good evening everybody I would like to call tonight's meeting to order today is Tuesday December 9th
and welcome to the Monroe County Council we have a packed agenda and we will go ahead and get started
and again for the for counselors present to my right here we have counselors Henry Iverson Decker wilt
and vital I don't see counselor a hawk
on teams, but I'm sure she will be joining us here very soon. So we will go ahead and get started with
our Pledge of Allegiance. So all those that are able to stand, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Pledge of 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
justice for all okay all right next up is the adoption of tonight's agenda and does anybody wish to
amend tonight's agenda yes council i ever say council i move to amend tonight's agenda in two ways number one
I wish to table indefinitely items nine I and nine J per the department requests. That's nine I and
nine J. And secondly, I'd like to add item six G, a request for an account line title change for the
council office. Second. Okay. And then I actually wanted to amend
our agenda for tonight as well. I know that I spoke with the sheriff this morning and they have their
discussion that is on item 10A and I believe the individual that is traveling, is she present? Oh, hello.
So she's traveling and so I would like to
that up because I was told it was going to be brief, to let's see. I'll bump that up before we get into
the meat and potatoes of the agenda. So I'll bump that to before we start the hire and freeze conversations.
And then the other thing that I also wanted to
for tonight's agenda is in light of everything that has been happening I think we should have a conversation
of what's been happening with the or the proposal of the encampment situation it's deserved lots of
conversation so I know I think I heard from maybe a couple of council members about this so I would
like to add that also to tonight's agenda under
council business. Will that be A or B or C or D or E? Why don't we make that, let's bump C to D and
let's make the conversation item the new C.
Another question for anybody from the public who is here about that issue and related issues. Is that
when they should wait to make comment or should they come at public comment? They can come to public
comment because usually what we do is we'll have discussion and sometimes discussion doesn't allow for
a public comment. However, that could change. But because public is here first and foremost,
I want to give respect to them as they are here. Don't want to waste the time. I'm sure their time definitely
isn't wasted, but I just want to be respectful of everybody's time, whether it's public commenters.
Obviously our room is very full tonight, but we also have other agenda items to discuss as well of county
council business. So yes. Thank you.
want to make sure everybody has a chance to speak instead of getting cut off. All right. Is there anybody
else that has any other items to amend to tonight's agenda? Okay. And because I don't still see Councillor
Huck on Teams, we can do this by voice vote. So all those in favor of approving tonight's agenda as
amended signify by saying aye. All those opposed, same sign.
Okay, motion carries. Okay.
So next up, we will have public comment. And these are for items that are not on the agenda. I just
want to make sure that we understand how public comment goes. I know recently, people have been wanting
back and forth discussions. Public comment isn't necessarily allowed for back and forth discussions.
However, any of us have the point of privilege to address anything that we hear tonight. So I want to
make sure that we do that.
And this is your time to talk to us. So I want to make sure that you use all full of your three minutes
to say whatever it is that you want to say. I might have an idea of what you might want to say, but
nonetheless, I don't want to assume. But I just want to make sure that people have plenty of time to
do so. And if there's anything at any time that somebody has a question about, I'm sure one of us will
be able to just kind of walk away from the dais, get your contact information, and we will
proceed or.
Some of you have also been emailing us, and I'm sure you also have our emails as well. But nonetheless,
we want to make sure that you all are heard. So again, everybody that is wanting to make public comment
here in the NatU Hill Room, you could come to the lectern here. You'll sign your name. All of the TVs
here will have your timer here. You'll have up to three minutes. Just state your name for the record.
Once the clock hits zero, that means you are done. So if you already
know that you want to have or speak on items that are again not on tonight's agenda go ahead and start
lining up for our friends via virtual land if you want to make a comment you also have a way of doing
that as well you will just need to raise your hand and
once we start seeing hands raised via Teams, I'll kind of alternate and go back and forth between our
virtual team option and here in the Nattie Hill room. So everybody is good to go with how we're gonna
do public comment? Okay, all right. So with that being said, I'd like to also acknowledge that Councilor
Hawk is in the building. So all seven council members are present to do tonight's meeting. So we will
proceed with our first public commenter.
Good evening. Thank you, council members. It's been a minute since I've been here. I'm Mary Morgan.
I'm executive director of Heading Home of South Central Indiana. As you know, we are a nonprofit that
was set up to address systemic long-term challenges that prevent people from being housed in this region.
And that's what we're working on. The county has been, as you know, a very strong partner in the Heading
Home initiative.
Many of you served on the plan that was developed as a community effort several years ago. Councilmember
Wilts is a member of our board, as is Efrat Rosser, who is also here tonight, Bloomington Township Trustee.
I'd also like to introduce one of our key staff, Erin Reynolds Nyland.
who's in the back here. She's our director of housing stability and is overseeing the new staff that
we're hiring for street outreach and diversion and prevention. I guess I'm just here tonight to say
that there are a lot of different partners, including Heading Home, but many, many others in this community
that have been doing the very challenging and long-term work of working with people
who are seeking housing. This is not something that we can solve overnight because like all of us in
this room, everyone who is unhoused has their own unique history, their own personal story to tell,
their own reasons for arriving where they are today. So I hope we can all keep the individuals
and their histories front and center as we talk about some of these system challenges that we're experiencing
and how we can work together in partnership with the county, with the city and our other partners to
really improve and shorten the length of time that people become stay homeless or that we can prevent
people from becoming homeless in the first place.
I would love to come back and give a longer report about some of heading homes work and some of the
challenges and solutions that we're working on. But tonight I'll just say thank you for your partnership
and I know it's a difficult issue and we need to work together to improve all of the lives of residents
here. Thank you.
I don't see any hands raised via teams. But again, if there's anybody that is on teams that would like
to speak, go ahead and raise your hand. And until I see a hand raise on teams, I'm just going to keep
going here and then at you Hill room. So again, state your name for the record. You have up to three
minutes. Hi, everybody. My name is Shelby Porter off. My pronouns are she they and I want to thank you
for taking the time to listen to our concerns. I'm going to move as quickly as possible. I've got a
lot to say.
Given that we have limited time, I won't spend much recapping the series of deeply flawed events that
led us to this conversation. But if there are any concerns, I encourage you to follow up with me or
us individually for more detailed discussion. I do, however, need to address a few things that have
occurred today. The first of note is that we have been informed that the agenda line item up for discussion
tonight pertaining to the cumulative capital fund has been pulled from discussion by the commissioners.
This fund is being used to pay for the eviction of Thompson property, and tonight was the only opportunity
for this fund to be discussed
among council members in advance of the eviction date set for 12-15. We see this tactic for what it
is and we want to call attention to it. If the commissioners cancel public meetings moving forward from
this evening, we recognize that tactic too. This is hiding from the very constituency that they are
obligated to represent. Secondly is that just hours ago I was texted by Commissioner Thomas who informed
our group that the meeting she scheduled for us to discuss this issue has been moved from its designated
time. This meeting was set in collaboration with
for Wednesday at 7 p.m. via Teams. Commissioner Thomas has moved this meeting to a work session on Thursday
at 1 p.m. at a time that we are not available to attend due to our jobs. Commissioner Thomas was aware
of this. She also discussed in her office hours on December 4th that setting a meeting required public,
open door policy and must be in person if exceeded a number of attendees. When I personally pushed back
against this schedule change, her response today was that this was the only time that worked for the
commissioner's schedules. I just want to note and go on record
that all of the people here tonight who were at the Commissioner's meeting last Thursday have been working
around their full-time jobs, their personal lives, their support of this community, in addition to attending
these meetings, scheduling phone calls, and hours of informal pop-up discussion with county officials.
Our time is valuable, and it is the duty of these elected governing agents to accommodate their constituents.
You represent us.
By this point in time, I assume the majority of the council members have been informed that the Thompson
property, also called the RCA Camp, was slated for evictions of the unhoused community that lives there
on December 8th. The folks here this evening pushed the commissioners hard to get a stay of eviction
so we could discuss with the county council and commissioners more closely why evictions in the winter
are a death sentence. Backing up a bit in time, on Monday, December 1st, members of the unhoused community
at RCA Camp were given paper notices by three deputies that identified themselves with the county sheriff's
department.
The flyer was not on official letterhead, was not signed by any sitting elected member of the county's
governing body, and gave the folks living at camp a week to leave. The flyer informed the community
members that their belongings would be stored at Monroe County Highway Garage for one week and that
Justin Baker would coordinate retrieval of these belongings. In addition to this flyer, a job posting
via cleanup company Bio One was listed online, citing unhoused encampment cleanups as the hired project.
In this job description, there are two bullet points of note.
