- All right, good evening, everybody. Welcome to tonight's county council meeting. We are coming to you
- at least one week early, due to the Thanksgiving holiday that is upon us, almost in another week. Today
- is Tuesday, November 18th, 2025, and here President of the NatU-Hilbrom, we have Councilors Henry, Iverson,
- Deckard, Wilts, and Feidl, and I don't see Councilor Huck
- But nonetheless, we have a quorum, so we will go ahead and get started. And so next up is our pledge.
- So all those that are able to stand, please stand for the reciting of the pledge. 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,
- Thank you. And Councilor Hawke has joined us inside the Nattanyu Hill Room. So once again, you have
- all seven council members present for tonight's meeting. Next up, we are on the adoption of our agenda.
- And so is there anybody that would wish to make any changes to tonight's agenda? Yes, Councilor Everson.
- Council, I move to amend tonight's agenda to add a second part to item I, lowercase I, is a request
- to approve resolution 2025-52 regarding an interlocal agreement between Monroe County and Ellisville.
- Section I, double lowercase I, is the creation of account lines and simultaneous appropriations of items
- currently noted as simply item I.
- Additionally, adding items 11 B, a request to approve resolution 2025 50 regarding items related to
- the Sophia Travis Community Service Grants program and item 11 C, a request to approve resolution 2025
- 51 regarding an interlocal agreement between Monroe and Owen counties to allow for bridge building.
- Second. OK.
- We got a motion and a second. Is there a discussion on the amendment as proposed? No. OK. So all those
- in favor of approving tonight's agenda as amended signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. All right. Motion carries.
- Next up, we will have public comment. So this is a time for public comment to come in and speak what's
- on your heart, especially for night items not on the agenda. So if you have something to say and you're
- here in the Nightingale Hill Room, you will come up to the lectern here, sit down on your name, and
- you'll have up to three minutes. And if you are on via Teams, you'll raise your hand and you will also
- have up to three minutes. So looking tonight here,
- to see if there's anybody in the room that would like to speak on items not on the agenda for public
- comment. See any, and is there any public commenters for items not on the agenda via Teams? Okay.
- And seeing none, we will proceed with tonight's agenda. Next up is the department updates. And we got
- some that are already listed here. So I'm going to call up
- Jordan Miller, our correctional center's financial director, and these are for items that are not on
- the agenda. Each department that is given a presentation update, you have up to 10 minutes, and then
- your time is done. So again, these are for items not on the agenda, and we'll have Mr. Miller here,
- joined by the sheriff as well, and the jail commander, welcome. Before I pass the actual microphone
- to my colleagues behind me,
- Because I know we have about 10 minutes. I want to say thank you to our liaison. This was last week,
- I believe, we came across something that we needed to notify the council and I believe the jail commander
- sent you, all of you, an email. I believe it was last Thursday. Was it Tuesday? Okay.
- And so I know you have questions about that, but I really wanted to thank Marty and especially thank
- Kate, specifically her, because she was out of town at a conference. And I know when I go to a conference
- and there's a breakout session, I don't want to be bothered because I'm trying to learn something. So
- for her to take the time and to me, I'm very grateful because she didn't rush. None of them did. And
- the last thing also, they gave us some good advice on how to proceed.
- So I truly appreciate that. And I really do thank you for that because, um, being out of town and making
- time for us that to me, uh, it's, it's a good thing working together. So, so thank you both. Appreciate
- it. Good afternoon. I'm going to be providing an update on the quarter, the third quarter summary for
- our commissary fund, uh, and specifically the third quarter, uh, the balance as of July 1st,
- was $129,427.10. We had a total of $55,059.24 worth of receipts, an additional $399.99 worth of interest,
- a total of $74,572.82 worth of expenditures, resulting in an ending balance as of October 31st of $110,313.51.
- I also wanted to touch quickly on a couple of changes before I pass it over to Lieutenant Colonel Gibbons.
- You are likely all aware there were some changes that took place, starting with going from a semi-annual
- update to a quarterly update. And we're going to do our best to continue to get an update to you by
- the 15th per the statute. And then also you'll notice that they chose to go with a standardized form,
- County Form 205.
- And there wasn't a ton of guidance as far as completing that, so I do want to point out that we chose
- to associate the codes that are specific to the approved expenses of commissary funds. And just to briefly
- go over those, the three most common that you'll likely see on these three months' worth include the
- commissary resale purchase items training that took place, as well as more of the other purpose, for instance,
- Transition team director the contract states that you know the travel and mileage reimbursement things
- of that nature are to be spent from commissary So things like that religious products and then haircuts
- beard trims things of that nature So I'll pass it on over to lieutenant colonel Gibbons So before I
- begin do you guys have any questions for Jordan Miller on what he just presented No, yes
- Just real quick, I know the transition team you had mentioned, can you point out the account code or
- the instances where transition team expenditures were accrued? So starting with, what would this be,
- July, you'll notice here, check number 7715, there's codes three and six.
- Pizza for inmate workers and then hotel room for Todd Smith for a training instance. And then as you
- go through, you'll see, I believe there's a couple of others. Let me see here. 7721 Hotel for Training.
- And that was in August. And as we continue on, I believe there's another as well. Mileage.
- You'll see a check number 7734. We issued a payment, $1,421.75 of mileage. Again, that's per the contract.
- Thank you. And I have a further question. There's a line here using these funds to purchase religious
- items. Is this something that we've done before? Is this something that the jail typically does for
- inmates? And could you kind of walk us through
- what we're using these public dollars for religious items for? I believe there's a statute associated
- with that. I can't really speak to pre-2023 or the decisions and items that were purchased prior to
- my arrival. We're speaking of Bibles, Korans, kufis, prayer rugs, beads, things of that sort that these
- inmates are interested in having.
- There are nine categories that permit us to use commissary funds without approval from a fiscal body.
- That is one of those categories, services for an inmate inside the facility. Wonderful. And I think
- I sent all of those nine categories in the email to you guys so you guys would have those, too. And
- we added one, but it has to do with an audit, which we'll talk about here as well. So there's 10 total now.
- Let's dive in to what I think is an odd issue to have, but I think it's a positive issue for us especially.
- I sent a brief description regarding what I'm going to talk about today, but I wanted to cover a couple
- things first. The program that we utilize, and I got this from Kate because she says I was speaking
- in a language that she didn't completely understand because she doesn't work here, but there is a program
- that we utilize
- to manage our financial records. It's called lockdown. It's easy to get confused in a facility that
- has lockdowns inside of it. So I understand the need to explain that program, but that program manages
- all monies inside the facility. Money going in, money going out, cash bonds, everything. It's our financial
- record keeping database, essentially.
- CPC combined public communications is our commissary company that we are in contract with. That is who
- do we utilize to provide commissary services, video visits, phone, texting services, everything. We
- moved to them for everything in 2023. Middle to end of 2023, we initiated an in-house commissary. That
- is something that we are allowed to use
- In addition to our contract, they permit us to sell items in-house and then we keep those funds in-house.
- These are the funds that we utilize for the most part, our commissary funds, to purchase all the whites,
- underwears, bras, shirts. Recently purchased sweatsuits for everybody. These are the things we utilize.
- We just bought $20,000 worth of a food cart
- rather than coming to the Commissioner of Council to get appropriated for these things. We keep a lot
- of those costs in-house, and it's because we utilize that commissary to do so. So what we came across
- in initializing this in-house was making a new line for in-house commissary funds. As that started to
- grow, we started to see the difference, and I'll explain this here shortly. So we have a commissary
- German-American account
- we have an inmate trust German-American account. They are two separate accounts. What you get in our
- quarterly report now is a report on the monies inside that German-American commissary account. That
- is what you guys have gotten the whole time. In the inmate trust, again, is all monies inside the facility.
- We found that prior to moving all our in-house commissary funds, we need to
- we needed to put together an external audit. We just now finished our internal audit. We scheduled training
- with CPC to come down and help us manage that transfer of funds into that commissary account from the
- Inmate Trust German American account. And recently, I think as of just a couple days ago, we verified
- an external auditor is going to be available to do that for us. What we didn't want to have happen
- was you guys to get these reports and then all of a sudden you see $500,000 added to the account without
- some explanation prior to that happening. But we cannot move those funds until we complete our internal
- audit and then obviously an external audit for obvious reasons. We want to make sure that our record
- keeping is up to par before we move any monies. Commissary is a hot button issue in the state of Indiana and we've
- said from day one that will be completely transparent with our commissary costs, and we would utilize
- those costs to facilitate the inmates in our facility and the facility itself. And we will continue
- to do that. Do you guys have any questions regarding the how the money moves specifically or or what
- it's how that in-house works? Looks like Council has our hand up.
- Yes, I asked you a question that I think the public might like to hear because I've been contacted by
- some of the parents, some of the ladies there, and talking about how much money that the parents put
- in there for the use of their relative that's in there. And she was talking about the additional that
- she pays for some of the
- lingerie, so to speak. And what you said to me was that if I understood right, they all have a certain
- kind that everyone gets. But if they want to get something better than that, then they would need to
- pay for it. Did I understand that right? Do you want to explain that to me so I can explain it to her?
- Yeah, I can do that.
- With the help of I Support Girls, a nonprofit group that donated hundreds of pairs of underwear, we
- were able to, in addition to the underwear that we provide when the person first comes into the facility,
- we were able to provide everybody with undergarments, including a t-shirt to wear as well. If they want
- to purchase additional, they're more than welcome to. But for instance, just Monday, I had someone come
- to me and say, hey, the socks you gave me, there's already a hole in them.
- Here's another pair of socks. I don't make you go pay for them because I've already given you one. We
- provide it for you. Obviously, we have to be very careful because we don't want to turn it into a,
- you know, six figure expenditure every single seat every year. But if someone says that they're purchasing
- additional, that's under their own volition. They're still provided that base. If they want two or three
- or four pairs, that's different than having one or two coming into the facility. Thank you.
- Back to the money and the way that it moves, what company or what firm is doing the external audit and
- how often is an external audit being done? Well, it's my impression, and this just came in newly enacted,
- and as long as it's a certified public accountant, they can do the external audit. I don't know the
- name of her company, and Chief Deputy can hit on that.
- But what happens essentially is this, an invoice comes in from CPC and it comes into our inmate trust.
- CPC says you can move this X amount of dollars to your Indiana commissary and that's how the money is
- moved. CPC, we don't have an invoice for in-house obviously. We're conducting this service in-house.
- So instead of just saying, hey, we think we're gonna move this money now into our commissary, we needed
- to perform an audit and we're having an external audit performed as well. So that's how that money,
- it still needs to hit inmate sales and go over to commissary, but we're not just gonna circumvent the
- current process because we think we're right on that. And that's kind of what the delay has been. I
- understand. And if you want, do you wanna touch on? Change your question, Councilor. All of this is kind of,
- come to fruition here in the past week, where Jordan and his crew kind of finished their work. Then
- we've looked at it and said, OK, just to make sure before we start moving things, we're moving exactly
- what we need to move and not moving what we don't need to move. So I literally, finding someone who
- has experience in this is not an easy task. So I contacted some friends of mine around the state to
- say, hey, do you know anybody? I got a referral.
- from a friend of mine down south and he gave me the number of a CPA and I literally talked to her yesterday.
- So nothing's been finalized with that transaction. She wanted a little more information about what our
- ask of her was going to be. I sent her some additional information today and have not had any
- more conversation with her. So to answer your question is right now, I can't answer your question because
- it literally started yesterday.
- So I think that it does. It highlights how transparent you all are being that you had the phone call
- yesterday and here you are at this council meeting. Yeah. And, you know, all of these things, they're
- the best thing we can do is come forward and tell you about any issues or any concerns or and make sure
- that what we're what we're moving towards is the direction the council wants us to move towards.
- and making sure that you have all of the information. And I assure you, as soon as we finalize things,
- whoever this auditor is going to be will notify you via through your council office. And as soon as
- that audit report is in our hot little hands, you'll have it too. Thank you. And just to follow up,
- once that external audit's completed, our process of moving that will be verified. We won't have to
- do this every time.
- So every single is it weekly or by every month? We're going to do it every week. We're going to move
- that money. And once we do that, we have that certified process. We're not going to have to have that
- audit continued. Now, with that being said, State Board of Accounts will audit it when they do that
- as well. But that's that's already a regular course of action. I don't want you guys to think we're
- going to have to do an external audit every time we move money. That was just to make ensure that our
- in-house process that we brought in
- is correct. That's helpful as an annual audit versus how many times you move it. So that was a good
- clarification. Nothing else? Okay. So there's nothing else. Thank you all very much for giving us that
- update. We appreciate it. Thank you. And I'm glad to see that both Councillor Wilts and Councillor Hawke are
- working in tandem with the sheriff and the jail commander as well. So we appreciate that. Thank you.
- Appreciate that. Okay. Excuse me. Are there any other departments that would like to do any department
- updates for items not on tonight's agenda? No? Okay. I actually thought it might be a good time to kind
- of bring this up considering the email that we received yesterday.
- and I have asked, just briefly before the meeting here, council, we all received an email yesterday
- evening from Jeff Cockrell, and it talks about the edit conversation and invites council presence at
- the December 4th commissioner meeting to discuss solutions. So at this point, I kind of want to look
- over to Ms. Turner-King and Ms. Gregory for this discussion here because the way that it reads, to me,
- it kind of feels like we're being, well, kind of, it is. We're being asked to come to their meeting
- on December 4th, and this is the conversation of the edit plan where basically,
- I'll just read it for the record here.
- Dear county council, I have been asked to alert you to an issue with the edit and to invite the council's
- presence at the December 4th commission meeting to discuss solutions. The county's current edit plan
- is attached. As you may note, that plan is set to expire at the end of this year. In addition, attached
- is code, Indiana code 6-3.6-6-8.
- 9.5, which guides who creates the plan, the commissioners, the consequences for not having a plan in
- place, the treasurer,
- puts the money into a separate account, and what plan must contain a description of each project, the
- cost of the project, all sources of funds needed, and timeline. The plan must encompass at least two
- years and must incorporate project costs of at least 75% of the expected revenue, given the Council's
- retraction of the support for the Justice Center plan.
- Maybe I'll just say North Park. And simultaneously, the council's budget for 2026, which incorporates
- edit funding, we do not have an edit plan that meets all the required criteria.
- Even if we consider a plan to incorporate the 4.667 million appropriated in edit for county operations
- in 26, it would not meet the requirement to develop a plan which accounts for 75% of expected revenue
- in edit. The state statute does not address expenditures made outside of the plan. The council and the
- commissioners need to meet to address this issue, otherwise edit revenue
- will be placed in a separate sequestered account beginning in January 2026. And then it ends with, please
- let Kim know how you plan to accept the commissioners, if you plan to accept the commissioner's invitation.
- So that was a whole lot. And I guess for me, I would like to know in layman's terms and for the public
- to know and understand
- what implications this has since council did use some of the edit funds for our 2026 expenditures, including
- insurance for people. So the statute does require the creation of a plan by the county commissioners
- or the executive body, and then it outlines what is in that plan. It does not
- The statute does not allude to what happens if you're spending in non-compliance with the plan. But
- what it does say is that
- For the year or years in which the unit does not have a plan, the county treasurer shall retain the
- amounts distributed for such a unit in a separate account. So starting in 2012, our plan will expire
- December 31st, 2025. Starting in 2026, we wouldn't have a plan. And so before expenditures could be
- made out of the edit, we'd have to develop a plan. And if we do and for the period of time that we don't
- have a plan, the treasurer would move all of the edit revenue to a separate account.
- And then it talks about how interest goes into that account. If the unit fails to adopt a plan for a
- period of three years, the balance of the separate account is then distributed to the other units within
- the county, so the other taxing unit. So the deadline to complete a plan, obviously, is three years
- because we don't want to lose the funding. But ideally, as soon as possible, because we need to be able
- to spend the funds that you put in there for twenty twenty six.
- The budget amount for 2026, I think, was roughly four and a half million. That's an estimate. And so
- before that amount can be expended, we would need to have a plan in place. The plan can't just be the
- budget items put in edit, because the plan has to encompass 75% of the revenue. OK. And you say if we
- don't, then it goes to the other taxing units, and that is
- other municipalities like the city of Bloomington? If we fail to adopt a plan within a period of three
- years. Okay. Because I guess we all think that we need to do something with the justice center complex.
- The idea was we rejected North Park, not the idea as a whole. So I guess that's kind of what I was kind
- of getting at. And I guess the other thing is,
- Considering that today is November 18th and we have that vote on October 27th, I don't know if you could
- speak to this and I asked the question last night for Mr. Cockrell of why we are just now hearing about
- this and it basically
- said that until the council decided not to fund the purchase of the North Park site, the commissioner's
- updating of the edit plan was straightforward. So I'm trying to figure out what we are needing to do
- right now because
- Revenge seems to be, I don't know if that's the right word or what, but it just, it feels a
- little retaliatory in my personal opinion, just one person saying that. So I'm just trying to figure
- out ideally what we need to do next because I don't want us to sit here and wait and then things happen
- with, if we don't develop a plan by the timeframe, that is, I guess, they would have to accept,
- is that right? They would have to accept it and approve.
- So then we have tied in some things to that that could potentially be at risk. Okay, just wanted to
- put that out there. I guess since we, I just wanted to, I felt like that was necessary for us to have
- this conversation since it was sent to us via email and they have given us a deadline and I just figured
- we would just kind of briefly talk about this. And I don't know if anybody else had any other questions
- or concerns. I see Councilor Henry has his hand up.
- Yeah, thank you, Madam President. Always is helpful if we can actually see the words we're talking about.
- Can we perhaps display the edit plan that was approved three years ago on screen? And also, I guess,
- prepare to share IC, the code, so we can look at them together. I am joining the Teams meeting now,
- and we'll be able to do that in a second.
- It's the difference between speaking in the abstract and actually staring at words together, which we
- like to do around here. No, I can see. Okay. Because I think from my notes, I'd like to, well,
- first of all, thanks for raising the issue that we got here, and if we're going to take some time to
- talk about it, now's the time.
- I wanna make sure we center our discussion on what the code actually requires, which we've had to do
- a few times here regarding conversations around funding of the potential justice facility. So that's
- where I wanna go with as we get this up and running. We're almost there. Council Member Henry, which
- would you like to see first, the code or the plan? Let's actually look at the code first so we can all
- see what we're talking about today. Any amendments? Yeah, and if there are any amendments, I mean, I
- guess we'll just start with what we have
- Mr. Cockerill. Okay, is this it? All right, it's a little, all right. Sam, do you need that close-up?
- I think I'll manage, I'll just have to, you know. All right, so the executive of a county, all right,
- it's up top, right? It's the executive of a county, city, or town may, so we have the word may not shall.
