definitely taught us buckle up, buttercup. The sequel is happening next
year, whether we like it or not.
I want to be able to, yeah, I'm not certain about this. Because it's almost like, if that's the case,
then do we even do a higher-end phrase to begin with? And my idea is, I understand people might not
like it. And I get it. I understand. But we are under different times right now.
Um, and much like what we've been saying before is to continue to come back, you know, obviously adding
the exemptions of the grant fund and public safety, which we did a couple of weeks ago, um, the 24 hour
seven operations. I know we've had the clerk staff, um, or, you know, come in and speak to them about
me too, me too. Um, so maybe that's also something to think about. And of course the mandated statutory
positions, but,
I just wonder if the work that we did to get us to the higher and freeze resolution with this is in
vain by this concept. So I don't think it's in vain. I do think that it might have been premature. And
this came from E. Sensenstein in the meeting.
He said, well, best practice in HR. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, wait, maybe we should find out
what that is. And it was, and correct me if I get this, oh, she's got like everything written down.
She's not color coded. I need colors though, right.
Before you, the hiring freeze is kind of the third thing you would consider. And first you would do,
changes to the amount of hours worked is in there somewhere. But what's the first thing? Yeah, that
kind of thing. Changing either from like 40 to 37 or reducing overtime. The things that we were, you know,
talking about, but haven't done. And slowing down, I think, is kind of the first step in that process.
Sorry, I don't remember everything that we did, because I obviously slept since then and lost some of
it up the back of my head. But the hiring freeze is sort of the most drastic, and I think that
Eve's point was there are a few other things that can be put in place and even long-term put in place.
Okay, so Eve, you want to go ahead and unmute? Can you help us out with this conversation?
I'm going to apologize because I am driving, so I don't know what I'm so sorry that will look like.
No, it's fine. So we had that conversation and there are a lot of options that you can consider. I think
what makes us different than some best practices is that we are government and that we are county government,
which there's a lot of layers to that, right? You have different offices and their statutory responsibilities
and elected officials and all those things.
um yeah there there are a lot of options and it really just depends on how you want to carry this out.
I think what you've all said tonight um about gap between what identified as your needs um for fiscal
responsibility and the department's needs to
carry out their job functions, right? And I think what is not happening there is consensus about what
the goals are. And I think that you haven't figured out what is the goal? What are you trying to achieve
to what degree? Like, is that a complete hiring freeze? Is that a pause? Where does that get you financially?
And the departments are not buying into that because they don't necessarily understand. And I think
that's what you need to
That's where you need to get to a point where they understand and they can buy into maybe sitting there
for 90 days, six months with a position open because that meets this goal that they are contributing
towards. Does that make sense? And figuring out what that option is in the large scheme of all the options
you could possibly consider.
Thank you. Anybody else have anything. Yes. Councilor I think one thing also we talked about in the
meeting with PAC was figuring out what the council priorities are. Right. So is there any sort
of prioritization. I don't know via department via the service via whatever the criteria would be in
what it is we'd like to see funded. Right. So that I think
could be something that we could come up with to aid in figuring some of these issues out. I think it's
like core work. What's the core work that really needs to get done here? I know all departments,
I'm sure, and all employees
should and want to feel valued and all that, but the reality is you have to look at the money situation.
I'm usually on the other side of this with the employees, so I get it. But now I'm on this side with
the money, and so you have to look at the money. And if you don't know the money situation, what are
your priorities? And you figure that out and then base your decisions on what you're going to do on
the priorities. At least that's what I think we talked about.
was the priorities. Yes, that is actually, that's a really good point. We did talk about that and the
need to think about our priorities, then use those to set goals. And that made me think about when we
talked first about setting up the long-term finance committee, that was actually what we were talking
about, is having a subset of council
able to meet regularly to think beyond the annual budgeting process and think about where is it we're
headed? What is it that we know for our future and can plan against and plan for? It might be worth
taking a look at that. I think PAC could play a role maybe in more short-term type approaches while
there's longer-term approaches being discussed in long-term finance.
So it sounds like there's more discussion that needs to happen. So I guess the goal, so it sounds like
what we need to figure out is what is the priorities that we have and trying to make this as clear as
possible to department heads as we kind of navigate through this, because I understand
that it's a little challenging and difficult. And I know since we kind of talked about it during our
budget season in September, it's been, I feel like every time we've had a meeting, it's been on the
agenda to talk about, which means maybe we're not making it clear to people. But I'm also, as we are
having the conversation personally,
I'm still liking what we are doing right now. Just because I feel like, again, like I said before, I
think it's like, what is the point of having the high air and freeze if we are not? It feels like all
the work and things that we've put into it has just, it's kind of been a lot in them.
Sometimes we just don't have to stick to things. And people might not like it. But that's just what
it is. But always, apparently, the magic word of the day is compromise and collaboration. So I'm of
hope and intentions that we can learn something from those C words that we use a lot in county government. So yes.
Councilor Decker. One thing is, I think one of the reasons we struggle with this is because I don't
think it's the intention of anyone that life in a department gets worse or that anything, it's an effort
to try to keep things from changing by changing them in the most subtle way possible. And to me, when
I was supporting this notion
and I can recall this very much during the budget. I saw this as a way for departments and council to
be really thoughtful when an opening comes to say, is there any way that that opening makes you think
about the way you're doing that position or that services while someone's not currently in it that might
get you to rethink that versus the alternative? And the alternative is this.
We either in the last budget would have went in and said, cut this position, cut this position, cut
this position, or cut these services in lieu of that position. And nobody really wants that. They also
don't want it in a year. And I think that this is a, and I really mean that. I mean, I get up here and
I well about the state. President Crosley wells about the state. But that in a quarter, they don't really
care until voters tell them otherwise.
and voters are being real quiet on this one. It goes one way or the other. To me, it would be a thoughtful
interchange where a department would say, you know what, and I've never, by the way, I'll say this,
I've never heard a department ever say,
I don't need that position or there's not a good reason. In fact, every spending item, there's a compelling
reason why it has to happen. And I've gone into somewhere I'm like, they will never be able to talk
us into this. And by the end, I'm like, my gosh, that was better than Netflix. I agree. That was the
most compelling argument. And a lot of times, the overwhelming majority, it's just because we just didn't
understand it or what have you. But this is an ability for it to me.
department to say, rather than do this later with this council, or rather than have done it last time,
this is a way to think through, is there any way in these tougher times? Again, telling associations,
telling other folks what tough times look like when these things get done. I'm sure that's not the answer
anybody really is looking for here, but this is just a mess because it's a darn mess.
her hand up. Just to round out this discussion and maybe for the public, we have been looking at fiscal
impacts. We have what we receive from the state as far as the
impact to property tax but those are estimates of course and for local income tax we won't have the
state estimate for that until you know we apply you know the we opt in to to the new taxes and it will
be mid 2027 so because you know they come through in 2028 so and there is still talk about changing
some of that legislation as well so it really is kind of the perfect storm because we don't
have that magic number yet. It's just unknown. So it's very unfortunate, but we do have an impact we
provided. However, it is, again, an estimate based on the information we know now. So I can resend that
so it's circulated again amongst the council, if that's helpful. That would be appreciated. Thank you.
Yes, Councillor Fryder. So I think one thing that I for sure heard loud and clear in the meeting, the
PAC meeting from those departments who did attend
was the fact that we have this preliminary form. I think the form, for whatever reason, they were feeling
was quite onerous. If we do ask them to come back, are you asking them to come to the council itself
or go through PAC or Human Resources and
and our council staff with a form or what would be the council's personal, not personal, but preferred
is the word I'm looking for, preferred preference there? That's actually on the next item, the form
discussion. Yeah, because I'm curious about that too. Because that was a big discussion was the form
and how long that was going to take. That was a big part of the discussion.
Okay, so is there any other council member questions or comments related to a higher end freeze right
now? I recognize that we don't have consensus on what it should look like. I do think we need to
We need to come up with something quickly that clarifies the, and maybe that's the next agenda item.
I mean, maybe I'm confusing them, but our departments really need to know what our thinking is on this.
And I guess ahead of our next meeting, which is next Tuesday is next Tuesday.
And that's when we have several of these positions coming before us for really kind of a decision. Right.
And it would be it would be good for us to come up with guidance for our own sake. And maybe that's
the I don't know. I just I'm feeling a little like we haven't finished and we need to kind of finish.
Yeah. I hear you. I'm gonna go to Council Hawk. Maybe she has some insight.
on this council? You're not gonna like my insight. We already know how much we were spending into the
deficit and had to make up for it out of those dollars that we were thinking we were going to move forward
with the jail. Well, now the commissioners and the public are saying, well, what are you doing? Well,
you know, we didn't want to cut the budget. We really didn't. And so rather than cutting it,
And for the most part, it got moved over into another fund, which was supposed to be for the jail. So
why would anyone question the need to reduce spending? We are already spending more than we're bringing
in, unless we plan to just forget about the jail altogether and just keep spending that economic development,
which will
actually be a part of the 1.2 by mid 2027. That's what we'll be looking at. The other thing is we really
do not know what our property tax revenue stream is going to be because of all the new credits and so
forth and deductions that is put in place and how much of that
change is going to affect what a revenue is actually going to be, it may be better than what we thought
because we were looking at the numbers that the state sent us was like, remember, there's the credit
for all the homesteads of $300 or 10%
the tax bill, whichever is less. So we don't really know for sure what's going to be 300 per homestead
or 10% of the part that's left. So for us to say, well, we need to have a definite price tag set on
these things, we do not know. And we should just absolutely give ourselves some grace because
We don't know the future. Now we can make some projections. But what we do know is we're always spending
more than what we're bringing in. Unless we go to the edit money. Yeah, that's a good point, Councilor
Hull. That was some good insight. I appreciate that.
I think I saw some movement over here. OK. Everyone's like, no, not me. All right. So I guess, because
technically, we were opening the discussion for an amendment. And the amendment that we heard from Ms.
Turner-King were to add some
more exemptions to the resolution. Sorry, my mic is being really sensitive right now. It's all good.
I think I started this off by switching C and D inadvertently. But I think we can do them together.
So let me try to share my screen.
This is the draft resolution that I think encompasses. I'm trying to make it bigger. So let me make
sure. The first, it says amended up at the top. The first thing it does is add residential specialist
positions and residential coordinator positions at YSB to the exemption list, which would cover the 24
our facilities. I will say that YSB would like a broader exemption or for consideration of a broader
exemption that just says anything residential coordinator and specialist position and also required
positions by the Indiana administrative code which would include administrative and supervisory personnel.
I don't know if that encompasses all of YSB positions.
but they would like the addition of that language. So if you're amenable to such, I could put that in
or you could leave it as is or as proposed thoughts. You had mentioned earlier other mandated statutorily
positions. Wouldn't that cover that? Currently, there's not language in there that says or statutory
positions. I can add that as a for.
One thing that we did talk about in PAC was the idea that although there are exemptions for these, and
I think the context was more of the public safety merit deputies, the jail staff, there are administrative
positions that wouldn't be covered.