Any items that seem very personal will be put in a personal property dumpster, which the county will
take care of and your time's up. Yep. Going to keep going. Most of what we will be interacting with
will be trash. So don't worry about being too picky. I will leave it to my fellow constituents to outline
why winter evictions should be against county policy. But I emphasize that the process in which this
anticipated eviction was conducted is unacceptable. In addition to the very real, very high risk of
a winter eviction,
that a winter eviction poses to the community members of RCA, as well as other encampments, there was
no clear vetted procedure for conducting an encampment eviction. This process was not made accessible
to the public, nor the community members that live on Thompson property. And when we, as constituents
of this county, pressed for more information, we were not able to be provided with any clear answers
as to who approved this eviction. Last line, I promise. Last paragraph, I promise. Sorry. I want to
go on record and make myself very clear, as I believe that when I was quoted in an earlier press release
regarding the week-long extension of the eviction,
I was misrepresented in my views. Under no circumstances do I support evictions of encampments. Evictions
are harmful inhumane actions, and from a logistic standpoint, they do not help effectively mitigate
any variables contributing to chronic houselessness. With that said,
If evictions are to be conducted, it is unacceptable for county government to not have a rigorous publicly
vetted policy. We urge and implore the council to demand the county commissioners to create procedures
that are reviewed in collaboration with outreach members and houseless community members. We also urge
the council to encourage commissioners that at the very minimum, a pause on any evictions be implemented
until collaborations with community can occur.
I end with a reaffirmation of my belief that evictions are never the answer. There is expansive research
that supports this belief. And if a truly collaborative process is to be facilitated by the county,
then we would be happy to support the sustainable, effective options that are available.
I'd like to talk about the critical need to make winter evictions against county policy and encourage
counsel here in discussing legislation with the commissioners. In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19
pandemic, the city of Bloomington's office of the mayor proceeded with evicting the unhoused encampment
at Seminary Park. This was done against the direct guidelines of the CDC that stated unhoused encampments
for public health should be left alone, in place, and undisturbed.
A member of that community died just a few days after this eviction occurred. I want to bring a closer
case in time that fortunately did not result in the deaths of our friends in the houseless community,
but very easily could have. Yesterday, December 8th, city of Bloomington proceeded with an eviction
of the Brown Woods property on the west side of town. Despite public reports for the city that only
one person remained at that camp, I can say personally, there were five. I was there last night.
There's five people, one dog, still calling this site home. Health Net, an organization that's been
identified as a resource employed by the city and the county, went out to this property, collected all
of the individual's blankets, clothing, and other warm belongings, told the folks they would return
to help them move, and never came back. Let me be very clear on what happened here last night. Health Net,
an agency contracted by the county and the city left five people without their warm gear outside in
the evening anticipated eviction in the dead of winter. The average temperature yesterday was 27 degrees
Fahrenheit with a low of 18, not including wind chill. Myself and many other people of the community
spent the better part of yesterday evening in Brownwoods helping those five individuals.
One of us set out to calling the city government with just five minutes to spare before their business
hours concluded. Their only concession that they would not evict until 8.30 this morning. They did not
offer to get any of these five individuals camp secured housing for the evening. That was all on us.
We were able to leverage our community partnerships with Hotels for Homeless and their director,
Katie Norris, to get all five of these people in a hotel for the night.
This emergency would have never occurred if evictions were not permitted in the winter. It is with this
that we emphasize not the necessity for making winter evictions a violation of county policy and encourage
immediate legislative action. We ask that the council support this initiative and ask for the assistance
in impressing this need upon the commissioners. Thank you. All right, thank you.
Now I'm going to go to teams before I go back to here in the night, you know, room person, Jonathan,
you have you should be able to unmute. And again, you'll have up to three minutes. All right, so I don't
really have anything to I'm sorry. Can you state your name for the record? Sorry, that's my bad. My
name is Jonathan Merriman.
And I don't necessarily have a prepared statement, but I just want to express my opinion and tell everybody
that I really believe that these evictions are cruel in the truest sense of the word. They will lead
to the deaths of multiple people more than likely. And there's a reason why these people aren't in homeless
encampments. It's because they don't necessarily really have anywhere else to go. And I just think that
at the very least,
the County Commission should stay these evictions. I believe that they should prevent them entirely,
but at the very least they need to be stayed to winter or stay till spring. I'm sorry. Um, that's what
I have to say. Thank you.
from my colleagues I want to talk about a future where harmful ill-advised situations like this do not
occur again. I'm sorry can you say your name for the record? My name is Aidan Reif and I thank the council
for taking our advice into consideration. The literature regarding effective solutions to chronic
houselessness supports housing first. This does not mean shelters it means houses. Put people in houses.
Right now Bloomington and Monroe County are in a housing crisis.
In addition to this, there is word circulating that Crawford is closing due to the loss of federal funding.
If this occurs, the people living at the site will most likely be unhoused. Our crisis is not shrinking,
it is growing. Evictions, which are a costly financial project, not only directly oppose what the evidence
suggests, but sets our community even further back. Thompson property is roughly 95 acres of outright
owned county property.
It has the potential to be catalyzed into a real solution-driven site, but that is not possible if ongoing
and earnest collaboration with our houseless community members doesn't occur. The answers to what our
community needs regarding houselessness comes from within the community. Working with and talking with
the individuals that live in encampments is not just recommended, it is a necessity for any success.
The literature also supports this.
However, in order for that to work, to occur at all, a foundation of trust has to be built and continual
evictions have created substantial damage to any possible relationship between government officials
and unhoused citizens. Another eviction, like the one set for December 15th, would cause such damage
that repair may be unobtainable. Let it be stated that the first step to building trust and lasting
change is not staying this eviction on Monday the 15th, it's staying evictions permanently, followed
by reform and a procedure created in tandem with houseless individuals.
Hello, my name is Pepper Vickery, and I would like to share a personal story about how these evictions
can affect those of us that are the most vulnerable. I would like to talk about a friend of mine. I
met them when they were sitting on a curb, just crying, crying their eyes out. So I sat with them and
asked them what was wrong. They told me that their bag was stolen in the middle of the night.
while they were sleeping. They lost all of what little they had, what little cash they had, their wallet,
their clothes, their phone, everything. They were staying in a safer location, but they were forced
out by the Bloomington Police Department. And the first night in the new location, this happened. They
were forced to walk everywhere, even though they had a broken ankle and were in a boot. They also were
diagnosed with cancer,
and due to their situation, they were unable to seek treatment. I would like to remind everyone here
that these policies affect real human beings. They're not numbers, they're people with names and faces,
and to evict somebody in the middle of the winter, it shouldn't just be illegal, it's absolutely cruel.
I do not believe that
I don't know what solution the city is looking for when they decide to evict the unhoused in the middle
of winter. It only tends to make everything worse. And I think the city should really think about moving
forward with a housing first policy. Multiple studies have shown in the few places that this has been
implemented that housing first works and
It has a massive, it massively reduces the amount of unhoused and the dangers therein of being unhoused
in the cities who have implemented this. I would also like to remind the city of the Martin v. Boise
principle that cities should not punish people for sleeping or camping if there is no access
to an alternative. And as the city should know, there's not enough alternatives for most of these folks.
and what little we have is full and inadequate to support our growing community's needs. That's what
I have. Thank you. Again, not seeing any hands raised on team. So if you just joined via teams and we
would like to make public comment on items and not on
not on the agenda. Please go ahead and raise your hand and then we'll go back to here in the night you
have room for public comment. Hello, my name is Moby Jean Glaser.
I'm a trauma therapist here in Bloomington and I also live in the Broadview neighborhood. And I would
like to first thank Council Member Hemnery for going to the Thompson property recently and choosing
to engage directly with our unhoused neighbors who really should be at the center of this conversation
and the center of the problem solving that is happening. I have been in proximity with a very small
and I will emphasize small group of
neighbors who have had complaints about the Thompson property. And I think their complaints really speak
to the lack of understanding of what it is to survive living outside, the lack of understanding of what
resources are truly available in our community. And we are seeing a policy and a decision from
the commissioners and the sheriff that is really centered on the discomfort of a small group of privileged people
who live in a certain social location. When we should be seeing policy, I would like to see policy that
is centered on the needs more broadly of our community, including our unhoused neighbors. They are a
part of our community. They are a part of our neighborhood. And this policy is not just dangerous. It
is incredibly violent to push people out of
the only place that they can live relatively safely at a time of extreme weather. And so as someone
who lives in the neighborhood, who interacts with the folks who are living in the Thompson property,
and I have interacted with these folks for years, I ask
I know you're a financial body, so this decision didn't come directly from you, but I ask you to do
whatever is in your power to make sure that we are centering our policy on the most marginalized members
of our community. Thank you for this time and for your service. Thank you. Hello. Hi. My name is Toby Robb.
I came all the way here from Indianapolis. I got on a bus on the southwest side of Indianapolis at 11
o'clock this morning and traveled for four hours to get here. I bring that up because there aren't a
whole lot of situations that would make me do that. This is a matter of life and death, and I want to
emphasize that. I came here because some of the people affected by this eviction
are some of my dearest friends. And I don't believe that friendship has borders, which is why, even
though you should absolutely listen to the experiences and input of your actual constituents who live
here, that's why I'm still speaking here, because I think it's worth saying that to turn homeless people
out of the place where that isn't even a house
That is the closest place. That is the only alternative to not freezing to death, to take away their
belongings and just throw them away like that is one of the cruelest, most callous things that I've
ever heard of. And it's incredibly easy to just look away and
to act like you can just make these people disappear. But they're not going to disappear, not for me.
And whatever happens to them, whatever is either done to them or whatever you as the government
of Bloomington, what happened to them is something that I will remember. For whatever that's worth.