- Ms. Turner-King, I know we're gonna do law on the fly here, but, so there's an either or, right? Adopt
- a capital improvement plan,
- specifying the uses of the revenue or designate the county or city, town, the county, the recipient
- of the proceeds. Okay, so, this was done three years ago, right? Our current plan? Yeah. Correct.
- All right, so, and I guess, so, Councilor Crossley's point, like, we did, actually, we voted on it in
- October. We started talking about the edit way back in September, and I guess I'm trying to figure out
- how we got 10 weeks without talking about the plan. They didn't know they had one.
- Is that, I mean, because that's kind of, I don't know if that's a question we can answer today,
- but I mean, that's a very long budget conversation where we're talking about using the edit, you know,
- night after night after night after night, and then here we are being told, by the way, there's a plan
- to update. And maybe this question for the auditor too, because I know this predates your time as auditor,
- but at what point did you all become aware that there's a plan that's on the books that we need to do
- every three years? If I may, I became aware of that with the email from Mr. Cockrell and then had a
- conversation with him.
- yesterday and the indication is I guess essentially just what the email said is it wasn't a problem
- until recently so. So and then I guess we covered some of the finer points this evening Ms. Turner-King
- that if there seems to be some ambiguity that yes we lawfully or like we did budget according to code
- what we could use with the edit right because we reviewed all the possibilities there while we were
- okay so like that's okay the issue is that the plan doesn't reflect the way the council has decided to
- exercise its authority over the budget and use those proceeds. The plan would have to include the allowance
- of the 2026 edit budgetary expenditures. And there's no right now issue with noncompliance. There's
- ambiguity in the law if we don't comply with it right now.
- There's nothing in the statute that says what happens if you're spending in non-compliance. It just
- says what happens if there is not a plan. And we have three years to figure it out or else the proceeds
- revert to the other taxing units in the county, but three years from now is well into the, those taxes
- are gonna be around three years from now, right? Well, in three years it reverts to the other county,
- but until you have a plan, the funds are put in a separate account. All right.
- Can we look at the actual plan then, because I think that's where maybe the rub is about, we have a
- plan that, maybe it's just a technical fix that we need to update the plan with what we're doing with
- the money now, rather than what was thought about three years ago. What does the plan say right now,
- so we can take a peek together? I'm sorry to take this much time, Madam President, I feel like we gotta
- do it. Thanks for bringing it up.
- Okay, so here's our plan from three years ago. We need hard copies. All right, we're zoomed in. Okay,
- whereas, all right, there's the capital plan. Can we scroll down to, I guess, what the plan says we're
- supposed to spend the money on? I guess we're printing some copies, too. And enlarging things. They're
- the now therefours, right? Is there anything? Okay, so.
- It's in Exhibit A, so I'm scrolling down to it today. Okay, so we have Exhibit, okay, great. So, County
- Justice Center estimated total cost at the time this was approved was 100 million. I think we're north
- of that now, okay. Source of funding as the economic development lit. How much of the, so in here I
- presume it says 75% of the proceeds are going to the Justice Center. I'm gonna scroll down, because then.
- There's that language. All right, so up through 2025, 10, 11, 12, 11, 32-ish estimated. Of course, I
- know the auditor's walking out of the room right now, it's okay, but we don't have. The auditor is going
- to get physical copies. Okay, great. So I mean, I believe we don't have 32.9 in the current fund, because
- we were looking at that anyway. We were gonna be that sometime next year, like summer of 26, I think
- we were getting close to that 30. So even the estimate was off by,
- quite a bit in the document from three years ago. Okay, that's interesting. I guess I just wanna, I
- don't wanna hog the mic, because I'm sure others have questions. So this is just a quick blush on what
- was sent to us, and now it's in the room, we're looking at it. I don't see anything in Indiana code
- that ties compliance with the edit to the North Park facility, as Councilor Crossley brought up. It
- doesn't say, because of North Park, we can't or cannot do it. That's not what's mentioned in here.
- It's just a justice facility. There's a dollar amount in here, of course, which is wildly off from where
- we are now in the current costs. We covered that. It seems to me that we're fully compliant with the
- Indiana code anyway, because we passed a legally required balanced budget, identified the edit as a
- possibility to fund things. We were in code there, and we identified things like public safety
- and infrastructure and county operations in there. I don't know. I feel like we've done our job. We
- just have to do a technical fix to get a plan approved by the commission, because the alternative would be what?
- not going to use a proceeds in a way that's allowed by law to balance our budget. So I guess I thank
- you for raising this. I have some questions, obviously. Happy to go on December 4th to ask them. But
- it just seems like we need a technical fix. That's my view at this point. I know this is off the, we're
- working on it. I just wanted to kind of bring this up and as we are getting the hard copies,
- and we can pass that down to Councilor Hawke as well. Anybody else have any quick questions? All right,
- I'm gonna look over here. Did you have, oh, okay, so I'm gonna go to Councilor Hawke and then I'm gonna
- swing it back over here to the left. As you notice, the signatures here is, that's just strictly the
- county commissioners.
- And perhaps they did it in a public meeting. We don't all go sit and hang on to their every word. I
- don't recall this ever being presented to us in any way. And we have a rather large legal department.
- There's four attorneys in that legal department, and that is
- at least three more than what most counties would have and we don't see this during the whole time that
- we were working on these budgets and putting things in there and we were studying the statute, what
- we were allowed to put in here, you know, to use it for, one of which, the very last item that you could
- use it for really pretty much set in for any other reasonable purpose, you know. I can't remember exactly
- how that works but
- it made it clear that one of the items, the bottom item, was for any useful purpose for county public
- dollars. And so, during the months that we were talking about this, where was this marvelous legal department
- giving us the advice that, oh, they finally came up with? I mean, come on, that's just not
- good representation, not good,
- for the council and not good for the commissioners and not good for the public. And if we have to pull
- that back from the budget, then we're gonna have to change all the budgets because there was a whole
- lot put in there. I mean, for some million dollars, that's because we put the deficit over into that.
- And we didn't hear from the commissioners during the time that we were trying to work through the deficit.
- We didn't hear one time, oh, well, you can't do that. I mean, we didn't hear that. Yes, Councilor Decker.
- Thank you very much. One comment that I'll make is as I look at that document, which I was not familiar with,
- Sometimes I feel guilt when I'm not familiar with something, and then sometimes I think, well, someone
- else should feel guilt if I'm not familiar with that, let alone the public. And that's kind of where
- I want to center my comments. As I looked at that, I see something that would be correctable by the
- county executive to reflect what we did, and certainly that could be something they could do in tandem
- with it. What we don't have a choice on, absolutely don't have a choice on,
- is reversing the expenditures for that budget for next year. We don't have that choice. And I want to
- be abundantly clear on that because that, you know, Councillor Hawkins had made the, you know, well,
- if you lose that, you're going to have to do it. That is
- the great unthinkable, right? That will sink literally our budget. And I'm also of an opinion, sometimes
- I look at the state checklists and requirements for doing certain things on certain times and what you
- must publish and what you don't, and I get they've got their rules, we have our own, and I'm sure we
- make someone mad. But I also, this is exactly how the redundant forms of government start stepping over.
- Those are dollars that were paid
- wholeheartedly by taxpayers in this community supporting the efforts of public service. And the state
- has gotta just either A, take your foot off the neck or B, stop giving us so much homework that you
- don't give us any funding to pay for. The other thing I'll say is any discussion on jail items to me,
- to me, any discussion on jail items, that should be done in an evening meeting where the public can
- come and weigh in.
- And I don't mean to say that as a criticism of anybody, but clearly now that has risen to an issue of care.
- Us adopting our minutes, you could do that at 6 a.m. and no one cares, but that, the jail, that gets
- to that kind of point. And I just think that the countywide, and we can only control our body while
- we're here, but I think countywide, each body that considers jail things should do it publicly. We saw
- a very prime example tonight where a very heart-filled,
- caring jail administration who's always looking at different things for their folks, and folks include
- the residents of that facility, they came in here and in a public transparent way said, hey, here's
- what you're seeing here, and if you get any questions, let me know. I worked with liaisons, and I think
- that there's a lesson there for all of us. Last thing I'll just say is I'm growingly, I'm growingly,
- I'm sorry, I'm in a more growing way getting really concerned about
- the county's use of project management by legal department. These are talented, super individuals that
- we have, but they are attorneys for chasing down legal issues. I think for some of these big projects
- that are once in every couple generation things that we're going to have to look at
- a more project manager driven thing, whether it's the spending on bonds that we've talked about, whether
- it's getting all this from the county end on the jail. We do have consultants that assist us with this,
- but internally, there's a lot of things. I mean, the discussion on North Park, I always hate discussions
- that get delayed so long that it causes unnecessary public woe. The discussion on North Park truly extended
- into one complete year since this body adopted the corrections tax. I'm not blaming anyone for that,
- but I think things that dutifully kind of push people towards their uncomfortable spots, particularly
- negotiating between multiple county bodies. So those are just some thoughts on this. I don't know if
- we could ever get traction on it, but I think that some of this leadership gets us past some of these
- unnecessary
- Stapler fights and gets us to the things of substance where we're actually saying okay public here This
- is this thing weigh in etc. Okay, I'll be quiet Thank you, I Share all of the concerns that have been
- expressed, but I wanted to add
- I have a question in here, but I'm gonna frame it in terms of my concern, which is I'm looking at an
- ordinance calling for a capital improvement plan, and then I'm looking at, well, I'm looking at the
- ordinance that says here's the capital improvement plan. I'm looking at the code that says create a
- capital improvement plan for your economic development lit. That's great.
- and we have one because there was a capital project associated with the lit. The uses that we budgeted
- for 2026, in addition to being less than 75%, they're not capital, I don't think. I don't remember every
- single, I mean, but correct me if I'm wrong, we didn't put any capital projects into our 2026 budget
- for the lid. We still have a plan to build a justice center, and that's the capital project associated
- with this tax. I mean, with adjustments of the inaccuracies that are in the current plan, such as the
- estimated costs and estimated revenues, what is it that has to be changed?
- answer the question, the auditor confirmed there are no capital projects within 2026 budget. I don't
- think I think the question is not what needs to be changed, but what's included in the plan now, because
- the plan is expiring. We obviously have to adopt a new plan and it's going to include the 2026 budgetary
- expenses and what?
- Why would it need to include the 2026 budget expenses when we're, this is a longer term plan. It's intended
- to be at least two years. What we put in for the budget for one year could be a line, I guess, it's
- already in here. It says we're using, I think it's in the whereas's, I can't find it, that we can use
- it for any other permitted uses in the ordinance.
- that's any other permitted use, the plan is focused on the capital project, which still is a goal, which
- is what a plan is about. To me, I don't see why it needs to change. I don't see how any of this is a
- problem. We still are planning to construct a justice center of some sort somewhere. God help us.
- and that's what's written in here. And that's what the majority of the revenue could be used for. So
- I just don't see why there's a conflict. I agree, which is why I'm going, why are we being called to
- a December 4th meeting when we still have the plan to do that? Again, all seven of us voted against
- North Park. So the plan is, and the meeting that,
- We had last week where they came in and talked to us during department update and during an actual discussion
- that they were invited to, now all of a sudden, like this happens. It just seems a little sus. Yes.
- I had a question following up on Councilor Watz's really good observation here. So how much of the lit
- do we use in the budget again? It was like 4.1, what was it?
- 4,667,719. What's the current lip balance? I mean, my guess is that we didn't use 75%, right?
- We used a slice. So to the Councilor Wolz's point, the plan still exists because we didn't use more
- than 25% of what is there. Now I know that's pretty close math, but I'm pretty sure we're about right.
- So I agree with all of that. I mean, the plan, we can go forward as is,
- revised by the commissioners to talk about the primary focus being the Justice Center, we took a under
- 25% piece for purposes of budget. Does that make sense? Yeah, Audra Gregory, what does it say? Yeah,
- current cash balance is 22,500,143. Yeah, we're under 25%, okay. I would just say, just my last thought
- on this is that we have a de facto reality of how we're using this fund right now.
- It sounds like the plan that we need to adopt before the commissioners need to adopt just puts it into
- de jure or to law, right? It just brings it into compliance with what we're actually doing and it turns
- out we're not actually doing anything out of compliance with the plan. So I agree with Council President
- that maybe the December 4th meeting might not necessarily be necessary. Yes, and I know we gotta move
- on because we gotta jump back into the meeting or our agenda, but I'll give Ms. Turner King a response.
- I think the budgetary expenses do need to be added to the plan because it says adopt a capital improvement
- plan specifying the uses of the additional revenue. It doesn't say specifically revenue uses for the
- capital improvement plan. So I think you do have to add the budgetary expenses. And the statute requires
- a timeline for planning, development, and construction of the capital project to be included in the
- plan. And I think that's the conversation piece. What is the timeline?
- If you look at our current plan, for example, it says property purchased in 2022, construction to be
- completed in December of 2025. I think some of the conversation that needs to maybe occur to update
- this plan is what's that timeline? Yeah, change, just update the numbers. It's not happened the way
- it was planned. I think that's okay. I mean, not ideal.
- So change the numbers to ones that the commissioners who have to sign this feel like are more realistic
- given that we don't have a property purchased. And if you feel, I mean, I see your point. I've seen
- capital improvement plans before. It's different. I don't know why it's,
- It is confusing to me as well that they are calling it a capital improvement plan, but they want whatever
- other expenses in it. That's weird. But if they want to say something to the effect of the other expenses,
- our insurance or whatever else we put in there, they can do that. But again, I think that's a blip.
- That's for one year, the way we, you know, determined to do something, that could change next go round.
- And I think that's our prerogative. Okay. So, yeah. I think Councilor Hawkins. Oh, I'm sorry. And then
- one more and then we gotta move on. Right.
- You understand they do not have to continue with that because the very first whereas, it does not say
- they shall, it says they may. So if they wish to put something else together, they certainly can, but
- they do not have to adopt a capital improvement plan. It says they can. And obviously, they could and
- already forgot that they did it.
- Clearly, they forgot. If they thought this was this important, the minute it went over 100,000 and went
- up to a quarter of a billion dollars, they might have stepped up to the plate and said, whoops, we've
- got to do an adjustment to this capital improvement plan that nobody knew we had. And to order us to
- show up by December 4th or everybody can just
- I mean, how many insults of injury does this council have to put up with at the commissioners? This
- is not the way we're supposed to work well together. I agree. Yes. I just want to kind of clarify. The
- first clause A of the statute does say they may adopt a plan, but clause C says that
- county, city or town that fails to adopt a plan may not receive the years in which the plan does not
- have their fraction of the revenue and that the treasurer shall retain the amounts distributed for such
- a unit in a separate account until a plan adopts. We may adopt it. That's an election. But if we don't
- adopt it, we can't spend the revenue.
- doesn't have to be, I don't think it has to be a capital improvement plan. When you look at the other
- uses that the other taxing units are using it for, it's not for capital items. I mean, I believe unless
- everybody is doing it wrong and everybody forgot what the other, you know, the right hand was doing.
- So, all this whereas is whatever, oh, guess what?
- the legal department. I think we need to look at what the law actually says. Okay. Well, this didn't
- want to kind of take us down a dark path here, but I felt like it was necessary since we sent or got
- that email and we're all together and we don't have another meeting until the top of December that it
- was necessary for us to publicly speak on this to kind of get an understanding for
- what we are being called to the carpet to do, since they're pretty good at that. So that being said,
- I appreciate all of that, and we'll move forward. All right, next up is item six, which is our consent
- agenda items. Council, I move to approve the following consent agenda items for November the 18th. There
- are three of them.
- A. The Highway Department's request for a Category Transfer within Fund 1169-0000 Local Road and Streets
- of $50,000 from the Services Category to the Supplies Category. B. The Board of Commissioners request
- for a Category Transfer within Fund 1138-0000 Cumulative Capital Development of $104,000 from the Capital
- Category to the Services Category.
- and C, the Board of Commissioners request for a category transfer within Fund 1000-0161 County General
- County buildings of $20,472 from the services category to the supplies category. Second. All right,
- we got a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion from council related to the consent agenda
- items? All right, and seeing none.
- If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the NatU Hill Room,
- or you can raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, all those in favor of approving the consent agenda
- items as presented, signify by saying aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, motion carries.
- And now we move from item six to seven, six, seven. Sorry, I had to do it. I had to do it. All right,
- and now we're at item number seven. You're welcome. Oh my gosh. Council, I move to open for discussion
- and possible approval the prosecutor's office's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed
- to hire 13010, Deputy Prosecutor Juvenile Position.
- Second. All right. And it looks like we have our prosecutor coming to the microphone. Welcome.
- Thank you. Good evening. Eric Oliphant, Monroe County prosecuting attorney. I appreciate you hearing
- my request to fill a vacancy during the hiring freeze. My office cannot function without our designated
- juvenile delinquency deputy prosecuting attorney on a long term basis.
- The juvenile delinquency prosecutor is a bit of an island of its own within my office. There is only
- ever one deputy assigned permanently to the caseload, and no one else does it with any regularity to
- really know how the job functions. Juvenile delinquency laws are codified in Title 31, whereas most
- adult criminal law is codified in Title 35. All that to say, boring speak for saying it has its own
- laws and its own procedures.
- that no one else in the office practices on a regular basis. The juvenile docket is also in Division
- 7, which is the Honorable Judge Holly Harvey's court, whereas all adult crimes are prosecuted in Divisions
- 2, 3, 5, and 9. So it's in a separate court from all the other proceedings we deal with.
- Judge Harvey intended to be here to support our request, but unfortunately she had another obligation,
- so she couldn't be here, so she sends her regrets.
- As I mentioned in my written request to counsel, the juvenile delinquency prosecutor is involved in
- a lot of multidisciplinary teams and meetings outside of my office as part of their regular duties.
- One such team is the Stakeholders Team for Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, which is precisely
- what it sounds like, providing services to the kiddos that we're prosecuting so that they can hopefully
- become successful adults and not continue with delinquency issues.
- They also participate in school safety team meetings with the school corporations, child protection
- teams, and other things that are sort of child welfare related. This is a specialized caseload, requires
- different knowledge and skills than other deputy prosecutors have, and the person in this role is expected
- to have the capacity to collaborate with other stakeholders in the child protection realm.
- Right now, a previous juvenile delinquency prosecutor who retired a couple years ago is currently working
- part-time to help cover the caseload. That's not a long-term solution. He's let me know he can't do
- that after December. And he's not covering all of it. If there are any fact findings, which is what
- juvenile delinquency bench trials are called, that's being handled by myself and a couple of other deputies
- in the office.