I'm hesitant to say, yeah, include your administrators. I get that people need to have supervisors to
get their jobs done, but an automatic exemption maybe is a step too far on that. I don't know. And it
looks like Vanessa Schmidt from YSB has her hand up. Maybe she can add to that conversation there.
I would just add in that for our positions, these are positions that are required to receive licensure
to operate our emergency shelter, and so it does not cover all of the positions by any means at the
Youth Services Bureau, but there are a few positions that you are required to have as licensed positions
to operate the emergency shelter. That makes perfect sense. OK. But again, I guess for Ms Turner King,
Could that? Could this suffice if we added the language of mandated mandated statutorily positions,
would that be? Could that be OK with that? I guess that would be a clarifying question. Are you adding
specifically mandated statutory positions for YSB or any mandated statutory position within
county government? I guess initially,
I thought you had mentioned that it was. Initially I proposed positions exempt as required by Indiana
code or Indiana administrative code. The code. It's Indiana administrative code 211 48 which
is administrative and supervisory personnel. That is what that code section is entitled.
If I add that language, it would cover those specific positions as referenced by Ms. Schmidt. Other
departments where there are statutory positions, is that what you're saying? That was my clarifying
question. Do you want to add the language specifically allowing the positions covered by the IAC code
for YSB, or are you requesting to add language that
exempts any statutory position within county government, so not specific to YSB. I would say any of
them in county government. As long as we are clear on how to define that, I think we are. I mean, I
think you just look in the code and see, but am I opening up something I don't understand? Because I
don't know what I
I guess I will answer that question with what you just said. I don't know what I don't know. I don't
know how many, I know there might be statutory duties clarified in the code and how those duties are
delivered or what positions deliver them, I don't know is defined by code. So is it clarifying to say
positions mandated in administrative code?
Or statutorily code. Yeah. Any code. Yes. And leave it at that. Not duties, but positions. So the code
refers to the positions. Is that right? Without knowing what all of these codes are, I don't know that
I can say it refers to the duties or the positions. This specific
IAC code refers to administrative and supervisory positions. If you think about the health department,
they have core functions, and that's their statutory duties. And how those duties are delivered in the
health department might be all in one position or in multiple positions. So I don't think there is a
clear answer whether it's duties or positions. Could you say statutory requirements?
because it sounds like there is more research that needs to be done before we get into that. Is that
something that right now we could do with trying to, what we heard from Mr. Schmidt related to YSB,
could we fix that? And obviously we are not fixing all of the resolution problems in one night tonight,
Is that something that we could look at for later? Yes, I think you could look at it later. We could
add the YSB specific language tonight. But I could comb all of administrative code and Indiana code
and still miss some statutory requirement, because I don't run the health department, so I don't know
everything that they're doing. I think it might be simpler, and I would maybe suggest, and I know we've
talked about it a little bit,
At the last meeting we were looking at a form and trying to define a process to evaluate positions.
Maybe the process is amended to departments submit a request and then that request is just added onto
the council agenda and one of the things council considers in the full conversation is, is this position
fulfilling statutory duty or a statutory position?
Because if anybody can tell you that, I'm sure the department's asking for the position can. I was just
thinking that somehow it seems like that they could self-select out if they know that they meet that
statutory requirement, right? If the department knows that it is statutorily required, would they not
be able to say,
statutory requirement, yes, and then that's it, right? I was a department head. When I made the request
to fulfill the position, I would probably note this is a request to fill said position, which is fulfilling
a statutory duty and put it right there in the request when they submitted it to council office. And
then that would be? They know the code.
and then that would be sort of the end of that, I would think, right? They wouldn't go any further anywhere,
is that right? Would that be the end of it or would it have to still come to council? I think that's
a council question, whether you wanted that to be the end and you just relied on the department head
providing the code or if it goes to full council and that's part of the consideration. If we were to
do the 90-day pause, then that gives
for us to really find out if we're talking about statutory duties being performed versus a statutory
position or a position required by a professional certification, you know, that's needed to then carry
out the duties. I mean, there's some nuances there that, yes, I agree the department heads will know, I think,
blind faith in differentiate and having them differentiate between what is a statutory duty being performed
by a position versus a statutorily mandated position might be, might be something we want to ask. Like,
you know, have a little bit of eyeballs on. Yeah. Okay. Yes, Ms. Turnkey.
So going back, I just added language to number three, which is the added exemption for YSB only, because
there are 24-7 facilities similar to the way the jail and the sheriff's office runs. And so it's residential
specialist positions, residential coordinator positions, and or positions required by 465 IAC 211-48
within the Monroe County Youth Shelter Bureau. That would be statutory positions
specific to YSB but not everyone else. Is that language amendable to council? I say yes. So I'm just
I think the easiest way to do this is to go line by line for potential amendments. And so if that language
is amendable I would
inquire whether there is a motion to amend accordingly. Just the sentence, not the whole resolution.
Council, I move to amend the resolution 2025-42 to reflect the changes in red on the screen. Second.
All right. We got a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion with council on this? No, but I see.
Ms. Schmidt has her hand up, so if she wants to unmute and speak. Yes. I'm sorry. I just would hate
for you have to come back. If it matters, you might want to change Monroe County Youth Services Bureau
instead of Youth Shelter Bureau. Ah, perfect. Thank you. Otherwise, thank you. We appreciate that.
Thank you. Friendly amendment to my motion. Consent. Hello, hello.
Could I ask? Councilor Hawke, you have your hand up. You went away, I don't see you. I'm trying. Can
you hear me now? I didn't hear what she said, changing the name of it to? Youth Services as opposed
to Youth Shelter. And why would we do that? I thought we were doing the same thing.
because it's 24-7 operations for the shelter. And by the way, the name of the shelter, remind everybody,
is the Morris Binkley Home. It's not just the new shelters named after Morris Binkley. And so I thought
we were tying that to the same thing because 24-7 as a jail, which is 24-7. Are you saying then it would be
all other positions. I'm not sure I understand, but regardless, I think we need to make sure that the
shelter operations are covered. I can read that administrative code section if it helps. It says, the
child caring institute shall employ staff to perform administrative supervisory service and direct care
functions.
Functions may be combined only upon the approval of the department. And then it sets out requirements
for the administrator and supervisory positions. And then. That sounds good. OK, so that should suffice.
And that covers the shelter and that covers what Council Hawks concerns are. OK, I believe so.
Okay. Okay. All right. So scrolling down, I've highlighted this yellow section because this is our current
process. The elected official or department head submits a request if it gets sent to council. If no
council member responds within 48 hours, the request is deemed denied. And then if a council member
responds, it goes on to the council agenda. We haven't identified
I don't think, a way to evaluate these requests. And until we do, we have multiple requests lingering.
So should we amend the procedure temporarily and so we can figure out or iron out the details of how
you want to evaluate the request to simply be
Once a request is received, it will be added to the next council agenda for further discussion by the
full council. No elected official and or department head shall move forward with the hiring and or transfer
of the requested position until after the full council has the opportunity to consider and improve the
hiring of the position at a public meeting. And so this would make it every request is just coming to
you for a discussion. And yes, Councillor Wilts, and then I'll go back to Councillor Hawke.
first of all yes I think that seems like a stopgap for right now but don't we need to vote on the one
amendment yes yes that's what I wanted to make sure that's what I was gonna say excuse me Oh counselor yes I
I didn't hear, she said we need to vote on which part? We needed to vote on Councilor Wilts' amendment
to what Ms. Turner-King had put in the green for item number three. Do you see that? Oh, right. Yep.
So that's what we're- Let's do that. Exactly. So Councilor Wilts' motion was to
you know, have that amended. So we need to vote on that. So because Councilor Huck is virtual, can we
get a roll call vote on this, please? Yes, this is on the amendment. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor
Feidl? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Huck? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes.
A motion passes five to zero. Thank you. And then kind of going back into what we were looking at before.
Okay. Is it time for me to make my comment now on? Yes, go ahead. I just wanted to comment that I don't
know about anybody else, but it seems to me that we are getting so much email, so much that
something very important could be coming through and it'll be missed somehow. So I think there has to
be some other way of making sure. I think one of the things we need to do is sort of pull out some of
the other miscellaneous things we're getting and have just an email that's just for council operation
business. But until we get to that spot,
I would not want it to be that comes back just as email to us. And then if we miss it, I mean, has anybody
else had that concern that maybe you'll miss something that because you didn't respond, they didn't
get to hire the person? Yeah. We're all kind of shaking our heads or nodding, I should say,
in here as well. Because I don't like, because of all the,
the barrage of emails that we get throughout the day. Some of us might have the intention of wanting
to respond to it and it gets buried in something and we miss it and we unintentionally miss something
and it could cause some consequences for department head. I believe. Uh, Miss Turner King just suggested about
having everything come to council right rather than needing a review would address that concern and
we still have the opportunity to make another amendment in the future if that's too much and too cumbersome
but at least correct at least we get everybody heard at some point so what it would be doing is effectively
It renumbered it and I don't really wanna play with the word formatting right now, but it would strike
what is now four and five and put three, previously three and four and just put in place three, which
is what I read a minute ago. Council, I move that we amend the resolution in question to reflect the
wording that Ms. Turner King has on the screen. Second. Okay, we got a motion and a second.
Is there any further discussion? All right, seeing none. Do I need to take public comment for this?
All right, so I always forget about this. If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward
to the lectern here in the Nattie Hill room, or you can raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none,
maybe please have a roll call vote.
Who seconded? I did. Thank you. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Yes. Councillor Feidl?
Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
So I don't know if you want to think about considering this, but so now if every position is coming
to full council, is there information that council office or employee services can provide in advance
of the council meeting that council would want to see, such as a fiscal impact or something like that,
so that we can put it in there so when the requests come in, Kim doesn't call me and say, what should I do?
The answer is yes. That's why we have the next thing on the agenda. I'm unclear if we're addressing
all of this together, which is fine. I think that we did talk a little bit about that during PAC, and
most of the information on that form is of interest. However, we heard from Department
representatives who felt like it was very cumbersome and especially given the short timeframe we were
requesting. This is a little bit longer timeframe, presumably, but maybe not. I mean, it depends on
when the... Well, and that's the thing. So if somebody submits a request, is this to be put on the next
available agenda? I mean, they may send in a request on Friday with
with mean, which means, does that mean it goes on for a Tuesday meeting? So I need some timeline there
and then with regards to fiscal impact, what are you looking for? Are you wanting like a fiscal impact
if it's paused or what is the position costing us right now? I need more direction on what kind of a
fiscal impact are you wanting?
Councilor Hawke has her hand up. Yes, I think many of us have seen even yet just this year where they
wanted to hire, you know, a replacement, but they wanted to hire them at a different price tag. It was
going to, you know, go by the numbers. And maybe they wanted to hire them at, you know, maybe it was
going to be a higher
number of years or something of the sort. And when you look at the difference, sometimes it was many
thousands of dollars. So I think the fiscal impact should be just like if you were looking at it coming
out of your own pocket, if you were paying $50,000 for something to begin with, and somebody says, can
you keep doing it? Well, yeah, but now it's going to be $58,000 making up those numbers. We need to
know what that's going to be.