So I would ask you and
the most vehement terms possible. Do not let this happen. Thank you very much. Thank you all for making
space to discuss such an urgent issue together today.
You can say your name. I'm so sorry. Keep going. Sorry. My name is Ashley Chaunting and I'm a current
resident of the Thompson Thompson property camp that has been the subject of so much discussion in recent
weeks. Before I was a resident of our camp, I lived in the neighborhood nearby and service the area
as an outreach volunteer. Like others who have shared their testimony in this conversation, I became
homeless as a result of a dynamic disability, an autoimmune disorder which causes brain swelling and
fainting spells when I'm exposed to mold.
building materials, and certain cleaning and grooming products, to name a few. Upwards of 90% of housing
or employment options are unavailable to me for more than a short time as a result. Other folks I camp
with have stories related to domestic violence, moderate to severe mental health disorders, old school
sports injuries, and previous failures by housing services. Whatever brought us there, about 40 individuals
call Thompson Woods home, and my understanding is that this has been the truth
for about the past 10 years. It is also my understanding that this number is roughly half the population
numbers reported to the counties by the nonprofits you pay to manage us. I've come to understand through
recent research and press that sensational reports about our camp are the norm, with one source quoted
as saying there are hundreds of needles littering the property and another citing wanton property damage
to the infrastructure at nearby RCA Park. The whole camp was grateful to Councilor Henry
and Commissioner Madeira for taking time to visit on Saturday and see for themselves that these reports
are categorically false. I was grateful for the opportunity to show them my reinforced tent with its
contained propane heat, hardly the critical fire or freeze risk cited in other available reports. Not
to speak for anyone, but they seemed pleasantly surprised to meet my neighbors and hear firsthand how
motivated we are to maintain our camp to a comfortable standard and encourage the least obtrusive, most
pro-social behavior possible in one another.
Councilor Henry seemed quite sheepish at the end of our visit for having to ask about our restroom habits
because he hadn't seen any evidence of the prolific human waste that had been reported to him. One point
my house colleagues have made many times in the campaign to save our camp is how visitors to homeless
camps rarely find the reality matches the sensationalism. They cite how welcoming we are to them, how
we've adjusted to navigating the world with good humor and care. I've heard them say several times that
one might be surprised
but the fact is that no one in my camp is surprised. We understand the limitations of the services available
to us, and we understand the intense weight of having nowhere else to go. When every other option fails,
Thompson Woods and our neighbors there give us shelter, safety, care, and agency. What's that saying
about home is the place when you have nowhere else to go, they have to take you in? By this definition,
Thompson Woods is fully our home.
And I urge this council to do everything in your power to delay our eviction as long as possible into
the spring and beyond. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I'm going to go back to teams here.
Shoot. I'm trying to see who this.
So Jessica, if you can unmute yourself, say your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
Yeah, sorry. I'm I'm Jesse, Jesse Coggy. And no, you're fine. You're fine. I want to thank you all for
being here. Like I said, my name is Jesse Coggy and I'm a Monroe County resident in District one.
And I want to take time to talk about the concerns this eviction has raised in terms of funding and
the transparency around tax dollar spending. Specifically, I want to question how the commissioners
can put the funds behind this eviction into use without your oversight as council members or that of
their constituents.
After digging into previously documented meeting minutes, public record, and conducting meetings with
county officials, it has been made clear that the money being used to fund this eviction has come from
the cumulative capital fund contract July 2024, number 1198, which is broadly defined in its use for
services and contracts.
What this fund does not encapsulate is emergency management, law enforcement support or health and social
services, all things the commissioners have already committed or plan to commit to this operation. As
you all know, this fund is most often used to support general property maintenance, including landscaping,
hauling away old furniture or bringing in electricians and plumbers. It does not expand even with this
loose definition to work that requires detailed collaboration between multiple agencies
each bringing their own approach to the execution of this camp clearing. This will be a massively expensive
undertaking, far exceeding the $35,000 contract already signed with Bio One, and we have no idea where
that money is coming from or where it is going. I'm sure we've all seen the argument that supporting
the needs of unhoused people in our community is an unnecessary expense on the part of the taxpayer.
While I vehemently disagree with this position, I can sympathize with the frustration of seeing taxpayer
money going straight down the drain. And this is what we are seeing every year with these rents and
repeat evictions. These expenditures are not only incredibly wasteful and ineffective, but represent
an inappropriate use of county funds.
I urge the council to push for a stay on the eviction at Thompson property until the spring to ensure
that this funding is not only accounted for but that this type of overreach into county funds can never
occur again. Thank you. My name is Sid Doss and firstly I'd like to reiterate all of the points that
have been made
by everyone before me. And I would especially like to emphasize all of our collective stance that we
do not support any forms of evictions at any point, regardless of season, regardless of location. This
has never proven to be productive at all and has only caused more harm than anything else. The main
thing that I'd like to share though right now is focusing back in on the slated evictions coming up
within a few days, within the week.
I'd just like to reiterate that as anyone who is working for the state, city or county, it
is your responsibility to oppose the upcoming evictions by whatever means that you have. Regardless
of the stated responsibilities of your roles as either council members, commissioners, mayor or anything
else like that, these evictions have been deadly for people in the past.
and it will result potentially in even more deaths if it is carried out. So given that alone, we demand
that this is discussed fully and all options of postponing this eviction and preventing all in the future
is discussed and carried out by any ways that y'all are able to. Thank you.
My name is Gabriel. I actually didn't prepare anything, but I'm familiar with the judiciary process.
I wanted to ensure that my colleagues were able to get the humanitarian angle across before I came out
to you with some policy recommendations and steps moving forward because you are the judiciary body.
You are in charge of process.
I would like to highlight the egregious process failure of the commissioner's board. It is the first
step of evictions to make sure services are rendered onto the unhoused community. The commissioners
have chosen health one and the SSOs to facilitate that. As we have seen both yesterday in the failure
of health net services and the repeated experiences, lived experiences of the unhoused folks, the lack
of access to services process has broken down. The first step to evictions, which is the ensuring that
services are rendered on these sites pre-eviction has not come to fruition.
the funds were not allocated from elected officials but staff members, two of which are in us in this
team's mission, this team's meeting. It is
my opinion that the judiciary body would have some form of oversight over these cumulative capital funds,
that funds don't go silently into the night, into contracts that do not cover the full breadth and scope
of an eviction project. This is a massive interagency undertaking involving LEOs, emergency medical
services, and contracts with cleaning companies. That has not been established. And as a taxpayer, I
would like to know where my money is going. At the very least, your body should be investigating both the fine
and non-financial processes of eviction and seeing that the county does not currently have any establishing
those before moving forward with a property eviction at the Thompson property. Accountability is incredibly
important in government and we as voters cannot hold accountable staff positions. It is absolutely incredibly
callous that those who we do not elect have the opinion-making power to make life or death decisions
for our most
vulnerable neighbors. I would like to reiterate process failure on part of the commissioners, process
failure on part of HealthONE, process failure on part of the city and communicating with the county.
I'm not sure if these numbers were reiterated. I don't know if any of you know how many beds are in
the city for homeless folks. Total, fixed number, it's 259. As of the 2025 January census, which was
11 months ago, there were 305 individuals noted as homeless. We know that there are more.
many places don't disclose for their own specific and valid reasons. That means that there's a deficit
of over 45 beds. And so when, you know, Councillor Thomas or Thompson guarantees us that every person
at this camp will have a warm bed this, you know, this cold winter week when that eviction happens,
It's not that she's lying. It's that the process has not given her the correct numbers. These numbers
were pulled from your Monroe County white flag procedure. So you have these numbers. They're accessible.
Clearly, there was a miscommunication in resources, in supply lines, in interagency cooperation. All
these are grounds to stall this eviction. This will lose a life. And I think there's plenty of policy
that you can put forward and procedure that you can iron out that could prevent this until spring. Thank
you for your time. Thank you.
I'm going to switch back to teams because it looks like Katie Norris has her hand raised. So Katie,
if you can raise your hand again, state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
To hear me. Yes, we can hear you. OK, I couldn't figure out how to raise my hand again. Hi, this is
Katie Norris. I'm executive director of hotels for homeless.
I also did not have something prepared. I scribbled a little bit down, so I kind of jumped in here and
prompt you. We did take five people and one dog last night from the camp that had been evicted on the
west side. Because we had to do that, we had to raise emergency funds to be able to do so. These were
community donations that people in our community decided to share their
funds, their money, to be able to make this happen with a quickness. These funds could have been used
for others who have not found and worked hard to make an unused area of land into a safe and survivable
home. People who live at long-term camps are the last to use our emergency survival services at Hotels
for Homeless if they even use them at all. And the reason I believe for this
this is my own personal opinion, is that they have created a place that they are able to survive. These
are not the people in our community experiencing homelessness who are sleeping on the sidewalks or in
abandoned cars or buildings. They are not the ones that get turned away at the end of the night
by the shelters once they have been full and go into full-blown panic mode because they have no idea
where they are literally going to lay their freezing cold bodies at night to sleep. These people have
found an unused piece of land in our community and created a safe and survivable home. It is their home.