- You know, my other deputy prosecutors simply don't have the capacity to absorb the duties of the juvenile
- delinquency caseload. The workload for deputy prosecutors in the criminal division is punishing. I have
- at least four of my most experienced attorneys, people I would consider to be career prosecutors, have
- expressed to me recently that they're experiencing burnout.
- You know, this is tough work, but I'll start first with some numbers. In 2024, we filed 1,832 misdemeanor
- cases and 1,086 felony cases. So far in 2025, we're on targets to file slightly more than that. In order
- to manage caseloads, we do a quarterly count of pending cases that each deputy and legal secretary is handling.
- Unlike public defenders, I would just remind you, we do not have caseload caps to keep our workload
- manageable. Deputy prosecutors could, in theory, have an infinite number of cases, and there's no law
- to say that can't be true. On average, a misdemeanor in Level 6 felony deputy has between 300 and 350
- pending cases at any given time. Our felony deputies average between 250 and 300 pending cases at a time.
- Our legal secretaries have more cases because there are fewer of them than attorneys and each of them
- are assigned at least two attorneys. There are only four victim assistants who manage all criminal cases
- and one of them is scheduled to retire in January. We only have two investigators in our criminal division.
- The Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council and WIS have assessed the need for deputy prosecutor staffing
- across the state. Their determination based on the volume of cases presented in my office for prosecution
- when we're fully staffed is that we need two additional deputy prosecutors. I'm not here requesting
- additional deputy prosecutors, but I can't afford to have long-term vacancies.
- In the past, it's been suggested to me by former council members that we try to lose positions by attrition,
- but given the volume of work that we have, we simply can't afford to do that. If you look at the time
- sheets for my deputy prosecutor sometime, you will see that many of them are working more than the required
- 40 hours a week and the 80 for a total pay period, at least occasionally, if not regularly.
- One of my deputies recently put in a pay period, so a two-week period that was greater than 150 hours,
- and that was only focused on her caseload. That wasn't helping to cover some of the duties that needed
- to be covered with juvenile delinquency.
- One of my adult criminal deputy prosecutors has been limited to part-time work for the last few months
- due to a medical situation. We already have had about six attorneys and myself pitching in to cover
- half of her caseload. So there's a lot going on. So I will honestly, respectfully request that the council
- consider making us an exception to the hiring freeze.
- We have a duty to prosecute criminal and infraction cases pursuant to Indiana Code 33-39-1-5. Indiana
- Code 33-39-6-2 subsection H reads, the various county councils shall appropriate annually
- for deputy prosecuting attorneys, investigators, clerical assistants, witness fees, out of state travel,
- postage, telephone tolls and telegraph, repairs to equipment, office supplies, other operating expenses,
- and equipment, an amount necessary for the proper discharge of the duties imposed by law upon the office
- of the prosecuting attorney of each judicial circuit. It is necessary that my office be fully staffed.
- I would point out that the sheriff's office has been granted an exception under the hiring freeze, and
- I completely understand why. But much of their work filters to my office. We help them by supporting
- ongoing investigations and providing legal training to their deputies and staff.
- But further, all of their complete criminal and infraction investigations are referred to my office
- for prosecution. And they are not the only or even the largest investigative law enforcement agency
- that feeds into our workload.
- The prosecutor's office is responsible for ensuring the protection of the constitutional and statutory
- rights of both defendants and victims, which includes deadlines, procedures, and the highest burden
- of proof available under the law. We simply cannot be expected to live up to these high standards without
- having a full team. The content of our work is very difficult, comes with secondary trauma risk.
- We see the human misery and suffering that result from mental health and substance use issues. We see
- the worst things that people do to each other. Horrifying violence and abuse. And that's to the tune
- of 250 to 350 cases each. So we really can't afford to lose teammates.
- If the workload increases, I'm going to lose more people. And that's just a reality. Since we've lost
- the ability to pay employees who have knowledge, skills, and abilities from previous work commiserate
- with their experience level, we can expect new hires to be relatively new in their career with less
- experience. So we'll have to take more time to train them, which will also slow us down a little bit.
- In general, when I'm allowed to post jobs quickly, it often still takes me some time to fill vacancies.
- Even when I can post them, hiring a deputy prosecutor, a legal secretary, or another person, my staff,
- whatever position, has to be done carefully because we have to find a candidate who's capable of handling
- a large caseload with the care and attention that's required. Sometimes I get lucky, I have somebody
- waiting in the wings, but that's,
- an exception rather than a rule. So requiring further delay in my hiring process from what I'm accustomed
- to only serves to get us all behind on our duties and overwhelmed with our case work. So please, counsel,
- I appreciate your time. I know this was probably a lengthier presentation than you'd hoped for, but
- please allow me to immediately post for and recruit a juvenile delinquency deputy prosecuting attorney.
- And I would ask that you please give consideration to creating an exception to the hiring freeze for
- my office. I would just let you know I do anticipate losing another deputy prosecutor. I have one whose
- last day is November 28th. I, as I said, have a victim assistant getting ready to retire. And I have
- at least one legal secretary who's considering a job that pays more out of county. So I do anticipate
- some vacancies in the near future.
- Thank you for your time. Thank you. All right. Does anybody have any questions for the prosecutor related
- to this particular item? Looking to my left? Yes, Councillor Wilks. How many positions are in your office?
- Do you wanna know attorneys or do you wanna know total? I would like to know both if you have those.
- Okay, so I have a total of 18 deputy prosecutors. There are four who do child support enforcement and
- are part of the incentive program for 4D enforcement. The remaining are in the criminal division. And
- that includes Jeff Kerr, who is a state paid, my chief deputy is state paid. And the total?
- Total staff is roughly 50 people. 16 of those are in the child support division. Yes, Councillor Henry.
- Thank you. I appreciate the detail. I think as we get into the end of this budget year, fiscal year,
- next year, these questions get harder with the revenue that we're facing the county. So forgive me,
- I have just a few specific questions. You said the 2024 caseload is 1,832?
- That's misdemeanors only. Oh, misdemeanors only. And so, and that's divided among 18 deputy prosecutors?
- So no, that is, I have four deputy prosecutors who handle misdemeanor and level six felonies. So there's
- the four deputies covering the 1800 in that case? Correct. Okay. You mentioned that you had, the position
- covers things outside of legal procedure like
- multi-jurisdictional meetings, school safety, welfare, preventatives. Do those all require a person
- with a JD to attend those kind of extra meetings? Could others attend those meetings? You have someone
- covering part-time right now, but I presume they're not going to all those.
- meetings, right? No, a lot of those meetings are attended by myself or my chief deputy now that we have
- a vacancy. To answer your question, it does need to be an attorney because a lot of the questions that
- are presented at these are legal questions fundamentally. And it is also the purpose behind it is to
- work together towards safety plans, towards a better or different way to handle the circumstances that
- we're all faced with.
- It would be unwise, I believe, to have someone who isn't a deputy prosecutor or a prosecutor. You're
- covering those now because it's not fully filled. How many of the cases went to trial last year? I think
- we had, I wrote this down somewhere, I think we had
- between seven and nine jury trials last year. That doesn't count the juvenile delinquency bench trials,
- I don't have that number. I'm still new here, I'm still learning some things 10 months in, but how does
- all of that play into the weighted course load in the county that's, according to the state, a little
- underutilized at .77, we're like 70th of the state for how the courts are hearing things. Just help
- me understand how the courts seem to be underutilized in that way, but there's a lot of work over here,
- can you help me understand that?
- I do think that the underutilization was primarily in the civil docket, not in the criminal docket.
- That said, I do think we could probably resolve some cases quicker in the criminal division, but it
- is a high volume and so sometimes it is challenging to get them done quickly. Thanks, I appreciate all
- that, thank you. Any other questions over here?
- All right, seeing none, if there's public comment on this particular item, you can use the raise hand
- function on Teams, or you can come to the lectern here in the Natt U Hill room, and you'll have up to
- three minutes. All right, and seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? The motion as read was
- I move to open for discussion and possible approval the prosecutor office request to be exempt
- from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire the 13010 deputy prosecutor juvenile position.
- You're welcome. We're voting to approve. Both. I don't know. Legal has given us a look. I'm just waiting
- to do a roll call. Yes. The way that I understand the motion is that we are voting both to exempt from
- hiring freeze and to give permission to hire the deputy prosecutor juvenile position.
- to change from what was in the packet on the agenda? It just says request approval to fill a vacancy
- during the hiring freeze. I don't see the other language in the printed copy I have. I know she talked
- about it, but I don't know that it's on the packet. That's a good point. I'm looking at the packet,
- and I also do not see the request to be exempt from the hiring freeze. Could we separate the question
- I move to do that. Can I clarify? I think the motion is to exempt that specific position from the hiring
- freeze and not like a blanket exemption, which is what Ms. Oliphant was asking for consideration on.
- The motion is specific to the juvenile deputy position. Okay. I'm sorry. I just want to get this right.
- Can you just maybe boil that down to a sentence that I can understand?
- it would be allowing the prosecutor's office to specifically hire a juvenile deputy prosecutor. So that's
- it, right? Thank you. Perhaps it would be more efficient if there was a motion to clarify to that effect.
- Madam Chair, I want to clarify that the prosecutor's request notwithstanding, that this motion is simply
- to allow the deputy
- prosecuting attorney for juvenile to be filled. Second. Okay. So we got a clarification and now we are
- now on the roll call vote. Councillor Decker. Yes. Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Hawk. No. Councillor
- Henry. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Iverson. No.
- Yes. Motion passes 5-2. All right. And next up on our agenda is item B from the planning department.
- If I may, before Mr. Iverson makes the motion, you're going to have the same language issue with the
- motion that you just had. So perhaps to simplify it, it should just be open for discussion and approve
- this specific
- position request. All right. Council, I move to open for discussion and approval of the Planning Department's
- request to hire the position 14006, Planner 2. Second. And welcome. Hello. Hello. Good evening. Thank
- you all for
- entertaining our request for a hiring freeze opening for our plan or two vacancy. I know that you all
- have a very, very challenging job. I don't envy your position, but here as staff, I'm here to advocate
- for my department and what I think would serve the public best. So this presentation is just going to
- cover specifically our plan or two position that was recently vacated.
- It is a PATC classification of 40 hours a week, and we're requesting to move forward with just the minimum
- salary. So that's going to be a savings of about $8,100 per the fiscal impact that you saw in the packet.
- Though this job position is not statutorily required, it does have a lot of bases in a state statute
- in our state statute. So we have our plan or two's cover things such as rezones, subdivision reviews
- and approvals, variances, conditional uses, use variances,
- building permits or improvement location permits as it's called in the ordinance. And these are all
- backed by the state statute. There's timelines for these, there's guidelines for these, there's rules.
- So it's a very important job that we have to train for and each of our planners has a timeline for each
- of their cases that they take on.
- And I'll just note, and I will in the later slide, as of January 1 of 2026, we're going to be extremely
- limited in our review times. And if we don't abide by those review times for permits, we can be forced
- to issue those permits without further review.
- So on average, our plan or two, individual plan or twos, we have three plan or twos in our office. They
- receive and respond to 510 calls or emails a year.
- These questions are often not simple. This does not even account for those follow-up questions on an
- email chain. Since COVID, people often want to email us instead of walk in, which means they have your
- contact information for every question that they have thereafter. And it's usually not simple questions.
- It's usually like, how can I add a second home to my property and also do an addition near a floodplain?
- So we're dealing with very complex properties, very complex
- topics. Also, we just did a screenshot in the packet as well of our caseload. So a lot of the 510 calls
- leads to actual cases that planners then have to take along with responding to those 510 calls.
- So in 2024, one of our planners took on 28 cases.
- So our planners are really important in our office. They help synthesize complicated information for
- board members and the public to make responsible and correct decisions. Our plan commission president
- is online as well, and she submitted a letter to you all stating that fact that she relies on these
- reports that our planners give out, often 30 pages or more for each case. And they contain a lot of
- legal information, including
- findings of fact that we have to do for each case.
- One position takes months of training, about six months. We get typically with our pay rate, we get
- a brand new graduate, which is great. We can take them and train them as best we can and often that
- leads after several years of service that they can move on to even better and greater, higher paying
- positions. But that means that if we have one vacancy and then we get a second vacancy, we are six months
- away even if we get that second vacancy filled.
- to be actually operational with that person.
- So some of those calls, like I said, often lead to people that are saying things like, hey, I'm going
- to close on this property in two hours. Can I make it a tourist home? And they're already under contract.
- They're already financially constrained maybe in some cases. And that means we have to A, research the
- topic quickly. And if we have limited staff, we cannot do that. It also means that those
- planners are often in a position where they have to share sometimes bad information or not bad information,
- bad news to people that are in a bind because they may not have done their due diligence and now are
- in a situation that they are having difficulty getting out of. So this can lead to burnout as Ms. Oliphant
- mentioned in the previous request.
- So we do help people Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. with their questions. We also help people
- with their building plans. We do that for free over the desk, which is extremely helpful. There have
- been just two state statute changes just this year that have been extremely impactful to my office.
- The first one I mentioned, effective January 1, House Bill 1005.
- for residential construction, we have three days to review it for a complete application and then seven
- days from the time it's complete to issue the permit. If we do not do that, someone can force us to
- issue the permit. As I said, some of the land that we have left these days often have constraints that are
- Difficult to administer the code for including floodplain including sinkholes or karst features They
- also may have limited area for buildings things like that
- House Bill 1037 was passed and then retroactively became effective May 1, 2025, and it took back some
- of the responsibility from Stormwater over back to planning for logging and some grading. So even though
- the county development ordinance and the Stormwater ordinance tried to equalize some of that, we ended
- up with it back because of the state.
- And there's various bills all the time, as you all know, that then force us to do tax amendments. Our
- planners have to be well trained on that new language. We also have to do those tax amendments, and
- they take quite a bit of time.
- Here's just an example agenda from two weeks ago. The meeting lasted till 11.30 p.m. We got through
- all the cases, but I just want to give one example of a case that our planner two was able to put together
- in an easily readable or understandable format for the public and for the board to easily vote on.
- So they take images such as the prior state of the building and then put that adjacent to what the building
- looks like now. So we do site visits. We also take surveyors information and we review that and then
- try to color code it for the public to see actually what is the issue. It's a setback issue and how
- close is it. It's one foot and supposed to be 10 feet. So this is the type of thing that we do on a
- daily basis and it takes time.
- and skill and also training.
- I also noted in the packet our full track changes of our fee schedule. As of December 1, the planned
- commission has approved a pretty dramatic increase in all of our fees. So we are anticipating taking
- more fees for the work that we're doing. That's commensurate with the 2026 council approved grid. And
- I do wanna take a moment to say I do appreciate your keeping up with COLA. It has created for me a better,
- status of longevity for my employees. Everyone is at the three-year mark or more. So what does a vacancy
- mean for my department? It will mean that we have fewer staff spreading the work. Slower response times,
- which we hope to avoid, but sometimes are unavoidable when you have limited staff. And it also puts
- us at risk for those aforementioned statutory timelines.
- We also have the possibility of burnout Currently with the vacancy that we have with that planner of
- the day schedule Monday through Friday 8 a.m. To 4 you have one less person working three times per
- week for those So you're just spreading it out to the remaining staff and it's it's a lot of work so
- we appreciate the remaining staff and we want to make sure that we can fill those positions over time and
- The people that are left are going to accrue more comp time. They're going to possibly not take the
- benefit time that they're given. And it can lead to low employee morale. And we just want to make sure
- that our employees feel valued and also that they take the time that they're able to.
- To take a break, we see errors when people don't take breaks over time, they get tired, they need to
- be able to not have to come in at 8 a.m. when a meeting goes until 11 30 the night before.
- Our public requests for information, they expect timely and accurate responses and also other departments
- rely on our planners to answer questions. We get questions about what's the right of way in this area.
- We get questions on do you have the detention information from an old plan set in the archives? Can
- you go look at that? We have requirements to update the corporate boundary layers and GIS and also the
- zoning map is very important for people.
- A lot of different departments rely on that, even just to tell what the county jurisdiction lines are.
- In the packet or via email, you've received six letters of support from different departments or board
- members. I do want to say that we work collaboratively with people and we try our best to work hard
- for the public. We have the ordinance that we have and we try to administer that with the utmost respect
- and ethical consideration for each person. And if there are things that are of issue reoccurring, we
- try to take those as text amendments and talk
- with the planned commission about how best to address those. So with that, I can take any questions.
- Thank you, Ms. Jelen, for that. Looking over here to my right to see if council members have any questions.
- Yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Jackie, for coming in on this. I am the
- council's representative on planned commission. I would echo a lot of what has been shared here. It's
- remarkable to see how
- This staff works so well with the public and our vendors are building in the community. It's not the
- fault of the department for why we see continuances and behaviors in the community when it comes to
- development. It's really the Planning Commission itself and not the staff that supports us
- so well professionally as we execute on the county development ordinance and getting things through
- here. I think you've painted a pretty good picture. It's not so much the staffing that we have but the
- demands of the state on your
- office now with these turnaround times that it really put us in a place where if we don't have the staff
- doing the work we may be issuing permitting for places in the county because we have to not because
- we've done the due diligence and so I hear the value in this here and I also appreciate the effort to come in
- At entry, you know, the 8100 savings should get our attention as opposed to trying to bring someone
- in at a mid or somewhere comparable but bring somebody in at the base and of course working to train
- people up as you bring in people in the community. Just one more time, how many staff right now doing
- planning work at the planner two? You said you had four? So we have four planners. Four planners, yeah.
- One of them is a senior planner and then we have three planner twos. Okay, and how many parcels in the
- county do we have to cover?
- Well, when we do the export to work on our permitting software, it's right now it's 62,000 lines of
- data, but it's quite a few. Thanks, appreciate it. Yes, Councilor Hall. As you know, I appreciate when
- I call with a question and people are so respectful and help me to find my answer, and I appreciate
- it, and I appreciate the fact that you're
- you know, if you don't have this extra person put back in there, that many things are going to go awry.
- That's gonna be true with all of the departments. And, I mean, this is tough, because if we don't fix
- this, somebody said, well, how much money
- do you need to say before you get it fixed, well, all you have to do is look at that four million something
- that we put over in economic development and the million something we put over in the jail. And that's
- how much we spent more than what we're bringing in. And the only way to fix it is we've got to see reduction
- in the expenses. And so as much as I want to support the departments, it has to be a no for me.
- I don't see any way around, but you know. I look over here to my right or my left, my other right. My
- true left over here and see if anybody has any questions. Yeah. I just had a quick follow up and I appreciate
- you brought up the fact that we had a major change in fees. Could you just remind folks where the fees
- go? And secondly, just to help maybe the public understand for the first time that
- outside of Planning Commission, they've seen this fee schedule, which will double in a lot of cases.