So are you saying Councilor Hawk that you would like to see a fiscal impact in this? Right,
if we're talking, yeah, if you're talking about a position and you could see what the person that's
leaving, because we'd be talking about if you didn't have vacant spot, we could see what's getting paid
right now and at what level they were and what they want
if they have somebody in mind they're going to place it with. If it's not going to be that dollar amount.
In other words, are we saving a little money? Are we spending a little more? And that's what I'd like
to see. Okay, I understand. Yeah, Councilor Wilson or Fido and also
maybe highlight whether or not we're not paying anybody in between those two people, right? Is there
some cost savings there? So the total fiscal impact, right? Yeah. But then I also hear, and so to come
back to staff to figure out how we can help you with this, because the idea is we need to have a deadline
for people to get this information in because
One a couple of things one we understand that people want to make sure that they are You know trying
to scoot in to get things on the agenda at the same time It is also like their deadlines for a reason
and so you know staff can only do what the department
can do or you know which is to get your information in on time. So I do think that whatever deadline
that we have. I guess I would like to ask Michelle like what comfort level are you because we should not be.
If we don't have a deadline, people could literally email at 352 on a Tuesday afternoon and say, we
want to be added to this agenda, and therefore then we can miss things as well. And then some people
get upset because they weren't added to the agenda, and now they think they might be cited, and we're
not caring, and all of those things there.
We need to have a deadline to be put into place because everybody knows that we meet on the second and
fourth Tuesday of every month, and there's a certain time frame for that to get those things in.
Of course, we know that things happen and it comes up, but at the same time, what comfort level would
you be in?
and the auditor's office too, because that's a, I mean, both of our office, both council and auditor's
office work in tandem to put together the agenda. Yeah, I think the deadline is like the Monday, is
a Monday prior to the Tuesday, you know, it's at least a week, a week and a day. I would say,
you know, at the latest it would be that Wednesday because we're still, you know, making adjustments
to the agenda, but I wouldn't do anything past a Wednesday. I would say that it would then automatically
just go if it's past Wednesday at noon, it just automatically goes to the next meeting. Because that
would allow enough time for them to get the required information that we need to be included in that
packet. So if they can't get it by the
by the packet date and the packets go out, if there's not a holiday, they will go out around one,
you know, on Fridays is I think the goal, you know, before the end of the day on Friday. So if we can't
get that information, then, you know, I think it just has to automatically be forwarded to the next
meeting. To interpret what you're saying into something that we could make a rule on,
it would be noon, three days before the next meeting day. Working days. Three business working, whatever.
Non-holiday. Yeah, working days. And if received after the deadline, it automatically goes to the next
agenda. Again, this was ownership for department heads because
I work in other entities where sometimes deadlines aren't, they're there and people act like they don't
see them. And I think this is like, there's a give and take. There's that collaboration word that we're
gonna use again because therefore you want this, so help us help you by putting, you know, getting us
this information. And we wanna make sure that we are doing that because if we're asking for fiscal impact,
There's a lot of work that goes into that. So it's a team effort. OK. That's not really part of the
resolution, right? This is just for her knowledge to understand. Now we got your policy procedure situation.
She's putting it into the blue now. This is a multi-color resolution.
I think I've incorporated your comments. So requests for the next council agenda may be submitted up
until noon, three business days prior to the publication of the council packet. If received after this
deadline, a request will be considered at the following council meeting. I don't like the following
council meeting though. Sorry, that was an out loud thought. Next available council meeting. The next
scheduled. Yeah, next scheduled. Regularly scheduled.
because there could be a budget, there could be. And then I also added language related to the fiscal
impact conversation. So in preparation for the council meeting, the elected official and your department
head shall provide with a request of fiscal impact that reflects a difference in current position cost
and the cost of the position at minimum salary level and or the cost of salary at the level of a transfer
into the position. This information will be verified by council office for discussion at the council's meeting.
So that puts it on the department to be like, all right, I have this person leaving at an eight year
level. I'm going to hire it at a minimum. This is the cost savings. And then Michelle would verify the
accuracy of those numbers. So she's not doing all the work, which might make this a little bit faster.
information have to come with that request? There's a deadline, the same deadline applies to that? I
think it could be clarified. Well, I think the idea
or at least my idea in drafting this on the fly was that the fiscal impact information would be included
with the request in the packet so that all council members would have it. So presumably it would be
submitted at the same time as the request. Yeah, that's what I thought. I just wasn't sure that was,
I mean, yeah. Well, you could say requests and all needed, you know, subsequent information. Substantiating
documentation. There we go. Yes.
because you want the whole package. You don't want it coming in piecemeal. Then something gets lost.
I just amended it to the elected official and her department head shall submit simultaneously with a
request of fiscal impact. Yeah. All right. Is there any other questions or comments related to this?
I think just for clarity, because we do have some departments with multiple positions that are the same.
to state they need to state the title as well as the fund and account lines because sometimes they may
have just for instance we've got jail who has who have positions in different funds but so I think we
need to have you know what fund and what the position title as well as the account line that that is
specific to that position okay
So it says request should specify the fund position title and account line specific to the position
being requested. Okay. Are there any other questions or comments from council related to this? I just
want to make sure that it couldn't be
misconstrued that what we mean is that by the next regularly scheduled council meeting doesn't really
mean the next one from that moment. It means the one after. If they missed that deadline. I know what
we mean. Is that what that says?
where she's typing. Okay. Well, it says if received after the deadline. I just changed it though. If
received after this deadline, the request will be considered at the council meeting immediately following
the next regular scheduled meeting. So it skips a meeting, right? That's kind of what I was saying.
Yes. Thank you. Council, I move that we amend the resolution to reflect the changes in blue on our screen.
all right we got a motion and a second are there any other additional questions or comments from council
related to this motion all right seeing none if there is public comment on this item you can come forward
to the lectern here in the night you hill room or you can raise your hand via teams hey i had a question
sorry what do you mean by publication or
get moved. There was something in there that said something about before the publication. Do you mean
just like before you send it out to the council members? Yeah. Distribution of the final council packet.
Okay, I mean, that's fine, because when you say publication, it almost makes you think you've got to
send it off to, you know, whatever. Get it bound. Good catch. I'll do the amendment to the motion. Second.
My mic is really messed up tonight. For clarity, it says, prior request for the next council agenda
may be submitted up until noon three business days prior to the distribution of the council packet occurring
on the Friday before the council meeting.
Mm-hmm. Yep, that's a lot, but yes. It is, but it's very specific. Yep. We are just trying to make it
all clear. And we accepted and you seconded, so we're all good with that. Yep. And I see Ms. Schmidt
has her hand raised again. Just as public comment, just to clarify,
if we are requesting to fill the position at the same time as submitting that fiscal impact, if we don't
know who's going to apply as far as if they have previous years with the county, would you like us to
just leave that blank? Because we don't know who will be applying at that point. No, my suggestion is
to always put minimum in there because if,
you know, if you're not going to make a transfer in with someone else or something like that, you know
that at least there's going to be a minimum. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. That's what the council wishes.
No, that is, that's good. So do we have any other public commenters?
Is that going to appear in the language or we're just clarifying without appearing in the language?
I incorporate it into the language. So now it says, in preparation of the council meeting, the elected
official and or department head shall submit simultaneously with the request a fiscal impact that reflects
the difference in current position cost and the cost of the position at a minimum salary level and or
the cost of a salary at the level of a transfer into the position if known at the time.
and seeing no other public comment, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor
Crossley? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Okay.
The only other suggestion I have at this time for this resolution is to eliminate the chart, which takes
up a lot of room and it just has become cumbersome because the positions reflected in the chart had
a higher date of November 1st, which has since lapsed. So I amended the language to say department heads.
This would allow for the elect official and or department head to continue hiring the following positions.
This exemption grants the department until the date explicitly noted within the chart, and it eliminates
them all except the correctional center who was granted until December 31st to hire the facilities manager.
All right. In a motion. Yes, I also move. All right. And I'll second that motion. All right. So any
other further discussion on that item? It's pretty self explanatory.
Okay. So seeing no other further discussion from council, if we have public comment, you can come forward
to the lectern here in the night, you know, room or raise your hand via teams. So this is on the amendment
because we're amending that again, right? Right. The list. Yep. Okay. This is to remove this. Okay.
Thank you. You're welcome.
and seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor Wilz? Yes.
Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
Thank you. I think that's all of my suggested amendments. Councillor Wilz?
to consider slash discuss adding to the exemptions positions in our justice system that are in addition
to the corrections officers and the merit deputies and by that I specifically am referring to certain
attorneys that
Right now, we are pretty, I think, aware that they have differentiated caseloads and their caseloads
are gigantic. We just hand it off. I think in both our public defender's office and the prosecutor's
office, I think those deserve a little bit of extra consideration. I'm just throwing that out there to see.
if there's other interest in adding that to the exemptions list so that we're not unable to, for instance,
prosecute juvenile crime because we have nobody in that position. Which, by the way, that's the position
that's open.
I see Councilor Hawke has her hand flying up. So Councilor Hawke. Right. Would that all of these other
plans for how they would come to ask for that position, take care of that situation? I think if you,
if you, if we make this so broad that we're really not going to have this hiring pause or if it looks
like we're being playing favorites in any way,
because each department is going to believe that their position is the most important. And as they should,
that's what the department head is supposed to do. So I wouldn't be in favor of adding any further right
now into an exemption. Okay. Any other council members that have any feedback for Councilor Wilts related to that?
Yes, Councilor Decker. I'm open minded to it. I think this is going to be a continued discussion. One
of the reasons I had some concern about us doing this to begin with was just the administration of it
is the hardest part. And we went through it last time and it was awful. And I don't mean that like,
oh, wine, wine, we've got to work.
It's why and when you gotta figure things out. I'm not quite there on this one yet, although I see the
points and I think that we may have to come back to that for sure. Yeah. I think I tend to agree with
that because again, then you have other departments, and I'm not saying that they are not by any means.
I don't want anybody to take into what I'm saying that I'm not caring about these particular things
that Councilor Wilts brought up. I just think that when we do that, we start now opening the floodgates
for everybody saying that we're exempt, we're exempt, we're exempt. And we just gotta be very careful
or mindful of that because then we do get into what Councilor Hawke was saying, the plan favorites.
We also might already be there considering if you are certain department heads that feel like you should
be on that exempt list and you're not, so that we already might be there and focus on us, yes. I totally
appreciate that. What about perhaps thinking of it as we've got the hiring freeze and we've got certain
exemptions
but then maybe there's some that are not exempt but have that slow 90 day pause where we take that extra
time. I don't know, just another. That's the thing. So what I hear you say is if we don't have them
exempt, are you saying then we use that 90 day time frame to gather the evidence to. It's sort of like
implementing that partial
that hiccup that still gets at saving money, which is what we're talking about, but recognizes that
there are certain positions that when going completely unfilled are going to disrupt operations in county
government. And that's sort of where I would see some of these attorney positions.