They have a place to take their food. They have a place to store their clothing. They have a place to
keep their medicines safe where they won't be taken or lost or destroyed. They have a place for their
beloved pets who may have lived with them for a decade and are elderly. And you know, we don't know
that that dog could have lived with somebody for 10 years in a safe and stable home before a medical
condition caused them to lose their job and be evicted and yada yada yada. We all know how it goes.
But these people are not using valuable community resources that others who have not figured out this
way or have not been able to make this happen for themselves could be using. So we are very happy to
provide our services to anyone in the community who needs them.
when we have the available funding. I just feel like our services would be put to better use for people
who have not already found and figured out a way to survive living outside in a community where they
feel safe and they have the supports of the others who are living in that community with them. That's
pretty much all I have to say. If anybody needs to reach out to us for help, or if they also would like
to help us,
they can reach out to us at h4hbloomington at gmail.com. Thank you. Thank you. OK. Hi, my name is Mo.
I just wanted to speak to something that some other people have spoken on, the fact that while an eviction
in winter is
incredibly hard. Evictions at any point of the year are just unacceptable. If somebody is living outside,
they probably don't want to be continuously harassed and kicked out of places that they can rest.
asked to take their belongings or go find their belongings in a new location without an ability to find
their own transportation to get those belongings, to find a new spot, to be kicked out of the next spot.
Simply at any point of the year, evictions are violent. They will cause deaths.
from people who are continuously put in emergency mode and have to rebuild over and over and over again.
And these are your constituents as well. And they deserve the same consideration as somebody who might
be uncomfortable to see somebody not living the same way as them. Thank you. Thank you. OK. Is there
anybody else?
that would like to make public comment on this item, whether you're here in the net, you know, room
or virtually via teams. Hello, my name is Marine Langley. I have lived in Bloomington all 28 years of
my life. I've never been to a county council meeting before today.
just because I think this issue is an important one. And I just want to publicly speak on the record
to say, I do not support the evictions. Thank you. Thank you.
And I just wanted to say, I think people did a really good job in showing that the bureaucratic process
to stop anything when we say that any negative outcomes of these evictions, we can see very clearly
that that is not working. And we know that in many ways that this is a death sentence for people. And
I think that I just wanted to really bring to the forefront that I
These people in many ways, as evidenced by someone who spoke earlier, are doing what the state has in
many ways failed to do, which is find safety in a time of extreme crisis. And their safety that they've found
these evictions will do nothing other than take away that safety. It does not give anyone else in the
community safety. I do not feel safer knowing that my neighbors might freeze to death. And I also want
to, I imagine too that people get into local government because I think people here and like all of
us in this room know how important these decisions are and like really how important it is. Yeah, these
decisions in these moments. I think it's been very obvious
people don't get into local government to become executioners. And I think that this is a death sentence.
I think that we knowing this, knowing that especially in this moment of this extreme cold,
although of course, I think evictions again are never the right way to go. Again, evidence by literature
is not the option. Capital punishment is especially a harsh crime for the crime of not being able to
pay rent. So I really hope that we can
we all care about these decisions. We know these decisions are going to have that impact and to choose
safety over violence and fear. So thank you. Thank you. Hello. My name is Lydia Kern. I don't really
have anything prepared, so just bear with me while I kind of stumble through.
I'm here actually because I was inspired by my son, my nine-year-old son, who is deeply passionate about
the unhoused population. And I just would like to, I think, remind the people here that houselessness
is a systemic issue, not a personal failing, and that any one of us in this room is far closer to being
without a home and sleeping on the street than we ever are to being rich and powerful. And I would just
beg towards humanity and towards seeing these people as people and not different from you in any way
fundamentally. And that the harm of evicting people from a place where they
are not causing trouble. They are just trying to live peacefully. That is doing so much more harm than
the slight discomfort of people around them that maybe have a lot more privilege and a lot more comfort.
I'm someone myself who has teetered on the edge of homelessness more than once. And if it hadn't been
for people in my community that took me in, I would have been homeless with a two-year-old. And I think
about that every time I see somebody sleeping on the street.
And I just, yeah, I think that's all I have. Thank you for your time, and thank you for being here to
listen. Thank you. Last call for items not on tonight's agenda. Hi there. My name is Liam Pizzano.
And I don't come preparing a speech or anything today. I would like to remind everyone here that this
is not a new problem for our community. Not even five years ago, a homeless man of 51 years of age was
found frozen to death by a park bench in Seminary Park. This is not an unfamiliar problem with our community.
We have seen this problem in our city before, and we have seen it killed before.
And the board of commissioners is allowing this to happen again by allowing this eviction to happen
again. And I think every one of us has a duty here as members of any civilization and as humans ourselves
to protect these people because these people are, through neglect, being killed. I yield my time.
Thank you. Thank you.
call via teams anybody want to raise your hand and speaker items not on the agenda all right not seeing
any hands raised on teams but again last call here in the net you hill room okay um thank you all very
much for your public comments um and i wrote everybody's name down that spoke
And a very special, I guess, thank you to Ashley for taking the time to come out and speak about your
lived experience. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. We're going to move forward and we're going
to go to department updates. So department updates are for items not on the agenda and
Kelly Whitmer is up and Stephen Miller is too. So each department that has an update for items not on
the agenda, you'll have up to 10 minutes and you can do that via Teams or here in person.
We're both here together because Steve came to me with a brilliant idea or I thought it was a great
idea. We bought 40 benches from the Pendleton Penitentiary and on the benches are. Excuse me, on the
benches are the nine, are QR codes for the 988 Suicide Prevention Hotline. With these 40 benches,
They may seem simple, but they carry a powerful message that help is always available. Each bench serves
as a quiet reminder that someone in crisis can reach out by dialing 988, then pressing 1 to be directly
connected to a service provider who's trained and certified to help veterans in crisis. Most of the
benches are going to be located at the Monroe County Nature Preserve, but others will be at Carson Farm Park.
The Cars Farm Greenway, the Flatwoods Park, Limestone Greenway, Will Detmer Park, Jackson Creek Park.
And I want to offer a heartfelt thank you to Kelly Whitmer and the whole parks team for making this
happen. It's really incredible to see the community come together to help veterans.
and what we did also with Pendleton is that we had to take two staff members up there with our trailer
and our truck and they had to go through tight security and get all the benches loaded and what our
park superintendent Andy mentioned to me earlier was that the inmates the gentleman who built the benches
signed their names on the bottom
and that they did take care. These benches are extremely well made and I believe it is a sense of pride
to them knowing that they're going to parks around the state of Indiana. I wanted to also mention that
Reads Across America will be happening this weekend on Saturday. In Monroe County there'll be 10 different
locations where we're having celebrations and honoring our
of deceased veterans. There's going to be a ceremony at the Elks Lodge 446 at 400 North Walnut at 1030
on December 13th. There'll be a wreath laying that follows directly after about noon at the Rose Hill
Cemetery. Additionally, there will be wreath laying at White Oak Cemetery, Gosport Cemetery, Unionville
Cemetery, Shiloh Cemetery,
Valhalla Elks Rest, Burgoon, South Union, Prairie Chapel and Dog Island. I wanted to thank you for supporting
these efforts, both the 988 benches that provide hope and the wreaths that honor our veterans service
and sacrifice. These initiatives reflect our community's commitment to remembering, supporting and caring
for those who have served. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. Does anybody have any questions for them? All right, Council Henry, and then I'll go
to Councilor Iverson. Thank you both for being here, and thank you for that good news. I guess my only
question is more about claiming one of the benches for Courthouse Square. Is it possible for us to get
one here, or is it really just designated for the parks? No, I mean, I'm sure the commissioners would...
I can't speak for the commissioners. Of course not.
but you can ask them yourselves. We would be more than happy to drop one off. Yeah, I may do so. I mean,
just given the information on them and just the foot traffic downtown as well. I mean, it just seems
like a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of what you all put together. So thank you for all that
work. Mr. Miller, you.
riddled off a long list of events for Reads Across America. For those watching or for those of us that
want to attend one of those many ceremonies, where can we find that list or more information? Sure,
there's the Reads Across America website, excuse me, if you just Google Reads Across America and then
from the website you can click on the different regions and Bloomington and Monroe County will pop up
as one of the options.
Anybody else? Yes, Councilor Wilts. I told you before the meeting that I was excited because you all
were going to be telling us about some new thing. And I specifically said, don't tell me, because it'll
be like Christmas. And this is super cool. I never would have imagined. You know, I work in parks and
rec and that kind of field.
And so I'm familiar with the Pendleton program and they, you know, they're at the trade shows and saying,
you know, the different products that they make. And this is so cool. It's just, it's a really good
example of when you work together across silos, you are, the synergy is just incredible. I think this
is a great project.
It's win-win. Thank you for getting together and doing it. First of all, thank you both for all of this.
It's always good to see the two of you. You never come with anything that's not helpful to the community.
And while we have you here, particularly Mr. Miller, I was going to ask you
If any of that, we've got a lot of influencers in the room as far as outreach to the community, they're
hitting places that we all don't always hit, or we're trying to hit and we're not hitting it well. If
a member of our audience or someone watching home knows a veteran, any veteran in the community, but
particularly someone that is either in an encampment or elsewhere, how would they get,
them in touch with you so that maybe to pursue things that folks haven't thought about or having struggles
with or anything at all. Absolutely. Thank you for that question. So folks can reach out to me directly
at my phone number is I'll give it to you now. It's 812-349.
