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.