- But could you just clarify that revenue generation for everybody? Absolutely. So all of our fees are
- put into the general fund and they are increasing quite dramatically in many areas. And the way that
- we calculated these updated fees was that we took the County Council approved grids for 2026.
- and we really went through thoroughly post the county development ordinance to assess how much time
- each of these cases take once filed. So we're not counting the upfront time of talking to the person
- explaining the process, explaining that they need this process. We're talking about, okay, they filed.
- Now we need to do the public notice. We need to go to the public meetings. We need to put together a
- staff report, do site visits. How much time do each of those things take? And when we looked back, we had
- not really assessed that fully since 2012, which we kept saying that we would do that as a plan commission
- and as staff, but we kept putting it off because of the county development ordinances delay in getting
- adopted. So that is the timing. 2012 was the last time we did the comprehensive plan. Then we did not
- have the new county development ordinance till 2024. So that is why that has taken so long and the jump
- is so large.
- All right, if there is any 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, may we please have a roll
- call vote? Oh, sorry. It looks like we just had a hand raise. So if you are able to unmute, state your
- name for the record, and you have up to three minutes.
- Good evening colleagues. This is Margaret Clements and I have been involved as a citizen appointee to
- the Plan Commission and the Board of Zoning Appeals and other boards and commissions since for about
- seven or eight years and I just can't tell you how proud I am of the Planning Department and part of
- the reason that I have that
- is both as a taxpayer and as the president of the plan commission. In terms of their professionalism,
- their commitment to duty, and also their objective to protect the property and treasure of our fellow
- community members and of our tax paying residents. They do a wonderful job. They're overburdened. I
- think that that overburdening will continue
- into the future and we really need to protect the professionalism of our department. And I know that
- the county is undergoing budgetary constraints, but this department is a well-oiled machine and they
- work collaboratively with the legal department, the highway department, the stormwater department, the
- surveyors department. They're really doing good work and they are working on behalf of the public.
- And I urge you to grant this request from Director Gellin, who has assessed her competencies and capacities
- in her department and has urged you to allow for the filling of a newly vacated position. So thank you
- for listening and I hope that you can find it in your duties to
- approve this request. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Is there any last takers for public comment on
- this item? Seeing none, may we please move on and have a roll call vote. And to clarify, this is a roll
- call on to approve the hiring of the planner to position as requested by the Planning Department. Councillor Deckard.
- Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk? No. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Iverson?
- No. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes 5-2. All right. Thank you. All right. Next up we have our
- highway department.
- Council I move to open for discussion and possible approval the highway department's request to be exempt
- from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire the following position one five eight three five truck
- driver and one five eight four four truck driver positions Thank you, and we have miss rich here welcome
- Sorry on my list it has the engineer position first I Do apologize I read the wrong thing
- So let me retract my motion, Madam President, and read the new one or the correct one. Council, I move
- to open for discussion and possible approval the Highway Department's request to be exempt from the
- hiring freeze and be allowed to hire 15815 Highway Engineer position. Second. Good evening. I'll keep
- this pretty.
- brief. I don't have a presentation or anything. I sent the reasons in the packet for my request to be
- exempt and be able to fill this position. Our current highway engineer is retiring February 6th, so
- it was our goal to advertise for this position in December, make a transition line for training in the
- month of January before he departs on February 6th. There's only one
- one county highway engineer that's budgeted in the MVH budget. It doesn't save the county general any
- funds by having the highway be part of the hiring freeze. I understand that you're trying to keep everything
- the same, but sometimes you can't just have that cookie cutter exempt or hiring freeze that fits for
- all departments. On the highway engineer, we've received 41% of his salary back from the state.
- That's $40,000 that we receive back every February for having a licensed engineer. By not replacing
- the engineer, we would have to outsource any of our review plans, anything for the planning department,
- anything for our federal aid projects. That is a cost by the hour. It can cost you anywhere from 200
- plus an hour for engineering services.
- The engineering position provides guidance for traffic commission requests, sits as staff and recommendations
- on that board, does traffic studies crash data, traffic signal maintenance, traffic signal locates through
- 811, sign installations, and make sure everything is in accordance with the Indiana MUTCD. Our federal
- aid projects. By having a PE on staff qualifies Monroe County to be a certified LPA. This saves steps
- in the federal aid process
- design review plans and there's steps that we can skip and not hold up the project because we have a
- licensed engineer on staff. The licensed engineer oversees all of our in-house projects. He oversees
- our stormwater crew, our local projects, our cum bridge projects, our highway projects to make sure
- that we're building everything to today's standards.
- He provides engineering support for the planning department on petitions that are filed throughout the
- county, serves as staff on planning commission, plaque committee, all of those reviews that go through
- that process. He assists in preparing our annual bids and material bids to make sure that we're satisfying all
- specifications on that. So that position, there is nobody to step into that position. It's not a multiple
- position, so there's nobody that would be able to take over those duties because what we stress there
- are duties that require a license for a professional engineer. All right. Thank you for that. And you
- said it's 40,000 every February, right? Yeah.
- It's in Indiana code if you have a licensed engineer. I believe the auditor's office files that. We
- give them the certificate number and then we receive 40,000 back into the MBH fund. Okay, thank you
- for that. All right, looking over here to my left, or yes, my left, Councilor Decker. I appreciate all
- the information there and that you always are figuring out what funds are eligible and what are not
- and then even, as I've said a million times, your track record at going to the state.
- to get us additional dollars for matches. I know it's not always easy to do, and we don't always make
- the matching process as easy here. One question I had for you, and you can always get back to me on
- this later, does the city and does either of the towns, I'm assuming just one of the towns would be
- eligible for this, do they have an engineer on their staff like we do, to your knowledge? Like the city
- of Bloomington? Yeah. I believe they have three.
- Okay. Town of Ellisville, I'm not sure, I don't think that they have a certified engineer, but I can't
- swear by that. Thank you. And the reason I ask on this, and I didn't want to put you on the spot on
- that, although I know you generally know everything you gotta know on these things, is I think we're
- increasingly tonight seeing an illustration of what I think gets lost sometimes on the public, is that
- there is one
- one entity providing a role or one specification to do the role. So for instance, I know there's intense
- discussion in Eltsville and Richland Township about potential action that could affect all of us. But
- there's to my knowledge, based on what you're saying and what my hunch is, there's one engineer to figure
- out those roads and that's still us doing that. And yet if
- They move forward. Don't move forward. It's still going to be from what I understand from descriptors.
- It's still going to be us on the hook for figuring things out. But if not, they're going to have to
- clarify that. But my point on this being is a lot of these positions that we're hearing, it's
- it's us or bust, and bust means that somebody doesn't call back to somebody trying to figure out the
- complicated this or that with their land or a juvenile prosecutor. And so I just, I think sometimes
- that gets lost on the public or legislators who think we're just burning money here. But these are jobs
- that somebody's gotta do that, because if that road's not right, that snow plows off in the ditch and
- 40 other people are too. So thanks for listening to my long comment.
- Anybody else? No? Okay. Yes, Councillor Williams. Looking at the fiscal impact and then I know you said
- at the beginning your plan for overlapping with a training lane. How long has the person in this position
- been in this position? So the engineer started 10 years ago.
- It'll be 10 years in February. Before that, we never have had a licensed engineer on staff. And so the
- fiscal impact that we have shows the same salary for a new person. Is that because this is? It's a special
- occupation, so there's no grid. Got it. Got it. Okay. And if we approve hiring this position, are we
- approving that overlap in training?
- Actually, I think it's another item on your agenda later on for a creation of that line. Okay. Okay,
- thank you. Yes, Councillor Iverson. I just wanted to speak just real quickly on something that was just
- said in the last vote. Regardless of how we vote up here, it is not a reflection on anybody's character,
- your work ethic,
- or how you manage your office. We are making really difficult fiscal decisions and next year it's gonna
- be even tougher. So I wanna be exceptionally clear that no matter who comes up here and talks about
- the great work they're doing, that is a given. We understand that you all are putting hours and hours
- and hours into the work for the public of Monroe County and we just,
- I wanted to make really clear that we're drawing a distinction between the work that you're doing and
- the fiscal outlook that we need to have here in the county. Thank you. Yes, Councillor Hawke. Right.
- So back a few years ago when we did not have a certified highway engineer,
- Is that what Nelson Steele did? I mean, I know we can't. He was a consultant. It was an engineering
- firm. And we still utilize engineering firms. Don't get me wrong. We still use outside sources. But
- I take a project like Fullerton Pike or the Vernal Pike connector or one of our bridge replacements.
- That engineer has been part of every step of making sure that they are built to design our eyes out there.
- So it pays the county to have that position for that expertise, to have it on board, and you're not
- outsourcing it. So when you think about the major projects that's happened in the last few years since
- Toby's been here, and we're talking about Toby's spot, right? No? Which one? Highway engineer? Yeah.
- It's Paul Satterly. Oh, I can't, why do I keep thinking of him? Toby's our highway superintendent, he's
- back there. Okay, so.
- Sorry about that. I just promoted you. I don't think he's leaving. Do you know something I don't know?
- Yeah, I was going to say we just locked the doors because Toby can't leave. So what happens then if
- we delay this for like four months, five months, or something of the sort, until we can see where we're
- going to end up? Because if we keep saying yes to everybody, then we're going to have to have a blanket
- percent layoff at some point in time, folks.
- You can't just keep spending $5 million more every year than what's coming in. And I get what you're
- saying. I bet you're going to hit me anyway. I'm still going to comment. I appreciate your views. But
- me not replacing this does not do anything for your $4 million deficit.
- It is a completely different budget. It's not going to change that overall picture. And if you look
- back at the budget that I took over five years ago with the NVH, we have maintained that budget. We
- have kept mainly fully staffed. We have not added, we add new roads every single year. We've never added
- a new employee in that NVH budget at all. We've moved things around and we sustain.
- Right, I mean, I get that, I get that. I'm just, what I'm trying to figure out is a way that. But if
- you have that four month gap, how is that new person, new engineer gonna come in four months afterwards
- and know where the county's at with their projects? I get it, I get it at least. Here's what we have.
- We have a situation where we've got to get from point A to point B somehow. Now, what I heard from the
- highway department when we were doing budgets was,
- our revenue's not coming in enough to cover the administrative cost, and we're gonna have to figure
- out some way to get that out of some other budget. And so that's what I was responding to. So those
- numbers were just ran for me yesterday in an email, 2022, 23, 24. And a lot of times people do not look
- at the numbers of the 1173 and the 1176 when they were split back and starting in 2018.
- So sometimes they're just looking at the 1176 and saying, I have this pot of money when they're actually
- forgetting that I have the two and a half million over here for restricted that I can pay employees
- out of and such. And we are maintaining that. We are doing the services that we need to do year round
- to the best of our ability with this size of staff that we have not increased in years.
- And to cut those is, yeah, it's a problem. Okay, next question. Okay, we know that if we didn't replace
- the engineer, we're gonna lose the $40,000. Correct. And his salary is, that salary, I shouldn't say
- his, could be a woman. 97. Who do we know? No. Could be who? Whoever it's gonna be. What do we think
- that salary's going to be?
- It's keeping it at the budget that it is. That's right at 97,300, I believe. I've checked it and I looked
- at the three engineering positions in the city of Bloomington. We're right in that vicinity of the low
- and the high end. I've checked other counties to make sure we're competitive and we are. Okay, so what
- I'm saying is, what my question is, it's 97.3, but of that we get $40,000. Correct. Okay, so really,
- It's not 97.3, because we're not gonna get the 40 if we don't have the... We will not get the 40. And
- so then that leaves only about $57,000 to hire engineers by the hour to come and do that, and they're
- not gonna be on site as is needed. See, you were jumping to conclusions. You didn't let me finish my
- questions, girl.
- So when we're looking at that, we could literally be spending more because we've got $57,000 to work
- with all of the engineers we would have to hire. And they're not gonna be there to do all. And do you
- see where I'm coming from? I mean, I'm gonna say no to most every request that comes up here, but it
- makes little sense
- to not say yes to this and know that we're going to actually be writing checks out to an engineering
- group to do what's being done in-house. Otherwise, I would say no and just let everybody go ahead and
- hit me, but this one, dollars and cents, makes no sense because we have to do
- A lot of these things, we can't just ignore it and not have an engineer, we have to do it. And I think
- Ms. Ridge has definitely made that case for that, so we appreciate that. Thank you. All right,
- moving on, we will go to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward
- to the lectern here in the NETU Hill Room, or you can raise your hand via Teams.
- It looks like we might have a commenter behind Ms. Ridge. So again, anybody that wants to make public
- comment, again, you have up to three minutes, state your name for the record. So I'll alternate from
- here back to the team universe here. So we'll go ahead with our first public commenter here in person.
- My name is Sarah Ryderband.
- I have sat on the MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the last 25 years. And I can tell
- you that it's made quite a difference to have the county have a certified engineer representing the
- county. They know what we're talking about. They're able to bring real detail and information to the table
- When we are looking at plans around the county, the city has two, Ellisville has none in answer to that
- question. And when we have an issue with a county road, to have someone with expertise to be able to
- address why we need to handle a situation in a particular way really helps the MPO
- to move forward in a reasonable fashion and to use those federal dollars to the advantage of everyone
- in this county. So I would really support and hope that you all will support this request from planning.
- All right, next up, we will go to the public commenter here via Teams. Again, state your name for the
- record, and you'll have up to three minutes. And then, well, first, before you do all that, you need
- to unmute. So please go ahead and unmute, state your name, and you'll have up to three minutes. Hello,
- it's Margaret Clements again, and I've been a member as well of the Metropolitan Planning Organization
- for several years.
- Lisa Ridge pointed out, this is a good investment for the County. And what she is describing and allocating
- for this position is an example of good and parsimonious budgetary leadership development and stewardship
- of funds. So I encourage you to vote for this position and to approve her request. Thank you.
- Are there any last minute takers for public comment on this item? Seeing none, may we please have a
- roll call vote. This is a motion, this is a roll call on a motion to approve the hiring of the highway
- engineer. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor
- Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.
- All right, and next up is the next item for the Highway Department. Council, I move to open for discussion
- and possible approval the Highway Department's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed
- to hire two positions, the 15835 truck driver and 15844 truck driver positions. Second. So we need truck drivers.
- We actually have a position open that's been vacant. We have somebody retiring next week and then we
- have another one that is taking employment elsewhere. We also had a stormwater equipment operator yesterday
- come in and they are taking a position elsewhere, which will open up that position. So if I have to
- follow the process, I'll be back at your next meeting for that one.
- We have, our crews are on 24 hour call, whether it be for tornado storm and the upcoming snow season.
- They can work hours on end, two to three hours with breaks in between, trying to get the roads and everything
- open for the traveling public, doing the best with what we've got. Again, we have over 700 miles of
- roadway. We have never increased our staff. We have worked with what we have and being down three positions,
- is detrimental to the public, not just us. We don't stop when it's paving season. There's sidewalk repairs,
- there's pipes to replace, there's brush to cut, there's potholes to patch. The list is endless. They
- don't stop. It's 24-7 that we get calls from dispatch. We have a rotating call-out list, so if you eliminate
- more off that list, it's just gonna keep going around to where you're gonna run out of employees to
- be able to call.
- We're coming up on a mandatory December 1st to March 31st that all of our crews have to be available
- for snow removal and it's part of their snowplow Bonus that they receive in April that basically is
- just so we can serve the public to the best of our ability I'm more than willing to leave the extra
- position open not fill it but I would
- really like to fill these two positions. We also have a CDL. We have made ourselves a training facility
- for the CDL program. It's worked really well for us. We have two flagging positions. We train them on
- site. We help them obtain their CDL, and then they stay with us for employment for two years.
- This hiring phrase eliminates us from being able to even do that with two potential candidates that
- we have right now in those positions. With the hiring phrase, we can't move them up to truck drivers
- either. So I guess my request is to be able to hire two of the three positions. Okay, I see Councillor
- Hawk. I'll go Councillor Hawk and then Councillor Henry. Okay, well first of all, this to me is something
- we can't ignore.
- because when it starts snowing out there and the trucks are going by so that we can get to point A to
- point B safely. And today I was talking to Chief Dillard and he was saying how much he appreciated the
- fact that when they needed to get out with the fire trucks, whatever, the highway had to get out there
- first so they could get there. And he appreciated how you worked together.
- And that's just literally saving lives. So, you know, I just don't see how we say no to the person that's
- going to be getting the snow plow to your house. But I do want, while we're talking about that, because
- I don't want anybody to think that, oh, you're also going to be, if Elstville should go ahead and do
- all of Richland,
- They've never contacted the highway department to say, oh, you're going to still do that. I mean, as
- far as I know. And so we shouldn't even put that out there into the air that that's going to happen,
- because I do not believe that it's in the county's best interest to take on the responsibility, because
- then we would have to start going into the city of Bloomington and doing part of their streets.
- So I don't understand how that even came about as being a part of it, but I mean, I've heard you say
- more than once that we are not, the more miles you get, you get some additional dollars for the more
- miles, but it costs more to take care of those miles than what revenue is that's coming in. And so maybe
- that's something that was not understood
- before, but I think we need to be very clear that's not going to happen. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank
- you for that comment. I know we're dancing on the edges of recent reporting about the Richland-Ellitsville
- Squaresville proposal, but again, I think it's fair to say that if you wanna be a city, you have city
- problems now, and so you pay for city things with city dollars in the limits there, so I guess we're
- gonna get to that conversation at some point. That doesn't involve you right now, but I do have some
- questions, though, to try to get some real-world understanding of this. I'd like to talk a little bit
- about the November 10th, Monday ice conditions we had in the county. The travel advisory was called
- at 826 after schools,
- rush hour started, road conditions started to get pretty gross about 11 or 12 o'clock that night. Can
- you walk us through what that meant for your department? You had these individuals currently employed,
- right? But help us understand how we had road conditions and then we had the advisory come after so
- we can get an understanding of how that works. So I will. Yeah, Toby's coming. So I will tell you, I
- was out of town, but I was very aware of what was happening.
- Toby went ahead and assigned five people and himself to come in at 1 a.m., right? 1 a.m. to start our
- brine locations with our new brine system that was built. So we have routes for just the brine, and
- they went to the bridges, the curves, starting at 2 a.m., five hours beforehand. It's my understanding at 5 a.m.,
- we really didn't have an issue, but come 6 a.m.,
- It was an issue around the county. All of our guys at that point are in out at 7 a.m. So Toby watches
- the weather. Our two assistants watch the weather. They work very close with emergency management. I
- believe that is who calls the travel advisory after conversing with I believe the sheriff's department,
- dispatch, highway, and the commissioners. And then they put out the travel advisory. And then they work
- hand in hand with the department checking the status of the roads.