2537. I do a lot of work with with unhoused veterans and veterans who are at risk of homelessness. So
if any veteran or family or concerned citizen wants to talk about a veteran or what have you, please
reach out to me. I'm happy to help get the ball rolling. If someone who's at risk of homelessness, we
can help get
them passed on to some social workers and heading home and other organizations like that who can help
get them back on their feet. I appreciate that very much. And I know sometimes people are meek about,
well, I'm not sure that's for me. But this office with Mr. Miller is beyond approachable. Every time
I pass by there, they are literally assisting somebody who served that we made a lot of promises to
as a country. And on the back end,
Mr. Miller and the team really helped to get that done for them. So thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Any
other updates or questions? All right. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. All right. Next up, we
have an update for our one of our township trustees, Efrat.
Oh, look at that. That's unheard of. Please proceed. Is this a quorum of township trustees? No,
not quite. Chair, can you see this? Yeah, it reads right there. You can bring a chair up another chair.
The microphones move around, so if you need to pass microphones, you can do that.
Thank you so much. It's good to see everyone. Afrat Rosser, Bloomington Township Trustee, and also here
as part of the Monroe County Trustee Association with some of my esteemed colleagues. If you want to
introduce yourselves real quick. I'm Rita Barrow, Van Buren Township Trustee. I'm Joan Hall, Salt Creek
Township Trustee. Michelle Bright, Benton Township Trustee.
11 townships within Monroe County and I want to pause for a minute and just acknowledge we planned this
date some time back not realizing what else might be on the public's mind and just thinking about the
threat of eviction prevention this this is kind of timely so I did have a presentation thanks for pulling
that up I'll try to
I don't know, do I tell someone when to move to the next slide? We'll try doing it that way. Okay.
So yeah, just by way of introduction, we thought we'd overview just the townships a little bit,
what we do, the impact we have in the community, and the challenges we're facing along with many of
our colleagues and other governmental bodies as we move into the next couple of years here.
There's a map up there of Monroe County and the townships. There's also a website at the bottom there.
If anyone's unsure of what township they live in, that's a really good way to look it up. The trustees
in this county, I think, collaborate really well together. I've learned so much from these three and
others. Mr. Combs sends his regrets. He was supposed to be here. I have a memo from him instead I'll
share with you. All right, and onto the next one.
Just to talk a little bit about townships, we are each independent government units. We each have a
board that we answer to and we're all independently elected. And townships are the oldest form of government
around here before the state, city, county came along. We were here and so a lot of our duties kind
of go back a couple hundred years and we continue to evolve what we do to meet
the challenges of today. I put your tax dollars at work because I say that often in my office when I
hear from people who walk in that maybe never needed help before but something happened, saw this a
lot with the federal shutdown recently and a lot of people struggle to ask for help and I just remind
everyone that these are your tax dollars at work if you've
been here, whether you actually own property or you just reside here and consume here and work or play
or any of that, your tax dollars support the townships and so don't hesitate to come to us at a time of need.
We are charged with providing for the health safety and general welfare of our residents. And next slide.
Some of the ways in which we do that, I think most of you know we provide a large amount of financial
assistance for emergencies that households and individuals face. Every year we help thousands
prevent eviction for thousands and we keep the utilities on, the lights on, we keep the water running.
For a lot of folks, we provide food in either a pantry form or a voucher. We assist with dozens and
dozens of burials and cremations for individuals each year, medical assistance, transportation, a lot
of information and referral and light case work. So we really attend to the most urgent needs. People
come to us usually on their worst day, possibly with that eviction,
or that utilities disconnect. Next slide. We also have other roles that help maintain our community and help
mediate neighborly disputes, we'll call them. We care for historic cemeteries. And I think between us,
I don't have the data aggregated. It's kind of laborious to go to 11 townships and pull all this together.
So I'm making a lot of generalizations. But I know that it's dozens of cemeteries, weed complaints when
there's rank and noxious vegetation being unattended to, fence line disputes between neighbors. Some
of us operate parks, community centers where people
we'll come together. And next slide. And we do a lot of other things. We support a lot of the nonprofits
in our community. Again, I didn't add it all up, but I do know that between your two largest ones, Perry
and Bloomington Township, we grant out over 200,000 a year to local nonprofits that support the work
that we do and we make referrals to.
special events, notary services. We have a representative payee program now where we can assist anyone
who receives Social Security or Veterans Administration income and has been deemed unable to care or
manage their own funds.
and we've had some great grant funded program ships with the county that I thought would be
worth highlighting. The ARPA funds that you all shared with the townships during COVID times helped
get so many households through some really tough times and allowed the townships to do that work efficiently
and effectively and help get our community through some
some really hard times. The home repair program that was launched in the last couple of years for rural
homeowners also in partnership has allowed
us to work with really some of our most vulnerable to maintain and preserve their housing that we're
talking roof repairs, leaky roofs, insulating broken windows, water lines that are leaking and costing
them hundreds and hundreds in water bills and so forth. So we can go on the next slide. We are, as I
mentioned, independent government.
units each of us. So we're fully tax funded. If you own property in Monroe County you're paying a levy
to some township and we heavily rely on that. We also get a little bit in the way of distributions from
a wheel tax, a gasoline and excise tax, and then we get the lit shares that you have generously shared with us
over the last couple years. And for some of us, that's a significant part of our revenue picture. I
know personally that's 25% of mine, I think higher for some of you. And all of these sources are now
strained. I don't want to harp too much on the wheel tax because it's pretty small, but that is dwindling.
there have been threats to township government, bills filed at the state to consolidate us to perhaps
the county one position there, and then the impact of SEA 1 and HB 1461 thought was worth just kind
of mentioning on the next slide. You know, SEA 1 gave property owners tax relief,
part of the governor and the state legislature's wish. And that's great, but it comes at a cost to all
of these local government units, including townships, and we'll have a real impact on the levels of
services that we are able to provide. We're barely
keeping up some days, I think this year will be my township's busiest in terms of a lot of numbers,
the pantry and assistance, and I think others will say the same. So the immediate impact of SEA 1 with
the levy freeze and some of the other changes to assess valuation means a loss of revenue that's immediate
of around five to 7% for each of us.
The sun setting of the lit in 27-28 will have that greater impact if not replaced locally. And that
total between the 11 townships is almost 1.5 million on average for those next three years after it
sunsets. So I know you're being made to be the bad guys by the state if we want to maintain levels of
service in this county.
And we're not here to press you hard. We're here to just start a conversation about this and what we
want to see in our townships moving forward, right? HB 1461 also had a big effect on us in our ability
to operate a healthy organization as it's taking any unrestricted funds, so mostly our grainy day funds.
On the next slide, all of these cuts, of course, come at this time when we've got this housing crisis
in our state and our community and, you know, safety programs like SNAP and Medicaid that have been
cut, not even talking about the shutdown. And so, you know, we've been asking ourselves and I think
a lot of the community is also starting to ask how we do foresee, you know, moving forward with all
these challenges.
Again, we're just here hoping to just start that conversation. We know you've been put in an awkward
position to say the least and that you're struggling just the same with us. If I have left anything
out that my colleagues want to add, please jump in. Otherwise, we're here for any questions we can answer
and we look forward to talking and working with you in the future. Thank you for all that you do.
Thank you for everyone that came out here tonight to engage in the heavy conversation. And I hope there's
some resolution to that moving forward, too. Absolutely. Thank you. I'd just like to say thank you all
for the work you do as well. But this also just goes to show how, if we all play well together and if
we don't play well together, the effects
that each body has on resources. So I hope for those who might be watching can get that message. And
if you watch back later, I hope you can continue to get it. So I'm going to open it up for my colleagues
here. I'm going to look to my left first to see if anybody has any questions. No, not right now. So
I saw hands. So I'll go Iverson and then Henry.
Thank you all for spending your evening with us. We're very happy to have you here. I think I told this
to you all before, but we just don't get to see you all that often here, so it's a pleasure. I guess
my question is a bit of a process one. You mentioned this is the first step in a longer conversation,
and you raised some very interesting conversation topics. What do you foresee as the next step in this
conversation?
Again, as Jennifer has said, we have to collaborate. We can't have both of us disagreeing or agreeing
to make an agreement until we all come together. And if the state decides to do away with townships,
look what you're going to be stuck with.
Let me ask you this. How many people can go inside a government office and be able to sit down and talk
to someone with an eviction in their hand? It doesn't happen that way. It doesn't. With the townships,
it does. We open our doors. We open our pantries.
We open anything that we can do to help any individual that needs help. I especially like the ARPA.