Um, certainly not every administrative position in the prosecutor or public. But, you know, and I don't
know, maybe it's not every attorney position, but that's not where you draw the line. Yeah. I just think
we need to think about some of these and before next week comes in, we're trying to make decisions.
I want to at least get some of it out of my head. That's a good point. I think I saw hands waved to Ms.
I guess. What I hear Counselor Wolf's describing is perhaps implementing a tier approach so that tier
one would be a blanket exemption. So if you're listed, you don't have to ask us for permission. You're
allowed to move forward with the hiring process. Tier two would be like a pause effect. So for example,
the prosecutor or the public defender attorney positions, which are very restricted by the amount of
caseloads they can cover,
would not immediately hire, but would wait 90 days before filling the vacancy. And having gone through
both the public defender and the prosecutor's hiring process, I don't think you can get through it that
fast. So what I hear is maybe that's something that we need to think about. And we can maybe ponder.
and bring it up yet again at another regularly scheduled county council meeting. But it's the cliffhanger.
I think these are all things into consideration. So yeah, I would be willing to give it a thought.
All right, now we need to come back to the overall resolution to adopt it as amended, right? Correct.
Would it be helpful for me to draft a tiered approach resolution and send it to council for consideration
so you can see it on paper before the next meeting? Or not? Sure. I mean, I don't want to give you more
work, but if that's something like all things into consideration, if we're all thinking into it, I think
we're not ready to make decisions right now. No, but it would be a draft. It would be a big old draft. Got it.
Okay. So now we come back to... But we need a motion for that. I move to adopt the amended resolution
2025-42. Second. All right. We got a motion and a second to adopt this resolution as much amended. Is
there any other final comment related to this?
I appreciate Pac and the discussions that come from that and all of our council members here who have
brought some things to the table. And again, it's not perfect, but it's something that we're still working
on as we continue to go through this process and stand firm in trying to not spend more than what we
are bringing in as Councilor Hawk mentioned.
All right, now we go to public comment. So if there's public comment on this item, you can come forward
to the lectern here in the Net-U Hill room, please entertain us, or you can raise your hand via Teams.
And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Hogg? Yes. Councilor
Crossley? Yes. Councilor Deckard?
Yes. Councilor Feidl. Yeah. Motion passes unanimous. Okay. Thank you. All right. Next up is item D,
which is the hiring freeze request form. Council, I move to open for discussion the development of a
standardized hiring freeze request form to assist council and departments through this process. Second.
All right. We got a motion and a second and I'm going to look to the two PAC members here to
talk about this form or miss Turner King. You just want to open it up and then we don't. I can, but
I don't know if you were want to have this conversation yet, because we kind of just amended it to not
require a form to kind of give you the opportunity to think about a form. Okay. Madam Chair, I withdraw
the previous motion. All right, so there is
no motion on that and we will move forward thank you for that um next up is item eight which is new
business and that comes with the aviation department council i moved to approve the aviation department's
request and fund eight nine five seven zero zero zero zero aip project number 45 for the creation new
account line 3006 let me read that back lines
three zero zero zero six contractual, and three zero zero eight one contractual county match, and three
zero zero eight two contractual state match, and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation
of $157,895 in the services category. Second. Second.
Our mics are taking a little bit of time to get used to us today. So we got a motion in a second and
I see Mr. Laverty is online. So if you'd like to unmute and go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great.
Sorry. I'm also traveling the lake effect snow through off my plans. Oh, wow. Be safe. Thank you.
The Monroe County Board of Aviation Commissioners has recently been awarded an FAA grant to design and
plan a refurbishment of the air traffic control tower at the Monroe County Airport. The tower, which
is 53 years old, has critical equipment and infrastructure that supports an airport with over 28% growth
in operations since the initial construction.
A recent assessment found that the air traffic control tower equipment and HVA systems have exceeded
their life cycles and are in need of a replacement. This project covers assessment, design and project
bidding. And the project, the total project cost is $157,895 with the FAA contributing $150,000,
state $3,947 and local match $3,948.
Thank you for that. Is there any questions or comments from council for Mr. Lavery? Yes, Councilor Decker.
Thank you, Carlos, for being here and for presenting this. I'm very interested in this and very supportive
of it. I am gonna ask you a real honest question. And if you need to get back with me later, that's
absolutely fine. But I see FAA on this and they've been in the headlines a lot.
Do we have a solid belief these dollars will get here and we will be able to do this project and not
be into what Councilor Hawk talks about a lot with grant funded positions where we're holding the ball
and there's not a partner there. How good are you feeling about this? A very good question. I actually
feel very good about these. This award has been,
This grant has been awarded. We have signed for it. The dollars are in the system. Conversely, however,
there was another grant that we had a verbal from the FAA to expect paperwork for approximately a week
later. And that day never came. And they did give us a phone call and let us know that that project
was no longer funded by the federal government.
but when it comes to airport improvement projects related to the bipartisan infrastructure law, those
projects are all good to go. Thank you. Good news. Okay. Any other questions or comments on this item
from council?
So now we'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward
to the lectern here in the NatU Hill room or raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please
have a roll call vote? Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor
Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Thank you. Next up is item B.
Council, I move to approve the Youth Service Bureau's request for a category transfer in fund 11140166
lit special purpose, YSB of $4,500 from the capital category to the personnel category. Second.
All right. And still with us this evening via Teams is Ms. Schmidt. Hello, welcome.
Thank you. Good evening, Council. This is a category transfer request for us to be able to move that
4,500 into our part-time line. Those part-time staff directly support the Binkley House emergency shelter,
and they are covering for staff on leave, vacation, benefit time, things like that, cross-training,
as well as when we have an increased number of youth, sometimes our ratio has to change and we need
a third staff. Okay.
Thank you for that. Any questions or comments from council? I would say look to my right, but nobody's
over here. So looking to my screen, because I normally would say look to my right and don't see any
hands raised. All right. So we'll go to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you
can come forward to the lectern here in the net. You can raise your hand via Teams.
and seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes.
Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right,
next up item C.
Council, I moved to approve the Youth Service Bureau's request for an additional appropriation in fund
41110000 donation BTCC of $1,500 in the services category. Second. All right. And also, um, look into
omission to add anything to this item.
Yes, thank you. Yes, we would like to recognize the donations that we received for the MC3 sponsorship.
So we received $500, or I'm sorry, we received $350 from the Firefly Children and Family Alliance, $150
from Hopscotch Coffee, and $500 from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, again, going to support our
10th annual summit coming up just in a couple of days. So we hope to see some of you there. And then
we received $500 from a training
our BTCC subcommittee did with the Bloomington Township Trustee to deliver a deescalation training to
them. Awesome. Yes. All right. It's what we've been waiting for all year. We've been talking a lot about
it. So are there any questions or comments on this item from council? Look into my screen and then look
into my left.
All right, then seeing none, if there is public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern
here, and then at you, Hilbram, or raise your hand via Teams, you'll have up to three minutes. And seeing
none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts?
Yes. Councilor Hogg? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right, thank you. Thank you.
Next up, we don't have any presentations or discussions. We will move on to county council business.
And looks like we have item A for the recorders updated or from the recorder's office black council.
I moved to receive the recorder's amended sworn affidavit regarding the twenty twenty six records perpetual
perpetuation budget. Second. All right. Michelle, what would you like to add to this?
During budget sessions and shortly afterwards, the recorder submitted her sworn affidavit for
her perpetuation fund. We just recently discovered it had a Scrivener's error. It had the wrong year.
So she has updated that, initialed it, and we do have a copy of that in the office. Okay. Thank you.
Pretty self-explanatory. But is there any questions or comments from council on this item? Yes.
Yes, when I was in discussion with the recorder, and at that point she was thinking she was going to
have to ask for an additional appropriation. So unless something's happened, maybe she's still going
to and just not at this meeting. But what she was really addressing was, what is that noise? What she
was really addressing
was something that many of us have been talking about, which is travel and training issues. And so whatever's
going on, it's echoing. So I think that we need to take a really hard look at the travel and training,
how much it's increased different departments. I know we've had a lot of paperwork to look at,
But that was pretty clear that we had some departments that were spending thousands of dollars more
than they had in the past. And so we might want to take another look at that. For instance, with this
elected officials training, just a few short years ago, the county council was not even included. And
so those of us on the legislative group
Went to the state and said we need to include the county council because it's important that we get
the additional training Whatever it is that we need and so we got that but without some pushback at
the state and so I think we need to be cautious because I'm understanding that from the recorder that
we were putting some of the staff members on that elected official budget now, maybe that maybe that
really was in the
an appropriated fund and not in that elected official fund, but that's what I understood her to say.
So I think we have to be real careful because we don't want them to remove the ability for the county
council elected officials to use that. And we have to remember also that there are, there's a lot of
additional training that's available online. There was just a really good one just last week put out by DLGF.
that went into talking about the different changes in the property tax and what each of the things could
mean. And so I hope everybody's looked at that and maybe that's what we have to be having the staff
do is those things that's available with DLGF or with the online training with AIC instead of the very
expensive overnight positions, overnight stays that's been happening.
And we need to set the example for the other county departments because I think, unless the sky is going
to open up and drop a bunch of money in our lap, we just, we really have to start looking under every
rock for every penny. Just my thoughts. Thank you, Councilor Haug. Okay. Is there,
Any other questions or comments from council related to this item? All right. And seeing none, if there's
public comment, you can come forward to the lectern here, the night you hill room, or you can raise
your hand via teams. It's also good to say all of these words without hearing my voice crack. Um, so
yay for my voice coming back. All right.
Um, but seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Great. Thank you for that.
Next up is item B with the 2026 council schedules. Council, I moved open for discussion the proposed
2026 council meeting schedule. All right, Michelle, what would you like to add to this? Hold on, just
hold on just a second. OK. So in the packet,
there are three options to look at with regards to calendar. And so the first option, which is option
number one, would be the typical council calendar. It shows the holidays. It shows pack meetings. There
would need to be maybe
a deviation with regards to the PAC meeting in May because we have an election on the 5th. And then
without any deviations with regards to November or December, this is what the first option looks like.
So then there was a, somebody had mentioned maybe taking a summer break
So with that, I used the same calendar with no deviations with regards to November or December, where
with the summer break, we would have a meeting in June, on June the 9th, and then council would not
come back and meet again until July. This would accommodate for this past year, we had several
council members out with regards to the summer break and traveling and this kind of thing. So there
was just an option to maybe have a summer break. And then the final would be a, this would be a summer
break with holiday meeting deviation. And so what I'm looking at here,
would be if you start with in May, there is, what is it? It's Memorial Day is on the 25th, maybe possibly
canceling the meeting after that, because people are still traveling with that. We would still have
the break in June, as well as the July meetings. And then,
With regards to budget sessions, the schedule that I have for budget sessions, which is in all three
of them, are the same, except for this one where in October, where we're gonna be meeting a lot of meetings,
we would just not have that last meeting in October. Then in November, we would have a meeting on the 10th
And then tentatively, I can't say that, have a meeting scheduled for the 17th, as well as in December,
we would meet on the 8th with a tentative meeting date on the 15th. And that's if you want to. And the
reason is it seems like we're getting ready to right now, we're just having back-to-back meetings in
November and December.