- I felt we were as prepared as we could be in that situation that really wasn't expected around the county.
- I'm not sure what other entities did, but we did have our brine trucks out at one, two o'clock in the
- morning to start that process. Thanks for that. And this is maybe my own edification, but is there a
- standing priority list of what roads get
- cloud first arterials and presumably fire departments for public safety. Is that something you can speak
- to? We do. Yeah, absolutely. We have about, depends on the number of employees that we have, 30 to 35
- routes and those drivers are instructed to get to your major arterials first and then we'll go to second
- rate and then we'll go back. Usually subdivisions are last.
- They're instructed, like I said, and it depends on the snow. It depends on if it's ice. It depends on
- what the situation is. Every storm's different. Continues storming. Those guys are going to stay on
- their main roads and just keep those open. And those secondary roads are probably not going to get hit
- to the next day. It is, timing is always an issue. You know, when's it coming? How long's it last? We
- kind of got two little different situations
- Sunday into Monday. The first little issue just kind of melted off. I seen the second Monday morning
- was probably going to maybe cause some problems. So we got some guys in, ran those bridges, ran most
- of those hills, got the curves on those routes. And obviously, you just try to get the main ones. If
- we try to get everything, we're going to bring them all in.
- And you've got to be very careful. When you push that button and you bring all those guys in and you
- start all those trucks and you start spending money on salt and diesel fuel, you better make sure something's
- going on. And we're not an end dot and we don't have that money. So, you know, it's left to myself and
- the rest of us to decide, okay, when do you push that button and bring them all in? Yeah, no, I appreciate
- that. How many trucks were out that night or that morning?
- That morning, I think we had 30, including pickups. So we have some plows on pickups, probably 32 to
- 35. So 35 drivers, and we're going to be down to, which is what this request is asking. OK, that's it.
- Thank you. And I guess to speak to that, so you take those two trucks, those guys have a route. So you
- would have to take those in around, it's usually 20 to 30 miles.
- So that's 40 to 60 line miles. So you have to take that mileage and put it on somebody else, or it just
- waits. That's the issue. I mean, these positions are the ones with boots on the ground. They're the
- ones out filling the potholes, out driving the trucks, spreading the salt. Thanks for all that. I know
- there's a lot, but I just thought, I mean, this is real world. So that happened last Monday. So if those
- folks remember that, so thanks for walking us through it. Yeah, that's it. All right.
- Thank you.
- primary reasons is I am always amazed between all of our entities, how those roads get cleared in those
- crucial times, and that's just the tip of the iceberg that we see. The irony is when I get an hour or
- two in the early mornings or late at night, I have a book I'm reading right now. It's a horror book.
- and it's in a town where the snow never gets removed from the roads and one of the drivers is always
- drunk. And I thought, that's not Monroe County, that's for sure. And your people always bring such peace.
- to that. I wish that some of our folks were a little bit more observant of that. Sometimes I'm amazed
- on social media what it said. I do want to say one thing. I appreciate very much that we're getting
- into, we've had some conversation among council members about who provides services and when, and some
- things are articulated. I'm not on that Richland-Eltsville question. I know that, again, that is not
- your deal, but in about a year, it's going to be somebody's deal heading one way or the other as that
- would start to move. I've not heard the clarity that I heard the two counselors down here articulate.
- And sometimes with my inquiries, I've not heard that clarity. But my point is that we have to, when
- we've got declining revenues coming in of all sorts, and the services don't change, people still need
- services, somebody that took an oath office has to say who gets what and where, and somebody out there
- in the public has to know that, whether that's law enforcement, whether that's roads, whether that's
- whatever. And so as these things get discussed publicly, somebody has to think about where those drivers
- come from, who's driving what, and where they're going. This is a large territory. This is within a
- year, if I'm looking at that calendar right, this is within a year that that starts propelling and moving,
- and not to bring you into that, Lisa Ridge, but in a year, you're one way or the other in or out of
- it, so we gotta be talking about that now. I'm gonna still keep going over here to my left. Nope,
- all right. Yes, Councilor Iverson.
- And I want to be really clear, the fund that this is sitting in is still that 1176. That's that motor
- vehicle highway that we just talked about that supervisor with. So again, this does not have a direct
- impact on county general. Correct. It does not. I also want to state, I know
- the stormwater position that came open. A lot of times that is an equipment operator. A lot of times
- a truck driver from this budget 1176 could possibly move into that position depending on who applies
- for it. So I could be back here for a truck driver in the NVH again. So it could be a repeat coming
- around. So I want to throw that out there. I don't know if it
- Thank you for that. 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 I see we
- have a hand raised via Teams. Again, state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
- And you need to unmute.
- Okay, thank you. It's Margaret Clements again. And I'm speaking to you as a taxpayer now. And I would
- like to commend number one, the highway department for the way that they keep our roads. And I'm really
- proud of the services that you provide and of all the services provided in Monroe County. This is a
- very valuable service to me
- and to our community members. It enables for the conduct of commerce during adverse weather, and it
- also allows for the conduct of professional services in adverse weather. And in the good weather, it
- keeps our town looking good. So I urge you to approve not only this request, but the one that will be
- requested in December. But as a taxpayer, this is a very,
- useful service to me, thank you. Thank you. All right, any last minute takers for public comment on
- this item? And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote. And this is a roll call on the motion
- to approve the hiring of two truck driver positions. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
- Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion
- passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Next up is item eight, which is
- ongoing business. And first up on the deck is the health department.
- Council I move to approve the amended health services director job position and update the behavioral
- health and wellness coordinator to public health nurse and the COVID-19 school liaison to public health
- nurse school liaison with their amended job descriptions and create the public health nurse communicable
- disease position. Second. All right we got a motion and a second and I see Ms. Lori Kelly is joining
- us via Teams.
- Yes, good evening council. So the health department is requesting approval of the job descriptions for
- the health services director and the three public health nurse positions. This is due to transitioning
- nursing services in-house. These positions will oversee and provide communicable disease investigations,
- contact tracing, vaccinations, health screenings and testing, health education,
- respond to public health emergencies, school health services, lead case management, referrals to clinical
- care, and trauma and injury prevention. These three nurse positions will also be cross-trained as the
- IU Health contract nurses currently are to be able to provide backup services, cover time off, and ensure
- that all services are being provided. Okay. Thank you.
- Now I'll open it up to Council and I'll look over here to my right to see if anybody has any questions.
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. I was pleased to see that these positions came back from WISC so quickly. That
- was really
- Wonderful to see, thank you to staff for their hard work on getting this done. And of course, as we've
- got multiple people from the Health Department here in that U-Hill and online, we've been reminded over
- and over again of the urgency of this matter. I will note that we do have the WISC factoring for all
- four of these positions.
- And so we know that WISC not only is looking at what is here in Monroe County, but is what is happening
- in other communities where there are similar positions. So I'm encouraged to read their recommendations
- for all four. And I'm glad that, again, that it came back so quickly. We're able to move on this. Anybody
- else over here to my right?
- All right, looking to my left. Seeing none, okay. Next up, we will go to public comment. If there's
- public comment on this item, you can raise your hand via Teams, or you can come forward to the lectern
- here in the Nattie Hill room, and you'll have up to three minutes. And then, of course, state your name
- for the record. I see somebody walking up. Again, state your name for the record, and you'll have up
- to three minutes. I'm Sarah Ryderband. I am the health officer from Monroe County, and of course, I support
- this proposal, thank you. Anybody else via Teams or NatU Hillbrow? All right, and seeing none, may we
- please have a roll call vote? And this is a roll call to approve the amended job descriptions and create
- the new job description. Councilor Wilz? Yes.
- Yes. Councilor Hawk. Yes. Councilor Fiddle. Yes. Councilor Deckert. Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Councilor
- Crossley. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Next up item B. Council, I move to approve the health
- department's request to fill the public health nurse, public health nurse school liaison and public
- health nurse communicable diseases positions. Second. All right. We got a motion and a second. Ms. Kelly.
- Um, yeah, so I just wanted to say that we do recognize the seriousness of the hiring freeze. We have
- evaluated alternatives and there really are no long term options that exist that would allow us to meet
- our statutory and public health obligations without hiring for these positions. So we are just requesting
- the ability to be able to move forward post and fill these positions. All right. Thank you.
- Any questions over here to my left? No? Any questions to my right? No? All right, moving on, we'll go
- to public comment. Public comment, if you would like to make a comment, again, state your name for the
- record. You'll have up to three minutes and you'll need to raise your hand via Teams if you'd like to
- do the same. Once again, your health officer. Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me. I just wanted to make sure
- Didn't see any, okay, now you go. Once again, I'm your health officer, Sarah Ryderband, and we've certainly
- spoken a lot about the urgency and the need to replace what has been removed by IU Health as of January
- 1st in the coming year. These positions are necessary and expedient, so I implore you
- please to approve our hiring of public health nurses to fill these essential roles. Thank you. Anybody
- else in the NatU Hill room would like to make public comment or raise your hand via Teams? Seeing no
- movement or no hands raised, may we please have a roll call vote? This is a roll call vote to approve
- the filling of the three positions the public health
- nurse positions. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Feidl?
- Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. And Councillor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes 7-0.
- All right. Item C. Council, I move to approve the Health Department's request to amend the 2025 salary
- ordinance and fund 1159-0000 Health Fund
- to remove account line 10180 behavioral health and wellness coordinator and add account line 10189 public
- health nurse communicable disease 35 hours Pat C exempt and in fund 1161-0000 local public health services
- add account line 10176 public health nurse 35 hours Pat C exempt. Second. Okay, Ms. Ridge. Oh, I'm sorry,
- not Ms. Ridge.
- So this is essentially a housekeeping item just to be able to update the salary ordinance so that we
- can proceed forward with filling these positions. Thank you. Any questions or comments on this item
- from council?
- Yes, Councillor Iverson. I will note, Ms. Kelly, that we're moving one position into one fund and another
- and another fund. Is this going to be sustainable where we can keep these positions in these funds or
- is this going to be something where we're going to have to come back to council and move them in another
- like month or so? Oh, so for the 1161 and for the
- 81 11. Well, that's next. So for 1161, those that positions already budgeted. Um, and so we're really
- just going to be doing a transfer in 1159 for the money that was in the contractual agreement to the
- personnel line. And we also have grant funding. So this will at least get us through 2026. All right.
- Thank you. Call over here.
- All right, if there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the Natt
- U Hill room or raise your hand via Teams. John, may we please have a roll call vote? And this is a roll
- call vote on the salary ordinance amendment. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
- Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Next up is item D. Council I move to approve the Health Department's
- request to amend the 2026 salary ordinance in Fund 1159-0000 Health Fund.
- to add account line 1 0 1 8 9 public health nurse communicable diseases 35 hours Patsy exempt in fund
- 11 61 dash 0 0 0 0 local public health services at account line 1 0 1 7 6 public health nurse 35 hours
- Patsy exempt and in fund 8 1 1 1 dash 0 0 0 0 crisis coag support add account line 1 0 1 2 4 public
- health nurse school liaison
- 35 hours, Pat C exempt. Ms. Kelly. So again, this is just some housekeeping and so that we can proceed
- forward in 2026 with these positions. So the public health nurse, which was formerly the behavioral
- health and wellness coordinator is already submitted in that state budget. So for the year of 2026,
- so no issues there again,
- for the public health nurse communicable disease. We'll be using the money that was set aside for the
- IU health contract to be able to support that position. And we have our school liaison grant funds,
- which we're just continuing to spend down, which we'll be able to provide the salary costs for the public
- health nurse school liaison.
- Any discussions here? All right, let's see, hands raised. Councilor Iverson and then Councilor Huck.
- So Ms. Kelly, as we're about to take this vote, have you been in contact with the Indiana Department
- of Health? And presuming that these positions will be filled relatively soon, this does cover our statutory
- obligations, correct?
- Um, if we have these, if we're providing these services with this position, uh, yes. And I have been
- in contact with them again, just, uh, most recently, uh, yesterday. And so we're just continuing that
- conversation. And, um, I've also been in discussion with the Morgan County health department to see
- if we might be able to work out an inter-local agreement if we need some of their assistance while we
- make this transition as well.
- Well, that's certainly a lot of initiative on your part. So thank you for that. And please do keep the
- council up to date. We're very concerned about how all this is gonna go on for the good of the people
- of Monroe County. Thank you, Councilor Hock. Right, could you remind us, were you able to cover the
- self insurance for each of these positions in the funds?
- and not have it charged back to county general? For 2026, so these, the behavioral health position is
- in fund 1161 for that self-insurance. We will pull the self-insurance from the grant fund. And since
- this will be a new position for the local county fund, I think
- that would need to be, we would need to have money transferred into that line, again, from the contractual
- line. All right. Looking to my left, does anybody have any questions? All right, seeing none, if there's
- public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here, then at your hill room, or you
- can raise your hand via Teams.
- And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. This is on the salary amendment for the 2026 salary
- ordinance. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckert? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
- Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Okay.
- All right, thank you.
- And it looks like that concludes our items for old business. I'm gonna take a brief recess here. So
- I'm gonna give counselors an opportunity to take a bio break. So please come back here at 27 after.
- Yes. All right, so, and.
- All right, so we are back and we are on new business and new business starts with the recorder's office
- Council I move to approve the recorder's request for an additional appropriation fund 1217 dash zero
- zero zero zero county elected officials training of $2,000 in the services category second Thank you,
- and we have a quarter miss Amy Swain here welcome
- Good to see everyone tonight. I'll make this as painless as possible. We need an additional appropriation
- and we have the money to pay for that. The fund is created
- so that certain offices can get newly elected officials training. We also are required to have so many
- hours of training. These are state called meetings by the State Board of Accounts. I did increase the
- line this time to account for council
- being able to go, that statute was changed in 2024, so that's reflected in the increase, but there were
- also additional expenses as well. The fund is very healthy, and so the additional $2,000 will be taken
- out of that fund that is created specifically for this training. It's funded by fees from the recorder's
- office, and like I said, it's very healthy.
- Thank you very much. That was pretty self-explanatory there. But I'm gonna look to my left to see if
- any colleagues have any questions, comments, or concerns. I'm seeing none. I'm gonna look to my right,
- and Council Ahog has to do it, so you're up next. Sorry, I know I said it. No, you're good. When I asked
- the recorder for information, and thank you for the information you sent, and it showed how much the
- increase was for different departments, the county council's budget
- had jumped way up, and then I found out that we're paying staff to go to some, and I think we have to
- lead the way to make sure that we are watching travel and training just like we've asked other departments
- to do. And I think it's important for us to take advantage of all we can learn online. There's so much
- from the DLGF and AIC,
- We don't have to go to conferences. And when I say it, because those conferences, most of those are
- set up for the elected officials to learn from the other elected officials. It is not meant for staff.
- So we need to be looking at what we're spending on that. Because, for instance, the AIC, when you go
- to French Lick, there's not sessions there for staff.
- And it's not just this budget that is being used for training because I had the auditor's office send
- me the copies of how much was being spent out of unappropriated. So we wouldn't even see it. We may
- think we know what people are spending on travel and training, but it's under line items that we don't
- see the appropriations called unappropriated.
- Do you have anything you want to add to that? I don't. Just piggyback off of recorder Swain's comments.
- The county elected official fund is healthy. It's trending upward, which is great as far as revenue.
- As you know, departments also have their own training and travel lines and their departmental budgets
- oftentimes. And then as Councilor Hock noted, we also are able to utilize the general fund unappropriated
- for certain state called expenditures as well. State called meetings, expenditures for state called
- meetings. We want to utilize the elected official training fund whenever possible just because that
- revenue, the money in that fund is specifically for that. All right, so if there's no other further
- question, oh, then Councilor Wilson has her hand. Yes, it's okay. Sorry, I didn't realize that about
- the unappropriated part. So is that just elected officials who use the unappropriated or is that anybody?
- I don't have the code in front of me,
- If memory serves, it's the whomever's on the call letter. So oftentimes for the auditor's office,
- for example, it will be the elected official plus so many of their chief deputies, which just, I have
- a chief deputy, but I also have director-level employees in my department, which would be considered
- chiefs as well. And that's usually part of the state-called letter. And so it's sent out by the State
- Board of Accounts
- asking them to be there for those trainings. And seeing no additional questions or comments, we'll go
- to public comment. If you have public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here
- in the NatU Hill Room and raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call
- vote? Councilor Wilts? Yes.
- Yes. Councillor Hock. Yes. Councillor Feidl. Yes. Councillor Decker. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor
- Crossley. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we welcome back the
- Highway Department. Council I move to approve the Highway Department's request for the creation of a
- new account line 16800 transitional temporary training position
- This is for the highway engineer and simultaneously amend the 2026 salary ordinance to add set account
- line 16800 transitional temporary training position for highway engineer in fund 1176-0000 motor vehicle
- highway. Second. All right. Ms. Ridge is back again. So this is basically so we can
- try and hire an engineer and we can have a training line to make that transition a little bit easier
- in January. Kim, I worked with her. She recommended to do it this way and then if we have to do an additional
- in January or transfer from another account line. Pretty self-explanatory. All right, so any questions
- or comments for Ms. Ridge from council? Yes, Councilor Iverson. My question is why a position
- We just talked about how there's ample engineers in the community. Why not just ask for a training line
- where the new person can be trained by other engineers in the community? Why are we creating this temporary
- position? So this, we ran into it in the past where we did not have, to where we didn't have an overlap
- within a salary. So I think they began utilizing this type of line a couple years ago.
- four people, four departments to be able to make that transition easier since you can't pay for two
- people out of a budget line that only has one person budgeted. We did that with the probation department.
- I want to say recently and within the past year or so. Yep, yes. Councilor Decker, did you have your
- hand up? Oh, okay, Councilor Wilks. Thank you.
- So how long are you anticipating for an overlap? The month of January till that position becomes open
- February 6th. It's our goal to post it for December, do interviews, hopefully get applicants by the
- time they would give a two week notice. We would really like to get somebody in there. I mean it could
- be the middle of January and only have a two week overlap. Yeah. And your intent
- Because you won't have an appropriation in that line. So your intent is to just do transfer from another
- line until I can do an additional. Okay. Okay. And you do you anticipate that you will need an additional.
- Let's just say it's filled for I mean I guess I'm looking at what's the fiscal impact of doing this.
- And I know you had a vaguely I had the numbers on there but then
- I was told I couldn't do an additional because you can't do that for 2026 at this point. I want to say
- it was around $9,700 if we had somebody full time for the whole month of January. And that's what we
- would have done for an additional. Again, looking at the timeline and by the time you post it for the
- next couple weeks and you're in the holidays, I don't think we'll have anybody on board at the beginning
- of January. Thank you.