I think this is an outstanding because I have a lot of rural area individuals that live out there that
are elderly. They live on social security and that alone. It's amazing to me
how well the individuals feel they can sit down and tell someone their story. And you sit there and
you give them a Kleenex and you're wiping your ears with a Kleenex as well. So they understand we're
here to help. So. And just to add on to that, we were able to help people the same day. I had an experience
yesterday. So Salt Peak Township is, if you're not familiar,
is out State Road 446 near the lake. So we are in close proximity to the Pain Town campground. So I
often am helping people who are actually technically homeless, but they're living temporarily in Pain
Town campground, which is in the township. So they're living in an RV or a tent, and they can stay there
for up to two weeks. I can help them with their campground rent, but then they have to leave for a couple
of days. And so
You know, I had a situation with a woman yesterday. She ran out of gas with her RV. You know, she had
she had nowhere to go for a couple of days. It's cold. She they don't a lot of these people don't have
any family or anyone to rely on. So I can put her up in a hotel for a couple of days and send her back
to the campground. You know, so we're trying to just keep these people, you know,
make sure they have food and shelter, but I was able to, she contacted me and I was able to help her
within a couple of hours. And this is the kind of work that we all do every day. So if townships are
dissolved, we just worry about what's gonna happen to these people. Who's gonna care for these people?
So that's it.
So yeah, I don't know on a practical level what that looks like. I think you have a long-term finance
committee and maybe that's the place to take something like this up with more data and forecasts and
whatnot. But I think it's a public discussion to understand the value of what our taxes provide us and
whether we want to
demonstrate those values, you know, locally in opposition to what the the state has done to us. I would
agree that the next steps need to be public and long term finance, I think, is a is a good recommendation.
But of course, that is something that we need to talk about.
Thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Henry and then Hawk. Sorry,
that sounded so definitive. Thanks, we'll talk. I don't have that power. Thank you all for being here.
I know the conversation is a long time coming. I know Dan has wanted to be here, I think, for a few
times at least to chat with us. You've all demonstrated again that you are the government of last resort
in our community for so many people. You are seeing the consequence of
state and national policy.
every day. And the more we can tell your story, the more important, I think, it is to the community
to understand that. Let me go back to why I think it's taken this long for you to get here,
because Mr. Combs had told me that a few months ago when we were all facing the potential loss of SNAP
benefits in our community, I understand that the Perry trustee office was just overwhelmed with people
looking for relief. And of course, we were looking at almost a falling out there of that. Can you maybe
share some of your experience with some of the
kind of whipsaw effects that are hitting your office, especially to snap and help us understand what
that looks like for all of you in the past few months. I mean, I know personally for Bloomington Township,
even before the shutdown, you know, when the big beautiful bill went into effect,
that cut snap for a lot of folks, including folks who are refugees or asylum seekers here through a
legal process, right? So we started seeing more new faces in our pantry. And then, yeah, the shutdown, we
We tallied numbers for those few weeks, and it was three times the volume we usually see in our food
pantry. And just a lot of people who were really scared. There was just a lot of uncertainty, and it
still has that ripple effect, right? They may have spent more of their own funds in those days that
will now come to bear as the rents do in January. And not only that, just the increasing cost of food.
Food assistance requests have just skyrocketed in the past year. Well, for everything, but especially
with food. $150 voucher doesn't go as far as it used to. So that we actually built a small pantry in
our little township, one of those little free pantries that we stock a couple of times a week just to
kind of help supplement. But people are really struggling out there. Van Buren, this is the first year
that Van Buren has had a pantry.
And we have had donations. We open it two times a week, and especially like, which I have to say, one
of my employees takes care of the pantry. And he opens it up one to three on Wednesday. And then on
Fridays, it's one to five in case you're getting off work or whatever. But I will tell you this.
We received 18 turkeys, not turkey breast, turkeys from Hoosier Hills. One day, they were gone.
One day, and it was on a Wednesday, they had two hours, three hours to get and go. We have never seen
this many people.
The only requirement that I am saying is if you come on a Wednesday, don't come back on a Friday. Let's
give everybody an opportunity to get groceries as well. But we've had a lot of individuals to come in.
And you go in there on Friday evening after it's closed and the shelves are empty. You're going, there's no way.
It does help. One of the amazing things recently in our community is just the number of people who have
reached forward wanting to help their neighbor. That became very busy trying to coordinate those efforts.
And we also have a food pantry. And I would go there. It would make my heart so happy because it would
be just busting at the seams. And then the next day, I might come and half the stuff would be gone.
And it would just be these kind of waves. But I've really seen our community come out and help each other.
Another thing we've struggled with this year is just the amount of benefits and the amount of time to
get benefits for someone that's in a hard spot. It's just been a real challenge with funding being cut,
you know, SNAP benefits decreasing. And it's just been very frustrating to feel a pinch from the state
about wanting to potentially eliminate governments, but eliminate townships.
but also, you know, we might be the only people who can immediately help folks in their time of need
as well. Thank you. Councilor Hawke. Yes. Moving away from the pantries, I mean, we've got a great one
over there in Richland Township and people coming from all over and they show pictures of everything
they have and I'm thinking, wow,
That's quite a grocery store there. So kudos to them and all of their volunteers and all of you for
making sure that you have it available a little closer to home because not everybody can walk to the
pantry even if some people think the children should walk there. Had to throw that in.
I want to talk about, which is something that I've heard from some of you about, is the legislation
tied to road funding. And so while that's not been
that's part of our conversation right now. I think it is one that we need to have. That's what I'm hearing
from you that you're concerned about this. And I would not want the highway department to think that
they can rely on all this extra money that's going to be happening because I.
they just don't see how that's going to happen because you're not going to be getting the same amount
in your income tax that local income tax as you've had in the past. So maybe somebody at the state didn't
understand that or they they just thought they thought and rightfully so that there were some townships
in the state
that had quite a bit of cash saved back. And Van Buren did that at one time so that they didn't have
to run up a bond and pay back interest on money to build that community center. But I just wanted to
say it has not gone unnoticed by me that you're concerned about that. And I welcome a conversation about
it because I know that's a concern.
of the townships so just at any time you wish to share that or send me information or let's
have a conversation about it just for the public to know the legislation was saying if you depending
on where those funds are standing that that money could be used for highway
you're not going to be able to do that. You're not going to be able to do that repairs is so right inside
that own township. In other words, you wouldn't use Bloomington Township money to fix potholes in Richland
Township or the other way around. However. Uh this is not a part of your funding to cover. And so those
of us who are elected understand if we don't have a fund where revenues
So please understand we're in the same situation where people come and say, well, can I do X, Y,
and Z? But if we don't have funding for it specifically for that, then it's not always workable. So
I've been studying the legislation, as you probably all know, and I know that you are.
stay into it and I think you probably all have your 1782s back right if we don't have ours back yet
I thought we might get it today and I think you're right council member hawk about the the state legislature
may be seeing you know some cash reserves from some townships and I think it's just important to note
that a lot of townships run fire departments and you know have to save up
for that big truck. So sometimes that on paper looks misleading. I can tell you most of us are not sitting
on huge amounts. And if we are, it's towards a goal that we have identified with our board, like a building
or a needed asset. And you know that the part that is, that we are allowed to put in a tax rate for
it to assist the townships
by when we get to the 2028, the amount of that can only be a 0.2%. However, they've said, oh, but you
can't use the 0.2 for that and the 0.4 for fire and the 1.2 for county because then you're 0.1 over.
So one of those is going to have to lose one. And so I think you're going to have to be talking to the
fire departments or something if you expect them to take less so that you can have some of it.
the the part that you could have under that point too if we took it to point two it that also goes to
the public library and they're counting on that money and that also goes to blemish and transportation
they're counting on that money big time and that also goes to our solid waste district am i leaving
somebody and the township so did i lead anybody out so that
just simply is we'll have to collaborate work together well but we cannot we don't have a money tree
in the backyard either so we understand the tough position you'll you're in now and will be in absolutely
thank you yeah counselor thank you very much and i want to thank you all for coming here and talking
to us anytime the trustees come in and and
educate us a little bit on what's going on. I think that is a true gift because you're seeing everything
directly. We will never be able to replicate the countertop that you have, whether it's your tabletop
at home or otherwise. I did want to say, I have a couple of things I made an outline of here.
Number one, and I was out of Bloomington Township maybe two or three months ago, but that payee program to me,
when I hear all the issues we have in our community, some we heard denied, some that we're thinking
about, to me, that payee program may be one of the hottest things since sliced bread is a sort of secret
weapon, not to put pressure on our trustees that have enough to do, but I think that that is a, I think
it's to be complimented, number one. I think there's opportunities there that when we can figure out
that a little bit more,
could probably be embracing that a little bit harder, but not in the traditional government way of you
go do that, because we think that's cool. We're going to go get a pizza, but in the partnership way.
And so I just want to say that I also want to say that in a partnership way, because the state has put
us into this funding kind of mix, I think we're going to have to
and we're going to do something that. Kind of figures this out and in does a little bit does as little
as harm as possible to the people, the county and particularly people that are served. I was talking
to some of our folks in the audience yesterday, and I said there was a time in
tried to do as little harm as possible. In fact, you didn't deliberately do any harm. And if you made
an accident, you tried to figure out how to get the train back on the tracks as quickly and efficiently
as possible. Somewhere that was written on a chalkboard for people when they took an oath of office,
somebody erased that throughout the chalk, throughout the eraser, and apparently they threw it out of
their memory. When we think about what position we're in, trustees,
and I listen to the comments that have gone before me, and I wonder what was the state thinking? Sometimes
I'm worried that people aren't thinking. They're just doing. Because if they were dealing with any,
and I just want to be respectful of your time, but if they were dealing with any of the stuff we've
had on our agenda for the last year and you've been doing it at your countertops, they wouldn't be up
there right now playing happy land and making up problems. So I know sometimes they watch us, and I
hope that they will listen.
this is where people live and things happen. And so I do think that we can be an example for that kind
of moving forward and how we do it. And I think that I don't think the county is capable of even trying
to figure out how to unlock your door and get in there and do those things. I don't know that we can
get that pantry stocked. We certainly don't have one downstairs that I found. And I don't know that
everybody can get down to the Nattie Hill to get that.