If things aren't pressing, you could just do just once a month kind of thing. So these are just for
you to look at. We also put in there, there's been a discussion with regards to Sophia Travis and moving
those deadlines up so that we're not trying to do Sophia Travis as well as budgets during that same
timeline of August, September, October.
this has not gone to the Sophia Travis committee yet but these are the dates that we're going to present
to them and those are highlighted in that teal blue. So that does move all of that up during the month
of June and July when this would happen with Sophia Travis. That is when the departments are filling
would be filling in their budget requests so that's a little bit of a
I don't want to say downtime for the office because we are helping the departments, but it's not as
time crunched with regards to getting the budget sessions and stuff together. So this is just, you know,
whatever you guys want. I just kind of put three options out there. I would like to maybe have a possible
recommendation from you guys. Next week, we've got departments trying to plan
for their next year. And so if we can get these out to the departments, that way they can go ahead and
get some departments that we also use the NatU Hill Room, we need to get those out to the other departments.
These are just recommendations. If you have any other dates you want to see or a different scenario,
just let me know.
And I saw Councilor Fiddle had her hand up, so I'll go to Ms. Turner-King first, then I'll go to Councilor
Fiddle and then Ms. or Councilor Hawke has her hand up too. And I just would add as a caveat in all
of the options, the identified PAC meetings would be subject to how Council handles the PACPAS. Yes.
Okay. Councilor Fiddle. So I was interested to know in each of the proposals you have here, how
the total number of meetings compared to this year and previous years? Are we doing the same number
of meetings? Okay, so I didn't add them up, so thank you. Yeah, I just basically used what we've done
this year and I built upon it. The only thing that I did add was this year we had six budget sessions.
Within those six budget sessions,
because of everyone's time schedule and the way the departments felt and it just seemed like everything
was very lengthy this year. I believe it's gonna be lengthy again next year. I added a seventh day to
the schedule which would be September the 17th and I've used the budget sessions all across. The 17th
would be strictly held for council discussion only. There will not be any department scheduled
to have their budgets reviewed during that. They'll have to do that, those green dates that I've got
there in September. Councilor Hawk. Yes, and I don't know whether it's at this time I should mention
it, but I think we need to make it very clear that when there's going to be a discussion on whether
or not we're going to do a bond,
that that has come in much earlier, much earlier than what we did it this year. Because that dollar
amount that was put on there for the bond, we had to vote on it before we'd even voted on the bond,
or whether we even would have a bond. And remember, if we can get, and I'm not even saying for next
year, but for whenever,
We're not going to get that 1782, that approval or disapproval of our budget until the state sees that
a bond has been sold. Well, if we don't get it started until then to even discuss it and vote on it
then later and later, we're going to be maybe at the very end of this year or the beginning of next
year before we'll even know if the state is approving our budgets.
So I'm just saying we need to start, we need to, oh, did I hear that word requirement being used of
us? For us that commissioners won't require something of us. And I think we need to require the people
who are going to ask for a bond to begin much earlier, much earlier. So whether that needs to be on
this document with a deadline for that or not, but that has,
has to happen because we're gonna be standing here. We still don't know whether or not, you know, where
we are on those budgets. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I saw some hands flying up. So
Michelle and then Ms. Turner came. So I failed to mention that option one is our regular schedule that
we've done in the past. Option two and three does eliminate a few days throughout the year. So
Um, I wanted to make sure that you understood that. So option one is, is reasonably close to what we've
done in the past. Thank you. And Mr. King, I don't know. This is the best time to make the remarks,
but counselor hawks comment
made me remember that at the last council meeting there was a discussion on establishing a timeline
and procedure for future bonds and that discussion was tabled to this meeting but has it been inadvertently
left off the agenda so we can address that at the end of the agenda as to whether you want to table
it to the next meeting or what you'd like how you would like to proceed with that yeah because we definitely
need to have a conversation of that and honestly we're missing people so i think
I mean, that is a very good point because having it late in the game when we're already through budget
season is it was challenging and frustrating to say the late or to say the least. And I think if we
have those conversations ahead, I would think maybe June that would get our minds and our bearings right
as we are gearing up towards
budget but again since we're not all here and we have two missing council members that are present it
might be a good idea for us to have that conversation on the 18th. Yes I see the auditor has her hand
up. Sure just a note we are actually just waiting on that bond closing so we can get that information
to the DLGF they have everything worked out except for that so that is the
kind of what holds us up this time of year. But if I remember correctly, when speaking with Mr. Cockrell,
I believe there are specific reasons for doing it late in the year, but I don't want to speak for him.
So he'll have to explain that. Sure. And I think we also speaking of bonds and things to to kind of
gear us up for thinking about budget. I thought it was discussed and maybe a couple of meetings ago
where we could possibly have
like an update throughout the year so that we know and understand what is happening so that when we
do have that bond conversation ahead of budget, we have already in our brain like what has been done
so we can think about that. I think Councilor Decker has his hand up so I'm gonna go to Councilor Decker
and then I'll go back to Councilor Hoff. So my question was Michelle, you're wanting us to take a look
at the calendars
consider it hard and fast to come back and be ready to move on this next time? Yes, I would appreciate
that. One thing I'll just say, there's always something wrong in a calendar the minute you get it. I
thought the calendar for this year was pretty good, and then we start rolling it out. There's always
something. But one thing is, given everything, everything we do is going to be more time intensive and
more hard. I don't know how else to say it.
and probably less rather than probably more rather than less and so I think it's adventurous to try
new things with the calendar but the reality is then when you're not in here people are going to need
you in here and it just is what it is. Councilor Hawke. I think maybe I should
I was going to ask a question, but it's not really relative to the schedule. I mean, I just want somebody
to put together what our tax rate is going to be, the realistic one, and not include the bond. And then
we can put in that later. But if people are saying, what's going to happen with my taxes for next year,
we don't even know what those rates are going to be.
This is just real frustrating. I understand. I think I'm inclined maybe to like the second or the third
one. I think agreed as some of us that have been on Sophia Travis plus this year budget purgatory sessions
that we've had. It was a lot.
And I think for council staff, auditor staff, and Ms. Turner-King as well, that was a lot to pack in
in eight weeks.
So I think we need to give ourselves a break. Ideally, what I would have liked to have done was after
we passed our budget this past year to cancel the October 28th meeting, but then that turned into a
session where we needed it and turned into our marathon meeting. So that was fun. But also, to say the least,
And with that being said, and thinking of what Councilor Deckard said, we've added meetings this past
year. I think of the pre-meeting that we had on the 8th of October, right before we had our final budget
discussions and approval. So there's probably likelihood of us maybe adding it. But also the other key
part is to give ourselves a break
June and July and most importantly, I'm not I'm thinking a council like the council County Council But
I'm also thinking about staff and department heads who don't feel obligated to make sure that they come
here I think there's a work-life balance that I'd like to Hopefully think that we have and county government
At least try to work towards that. So I would really like to see how we could kind of
have that as an option. Our colleagues in the city love themselves some breaks too. So they have that.
And I think that actually helps. You come back and you're refreshed and you're ready to go. So again,
nothing is final. This is a presentation and we'll hear it again next Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, November.
Also, I wanted to let you know that David, Councilor Henry is online again. Oh, so I know he was saying.
He wasn't sure. Okay. Hello. Alrighty. So we have Councilor Henry and Councilor Hawk via Teams,
the duo. Okay. All right. So next up, so we'll think about all of this and then we'll bring it back
to the table here next Tuesday. All right. Next up is what we were trying to get into earlier this evening, but
what's really on our agenda. So let's go to item C. Council, I moved to open a discussion regarding
outlining the next steps for the Justice Center. OK, OK. And I see that we have Commissioner Madeira
that's in the room. So if you want to go ahead and come up to the table here and I see we have Commissioner
Thomas joining us.
as well so we can have the discussion, because I think what I'd like to do is to have those questions
that were highlighted to us at the beginning to kind of look at as well. And I'm sure that we all kind
of wanted to make comment at our marathon meeting, but we were so overworked and tired that we all went
home here after that. I guess,
You know, I'll open it up, and then we'll kind of have the conversation. And we talked about this. I
was able to be a part of the noon edition on last Friday with Commissioner Thomas and former council
member Eric Spomore, who is now the greater chamber, or now with the Greater Bloomington Chamber of
Commerce. And so it was a rather robust conversation. So if folks want to go back and listen to it, you can.
I guess the only thing that I would like to add to all of this is I appreciate the commissioners coming
back and taking me up on my offer. Even, you know, not getting a response back from, you know,
until here. We're here now. And as I mentioned, I completely understand that we we are folks can be
disappointed.
that that's that's the thing but to stay in disappointment as a disservice to what we have to do here
and we we now need to put differences and disappointments aside and go now we got to come back to the
drawn board because at the end of the day we still have folks that are in the justice building that
are there we got to come up with the plan we have all things that we now have to consider so I want us to
to do that. The other thing that I really want to highlight is I feel like my colleagues, all seven
of us, we all have many different beliefs, but I think it was pretty clear and unanimous last two weeks
ago, our reasons for the vote that we took. But again, we don't have to go back into the past. We're
now trying to move into the present and the future here.
So I pledge to my colleagues on the Commissioner's side
If we truly really want to have collaboration and we really want to have, we can share the court, we
can dribble, shoot, you know, throw passes like Mendoza and Cooper did on Saturday. And boy,
was that a team. And I can only imagine what that would look like if we had that same mindset mentality
in county government. So I would really hope that, um,
we really say and what we mean when we talk about collaboration, because I will tell you, at times during
this entire justice conversation, I do not feel like council has been respected. I do not feel like
our voices have been heard. I do not feel like the collaboration effort has been a part of this process.
So there's, you know, just as you all feel disappointment, there has been disappointment on our end, but yet
continue to persist and we still keep trying to move forward. So I just wanted to say that.
The other thing that I want to highlight, because I'm not certain if we have any folks from the city
watching via Teams or watching this on cats right now or watch it back later, but what I would like
to say, because it's been all in news media and different things like that, what I would like to say
is this is the time for any city council colleague, any nine of you,
who are watching or paying attention or will watch later or will hear from this meeting. This is your
time now where you've told us that your reasons why you don't want to have, or why you didn't wanna
have North Park. But there really wasn't honestly any solutions or suggestions that came with that.
So I'm gonna ask my city council colleagues
help us out in this particular timeframe. I know there were emails that were going back and forth of
how they think they could contribute, but I think we can take it a little bit further and figure that
out. And I appreciate those colleagues that gave that response, but to some of you who have not, I'm
still waiting. So let's get it started. Let's keep moving forward because we got work to do and the
clock is ticking and overtime is in full swing.
So, with that being said, I've said what I needed to say.
kick it back to my council colleagues, and then I really wanna talk about really next steps. What are
the next steps that we can do together? I don't wanna hear one side of this or that. I wanna talk about
what we can do together in this conversation. So I see Councilor Henry and Hawk have their hands up,
and Councilor Henry had his hand up first. So I'll go to Councilor Henry, Hawk, and then I'll kick it
back to here in the NatU Hill room.