- All right, and so if there's no other further questions, if there's public comment for this item, you
- can come forward to the lectern here in the Nightingale room, or you can raise your hand via Teams.
- And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckert? Yes.
- Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
- Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Does the motion pass?
- Motion passes, sorry. Unanimously. All right, so because Ms. Ridge loves County Council night so much,
- she is staying here for more items and we are at item C. Council, I move to approve the Highway Department's
- request and fund 8166-00
- 00 Rockport Road Bridge number 308 for an additional appropriation of $415,200 in the services category.
- Second. So this is to appropriate the funds. This bridge is to go to letting in February. So this is
- for the construction line for our match when we have to pay it in February and grant funds are a carry
- forward. So that fund amount will carry forward.
- Thank you. All right, any questions or comments from council on this item? No, seeing none. If there's
- public comment, you can raise your hand via Teams and come to the lectern here in the Nattie Hill room.
- And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor
- Hawk? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes.
- Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Motion passes 7-0. All right. Next up is item
- D. Council, I move to approve the Highway Department's request for a fund to fund transfer of cash from
- fund 1135-0000 Cume Bridge to fund 8166-0000 Rockport Road Bridge number 308 in the amount of $477,200.
- Second. All right. Thank you.
- So this is the fund-to-fund transfer from cash from Kuhn Bridge into the grant fund. This will help
- cover our local match for the construction and construction inspection for that bridge project. Okay,
- thank you. And Council, do you have any questions or comments on this item? All right, and seeing none from us,
- If public comment is here on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here, or you can raise your
- hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Deckert? Yes. Councilor
- Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes.
- Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes 7-0. Thank you.
- Council I move to approve the highway department's request and fund eighty one seventy six dash zero
- zero zero zero eagles and bridge number nine twenty two the creation of account line three seven four
- one one construction and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation of nine mil nine hundred
- seventy six million one hundred forty six thousand and eighty cents in the services category second
- nine hundred excuse me yep thank you thank you nine hundred seventy six thousand
- One hundred forty six dollars and eighty cents trying to get you more And this is basically also this
- eagles and bridge goes to letting January 14th So this would be to cover our construction match for
- that grant project Any questions or comments from council on this item?
- Seeing none, if there's public comment, you can come here in person and speak, or you can raise your
- hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor
- Hawk? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes.
- Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes seven zero.
- All right, and last but not least from the Highway Department is item F. Council, I move to approve
- the Highway Department's request for a fund-to-fund transfer of cash from fund 1135-0000 Cume Bridge
- to fund 8176-0000 Eagleson Bridge number 922 in the amount of $1,078,146.80. Second. Okay, Mr. Ritch.
- And this is the cash to cover for our 20% local match for the project for construction and then our
- local match for construction inspection. Any questions or comments from council on this item? And seeing
- none, if there's public comment, again, you can come here in the room and speak or you can raise your
- hand via Teams. And still seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
- Councilor Wilz? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Decker?
- Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes 7-0. Okay. Thank you very much.
- And thank you to Ms. Ridge for a long night with the council. All right. Next up is item G from courts.
- Council, I move to approve the court's request and fund 1213-0000.
- guardian ad litem and a court appointed special advocate for an additional appropriation of $1,500 in
- the services category. Second. All right. And we have Ms. Abraham. Welcome. Okay. I was here not too
- long ago right after budgets, I think, for $5,000, but as of this morning,
- We are down to about, I think, 16 cents maybe in this fund with some more invoices yet to pay by the
- end of the year. This fund is one that can only be used by the courts for these mediations,
- parent coordination, and the co-parenting counseling. It's $20 from every divorce case that gets filed
- goes into this fund. So as of this morning, it still has $115,408 there. And I'm just asking for $5,000
- so that we can finish paying invoices for the year.
- 5,000 or 1,500? Well, he read the ADR. I think it's what Peter read. So that's why he jumped to that
- one. No, I read the GAL CASA. Oh, I'm sorry. That was my fault then. No, that's OK. Yes. OK. I heard
- you say it with the numbers. I am so sorry. No, no, no. It's been a long evening. Yeah, this is CASA.
- No wonder you guys are all staring at me like, what is she doing? It's OK. It's OK. It's OK.
- The CASA grant is the one, this is the third time I've been here for the CASA grant, they got a third
- one. So this is just a 1500 other pass through grant. So I just need it to be appropriate and we'll
- get the money right to them. It's already in the auditor's office. Appreciate that, all right. Any questions
- or comments from council related to this item? No? All right, if there's public comment to be had on
- this item, you can raise your hand via Teams or you can come in person here in the Nattie Hill room.
- Seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor
- Hawk? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Motion passes 7-0. All right. Next up item H. Here's 8-R.
- Council, I move to approve the court's request and fund 2200-0000 alternative dispute resolution for
- an additional appropriation of $5,000 in the services category. Second. Okay. I'll say I've already
- explained it. You want me to repeat all that? All right. Thank you. And any questions or comments on
- this item from council?
- Seeing none, if there's public comment, you can come here to the lectern here in the Nightingale room
- or you can raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor
- Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckert? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
- Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes 7-0.
- Thanks for the confusion. All right. Next up is item I from the sheriff's office. And just as a reminder,
- this is item I lowercase I or baby I. So counsel, as the sheriff's office and honors office have continued
- working on this grant funding, it has become necessary to amend the sheriff's office request.
- The amended request creates the following account lines and simultaneous appropriations in the following
- amounts. And then I think, do I need to actually read the MCI grant amounts here? I'm looking
- for clarification on reading the motion.
- The first agenda item is actually the interlocal. I think the motion that you read in the beginning
- under adoption of agenda is to add the interlocal. So resolution 2025-52. All right. You ready for the
- interlocal? Molly's talking about the interlocal. Got it. Council, I move to approve resolution 2025-52
- regarding an interlocal between Mineral County and Ellitsville.
- So the Sheriff's Office applied and will be receiving a traffic safety improvement grant through administered
- to the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute and funded through the National Highway Traffic Safety
- Administration. This grant will fund the development of a major crash investigation team consisting
- of members of the Sheriff's Office and the Ellitsville Police Department. And so since Ellitsville will
- be participating in the grant and will be receiving reimbursements per the grant, it became necessary
- to draft an interlocal
- outlying each agency's responsibilities per the grant and then basically how the team would function.
- So what was attached to the resolution is the interlocal. It's going to eventually be provided to the
- town of Ellisville on November 24th and then we'll go to the commissioners.
- I'm going to share the interlocal because there is language in the interlocal that I do believe needs
- change, so I would be requesting consideration for a possible amendment. So what you're presenting includes
- the changes you're recommending? I would be requesting a change to the interlocal, and then the interlocal
- is attached as Exhibit A to the resolution. So once that changes,
- approved if approved, it will change the exhibit and then the resolution would move forward to vote.
- I'll just run through the interlocal real quick. Article one is scope of work. It outlines who's on
- the team, what the duties of the team are.
- Article 2 outlines what the qualification of team members would be. Article 3 talks about how the team
- will be activated, and if Sergeant Molden wants to jump in at any point and add further detail, please
- feel free to do so. Article 4 talks about the grant term and how the agreement can be modified. Article
- 5 is payment, and so this talks about how
- cost will be submitted to from Ellisville or the sheriff's office to the auditor's office. And the language
- that I want to draw your attention to that I believe should be amended is currently it reads in the
- language in the yellow. So it will be the responsibility of the MCI team commander, which will be the
- sheriff's department person in charge of activating the team and will be Sergeant Molden.
- and the sheriff's office to provide notice to the town and the Monroe County Council in writing prior
- to the full exhaustion of overtime lines within the grant. Continuation of the team activity beyond
- available grant funds requires permission from the council. There, in fact, I think lies the problem.
- And so I think the language should be amended to what is in red, which is the Sheriff's Office agrees
- to notify the council and town in writing upon the full exhaustion of the overtime lines within the
- grant agreement. If the grant's overtime funding is exhausted, each respective agency shall be responsible
- for payment of its team members' activities with the understanding that no reimbursement from the grant
- will occur from such. So if overtime grant funds are out, Elitzville's paying for Elitzville's response,
- and then the Sheriff's Office is paying for the Sheriff's Office.
- The Sheriff's Office, so MCSO, commits to judiciously monitoring its overtime response of the MCI team,
- Major Crash Investigation Team, while balancing such with its statutory duties of law enforcement and
- public safety and working with the County Council on overtime budgetary matters. The Sheriff's Office
- shall follow the established policies and guidelines by law and the County Council for requesting additional
- appropriations for overtime lines outside of the grant.
- I am recommending the language in red over the language that is highlighted in yellow because I believe
- that the continuation of team activity is within the discretion of the sheriff. I think everyone would
- like if there's a major accident for deputies to just respond and not have to think about, is there
- an overtime approval for this? And so this honors the sheriff's authority while also giving the council
- notice of what the grant funding is.
- Council, I move to adopt the red text as the new text for section 5.3. Second. Okay. We got a motion
- and a second to adopt what was outlined by Ms. Turner-King. Does the Sheriff's Office have anything
- else to add to that? I feel like Ms. Turner-King has already
- captured the essence of the interlocal agreement. If you have specific questions about the team, I'm
- happy to answer them, but she's captured what we're asking for right now. Okay. All right. So yes, Councilor,
- if I have a question. So I'm just wondering if the parties of the interlocal agreement have agreed to
- all of this as we begin to think about approving it.
- So I've provided the interlocal to town of Alexville, specifically representatives from the police department
- and the town attorney. And we met about it last week. I think we kind of touched on everything that
- we would like to be changed. I sent them the amended agreement. I haven't received any feedback on it.
- And so I don't have any reason to believe they're not in agreement with it.
- Other questions or comments on the amendment as presented? Yes, Councillor Iverson. I'm sorry. I don't
- know who to address this to. This is six members that will be part of this team? That's correct, Councillor.
- Now, that does not necessarily mean that all six will respond to every crash. Each crash will have its
- own specific unique needs, but ultimately six people will be available to respond if needed.
- to each crash, but it could be fewer depending on each individual circumstances. Four of which are from
- the sheriff's office and two would be from the Eltsville Police Department. Excellent, thank you. And
- I can elaborate a little further. In the interlocal it says initially composed of six members. The idea
- is that this will be a reoccurring grant and if the need arises to adjust the team composition that
- we can. And then that those six team members' qualifications
- They possess a high level skill that requires them to be on the team. So accident reconstructionist,
- drug reconnection experts, something of that nature. Laura Wolks? Could you tell me the, so if we approve
- the changes that you've made,
- Does this need to go back to commissioners and town council? You are the first body to look at it. I
- thought it had already gone. It'll go to Ellitsville on November 24th and the commissioners on the 4th
- of December. Okay. All right. Any other questions or comments on this amendment? Okay. Oh,
- since we need to vote on the actual amendment of language and then we'll have to do the overall. All
- those in favor of approving the corrections as amended signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. Okay, motion carries. So now we come back to the larger motion at hand here, which is the
- resolution approval. Is there any other further discussion and questions or comments from council? Yes,
- Councilor Iverson.
- So in the contract, it talks about training costs, equipment costs, how are those going to be shared
- between the two taxing entities? So the grant provides for training. Currently, the sheriff's office
- will be the entity that is sending members to training. That might change in the future, but for now,
- that's what's happening. And for equipment, it's going to be a shared cost. Elitzville is purchasing
- some equipment.
- and in essence providing the local match for such and the sheriff's office will be purchasing some.
- And then that equipment will be housed with the sheriff's office or will it be housed in a? I'm going
- to. There's a clause in the interlocal and I can find it. The equipment is going to be
- In essence, the agency who, whoever buys it, they will allow the equipment to be primarily used for
- the team. It's in 6.1. Okay, thank you. The only thing else I will point out, there is one change that
- is probably going to occur, and I don't have the dates right now.
- there are several exhibits attached to the interlocal. One is exhibit A, which outlines the statement
- of work. Exhibit B, which is the 45-page grant agreement. And then exhibit C is going to be the sub-recipient
- policy for the sheriff's office because they will be responsible for monitoring Ellisville's compliance
- with the grant. And so I just wanted to point out in the sub-recipient policy,
- There are dates that Ellensville would submit quarterly reports to the Sheriff's Office and then the
- dates that the Sheriff's Office will submit those quarterly reports to the grantor. And so those dates
- will probably be adjusted. Thank you. And is there anything else that you'd like to add? No? Okay.
- All right, so if there is public comment on this item, you can raise your hand via Teams, or you can
- come forward to the lectern here in the NatU room. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call.
- This is a roll call to approve the interlocal. Yes. Commissioner, Councilor Wilts. Sorry.
- Yes. Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Deckert. Yes. Councillor Hawke. Yes.
- Councillor Iverson. Yes. And Councillor Crossley. Yes. Motion passes 7-0. All right. Thank you.
- Next item. Okay. So here
- Council, I move to approve the Sheriff's Office request and fund 8193-0000 MCI grant 20-616, the creation
- of new account lines as amended and simultaneous, nope, I need to go back up, don't I? I'm sorry. Let
- me go back up and let me scratch that motion and I'll read a new one.
- actually two motions because what happened was the agenda packet was sent out with the original numbers
- that we found were incorrect and so we needed to update those numbers so that's the first motion is
- to update those numbers so you have the correct numbers and then the second motion is then to approve
- the appropriations okay council I move that we update the
- appropriations for the MCI Grant 20-616, which is in Fund 8193-0000 to the following in Fund 10156 Merit
- Deputy. That should be one thousand six hundred ninety three dollars and seventy five cents. Wait,
- hold on. I think account. Account number 8193-0000.
- I'm slowing down. It's fund 8193, account 10156. Right, right, yep. Okay, I'm gonna keep going.
- Account 10173, merit deputy, $1,693.75. Account 15133, sergeant, $1,693.75.
- Account 15140 Sergeant, $1,693.75. Account 17102 Deputies Overtime, $13,334.00. Account 30028 Training
- Travel, $7,100.00. Account 38350 Grant Distribution, $11,066.00.
- And finally, account 47100 Equipment Law Enforcement at 16,600 for a total of 54,875. Okay, we got a
- motion and a second. Ms. Turner-King, did you have? Oh, okay. All right, so now we'll toss it back over here.
- This is just to create the funds and the account lines for this grant. Basically to get us started.
- Right. Because we have to do the approval first and then we're just going back. All three just go together.
- Yep. Okay. Got it. Is there any questions or comments from council on this item? Yes. Councilor Woods.
- Yeah. I'd like to get an idea of because the
- Let me phrase a question. I'm gonna get there. So the changes that were just made added a couple of
- lines that obviously were meant, I guess, not for overtime, but for just paying out regular time.
- So the idea, I mean, how are you arriving at the amount for overtime versus regular time? Is it just
- anticipated that they'll be both and we hope it all works out? I mean, what are you thinking? And it's
- purely curiosity.
- So in terms of the overtime allocation that was a projection that we made based on historical data in
- the past looking at county data for crashes that fit the criteria of which the team would be responding
- estimating about 12 for 12 month period for this for the grant period in question and then within that
- then trying to approximate
- based on some historical data in terms of what our previous reconstruction response is required in terms
- of number of work hours, as well as what we're trying to accomplish by expanding it slightly to arrive
- to the final amount there. I'm confident that we should be close with our estimation, but if we are
- incorrect, I wouldn't think it would be by very much. We'd be looking at a few hundred or maybe very low
- But I think we're going to be pretty close, although it is based on historical data, and we can never
- project with certainty what the coming year is going to mean for traffic safety locally here. So the
- line that is the grant distribution for collaboration with Ellitsville, is that to pay for their time?
- What is that exactly for? That is to reimburse them for their time and for the equipment. Anything that
- we are reimbursing ELTIL for is coming out of the grant distribution line. And that's only $4,800, right?
- I don't remember what the amount is. I mean, did that amount change? Yes. Okay. All right. Because that's
- a lot. I mean, that's tiny. So can you tell me what the amended amount was? Sorry.
- Procedurally, Councilor Iverson has made a motion to amend those numbers. We're not even to approving
- the appropriation or creating the account lines yet. This is just a motion to amend the request.
- Got it. Okay. If my questions are out of line, I apologize. I just didn't write down the numbers. I
- didn't know where we were heading. I didn't quite get how 4,000 was going on. There's a lot going on.
- Um, no, I think that makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, is there any other further questions or
- comments on this amendment item? Everybody has. Yes. The auditor. Yeah. The amendment is just to reflect
- what is actually in the grant document. So it, the original request did not reflect that. Okay.
- All right. So now that we,
- have that clarification. If there is 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. All right. And seeing none, may
- we please have a roll call vote? And this is a roll call vote to amend the numbers. Councillor Wilts?
- Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Hawk?
- Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Deckert. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes.
- Motion passes 7-0. Thank you. Okay. Next item. All right. This is section I, double I. Council, I move
- to approve the sheriff's
- request and fund 8193-0000 MCI grant 20-616, the creation of the new account lines that I just read
- as amended, and simultaneously approve additional appropriations as we just amended. Second. All right.
- And would you like to add anything else? Not unless you have any more questions right now.
- And I'm gonna look to my left and my right to see if anybody has any questions for you. Yes, Councilor
- Everson. First of all, congratulations on getting this grant. Thank you. It's a big deal, right?
- It's $54,000, $5,000. So I guess one of the things that we touched on a little bit in the interlocal
- conversation was what happens when, or I'm sorry, let me put it in a different way.
- Should this grant not be reimbursed next year? What will we be doing with these six positions? They're
- already employees. They will still get deployed, or at least our officers will. We will still pay over
- time. It'll just come out of our normal general fund, or the lit fund, depending on where their accounts
- are. So we'll just continue to absorb it like we have. And the same is true with equipment that will
- be purchased through this grant.
- If we don't get the grant, I don't know about purchasing this equipment. I don't know that we'll be
- able to. All of the equipment that we're purchasing with the grant is going to be a single time expense.
- There's some software, but it's a lifetime license and everything. So fundamentally, if the grant were
- to not be renewed, we've already got it at this point. So we've been very grateful with the
- the awards that we got everything we asked for and really everything that we really absolutely needed.
- I mean, there's a few other supplies that would be helpful, but assuming the worst and this is all we
- get, we're going to be in very good shape and finally catching up because it was a deficit for years
- and years where our reconstruction teams in particular were working with software licenses that were
- 10 years expired and lacking some
- expensive analysis and equipment that up until now we didn't have. So we project that the equipment
- that we are getting should last us well into the future. Excellent. And I like the way you put it. We're
- expecting the worst but anticipating the best. I have all the faith that we'll have this renewed.