Again, if anyone's listening, I know they don't know who's listening to me up there. Another new there.
But if anyone's listening, I wouldn't mess with that. And there's a lot of powerful people from both
sides of the aisle in this community that represent us and we shouldn't look at it. And I do think that
you're wise to be here now. We're now in a position that nobody ever wants to talk about, which is now
we will have to
raise revenues, AKA raise taxes, because we've got these services have to be provided. And I think some
of us have to keep saying it like that, because that's exactly what this is gonna be, because there's
no free services. So anyway, I'm sorry to go on so long, but I wanna thank you and I just appreciate
the opportunity.
I'll let Councilor Feidl's hand go up and then after that we'll move on to the next. Okay,
first of all, thanks for being here. I always appreciate hearing for all the groundwork. But I'm also
wondering about, I know there have been numerous attempts over the years about trying to eliminate township
trustees. And I can't remember, maybe you can remind me if there is a state trustees association, do
you have an organization that looks out for you all statewide?
And I'm hoping that that can be helpful in working with the State House to make the case to show how
important it is to have this one-on-one service firsthand, right? When people come to you and they're
so close. And so I would be interested to know how this goes. Do you know if there's any legislation
already proposed for next year? Yeah, okay. House Bill 1233. Yes, 1233.
the Indiana Township Association. I think we're all pretty active in that area. We all go up there like
in February to the state house. Can you move your microphone next to you so we can pick it up for people
in the back? I'm not sure that I'm not sure that they're listening, but we're trying, you know,
we're trying. I think it's probably going to come up again in January. One of the things that I think
the Township Association is proposing is that instead of just saying, oh, we're going to dissolve township
government, let's really look at the different townships. There may be opportunities where there could
be some consolidation and more efficiencies and, you know, maybe
do kind of a scorecard for each township. And if the ones that are active should remain, the ones that
are not active, maybe those are dissolved, but don't just just wipe it on, wipe out slate clean without
doing some closer evaluation, which makes sense to me. So I mean, even in Monroe County, it's possible
that the two smallest townships are Salt Creek and Polk. And even though for a small township, we're
very busy. I mean, there is a possibility that maybe some of the township, we could look at something
like that even right here in this county.
I want to go further. What scares me is if we merge these townships and they're in rural areas, how
are they going to get there when they don't have a car? They can't use a computer. They have no idea
how to even get us. So how can we go get them all the time and bring them to the office or take
the application to them. That just means hiring more people to do more work. I don't see the merging
working. I really don't. I just want to reiterate that point. The townships are the government definition
of meeting people where they are.
we can't pull back from that. And the fiscal situation, notwithstanding, this is critical work that
is on the front lines of what we've been talking about since this meeting started. So thank you. Well,
thank you very much for taking the time to come in. That was a nice
overview of what y'all do and thank you for your service and all the things you have done and continue
to do to uplift those and help those in our community who need it the most. So we appreciate it.
Thank you. Appreciate all of you. Thank you very much for your time tonight. All right. Is there another
department with an update? I'd see somebody that was shaking their head. Come on up.
Good evening. Kyle Gibbons, Jail Commander. Typically, I try to keep things lighthearted and positive
with everything we've talked about tonight. That's not something that I'm really interested in doing.
This update almost seems meaningless, but we said we would do it, so here I am. We have selected a licensed
CPA. She is from Indiana. She's from New Albany.
Her name is Marcy Grube. She is a minority owned business. She's one of the best auditors in the state
of Indiana. I've already provided her licensure to our liaisons. She has prior experience working with
the commissary. This is something that we're looking to start the next week or so. If you have any questions,
I'll answer them now. Thank you very much.
Thank you for moving so quickly and coming back and keeping the communication going on this. You said
she has experience with the commissary can you expand on that just a little bit. She's a forensic auditor as well.
like I said, she's one of the better auditors in the states, why we selected her. But one of the primary
reasons, Ms. Wilts, is because she has worked with sheriff's commissary before. So she has experience.
We've got kind of a unique issue with creating the in-house commissary and the external commissary.
So she'll have full knowledge on how to navigate that process. And that's primarily why we selected
her. Thank you. Great.
looking to my right here to see if anybody has any questions. No? Well, that was fast. Thank you very
much. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right. Last call for any other departments that would like to
provide an update for items not on the agenda. I see Ms. Kelly, yes.
Good evening, Council. I don't have a whole lot. I just wanted to give you a brief update. So for the
three new nursing positions that you recently approved, again, thank you for that. Those have been posted.
We have started receiving applicants and started scheduling for those interviews at this time. So just
wanted to provide that update. Appreciate that. Wonderful news. Thank you. All right. Last call for
a department updates.
of seeing none. Thank you all very much for providing those updates to us. Next up on our agenda is
the consent agenda items. Council, I move to approve the following consent agenda items for December
the 9th. A, the sheriff request and fund 1000-0005 County General Sheriff the creation of account line
30190 promotion and advertising. B,
The sheriff's request and fund 1170-0005 public safety lit sheriff, the creation of account line 36013
services law enforcement. C, the highway department's request and fund 1176-0000 motor vehicle highway
for a category transfer of $120,000 from the supplies category to the services category. D,
the commissioner's request and fund 1000-0068 county general commissioners for category
transfer of $41,680.52 from the personnel category to the services category. E, the prosecutor's request
and fund 2503-0000 diversion prosecutor user fees for a category transfer of $50 from the services category
to the supplies category. F, the county council summary minutes of August 26th, budget session one.
August 27th, budget session number two. September 3rd, budget session three. September 4th, budget
4, September 10, Budget Session 5, September 11, Budget Session 6, and September 16, Council Meeting
G. And finally, the Council Office's request in Fund 1000-0061, County General Counsel, and amend the
title of Account Line 30031 from Sophia Travis Service Grant to Sophia Travis in order to encompass
all expenditures for this account line. Second.
All right, we got a motion and a second. Is there any questions or comments from council? Yes, Councillor
Iverson. Just real quick, thank you so much for doing the minutes. I know that was a big burden,
so thank you, thank you, thank you. Anybody else? Yes, Councillor Wilks. Yeah, item D, is there any
more explanation about the reason
for the category transfer. I read what's in the agenda. But typically when we see these types of transfers,
they are coming from the account, they're reflective of what the nature of the expenditure was. So I guess,
Do the liaisons have more information or is there something that maybe I missed because I've not been
great at my email the past couple of weeks? I'm going to look to Kim Schell and I do know that it looks
like Ms. Purdy is online as well too. Okay, if Ms. Purdy wants to start first, but I know that earlier
in the year they came in and they had done some in-house transfers to meet some bills.
So that is, so one of the lines that they had used was Centerstone. And so they have an account line
called Centerstone. So that line is going to be short. They got to make that payment here at the end
of the year. So they're asking to do an in-house transfer or the category transfer so that they can
make that payment for the end of the year. Do you have anything else to add? No, that was very good.
Thank you. Did I see a hand go up over here?
All right. Yes, Councilor Wilson, you had another question. Is this? Yes. Thank you. Is this from? So
this is not the health insurance issues that we had that were unexpected. This is other that liability,
that other kind of insurance that the county carries. Was this and I know I know you were in here. So
this is just me asking if somebody remembers better than I do. But was this an unexpected rate increase?
that you were covering? It was more than that. So I think it was more than just a rate increase. We've
been adding vehicles. So every time we add a vehicle, that's a cost that's incurred. We have added,
there were some buildings, I think, that was not actually included and should have been included. And
I don't know if that was the transfer between, we went from one
provider to another. So as far as our liability and workman's comp insurance is concerned, and that's
what took much where we had to start dragging from other particular lines. This was all cost premiums
that were being paid as opposed to claims. It was premiums and then I
don't have it in front of me because we've had to transfer in multiple places. So I would lose track
of where I'm stealing from. But if you approve this transfer, we should be able to pay all of our claims
that are required in that particular budget.
This will make the Centerstone account whole, but this does not represent the entire amount of what
you needed to cover the expense. And you're pulling from the financial manager line because that was
the only line that we have available to do it in house transfer. The only line that had enough extra funding.
Yeah. I mean, the other option, because when I realized that we were down to $50,000, I went down to
the auditor's office, and it was like, I don't know what we do. It's too late for an additional, and
we have to make this payment. We have someone in that position, right? No. We do not have anyone in
that position. Office manager? You've got office manager. Yeah, office manager. It says financial manager.
You have financial manager, but you don't have anybody in office manager. Yeah, that's the wrong.
That's the wrong should be office manager. Got it. That starts to make a little bit more sense. OK.