Thank you, Madam President. Can you hear me in the room okay? Yes. All right, it's a little delayed
at my end, so I'll just try to be brief. Thank you for getting me back in. I am between classes right
now. So I wanna agree with you that we maybe need to set aside the maybe autopsy as to how we got to
this point, but to accept that we're at this point. I think that one thing, rather than maybe working
through a question set,
which is a reasonable idea, is to maybe take an approach where council passes a resolution about what
its risk tolerance is for funding a future jail and or justice center. I also think that the budget
is now driving this project. And I think as I was saying earlier,
I think we need to get to a point where we all have a same understanding of the conditions. It's clear
that we don't. Yeah, and I can appreciate why that might be. I mean, if you took a vote and felt you
had your marching orders to move forward and you didn't want to acknowledge, you know, the changes in
tax code, the consequences of an election, all that stuff.
And then you lifted your head up and realized that, you know, that things were changing. I could see
us getting there, but the budget now drives the project. And the truth is, you know, this body has decided
that we don't have that risk tolerance for a budget that we are going to try to figure out how to fund
the rest of county government for 20 years on. That's really important. So I think something about,
you know, a setting of what we think we can manage and then having the budget drive the project is really
where we need to start.
So I don't really accept the idea that we will go down a path and ask these questions and talk to the
stakeholders internally and end up exactly where we are because that is, to borrow a term from the city
council, deterministic, right? It's setting the, expecting that we're going to arrive at the same outcome.
And I just don't think that's the case. So what I think we need to do is figure out how the budget works,
what we can afford.
And then we need to have serious conversations about what is nice to have relative to what other communities
do in Indiana. Co-location is not something every county in Indiana does.
law enforcement has worked out ways to do transport of inmates from a facility to another facility in
multiple counties in Indiana. And while it may be a state of the art practice or something that would
be nice to have if we had unlimited resource, we don't. And also to say that we can't manage the risk
management of that without that, I think it's just not accurate. It's the end of the day. So I think
another thing this ordinance or this resolution should do is we need to get to common terms about
what we all agree is actually happening or not happening. It has been suggested in the media that this
is unconstitutional as is. I don't think that's the case. I think we've kept the jail constitutional
within the agreement of the ACLU. I don't think we're agreeing on the terms. So if we can agree on common
terms, common grounds, common understanding, common risk tolerance and budget, that will frame what this next
step looks like. But let's be honest, co-location is what doubled the cost of the project. We know this
and needs to be addressed and needs to be explained to staff that maybe this is a thing we're going
to have to move away from if people want to be in new facilities. I'll just leave it there as a starting
block and understanding how they're going to talk. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Councilor Hawke. You're
muted, Councilor Hawke.
Okay, I just have a question and perhaps no one wants to discuss it. At this point, some of these things,
people are just sort of working behind the scenes. But from what I gathered, we have several people
in the community that are coming forth with what if situation. And so I would like to suggest that when
people make a suggestion of,
a location or a different way of operating or whatever, that we keep that list and we don't just keep
it within a few people, but that we share it with all of the council members. I don't like it at all
when I hear, oh, we'll just send this to the leadership group. I mean, I think we all feel like we're
leaders, you know? But there's gonna be a lot of different suggestions coming forward. And I think that
people are,
really engaged in toward making sure that we don't take forever to make a decision. And that's what
it's going to take if you start going back into these committee meetings with every different department,
we're going to be right back where we were because as you know, Jennifer, you sat on those meetings
as well, so did Kate, went on and on and on. At every meeting we had, a different department was coming
up with their wish list. And before they got through this wish list,
sunk the whole project. So I think we have to look, I agree with Councilmember Henry, we need to look
at what it is we're required to do. And of course this agreement with the ATLU doesn't require us to
build a new jail at all.
I don't know why everybody keeps saying it does. Do they think we don't know how to read or what? But
it doesn't say we have to build a new jail. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be thinking about
what we can do to make that jail better in the meantime, because no matter what we find, we're not gonna
be moving there tomorrow. And because of changes at the state level,
If some of these suggestions go through and makes it law at the state level, we're going to be required
to have more. I mean, the result will be that we'll need more beds, not less. So those are things that
I hope we'll look at. The other thing I wanted to share was that we had a member of the community come
forward and say, how was it all this money got spent when we were not on board? I want to remind you that
the purchase price of the property at North Park was something like 11, 350 or 11, 750, something like
that. And we had a bond for that, bond anticipation note, and that had already been approved. And that's
where all those dollars were getting spent down, and we didn't even see the appropriations going through
because we'd given them a blanket check. So,
And then when they came back and asked for $3 million and something, that was because they'd already
spent $3 million and something out of the purchase price of the property. So that, I just wanted to
share that as well. So, okay, enough of me. Sorry. Thank you. And to clarify, Councilor Huck, you said
keep a list of locations. You're talking about locations that people are suggesting to the county.
Oh, you're muted again. So you can't hear my dog bark. Just four answers. If there's people who are
making suggestions and moving forward, and I understand some of this really should not be out there
in the public if we don't, you know, we're talking about people's private property. And so we have to
be respectful of that. But at least we need to make sure that the public knows that we're not just sitting
around doing nothing.
because I think there's a lot of people who are doing a lot of work behind the scenes that is not like,
we're not going to throw people under the bus if they have a property they're thinking in mind because
that can affect the personal property values. So, okay, that's where I was. Okay, thank you. All right,
look down to my left here to see if anybody here had any,
other additions for things that we heard and are impromptu department update and the discussion that
we're having right now. Yes, Councillor Decker. I will jump in and just say we did have city officials
or a city official on behalf of the council come in and and offer some comments and committed the city
council at least.
to telling us some of their preferences. And I made a comment at the end of that, that I'd like for
that to be a public thing on properties and or conditions. If that is on a city position, I'd like that
to be a public thing because one of the biggest issues we face in this community is NIMBYism. And I'm
gonna say that and I'm gonna own that. And when you have a jail, you have NIMBY on steroids.
And there's always a reason not to have something near you. Right. And sometimes we have very plain
spoken people that are like I don't want that near me because blank and then other people come up with
very sophisticated arguments. And this community is notorious for those sophisticated arguments. And
we do that about housing and the way you build your porch let alone a jail. So for city officials who
represent districts and have constituencies of
I don't know, Dave Askins will know, but like 6,000 or some odd here or there, depending on what's going
on, I would be curious what areas they envision, because we heard a lot of arguments about downtown
Bloomington, keeping downtown Bloomington rich and all that. So I would just say, if everybody's putting
their stuff on the table, where are you talking about? And be specific, and more importantly, we cannot
say transparency just at election time, say that publicly.
The other thing I would say is, I don't know. I keep coming back to the question, I don't know. And
I've had a few silent people, people that don't get up at the public mic and were for us moving forward
last week. I've had a few silent people reach out to me and get a little bit upset because they say
the following, I'm gonna try to sum it up. Everybody knows you guys have to do something and you've
been talking about this for years and they get mad.
But when it gets to the particulars, that seems to be where everybody falls off. The one particular
that seems to be just choking me, I'm going to be very honest about this, is I don't know what we are
legally permitted to do with bonding, with building, with that tax that we enacted last year. We worked
on that gangbusters.
And I get a little frustrated because I was in that chair to my right and now a year has passed and
it's our fault, I guess, that we're not moving forward. We passed that a year ago and I never have received
an answer why at that time when momentum was going something changed. And I'm sure the public's like,
well, we're glad that you didn't do that then. But my point is momentum seems to be hot
and cool around here depending on time and month of ask. And so I don't know what we can do. And I'm
not confident that I know why anyone up in Indianapolis knows about what we can do. And I know different
ones of us have different faith in them depending on the year and the partisan control. But friends,
I don't think they know literally when they are in for the next session what they will do. And I can't
find a legislator that will stay still from this local area and talk about this issue. They want to
talk about redistricting, that's fine. They want to talk about other things, but they don't want to
talk about this one. And that tells me that there's not a lot of hot people beating the snare drum for the jail.
This is the unmentionable, unforgettable, or forgettable. This thing has all those components because,
again, it goes back to what I kind of said at the end. Other than the folks that are in there and their
families and some of the other comments we've heard, who says this needs to be this way or better? And
so I am interested. I mean that sincerely. I want to know what Ken Falk thinks.
about when he walks through what he observes. I remember the old 2008, 2009 articles. What do you see
now? Right? This is not 2008, 2009. Those sheriffs, those systems, it's just, it's different.
Or maybe it's, I don't know. You tell me, Ken Falk, because this is a lot about that. But then I will
just say the bottom line is every time, and I said this to Kate Wiltz next to me during the meeting,
I was like, my gosh, there's,
you can't resurrect the dead. That, two weeks ago, had hit a point where it's just, it's like you're
trying to get Jell-O to build something that you could drive home tonight, and friends, it wasn't happening.
And so for this to get to that point, some of these things have gotta be a little bit more solid than
not, and maybe it is, like Councilor Henry's saying, maybe it is a resolution that starts getting around
particulars, but it is gonna take a resolution
that understands the needs within the system, to me, accurately talks about the word treatment. I think
sometimes people who are elected officials talk about the word treatment and they have something in
their head and then there's actual practices going on that they don't know anything about or they don't
know as much. I think that's gotta be accurate. I think the details have to be a little bit more refined
and I just feel like the I don't know is getting bigger.
And my personal opinion is it is hard to keep hammering a train down a line when you don't know what
the cargo is doing or what you're doing or where you're going or really if it's gonna be safe when you
get there. And that's kind of this system. I'm not saying this doesn't need to be done. I actually believe
firmly, overwhelmingly that it does, but the particulars are just choking it. So anyway, I've said too
much, but those are just some of my thoughts. Thank you. Anybody else?
I will speak. I don't have a whole lot to say right now because I feel like we were pretty clear when
we talked about our votes whenever that was, a couple weeks ago. Seems like four months ago at this point.
I actually don't mind being given the questions that were on the presentation. I think they're good
ways to focus conversation and thinking. I think that they are conversational in that maybe we should
really talk about that and find out where are our differences on some of these things as we move forward.
I honestly don't think we're probably all that different. I can tell you,
that I don't mind compromising what I think on any one of these questions necessarily, but it's when
on top of compromising for four out of five, and I'm just throwing that out there, I haven't seen these
long enough to know, but compromising a good chunk of them and not knowing how we're gonna pay for this
and whether or not paying for it might even, I mean,
It's scary. It's scary. So it's just, it was too much. And I get that that may not sound like a really,
this is why I feel we can't do it. Yeah, there are multiple reasons. There are multiple things. It was,
I felt like I'd made compromises. I felt like I'd been like, all right, okay, well, this is our best
option. And then nothing happened except that, you know,
We occasionally, twice in a year, got an update on what was happening. And then all of a sudden, we're
being asked to approve something after just having demonstrated, I think, pretty clearly that we do
not have an extra penny anywhere. So yeah, I don't have a whole lot of faith in the current project.
at its current expansive level. I'm not unwilling to discuss it. I'm very interested in having conversations.