- As I like. Yeah. Any other additional questions? Council Hawke. Just comment. This is kind of grant that
- we really wanna look forward to because it just adds and it doesn't really cost us anything. You're
- not going to be hiring more people or having to cover more insurance or any of that. You're just, yeah,
- love it, thank you. Okay, thank you. Yes, Councilor Wilks. So congratulations and agree this is really
- cool to see some capacity
- Typically, we don't appropriate until everybody's approved the contract slash, you know, that kind of
- thing. So I'm going to look to this table to see what maybe the guidance might be on that. I think the
- appropriations would be contingent on the execution of the interlocal agreement by the appropriate bodies.
- Could the chair's office please confirm that this grant agreement award has gone before the commissioners
- and been approved and executed? Yes, the grant agreement has been approved and ratified by the board.
- I'm not. I haven't seen the executed like signed document, but yes, it has gone before the commissioners twice.
- They approved it. Okay. Okay. All right. That's cool. Thanks. So it's just the interlocal then that
- I need. Okay. Okay. All right. Any other further discussion from council? All right. Seeing none may.
- Nope. I got to go to public comment. All right. Public comment. Um, if you are here, um, please state
- your case and, uh, on this item and you can come forward to the lectern here and then at you, you can
- raise your hand via team.
- and seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor
- Hawk? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Deckert? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Motion passes 7-0. All right, thank you. Next item.
- Because the Sheriff's Office and Auditor's Office have continued working on this grant funding, it has
- become necessary to amend the Sheriff's Office request. The amended deappropriation request total is
- $10,975. Hold on.
- Got it. Okay, so Council, I move to amend the request of deappropriation from $8,780 to $10,975. Second.
- All right. Is there anything that anybody else would like to add to this item? Seems like that's just
- some housekeeping stuff there. Okay. Council, do you have any questions or comments on this item? Nope. Okay.
- public if you would like to make comment on this item you can raise your hand via teams or use the podium
- here and then at you hill room and Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote and this is a motion
- to amend the appropriation amount Councilor Wilts. Yes. Councilor Fiddle. Yes. Councilor Hawk. Councilor
- Henry. Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes.
- Motion passes 7-0. Okay, thank you. Next item. Now Council, I move to approve the Sheriff's Office request
- and fund 1000-0005 County General Sheriff to deappropriate the amount we just changed of $10,975 in
- the services category. Second. Okay. Anything else anybody would like to add? Again, this is
- some housekeeping cleanup.
- And seeing none, Council, do you have questions or comments on this item? And seeing none, public, if
- you would like to talk to this item, you can use the podium here and then at you, Hilbram, or raise
- your hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor
- Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes.
- Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes 7-0. Okay. Thank you. And next item.
- All right, we've got another one. We need to change the number first, then we'll get to the vote. Council,
- as the Sheriff's Office and Auditor's Office have continued working on this grant, funding has become
- necessary to amend the Sheriff's Office request for this fund-to-fund transfer. The fund, the total
- will move from $52,680 to $10,975.
- Second. Okay. Anything anybody else would like to add to this item? No. Council, do you have questions
- or comments on this item? This just reflects the same money we just, okay. Yeah, got it. All right.
- Any other further questions or comments?
- All right. Oh, yes. I just have to say sometimes when we get into this level of hitting it from this
- many sides, I wonder if we need an agenda crasher investigation because I mean, my God, we've done 19
- different rounds around the same thing and I'm not completely convinced that the public is well served
- by it. But anyway, I'm glad to see it. This is it, I think. Yeah. Okay.
- and seeing no others. 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? This is a roll call on the motion to amend. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor
- Deckard? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Motion passes seven zero. OK, thank you. All right. Last one. Here we go. Council, I move to approve
- the Sheriff's Office request for a fund to fund transfer cash from fund one thousand dash zero zero
- zero five. County General Sheriff to fund eight one nine three dash zero zero zero zero. MCI grant to
- twenty point six one six in the amount of ten thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollars. Second.
- Is there anything else that I'm missing right now? So this is the motion to do the fund to fund. The
- previous motion was to amend the amount which was on the agenda as
- Okay, so we only approved that. Now we're gonna go back and do the other. Yes, so we amended the amount,
- and then this approves the fund to fund. All right. And then after this, we are all finito? Yes. Okay.
- And the reason there's these amendments is because we had a meeting today at noon, or at 10, and then
- we realized the amounts in the agenda needed corrected. So we had to amend them all, and then approve
- the underlying motion. I appreciate you finding
- that and correcting it or else they would have came back and you had to do it all over again. So yeah,
- county government. All right, anybody else have any questions, comments or concerns on all of this?
- No? All right. Public comment, you can entertain us by making public comment. You know what to do.
- And seeing no takers for public comment, can we please have a roll call vote? This is a roll call on
- approving the fund to fund transfer in the amended amount of ten thousand nine hundred and seventy five
- dollars. Counselor Wilts. Yes. Counselor Henry. Yes. Counselor Hawk. Yes. Counselor Fiddle. Yes. Counselor
- Deckert. Yes. Counselor Iverson. Yes. Counselor Crossley. Yes. Motion passes seven zero.
- Okay, thank you. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you guys. You're very welcome.
- Have a good night. All right. Next up is the meat and potatoes of the rest of our agenda. Council, I
- move to approve Resolution 2025-48, 2026 County Council Meeting Schedule. Second. Okay. Ms. Turner-King.
- So at the last council meeting, Ms. Schell presented three calendar options to council and this is to
- adopt one of those calendar options. So I think first what needs to happen is council needs to identify
- which calendar option they would like to attach to the resolution as an exhibit and then you would move
- to adopt the exhibit. So as a reminder, and I can display these calendar options if you like, calendar
- option one is your standard calendar
- County Council. It has two monthly meetings with no deviation. So I would point out in this option,
- you have a meeting on November 24th, which is Thanksgiving week and December 22nd, which would be Christmas
- week. Also is the budget calendar and the PAC calendar.
- Now, in all of the calendar options, I think the first thing I would like to request or clarify is,
- one, is it the will of the council to keep the meeting time at 5 p.m. last. This was the first year
- we moved it to 5 p.m. Previously, it was 530. Michelle had requested that I confirm what time you would
- like to go with.
- I guess it's if we go with this particular. Well, you're going to have to establish the time for any
- of the options. Right now, all of the calendar options reflect a five p.m. start time for county council
- meetings. OK. Yeah, so I'll look to my left. Yes, counselor Fido. So I wondered how long it's been the
- five o'clock time. This is the first year. Just and before that, it was five thirty five thirty for
- a long time.
- As long as I've been here There have been public complaints about the five o'clock time. I don't I haven't
- heard complaints either way Remember I remember one Or someone said I do not have time to get home and
- then get on teams for your meeting Okay
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. We have had some really long meetings this year, longer than we've ever had
- before. I'm really nervous about making our start time later for that very reason. I would vote to keep
- it at five o'clock. I agree. Yes, Councilor Hawke, I have saw your hand up. Well, I mean,
- I'm sorry, but I mean, somebody just said what I was going to say. I mean, if we don't get out of here
- until 11 o'clock, if we don't start at 5.30, well, then we could just stay till midnight. Now, you know,
- I'm pretty good about saying that since, you know, you guys have already said the pledge when I walk
- in here. But since I have to come so far away, that's my only excuse. I just think we should not do it later.
- There was reason why we wanted to do it earlier, and it wasn't just for our benefit, but it was for
- the departments, because many of those departments are still here at work until four, and then if we
- don't cite 530, then it's a very long day for them as well.
- and then you have people that need to have flex time to make up the time. So yeah, I get it, as I work
- in another government entity where I do something very similar. And I have opinions about that, but
- I'm gonna mind the business that pays me, which is county government. So yes, I totally agree, and I
- think that we should keep it at five o'clock. I know sometimes some of us that have children, it kinda
- makes it a little,
- sharp there, but I think we've been able to try to manage as best as we can. So I appreciate everybody
- doing that. So it sounds like I'm leaving the start time in all calendar options for county council
- meetings at five o'clock. In all of the calendar options, it also lists meetings of PAC, and the time
- says to be determined.
- You can leave it like that for now and wait until PAC members are appointed in January for next year
- to determine it. That just means that we'll have to advertise the PAC calendar separately or advertise
- every individual meeting. Councillor Iverson. And it also presumes that the PAC freeze is halted because
- as of right now, council needs to tell PAC when to meet and what items to discuss. Yes, Councillor Wold.
- council need to tell PAC to meet each time? It's because the resolution paused PAC meetings. Just leave
- it off of there. Yeah, so in all the calendar options, it sounds like I would suggest eliminating the
- PAC calendar and just advertising the council meetings and the budget sessions right now. Yeah. OK,
- so back to. Option one, we already talked about that. That's the
- two options every calendar every month as we have done in the past. Calendar option two. This is a entitled
- summer break with no deviations. And what this calendar option does is there's two meetings every month,
- but for June and July where there are only one meeting and then. Calendar option three.
- is a deviation in the sense that there are two meetings a month, but for May, so there would only be
- one meeting in May, one meeting in June, one meeting in July, and then one meeting in
- November and December, there are dates on these calendars that say tentative, and I think that's confusing
- for departments and public and everyone else. And so I think you either include those dates and commit
- to having them or exclude those dates and don't have them. If you include them and you decide you'd
- like to cancel those meetings, we can cancel accordingly. Or if you don't include them and you want
- to add them, we could do so. I think adding them in later is more difficult than eliminating them
- and when they're already at it in the beginning. I did want to share. I did receive. So as you consider
- what calendar option to adopt, I did receive some concern about council potentially having months where
- there's only one meeting. And I wanted to express that because I told the department that I would. So
- the concern is that, you know,
- During budgets, there were reductions in 2026 budget lines, which could potentially increase the likelihood
- of needing an additional appropriation or a category transfer. With canceled meetings, there are less
- opportunities to request such. Currently, the deadline for an additional appropriation is approximately
- 13 days in advance of the meeting, and it's only a longer wait if there are months where there are only
- one meeting. So for example,
- The deadline for the May 12th meeting is April 23rd. If a department had a need arise on April 24th,
- so after the additional appropriation deadline, the next meeting, if the second May meeting is canceled,
- would be June 9th, and that's a 31-day wait. And I think departments are concerned, what happens if,
- during that 31 days where they can't get an additional or a category transfer, if they can't pay a bill,
- if there's a late fee?
- things of that nature. So therefore, according to that, then technically option three is a bit of an
- issue. It would create an issue with option two and option three because in calendar option two, there's
- only one meeting in June and July.
- but also at the same time, we could also add to, like, we can also schedule meetings as we seem fit
- to. Correct, as long as we do the 48-hour notice, you can schedule a meeting. All right, I guess I'm
- gonna look over here, I'm gonna start over here to my right. Yes, Councilor Henry. Thanks, I guess,
- boy, I'm fine with things the way they are. I mean, because minimally,
- Next year's docket, like if we're just gonna take the things that we know are coming, not the stuff
- that we don't know. I mean, it's the 1.2% that we gotta figure out with the lit. It's the Richland-Ellisville
- potential merger. It's the Jail and Justice Center situation. It's the whatever comes of the short session
- with the Indiana General Assembly. It is the results of annexation one way or another. And it is our
- just general budget process as we absorb all of that.
- I can't imagine fewer work days. I guess I'm okay not disturbing unless there's a compelling reason
- to do other, a lot. And I can't imagine we're gonna be able to get that under control on a shorter schedule.
- That's it. Council Hulk. I can see the need of having one of those
- meetings where we really get into these budgets and figure out what we're gonna do about our deficit
- spending. We're gonna have to do something. And we need to also take another look at what do we think
- the 1.2 is going to bring in? We don't know whether or not the city's gonna get part of it. If the state
- says yes, you got to share that around. Let's get a better handle of where we are so that we all understand.
- So that if we do have to do some major changes, it won't be such a shock to everybody. You know, they
- all wanted the 3% raise. They all wanted the longevity. They don't anyone want to cut anything. And
- I get that. But that's a lot and to reply, to say, well,
- We're just not gonna meet very often. That'll fix it. It just doesn't work for me. Yes, Councilor, I
- understand. Getting back to these meetings, what was the rationale for taking time in the summer? Were
- meetings not being utilized as much during that time? Were council members missing more meetings during
- that time? Were department heads not as available during that time? I guess, what was the rationale?
- speak to one of those because I think I kind of suggested some of the breaks in there between June and
- July is because some of us are either here or not here either attending virtually or out due to other
- obligations that we might have during the summer. Some things are a little bit more slower and I think
- it was also because some of the department heads also were gone on
- and couldn't attend either virtually or in person. So I think that was the idea of it initially and
- thinking about that and also just trying to personally give our staff just a little bit of a breathing room.
- As we gear up for a budget and give them plenty of time to go over those types of things We could take
- that time also to meet with as liaisons to departments to go over budget Items as well. So that you
- know, yes, it might look like a break But there's still work that will still be happening for those
- of us who will still be around so that was I think a
- my thought process of it. Again, I'm not married to it, and if council staff, if there's anything I
- miss to add to that, that's something that we were thinking about, me. Yeah. All right. Yes, Councilor
- Wilks. I tend to agree with Councilor Henry and Councilor Hawk on the need
- to maintain our current frequency in meetings given, doesn't look like the workload's gonna let up.
- And I appreciate the concern for maybe giving staff a break. I don't have a better way to do that,
- but I just, I think we'd be doing a disservice to our
- ourselves and the county if we met less often and to the point about I mean maybe through some juggling
- of scheduling agendizing and that kind of thing maybe we can focus a little bit more ahead of August
- with some meeting time for
- really getting into budgets. I know. I think that's important. I think the long-term finance committee
- could really.
- You know what I'm saying. No, and I hear all y'all. I think that was just kind of thrown out there.
- Again, I hear everybody's point with that. Yeah, because we obviously have a lot of work to do. I think
- if the concern is, because our meetings are a little bit longer, I think it's incumbent upon
- us as individuals to figure out how we can shorten the ways that our meetings are a little bit
- That go a little bit longer. So Well, let's work on the calendar first here, so I guess the yes counselor
- So what I would recommend is to make a motion to Use option number one as an exhibit to this and so
- I'm gonna go ahead and make that motion second
- Okay and so the motion was to adopt option one as our official calendar for 2026. And the exhibit as
- currently presented does include the PAC meetings and I think you could eliminate the PAC meetings but
- I'm gonna kind of jump ahead into the resolution because the resolution says the PACs meetings will be held
- at time it says noon in a hybrid fashion the standard language but then it says the council delegates
- to the PAC chair the authority to address any scheduling amendments necessary for PAC meetings including
- scheduling rescheduling and canceling meetings accordingly so you can leave that tentative that PAC
- schedule in there identify a time and if the PAC chair whoever that may be and whoever's on PAC says
- this time doesn't work for us we would just re-advertise them.
- Well, yeah, okay.
- And the only other thing that I add to the schedule is if folks recognize, we did move up Sophia, and
- all of them, but Sophia Travis didn't move up because this budget purgatory that we were in plus a lot
- of the items that were needed with Sophia Travis plus we also had a new employee that started with our
- office. There was a lot of moving pieces with this. And so while everybody adopted very well and who
- has done a really good job with that,
- It was just a lot for all of that all to happen at one time. So I'm glad we were able to kind of scoot
- that up. Yes, Ms. Turner-King. Just to clarify, the Sophia Travis calendar is not going to be in this
- exhibit. It's going to be in resolution 51. It's in the next resolution. Oh, that's right. Okay. I'm
- looking at it all and yeah, sorry. Okay. Yes, Councilor Iverson. Included in option number one is the
- budget session schedule.
- This year we met pretty frequently. So I guess my question is, I'm okay meeting as frequently as we
- did to take care of our business, but was submission to Gateway possible this year for staff? Did we
- give enough lead time for staff to get everything updated and into Gateway? Do we need to make any changes
- in that regard?
- I think there's always ways to improve efficiency and so forth as we, you know, proceed with maybe an
- updated procedure. It is really hard, the turnaround time to, you know, the council office has their,
- you know, set of duties and then my office in turn has ours and we need to reconcile together.
- provide a little bit of a time crunch, but we do reconcile and ensure our numbers are correct, but more
- time is always better in allowing us to do better audits, if that helps at all. Well, I asked, and that's
- the answer. All right, so we got a motion, and we, yes. And so it sounds like the motion's to adopt
- calendar option one, and I have three
- very specific questions about that calendar option. So two meetings a month. Can you put it back up
- on the screen? Thank you. It's important. It's a little meta, but it's important.
- What should I do with it? While I try to locate the file, so my first very specific question is this
- has two meetings a month and I'm looking at November and December.
- If you follow your normal schedule, the meeting is November 24th, which is the week of Thanksgiving.
- This year we moved it up, which resulted in back-to-back meetings. So do you want to leave it November
- 24th, recognizing it's Thanksgiving, or do you want to move it up a week like we did this year? Which
- would make the date the 17th. Couldn't we do like other government entities and change things within
- 48 hours? Yes.
- our friends that meet at 10 a.m. on Thursdays do the same thing. So I think the idea is maybe if we
- just kind of keep it as is and if we have a need to change that later, we could do that, unless somebody
- else has any other suggestions. No, okay. Okay, then that eliminates, that cuts it down to one additional
- question, which is do you want to leave the PAC meeting calendar on here and then
- the resolution lets PAC chair change it or do you want to just remove the PAC calendar at this point?
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. Because we don't know who PAC chair is, I say we leave it and let that person
- make the decision, given whatever landscape we're about to come into in the next year. And historically,
- the PAC calendar has always been included in the calendar option.
- I would like to put a time rather than to be determined. Should I just use our standard noon time and
- then whoever's unpacked? And my rationale is that I think departments expect that as well. So again,
- we got the motion to adopt calendar one as our 2026 official order of business. Is there any other further
- discussion from council? And seeing none.
- If we have public comment on this item, raise your hand via Teams or come here to the microphone here
- in the room. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Well, actually we can do this, a
- voice vote. It's a voice vote. Okay, so all those in favor of approving option one as our official calendar
- of county council, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. All right, great, motion carries.
- All right, thank you. And next up on the train. Council, I move to approve Resolution 2025-50, 2026,
- the Sophia Travis Community Service Grant Schedule and Citizen Application Form. Before you get there,
- the voice vote was to adopt Calendar Option 1 as an exhibit attached to Resolution 2024-8. You have
- to vote on the underlying resolution. Okay.
- All right, so can we do that by voice vote, or is that a roll call? I would recommend a roll call. Okay,
- roll call closed. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Necker? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hock? Yes. Motion passes 7-0. All right,
- thank you. Just for transparency, I'd like to reread the motion. Yes.