So as frustrated as I might sound, I really am interested in sticking around and hammering it out. So
hammering out is what I've been doing for a long, long time.
I look forward to hammering it out of whatever we're going to call the process. I think getting together
as many times as we can in earnest to talk about possible solutions that are feasible both financially,
as well as meeting the goals of the people in the prisons who are unfortunately there, as well as people
who staff the prisons, as well as the community who supports the prisons.
So I think there are a lot of different components to this whole thing as always. But I'm more than
willing to get down to business and meet and discuss anything, any time, as long as we're making progress.
I think it's important to have a good understanding that just to meet is not good enough. We need to
have goals at those meetings.
maybe we're going to discuss one or two items. That's okay. It doesn't have to be all done in one session.
But we need to have meetings that will produce results. I'm interested in results. And what is the impact
going to be on everyone that's involved, right? So I'm looking forward to getting down to business,
making decisions, and
ultimately, hopefully, being able to have money to work with, because I don't think there's any guarantee
at this point from what I see from the State House. I mean, there's talk of maybe it being discussed.
Well, maybe discussed doesn't write the check, right? Where's the money to have that maybe discussion
fund from going to come from? So I think without the proper funding, it's going to be really difficult,
but I want to hear
all the options about how to make it work going forward. And I think to kind of wrap that up to what
I am writing down all the council members as everybody has been talking, just kind of going through
and jotting down what's really important. And I really like the idea of a resolution. I think honestly,
that might be the start.
for us to say, again, as it's been mentioned so many times, is the ball is now in our court. I'm gonna
stay in my lane now and figure out how to make that work and let's go. So maybe that is the discussion
by way of resolution where we outline what we can and cannot afford, what it looks like to co-locate
and cost and whatnot. And maybe that's the opportunity for us to start there.
I think if we set the bar for what we need to do with that respect, then we can really start having
the other components and conversations to be put into play. Because again, as I mentioned before, we
can't afford it. And I know folks went to go, you know, talk to folks at the State House to figure out,
you know, what's happening, what's going on. And we still haven't heard
anything about their willingness. I know they're not in session right now, so it would be interested
to see. But again, in interest of time, since we keep talking about deadlines and things like that,
let's figure out a resolution. And let's maybe put that forward and continue to go. So yes, I saw Councilor
Hawk had her hand put up. OK.
I just want to remind us that even if the state said, yes, we'll let you double the amount of bond that
you were going to have or whatever the dollar amount is, that does not mean we should because it will
get paid out of that 1.2 income tax that we will be receiving if we even take it to the 1.2.
And remember, that's where the economic development tax is going to be part of the 1.2. The jail tax
will be part of that. Public safety is going to be part of that. And we've got to pay for all that stuff
out of the 1.2. And so just because the state would say we're going to allow you to do more, would we
really do it? Because if we use up all that 1.2 for that, then that's also to operate the rest of the
county government.
The other numbers that we're working at, the 0.4 for fire and EMS and the 0.2 for other governmental
units, we can't even take it to 1.2 if the city takes theirs to 1.2 because that's going to get you
up to three and all we can do is 2.9. And so I think we have got to look at the big picture
I know I'm getting tired of me saying that, but we really have to, because if we say we're gonna use
all this for this, then what are we gonna say when the fire department say that we need help? What are
you gonna do when the town, well, when Bloomington Transportation or the library wants something, or
the townships want something? That's under the point two, and we may only be able to do point one. So
we cannot just look at
just the jail because we've got to do a lot of other things. Okay, so I know we have the commissioners,
we have Commissioner Madeira that's joining us here in person and Commissioner Thomas that's joining
us virtually. Is there anything that you would like to add that hasn't been already discussed?
Yes, actually. So, Councillor Henry mentioned that rather than work through questions, he recommended,
you know, look at the risk tolerance, perhaps arrive at a dollar figure. And I think if we just get
a dollar amount, we don't get insight into your values and your priorities, and that's really important.
Those are points arrived at working through the questions, and I think we, I agree, we all need to agree
on what's actually happening.
you know, as the constitutionality. And what we're asking for is a conversation. I don't think we're
calling anyone to account. Certainly, this is a power play. It's actually asking for something genuine,
for a dialogue. And so I think that a dollar figure is not what we want here. We want something much
more genuine.
councilor hawk had this excellent remark if we have people coming forward with property we keep a list
we do have a lot of people coming forward and leading and I agree I also think it would be a great idea
to involve people more you know if we can
to convene a public committee of leaders to weigh in on these matters if we can do so in an expeditious
fashion. I think it's really important for the public to feel included and heard and to know that their
views matter. And I also think it's important for them to appreciate the weight of these decisions and
how burdensome and weighty and important they are for government. And sometimes it's really easy for
people to come in and talk in front of a public microphone for three minutes. But when they are forced
to look at these documents, and all of them are available on our website,
They really appreciate these documents and perhaps the weight of this information in a new way. So I
think public participation may have a very important role to play here as well. I am also scared about
building an unaffordable facility. I also fear building a facility that will be inadequate for the next
50 years. I'm really scared, like you, about not meeting the needs of inmates and prison personnel and
Justice Department staff.
And one more thing, I do disagree strongly with the idea that we don't have to build a new jail. And
with the fact that that's not mentioned in the settlement agreement, while that may be technically true,
if you look at the four corners of the settlement agreement, that
doesn't matter one whit, I think. So we have an envelope of documents. And it's that envelope of documents
that that understanding is built on. It's not just the settlement agreement. We have to look beyond
that. It's the studies that have been done. It's the committee meetings that have been held. It's the
community surveys, including the CJRC surveys. It's the councils and the commissioners' actions that
have been taken. And we've been moving forward as a community with one goal, which has been building
a new jail and envisioning this new facility and this justice complex. So we can't suddenly say,
years in that this is not the case and reverse course. This material is on our website. It's publicly
available to every member of this community. And we invite you to review that if you think it's just
the settlement agreement. So that is not just true. We cannot just look at the four corners of the settlement
agreement and call it a day and say we cannot build a jail. We do not have to build a jail because it's
not mentioned in that document. That is a simplistic and false notion. Thank you very much.
The only thing I want to challenge you, Commissioner Madeira, on, and I'm kind of going back and looking
at my caption here, and seeing what was said. It says, and I heard it, so I want to make sure. This
is picking up what I'm hearing you say. It says, like you just said, we're actually asking for something
genuine for a dialogue. So a dollar figure is not what we want here. We want something more genuine. Yes.
I think two things could be true at the same time, but you're also asking the fiscal body. That's what
we got sworn in and took the oath to do. That's literally a part of our job. So if we can't afford it
and we don't have all the numbers into play, then what are we saying? So I just want to challenge and
push back just a little bit because
We do want that conversation, because if we don't have that conversation, then we're back at square
one. So we want to make sure that we know that's what we're asking of. So I just wanted to kind of push
back on that.
I think we're on the same page. We just don't want a dollar figure without the conversation is what
I was saying. Because there's always values and value judgments that are behind the dollars. And I think
we want to be absolutely clear that we're on the same page instead of just getting a figure. For example,
if you say we have $100 million to spend.
I think we would want guidance from you on how to spend that 100 million. And without that guidance,
we just can't move forward. Yeah. But I think that also can come through a way of resolution to absolutely
is that we set the bar there. So yes. OK, I see Commissioner Thomas has her hand up. Yes, thank you
so much. Appreciate having this discussion. I just want to say that
Your consultant believed that you were without Senate Bill 1. Take that off the table for a moment.
I know it's a reality. I'm not ignoring it. According to Mr. Garitas, things were aligned to proceed
with the project as it was before the legislature met in 2025 and changed the parameters.
So I'm not sure, I don't know what the answer is there, but certainly yes, the budget is key. But what
we heard was for reasons to say no to the project was more than money. And that's why we're asking these
questions. Because you are in charge of the money, clearly that is your job, that is a difficult,
darn difficult task, especially in current present situation. But y'all were offering opinions on other
parts of the project, and that's why we're asking these questions. And yes, so this is part of that
conversation that needs to happen. And yes, money matters. Yes, you're going to have to make that decision.
But if the parameters you set will help us look at
what budget we're going to need as well, right? So we can have that conversation. But if it's not co-located,
if it's not one floor, if it's not whatever, that's gonna change the budget too. So there's budgetary
concerns obviously from the council side, but then there's what can you build for that much money?
And I mean, if you wanna look at what happens when we insist on having
the justice building downtown and we insist on having multiple floors, which at the time was normal.
It wasn't that unheard of, but they don't do that anymore for a reason. You can look at our current
justice building and all of its pimples and warts. It was good while it lasted, but it is not a building
that can be remodeled or expanded. Those two things are
just literally killing us. So thank you again. We look forward to the future conversations. All right.
So yes, Commissioner Medeira. Can I add one more thing? There's two matters that I referenced before
in the commissioner's meeting that I think also bear upon matters. There are two
statewide measures that I think the public does not know about and council members might not know about
that do bear upon
the size of the jail, the jail in general. There's a proposed criminal rule that is open for comment
right now. It closes, actually just closed, where the court proposed cutting the continuance period
from 90 to 70 days and allowing judges to keep level one through three felonies and murder defendants
jailed during continuances. So this basically means for serious charges, there will be more jailed bed
days, even with a shorter continuance clock. In addition, there is a constitution
So in 2023, the General Assembly passed a constitutional amendment to let judges deny bail to people
deemed a substantial risk to the public, but they don't define what that is, which can create major
due process issues. So to take effect, it must pass the General Assembly again this year in 2025-2026
with the same language, and then will win voter approval probably on the November 2026 ballot.
expected to win voter approval. It is not yet certified for the ballot, but if this passes, we will
also have more pretrial detention, so we will have a higher average daily population. So these are two
things I also am very afraid of when I think of this jail building and makes it hard for me to sleep
at night again because due process concerns, etc. So I just wanted to share that as well. Thank you.
Thank you. All right.
So is there anything else that we need to discuss? I think we talked about this at great length now.
I'm glad, again, that we were able to talk about next steps, because I know it was mentioned
in commissioners' meeting that they hadn't heard from us, and we were trying to sleep after our marathon
meeting. But after that being said, I did reach out, and I'm glad you all took us up on that offer.
Now we understand the assignment and so I think this is something that is a work in progress and will
continue to work on. And I just hope that our council, my council colleagues, all of us will consider
what we need to do in next steps. Maybe that means we have a separate special meeting where we actually
just focus primarily on this. I don't think that we could possibly have a conversation of a meeting
like during a regular session of our meeting to have this. I think this is definitely something that
is special and obviously
of the time is of the essence so you know to talk about things such as resolutions such as setting a
budget and saying what that looks like and what we can and cannot afford because that's you know what
the fiscal body does so if there are no other further questions or comments from council and commissioners
I will ponder on this, but not for too long, because I know we all got some things to think about. So
all right. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Thomas. All right. Next up, as we proceed
and wind down our agenda here, we got item D. Council, I moved to approve resolution twenty twenty five.
Approving the interlocal cooperation between the city of Bloomington and Monroe County regarding the
2024 Edward Bryan Memorial Justice Assistance Grant. All right, Ms. Turner King, what would you like
to add? So I'm displaying the resolution. This is a resolution that approves an interlocal agreement
for the JAG grant. This is a grant that we receive annually. Well, the city receives it and it is shared
between the city and the county. The interlocal provides that the county receives 7% of the JAG funds
made available through the Department of Justice, and that is based on violent crime statistics. And
so this would mean that the county would be receiving in total
$3,093 of the available funding and that the funds would be committed to the purchase of Taser cartridges.
Council, what questions or comments might you have related to this item? Councilor Wilts? What's the history?
of this? Is this like every year we've done this in perpetuity forever? I can say we've done it every
year that I've been here. Beyond that, I'm not sure, but I don't think it's a new thing. And so the
city gets the 93% and we get the seven or are there other jurisdictions?
This is just city and county. Do we always use it for similar items? So the grant itself, we have not
always used it for this items. It's always been a law enforcement purchase. Last year, I think we bought
stop strips. It's always something that we work with the Sheriff's Office to identify why it's
what it's going to be spent on. The federal code outlines what this could be used on, and I'm trying
to find it on the fly here, but it's primarily for law enforcement purposes.
Do we always indicate in the agreement what the purchase is? The agreement does outline the purchase,
but there is the option and we have in the past used it so that if the sheriff's office identifies a
different need, there's a process to amend the request for what it is to be purchased. But this is a
reimbursable grant, so any amendment there to the grant must be amended prior to the purchase or expenditure
of the funds.
Since I'm new, I'll ask who Edward Byrne was. Who was he? Do we know? I know. He was a 22-year-old New
York City Police Department patrolman who was murdered in the line of duty in 1988 while sitting in
his car. He was shot five times in the head and died at the age of 22. Thank you.
And that is in part why it goes, it's based on violent crime statistics because Officer Burns' death
was committed by a violent drug gang in New York City. All right. Are there any other questions or comments
on this item?
Seeing none. If there is public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here and then
at your room or you can raise your hand via teams. And see. And prior to the vote, I do want to procedurally
add what happens with the interlocal next. So this is on the commissioner's agenda for approval on the
13th because both bodies approve an interlocal.
Typically city council would also approve the interlocal, but I've been advised by city legal that they're
going to be sending the interlocal to the attorney general for approval, which is an option that the
statute allows for. I don't have reasoning behind that statement. I just know that's procedurally what
is going to happen. I don't know why the city decided that course of action.
on the business that pays me, which is council. So, okay, so I'll let it go. Okay, thank you. Well,
thank you for that tidbit of information. And now we will go to a roll call vote, please. Councilor
Hawk? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes.
Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wills? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Great. Thank you for that. We were
efficient in our meeting and we have now come to the time that we have missed because of marathon meetings
where we welcome all colored discussions.
as Councilor Feido gives us. So we are now at the Council Liaison and Comment part. And I'm going to,
I would again look to my right, but Councilor Hawke isn't here, so I'm gonna look to my screen to see
if she has anything to add. And you're muted. Yes, I very much want us to have a breakdown.
I don't know who's gonna do it, whether it would, whatever, but we need to find out exactly where, how
much we think the 1.2 is going to be. Break it all down, put dollar figures with it and recognize then
where we are because we're already spending down a part of that because we spent it down out of the
economic development and out of the jail tax. And I heard Council Member Deckard
question, will we put that tax in place and we aren't doing anything with it? Well, remember that we
are doing something with it. We have personnel in there. We have the medical contract in there, because
it is not just to build a jail, but it's also for operations. And so we moved
some of the jail operation costs into there. So it is being used, it just isn't being used to build
another jail. But if we build another jail and we need more staff, we're gonna have to cover it out
of this jail tax. This is not just like money that's gonna be sitting around, we don't know what to
do with. But thank you. Appreciate that, thank you, Council Hawke.
All right, I'm gonna look down to Councilor Feidl, because she already has her pad and pen ready. But
I'm astonished, because I don't see any more, Caleb. I know, can you believe it? I know. I've just been
so wrapped up in so many different meetings and projects, and I think we've been discussing many of
them at the last several meetings now. And so I don't know that I have much else to add at this point.
So I think a lot of our work has been done here that I've been involved in. So that's enough. All right.
Yeah, I just have one comment or at least one topic regarding like regarding our schedule. We looked
at kind of the meeting schedule for next year and some options there and some of the options I think
rightfully consider maybe
providing for what Councillor Crossley was referring to as work-life balance, giving us a little bit
of a break, maybe knowing that sometimes of year we have to dig in and be the best friends that we all
are for days and days in a row. Having been on council now for a few years, it's hard to get the business
done in the amount of time we have.
My knee jerk reaction is to be very hesitant to cut out meetings. Although I cannot take that. I do
think that work-life balance is important. And I think one thing that we should consider as we plan
for next year and even into the end of this year is committee work.
whether it's official, unofficial, that kind of thing, but delegating to each other. I think I've said
this before, but I personally think that having no PAC meetings at all this year was a bit of a mistake,
just because there's plenty of work around personnel issues that we could be doing. And it's not that
we can't do it without PAC, but we're not likely to.
So I've been accused of being really into meetings. I do like a good meeting. But I just want to throw
it out there that it might be worthwhile to really consider targeted approaches to getting some of these
things done. I worry when we talk about the next steps with the jail that it might languish.
if we're not really and I'm not questioning your leadership on it at all. Councillor Crossley I appreciate
everything you're doing to get us moving forward. But you know these are the things that are in my head
right now is like you know we've got these things that we need to work on things we need to move forward
on and maybe it's you know carve out little pieces for subsets and bring it back to the whole at these
at these bigger meetings. That's that's what's in my head.
So to clarify, would you think like, are you thinking maybe more council committees to break up some
of the work to maybe kind of break up the time spent in here and doing that and then bringing it back?
Is that what I'm hearing? I think our time here could be better spent if we were forced to
have some of us have some homework and bring it back. That's all. Oh, I don't do homework. That's not
assigned to me typically. So I'm just saying if you want me to work on things. Well, tell me what it
is. Give me a due date. I can do that. Yeah, that's it. I appreciate that. Thanks, Counselor Wiltz.
Counselor Decker. Thank you very much, President Crossley. I will say that
for the entire community, and this is a large statement. I think, and this, you could extend this beyond
local government into state and federal too, if anyone were listening. I think life will be much easier
if politicians do what politicians used to do best, and that was talk amongst each other. Having just
the thing or the idea or what have you.
just doesn't get it done. And so it's for hard things ahead. People are going to have to talk whether
or not they like it or not. So one thing I wanted to say in my report, in addition to the wonderful
tribute to Charlotte that went earlier in the meeting, I also want to mention another community lion
and legend that was celebrated on Saturday was Pat Williams. Long time.
Bloomington City clerk and Democratic Party chair for years did did those things.
four years in a way that makes you sometimes question what was her secret to getting those done. And
these legends, it seems that we're losing a lot of them, and I hope not their lessons. And there was
a beautiful tributes to both in the last week. It's a lot for the community. So we certainly think about
that. I do want to say I woke up this morning to more snow. I drove home in a little bit of snow coming
from Anderson yesterday. And when I see that snow a little bit early,
November 10th November 9th and 10th I always think of our highway workers and just gratitude to them
and the emergency responders that have to work without ceasing around those situations thanks to them
and of course Lisa Ridge and the whole team that makes that happen. I do want to say on the eve of Veterans
Day thanks to all of our
of the Monroe County veterans, which number in tremendous amounts. I do want to say for Veterans Day
itself, it's important for veterans in the community. If you believe that you're in need of assistance
in any way, we have a dynamic team just over in the Curry Building at 214 West 7th Street. We've got
Steve Miller over there, our veteran service officer. We have
is loyal assistant veterans service officer Andrew Blake those two go above and beyond as they did for
this country they go above and beyond in assisting veterans and I routinely receive updates from them
as liaison about
what they can tell me about who they're helping, what they're doing. They are literally out where veterans
are, whether that be a veteran sitting in their office enjoying the fine coffee that they share, or
it's a veteran that is literally sitting out in the street in weather like this. They work with everybody.
So if they could be of assistance to you or a veteran in your family, just ask, just ask. Sometimes
the VA is cumbersome,
Navigating that can be hard. Reach out to them. Search for Monroe County Veterans Affairs Office. Go
down and see him. Call 812-349-2537. We are grateful to all those veterans. Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah. And so tomorrow we are are off and county offices are closed because tomorrow is Veterans
Day. So I just want to thank all the
those that have served and continue to serve our country. I think of the veterans in my life who are
no longer here, especially my dad, who is a Vietnam vet who was a Marine and almost lost his life fighting
for this country. So I just really take my hat off and much gratitude and appreciation because of you
we are. So I want to say that. And I'm looking forward to attending some
of the Veterans Day events that are happening throughout Bloomington and Monroe County that we usually
have to pay tribute to those that continue to serve. The other thing I wanted to say in addition to that is
I think sometimes it's also important for folks to see people being out and about in the community.
And I just want to take a moment and congratulate the NAACP on their Freedom Fund banquet that was about
a week ago. And so I saw some council members there, Councilor Decker and Councilor Feidl, that were
there in attendance. I got a chance to MC that or co-MC that with a guy that's near and dear to me.
But there was this
or the topic was the fierce urgency of now. And I think of the keynote speaker, Charlie, Dr.
Charlie Nelms, excuse me, who made a quote or said a quote that has stuck with me since he said it.
And he said, a vision without a plan is an illusion.
And I keep repeating that because I keep thinking about all the things that we are doing right now as
elected officials and all the hard work. And I think of the giants that we have lost over the past several
years. I think of, you know, Judge Tyler Farrell. I think of, you know, Pat Williams. I think of our
You know our our beloved council members Cheryl Munson and now I think about Charlotte Zitlow and all
of those are great phenomenal women who did hard stuff and got
jobs done and, you know, reached across the aisle and talked with people. I talked to Councillor Hawke
about Charlotte and her, you know, her memories of her and that was a really interesting conversation
that we had there about that and didn't learn or I didn't know about that. So I appreciated Councillor
Hawke sharing that with me.
As we continue to lose our giants and pillars in our community, I think it's incumbent upon us as electeds
now to not necessarily feel the shoes of those people, because we will never feel unless and we will
never feel that. But now the torch has been passed on to us. And so now we need to do what is right,
because I keep thinking and I keep saying this a lot, but it's something I've thought about
Some of my final conversations I had with Charlotte was that you can, and her small voice that she had,
she said, you can do hard things. It might not be easy, but you can do them.
And I think about all the conversations that we've had, the continued conversations, those that are
sometimes that give us heartburn and pain, but it's what we get paid the big bucks to do and what we
got sworn into office to do. And I say big bucks sarcastically. So with that being said, I appreciate
all of our colleagues that joined us virtually and in person. And with that being said, happy Veterans
Day. Thank a veteran tomorrow, but just every day. And we are adjourned. Thank you.