- Council, I move to approve resolution 2025-50, the 2026 Sophia Travis Community Service Grant Schedule
- and Citizen Application Form. Second. Okay. And is there any other further discussion? Ms. Turner King,
- do you wanna talk to this? This resolution is to adopt two procedures for Sophia Travis Community Service
- Grants Program. The first is the resolution approves the use of a citizen application form for
- the 2026 citizen application period and for future years and forevermore until council decides otherwise.
- And then the second is the resolution adopts a calendar for 2026. And that calendar is greatly different
- than what we have done in the past. So I'm gonna put the resolution up. It moves Sophia Travis so that
- the calendar begins sooner in the year.
- and doesn't overlap with the budget. So it would have the grant kicking off in March and the grant period
- ending in early April. And it ultimately puts the presentation to awards to council in June and then
- it going to the commissioners for approval in July. So agencies would get their money in the summer
- versus now.
- All right, anybody here have, yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you. I have, I guess, a procedural question,
- seeing as we're looking at the Sophia Travis process here. I was on a council when the council had made
- an effort to override the decision of the county commissioners to fund the BEDC, which was an activity
- you all did, kind of in response to the commissioners not fulfilling that obligation.
- It's probably worth bringing up that we just went through a similar process with the Sophia Travis grant
- process where the commissioner is not to fill an obligation that both the committee and this body as
- a whole approved. What, if any, mechanisms are there that are similar to what you all did with the BDC
- that we could do in this process to assure that the will of the committee and council is carried forward
- for potential recipients of the funding that we provide? What do you think?
- Are you asking this question in general or specific to this instance? It could potentially be in addition
- to this resolution to add additional provisions. I mean, I think there are two ways to structure Sophia
- Travis. You can do it as a grant like we currently do, which requires a contract, which requires commissioner
- approval. You could do it as a donation, which I would not suggest. I'd want to check with SBOA to see
- how they feel about that process. If you do it as a donation, like we did with the BDC,
- There's no regulation. Like we're just giving the agencies the money. But also that process requires
- commissioner approval of the claims. So either way, you're going to require commissioner approval here.
- And yet they didn't reject the claim when the BEVC went through last time, right? They did not reject
- that claim. So once it was re-decided and went back across the desk, it went through the second time.
- Is that the way to understand that? The claim was approved.
- for food for thought today, I don't know if we can solve that today or not. It was very different cadence
- to how that all worked too. It was a much longer drawn out back and forth. Okay. I will say there is
- a statutory process that allows if a commissioners reject a contract, but the problem is that statute
- requires it to be a constitutional officer and a constitutional duty, which Sophia Travis would qualify
- as neither.
- And we're not you're not a constitutional officer either. But in that sense, the statute was like if
- the sheriff, you know, submitted a medical contract and it was rejected, then there is a process for
- him to get that contract approved. So counsel is basically as well on what just happened.
- I think we could brainstorm ways to prevent what happened happened, but I don't know that you want to
- brainstorm them now. I only raise it here because if it's easy to insert in the resolution or not, it
- sounds like it's a whole separate resolution. I think that ordinance that established Sophia Travis,
- not this resolution. Okay, because the other thing that I kind of wanted to get into with this and I
- know we're with the schedule and the whatnot is
- We, you know, the committee just did work. That was approved. Council approved it, majority. You know,
- actually all of us approved, all unanimous approved that funding for Seven Oaks. And then we get to
- last Thursday. And then there is a moment where it was separated and therefore,
- two-one commissioners, Commissioner Jones and Commissioner Thomas, with Commissioner Thomas making her
- claims as such, changed the way that the
- The committee didn't and we had our meeting last Thursday or Friday and we weren't all too pleased with
- that process. I think it was very frustrating to go through that. I know one of the big things is Councilor
- Iverson actually had brought it up while we were talking about those conversations. They qualified for
- number one. The committee said yes.
- And council all said yes, and then we get to Thursday and we're at a governmental halt like the shutdown
- so You know that that was kind of frustrating to say the least it also looks like vengeful government
- to be honest with that and it's just
- That's just a little frustrating. Once again, I personally feel like council is not respected and they're
- right in the way that we do things. And boy, if she was on the other foot, I could only imagine. Yeah,
- so I guess I would like to figure out how we can not have this happen again because we just got made
- out of a mockery out of all of this.
- That's just frustrating. I wish that the governmental nucleus of county government could fundamentally
- change so they can actually work better and hopefully that'll be here soon. Yes, Councilor Feinstein.
- So I guess for me, I was very well aware of all this issue and I wanted to know is there a way
- it doesn't matter which organization it was that didn't get their funding and the commissioners might
- have halted that. Is there an appeal process at that level that an organization can go back
- to the commissioners and appeal that decision? I don't know if the organization would have an appeal
- process. I mean, I think council could resubmit the contract for consideration to the commissioners
- and you could go to the commissioner's meeting and
- But I don't know that results in a different outcome for the agency. But I wondered if the agency itself
- had a right to appeal that commissioner decision. No, I can't think of a reason that they would be allowed
- to. There's no current appeal process. Okay. Thank you.
- Councilor Frido literally went and did a really good job of expressing the need for that. And it was
- very Trumpish to decide to do something like that. So hopefully as we, so basically what I'm hearing
- is as much as all of us in the committee put the work in into doing that, there's really nothing else
- that we can do to help this agency.
- I don't think so. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Somebody over here had. Yes, counselor. I was just going to say
- I don't recall a time ever. It's going to be a question. Not ever. Did this happen? I mean, but after
- the beginning of having Sophia Travis and having it done that way, and then we were told what we had
- to do it like a contract commissioners just
- passed it because it was all there. I mean, all of the ability to do it was there. The money was there.
- The appropriation was there. The vote was there. And just like any other appropriation put before them,
- if all of that's there for them to deny it. So I mean, I know it wasn't just an appropriation. It was
- a contract.
- but it was the most vindictive, hateful, mean-spirited thing I've ever seen to say, you know, let those
- children just go to a food bank. They're all gonna get out and walk to a food bank and then gather up
- the goods and walk back to their home, wherever that might be, and try to fix. This is just food for
- kids. Those kids didn't choose which school they went to.
- Now, maybe I'm just beside myself because it's in the school building that's near and dear to my heart,
- but they're kids, they're just children. Again, I feel like it undermines the committee and the council
- for the work that they've done. It makes us all look bad because people were saying shame on Monroe
- County. Well, we didn't, we the county council,
- make that horrible judgment call? Well I highly recommend anybody that would like to say anything to
- commissioners and their vote they have a spot just like we do for items not on the agenda to go publicly
- and and make their pitch and their plea because again if we're going to continue to have the
- the dysfunction of county government, which is the nucleus of all the issues right now. We're going
- to keep getting the same, you know,
- mediocre and disappointing results that we continue to keep getting. So I share your sentiments and
- I am extremely frustrated and sorry that this is where we are. This isn't any of our doing by any means,
- but this is just the hands that we are dealt with. And hopefully, you know, in the spirit of the holiday,
- I just feel like, you know, it was a Grinch who stole
- Christmas kind of vibes. So I've said enough because yeah. Yes. I think having this schedule so far
- away from budget is a really good thing. Yes. That's the big thing. Yeah. Councilor Wells.
- I'm just piling on. Never mind. Thank you.
- Yes, Councillor Decker. I want to thank the two community members that serve on the Sophia Travis Grants
- Committee, Jenny Olm-Stevens and Julie Robertson. And one thing I'd like to say is, particularly when
- we have community members that serve on an intensive process like that, as much as the county
- can appropriately follow it, we need to honor those processes because those people
- spend hours, hours coming in here, whether it's that or playing commission or whatever the heck it is,
- the only way you're going to attract people is by empowering them and putting them in there. We cannot
- just do this, I'm going to create this commission to get elected and then ignore them when you do that
- kind of sheer power. Getting citizens in there doing those things, et cetera, that's key, and those
- are two very
- loyal community members in that process. I mean, they both took that task to heart, went home,
- sweated it out. And as did the three of us on there. I mean, we weren't too bad either, but we had to
- work to keep up with them. And so I hate to look at anything I voted for two or three times.
- that I did something wrong because I didn't. In this community, we've got, I said this last week on
- social media, we've all got to, politicians at every level, federal, state, local, we have got to get
- out of the dipping in each other's buckets business and get off of our butts towards solid things, towards
- hope. And some of these differences are killing us. I think a lot of it's, it's a bunch of crap not
- worth it. So that really makes me mad.
- Yes, Councilor Williams. I decided I could pile on here here for the comment about citizen participation
- because that's offensive that we would have volunteers on that committee who are, anyway, disrespected
- to that extent. What I was gonna say before too is
- understand that there were two charter schools on the list. And that was different, unprecedented as
- far as I know. And I questioned that when it came before our body because I didn't, you know, it doesn't
- jive with my personal approach to education that, you know,
- we're doing that, but I thought it through and I heard the articulated arguments as to why those projects
- were approved. It made sense. At no point should your personal feelings about individuals or
- an organization's past behavior that
- you know, may or may not have worked, you know, for your agenda, get in the way of feeding children
- and incorporating our community in something that is fundamentally good, like the Sophia Travis grants.
- All right. Thank you. All right.
- Without that being said, we'll move on and appreciate all the comment and feedback from counselors on
- this. If there's public comment on this particular item, you can come forward to the lectern here in
- the Natt U Hill Room, or you can raise your hand via Teams. And definitely got a hot hand that just
- got raised. That was a record. So again, you can state your name for the record and unmute yourself
- and you'll have up to three minutes.
- This is Eric Spoonmore, President of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. Certainly support
- this motion. Hope you all will vote for it. Anything that we can do to enhance processes, especially
- with our social service grant programs, I think is important. And just also wanted to say that really
- appreciate your comments here tonight regarding that unfortunate decision that was made
- with the Sophia Travis grant to Seven Oaks. I saw the news reports on WRTV. I read the local news reports
- in the media about it. It was very unfortunate and we know in the business community that the County
- Council put a lot of effort and thought and work into
- those decisions for the grants. That decision that was made in a commissioners meeting I know very well
- and I think the broader community understands that it doesn't reflect the values and the priorities
- of Monroe County, especially our businesses. And you know, it's important to me because that's our future
- workforce children. We need to do everything we can as a community to support our kids.
- and give them that support so that they can be the most successful adults possible when they're out
- of school. So I appreciate you thinking of our future workforce. Appreciate the work that everybody
- on the Sophia Travis grant committee did. I know it's very intensive. I've been there myself. So keep
- up the good work and appreciate all that you do. Have a good evening. Thank you.
- All right, is there anybody else that has public comment on this item? Again, if you're on Teams, you
- can raise your hand. All right, and seeing no other hands raised or any takers here in the NatU Hill
- room, can we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Wilz? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
- Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor
- Crossley? Yes. Okay, and last up on the item. Council, I move to approve. Motion passes. Yes, yeah,
- we got it. I move to approve resolution 2025-51, an interlocal agreement between Owen County and Monroe
- County regarding the repair of Owen County Bridge number 209.
- Second. Okay, Ms. Turner-King, is there, what would you like to add to this? This resolution is to prove
- an interlocal between Monroe County and Owen County for bridge work to Owen County Bridge 209, which
- is located on Owen County Line Road. After inspecting the bridge, Monroe County and Owen County jointly
- determine that the bridge is in need of repair. There's an approach on each county.
- So Owen County currently does not have a superintendent. So Monroe County agreed to manage the project
- and put out the initial cost of the project, but then Owen County will reimburse us for half that expense.
- So the overall expense for repairing the approaches to the bridge is 46,500, and Monroe County would
- get a $23,250 reimbursement from Owen County. And the interlocal outlines all of that.
- I believe Owen County's commissioners have already approved it. Our commissioners have already approved
- it. I'm not sure about Owen County's town or city council, county council, but that would be the next
- step if they haven't already approved it. All right. And look into council here to see if you all have
- any questions. No, no. OK.
- And Ms. Turner-King, did you have something? Oh, okay. All right, so if there is public comment on this
- item, raise your hand via Teams, or come forward to the lectern here in the Night View Hill Room. And
- seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor
- Hawk? Yes. Councilor Deckert? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
- I guess. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes seven zero. Thank you. And now we are finally at the end
- of our items here, which is council liaison updates and comments. I'm gonna start over here to my right
- with Councilor Haug and just kind of go down the line to see if we can provide some quick updates. Yes.
- Just as a reminder, I saw a warning that fog is really bad out there. So everyone safe travels. Hope
- we all make it home. Including me.
- as it gets foggy over toward Elstow. You would take your time and be careful. All right, anybody else
- down here? Yes, Councilor Henry. Thanks, I'll keep my comments more procedural and I really wanna just
- appreciate everyone's comments on the whole Sophia Travis discussion. I kinda kicked it off with mumbling
- about amendments, but I didn't really get.
- On my soap box, I will just add one more comment, aside from the fact of my absolute disappointment
- and I believe the apology we owe the Seminox community and the children that had to see bad civics.
- That's not what we want to represent here. I want kids to look at this building and have a point of
- pride and not the bickering that we see. But I think more importantly is the hypocrisy of public health.
- Do not come to this room and preach public health and then take food out of kids' mouths.
- And that has been sitting on my mind since it happened. If I could find a way, you know, to have this
- government own up to its responsibility, we obviously tried to have that conversation. We should have
- figured out a way. Maybe it is a donation and we seek come what may. I'm up for it. I appreciate that
- there are people in the community that opened their wallets to help out with school. I'm sorry we couldn't
- do that. That's important to say.
- Secondly, the budget process, I appreciate the comments about our entire budget calendar. I will say,
- I think, as we went through the resolution, it dawned on me that we were starting to assign obligations
- to personnel, PAC chairs, and council staff on what happens and when.
- I would just again reiterate that the next council leadership needs to really think through what our
- playbook is that we can point to to understand who pulls those levers and when. It's captured in ordinance
- or resolution. It is not something I can point to as a procedure for the group. This is probably important
- for us to think about when we get to the actual meeting of departments to make sure that the liaisons
- can be here on the nights that the departments are presenting.
- I had some challenges with that with my own personal schedule. It was set before I took my seat, but
- I would just advise to the next leadership, whoever we may be, to make sure the liaisons can be here
- the same nights as the departments are presenting as opposed to trying to scramble that. Some coordination
- at the front end may make sense procedurally there. I just wanted to air that out. Lastly, just happy
- Thanksgiving. That's it, right? Enjoy that and we'll see you on the other side of it. Thank you.
- I just wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow at noon is the November meeting of the Substance Use
- Disorder Advisory Commission. We continue, despite the fact that we're not going to be making progress
- on North Park, to see people succumbing to substance use disorder in our community as well as mental
- health disorders. This body exists.
- to provide solutions in these areas and it's entirely volunteer led by people with lived experience.
- I would issue a plea of sorts that if you or someone you know has lived experience, we have two vacancies
- on this body, please apply at the Monroe County website. That would be really helpful. And again, we
- meet once a month on Wednesdays.
- The second thing is that the climate resilience group here in Monroe County will continue to meet. That's
- on the county calendar and we're gonna continue to make progress on the matrix that we wrote oh so many
- months ago. Again, if that's something that interests you and how public can take impact on the climate
- even as COP just concluded, I encourage you to join us in our efforts. Lastly, I just wanted
- to extend my thanksgiving to all of you. We're truly grateful for everything that Monroe County employees
- are doing for the good of this entire community. A sincere heartfelt thanks goes out to each and every
- one of you. We've put you through the wringer this year, and we could not be more proud of what you're
- doing, even as things are getting tough. I also will conclude. I just got back from four days from the Southside
- Chicago, and I think Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to remind each and every one of us that at one
- time we were immigrants, too. And I just really want to have folks keep that in their minds. Whether
- we came to this country seeking better economic conditions or we were forced against our will, at one
- time we were all strangers in this land, and we should not be arresting our way out of that. OK, thank you.
- Yeah, I'm just going yeah.
- Keep going. All right. I'll be very quick. First, I just want to say thanks to all the department heads
- that come into our late meetings, engage all this. They don't seem to complain as much as we do. So
- thanks to all of them. I just would say as we do approach this season over the weekend, I was out a
- lot in town and all around the county and my heavens, it was a busy place everywhere that I went.
- Of course, there was a good football game, but just it was busy every aspect of it. And this is a
- place where that's a good headache to have, that we're busy, people want to be here. A week from Friday,
- this community will really celebrate on the backs of a beautiful Thanksgiving or a good break or what
- have you for each and all. They will celebrate the lighting, literally, of the canopy that goes around
- this building. The tree here in the courthouse will be lit, all good things. And it is, for me, always
- a real sense of renewal around a good, busy place where communities
- comes together and my hope in this new year is we have more of that not less and I wish all the best
- to everybody border to border in this community. I just want to wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving.
- I do not have any updates. I was out of town last week and you already heard that I chit chatted with
- the sheriff so that's about all that I've got but thanks.
- And you got praise for that too. Yes, Councilor Pridle. So I just wanted to say that I went to the Veterans
- Day with some of my other colleagues here at the American Legion, and I was really impressed with that.
- My dad served in the military as a link trainer instructor in the US Army Air Corps, and I'm a proud
- daughter of a veteran. And so I was happy to be there for that.
- many miscellaneous meetings. There was self-insurance, a PAC meeting, a FabTech meeting, all the Sophia
- Travis group work that we did. Then I represented the Sophia Travis group at the Meet the Funders for
- the Nonprofit Alliance. I got to promote it there, which was really nice. I went to the Ellitsville
- Town Hall in Richland Township.
- potential merger there, I don't know what that's gonna turn into, but I'll be most anxious to find out
- because I'm a Richland Township President. So my backyard looks over Bloomington Township, I'm that
- close to it. So then I listened to the League of Women Voters pre-session preview of their, two legislators
- were there, or excuse me, Shelley Yoder and Matt Pierce, and they're ready to hit
- the ground running trying to make an impact at the state level for us. So I'm very happy about that.
- And I think that kind of wraps it up for me.
- Thank you. Yeah, and that was a wonderful Veterans Day celebration as I was able to attend as well.
- So just many thanks to county government employees, all county government employees, for all the hard
- work and dedication that you all do. A special thanks to our staff that continues to keep us going even
- when I'm sure we drive you crazy. And last but not least, something that Councilor Henry said that kind
- of made me think about
- when we say don't come in and preach about public health and then take food away. I'd take it one step
- further and don't say to continue to advocate for food banks and do the same thing as well. So with
- that being said, many thanks. Happy Thanksgiving to all those that celebrate. Be safe. Canopy of Lights
- is next Friday. And with that being said, we are adjourned. Thank you.