Is can you confirm that the fund number is correct. Fund number is correct. Is correct. The account
line is incorrect. So Carly are you able to pull up loud for me please.
We can approve this as it is and let the department do an in-house transfer, or we can make all the
changes tonight. What would you guys prefer? Say that again, please. I'm sorry. This correction can
be handled with the department tomorrow, or we can make the changes live at tonight's meeting. It's
up to you guys. You're saying we can approve it and you can take care of it, but we don't? Yes.
Okay. All right. Does anybody else have any other questions? On that particular one or the others? Or
anything else on consent agenda items? Okay. I heard somebody said, anybody have any more information
on it? And on the sheriff's office, what we really need to look at is if they're creating an entire new line
for something that we hadn't included in the budget. And so when I spoke with them about it,
because you know, I'm always curious, I want to know what we're doing, because once you give them the
new line, then, and they're saying they can do a transfer then within that category. So then I asked
what category they were paying for it
out of now and just exactly what it's for. Evidently this was at a request from the auditor's office
to do it this way instead of paying for it out of the account line where they had been paying for these
items so that it would be clear to the public. Just wanted to make that clear that we talked about that.
also the new account line under public safety lit for the sheriff's department that had something to
do with the uniform expenses, something that was embroidered on to a specialty area that the group working
on. And so there was some embroidery that had to be done. And so evidently the auditor's office felt
like it should
not be under uniforms, but under this. I think I have that right. Are you back there? Did I get all
that right? Yes, you got it all right. I think it's appropriate that we talk with them because anytime
somebody puts in, oh, I want a new account line and I'll just
moving around, well, then we want to know, is that something we're already doing and we're just paying
for it in another line? We're just going to call it something different? Or is this a whole brand new
something we're going to be doing that we didn't include? So you're already doing this, just paying
for it out of different lines. And the auditor's office requested that it just makes it cleaner by creating
these new account lines. Right. I just wanted to make it clear that we have done our due diligence.
We did have a conversation about it.
Thank you very much, Council Hawk, for that. Okay, anybody else have any other questions on anything
related to consent agenda items? All right, and I'll go to public comment. If anybody has public comment
for consent agenda items only, you can raise your hand via Teams or come to the lectern here in the
NatU Hill Room. And seeing none, and seeing that we can also vote
by voice vote for consent agenda items. All those in favor of approving consent agenda items as presented
signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay. Motion carries. Thank you for that.
Next we'll go up on the amendment part of our agenda item. This is we're moving up the sheriff's presentation regarding
the required pension reporting, and so I'm just going to ask for the Sheriff's Office to come on up
for this item. Thank you.
This presentation is based upon a new statutory requirement requiring us to provide certain information
about the pension fund. I want to introduce Elaine Beatty. She is with Gelzer Investments, and they
handle our investment portfolio.
Elaine, I've known Elaine for 30 plus years or so. She's just a wee bit older than me. But actually,
she's not. I'm not just teasing her about it. But she spent an awful lot of time with Mercury and Keene,
who is the actuary for nearly all the sheriff's pension plans and also the state police. So she has
a very broad knowledge in the
things that she's going to discuss with you. So I'm going to turn it over to her, and she's going to
fulfill these statutory responsibilities and take any questions that you might have as a result.
Thank you, Phil. And I even noted in the minutes that there was a bit of an overview as to what this
was about. And as Phil even said, Senate Enrolled Act 144 was passed and signed into legislation effective
July 1st of 2025.
And it added a new section to the Indiana Code stating that there needed to be an annual presentation
by a county police department, either by the county police department or the department's designated
designee. So that's me. I'm the designee. Just to let you know, what is this really all about? It's
a lot of accounting information.
Back in 2013, the state started reporting and requiring reporting on the gateway system where adopting
units that had pension plans and obligations made that would be a source of government revenue had to
post information, supply information for legislative review.
And it's the accounting information. It's not the information that you folks utilize in your budgeting
process. This is what accountants, okay. So 2013, well, as it has evolved, more information has been
required to be reported, and the General Assembly took this under their, I guess, arm of responsibility
by the Pension Management Oversight Committee as an off-session
committee, and they said, well, what is it we're supposed to see? Well, NPRS has an actuary on staff,
and the actuary, Andy Blau, said, well, these are some of the things we should probably look at as important.
Number one, is this happening in timely fashion? Are they reporting the information? And so that's how
it sort of evolved. As Phil noted, the actuary, McCready and Keene,
does all the calculations, sends all the information to the auditor's office to enable them to meet
the deadline of posting to Gateway the first part of the year. And all that we have done here in this
presentation is taken the information that McCready and Keene does provide, a copy of which is in the
back, and put it into a more
readable or understandable format. If you do have a second to look back at the appendix, when they provide
the information, they go line by line, step by step what has to be entered into the software reporting
system. And so what we're trying to do here is just make it a summary just to let you know what it is
that does in fact represent.
So we start with the retirement plan, and it talks about who's eligible. These are the merit employees
and the sheriff. This is a pension fund that does not cover the other staff members, like the jail staff,
support staff, but by statute just the merit employees and sheriff. What are the requirements for vesting?
Eight-year cliff vesting, benefits that are included under this program by Indiana statute,
disability, death benefit, and retirement income. Who is the administrator? That, again, was many years
ago established under the old rules of Indiana code. It was going to be the sheriff and his merit board.
The number of employees that are participating, it shows on page four. We've got some employees, half
of them are not vested, half of them are vested, some separated, and you've got about 30 people drawing
pensions right now from the program.
Things that might be relative to what you do with your budgeting process is what is the contribution
rate? The numbers that you receive as a line item to say this is what the contribution needs to be,
when it is related to a percentage of payroll, it's about 26.5% of payroll. That really is meaningful
so that you can compare a department that only has 10 employees to one that has 150.
What do the members have withheld from their paycheck as mandatory contributions? They pay in 4% of
their pay through payroll deductions. Annual covered payroll of these officers covered by the program
is about 3.8 million.
Then on the next pages, there is a little bit of information of which this is my bailiwick, the assets.
How are the assets invested? There is an investment policy statement that is in effect, and that has
been through the process with the merit board and the sheriff and our governance group, our compliance.
This is certainly something that is adhered to. That portfolio is to be strategically allocated long term
with this allocation, about 60% equity, sometimes a bit heavy, but in that range, fixed income about
30%, and then cash and other cash equivalent of 4.8%. You can see a little bit more information on there
is how that relates to dollar amounts. And then some additional information here about what's the funding
percentage of the program is 73.7%, et cetera, which might be something that you
are interested in as you report those on your financial statements as well.
The next page pension report, again, more of how those numbers are calculated relating it to service
cost, what the actuary said is required contributions, et cetera. So all this information was being
reviewed for all of the 92 counties and some of these other adopting agencies that had programs for
their libraries or something like that. And then the General Assembly said, OK, so what? What?
What should we be concerned or not concerned? So more recently, they have looked very closely at, well,
OK, is everybody doing what they're supposed to be doing, kind of in a big brother role? And they came
up with two things that they felt were very important. One, is the minimum contribution being paid?
When the actuary says, here's what you got to pay,
There's no pension police. These guys enforce laws, but there is no pension police. So is it happening?
And so they said, if it's been happening and it's consistently been done in the most recent preceding
five years, they're good. And what you'll see here on page seven is in those five years most recent,
you have met or exceeded the minimum, so you're fine. So what's the other thing they said? What else
should we be worried about? Well, what if
obligations are being made at a local level that they really can't afford in essence of increasing an
unfunded obligation. And that is where I said sometimes that's important to you folks as you want to
get your bond rating so that you can issue bonds. Okay. So I said, well, anything over 50 percent, any
program that maintains funded status 50 percent or higher, we're going to say that they're okay. So
those are these two exhibits in here is what we're tracking again, just illustrating
waiting for you there on page 8, for the last five years the plan has not at any point fallen below
the 50% funded range. And that means you're in good graces with the General Assembly. There is further
statutory language that says what happens if you fall below on either one of those. You are issued a
letter and you are told to come and give a presentation to PMOC of how you're going to fix that problem.
You guys are not in that position and really most of the counties in the state haven't been and are
not going to ever be in that position.
just resting assured. That's really the content of this presentation. There is a separate report that
is identical to what I just went over, and for the benefit plan. By state statute, there are two programs
to be funded through the one appropriation. It is the retirement program, and statute defines what those
obligations are for that program. And that's really the heavy lift, because that's the retirement pension.
So those are the most costly.
a separate program established to be called a benefit fund that is to be similar to almost a checking
account. Now, that's been expanded, but a checking account for what purpose? To pay life insurance for
the officers while they're working and to pay widow benefits in the event of a death of an officer and
long-term disability insurance premiums. Those are very minor in comparison. Therefore, they don't have
the financial
commitment or obligation, and it's just a much smaller program. I mean, it's less than a million dollars,
and it's funded completely adequately, but it's just not the biggest target in terms of the finances.
We do show, though, on page 13 and 14 that tracking those five-year contributions, they have been met
or exceeded what the actuary said needed to be made, and the same thing true for the funding of that
program. In fact, it's been
100 percent funded for so long, primarily because insurance premiums are very predictable. They have
master policies with all the counties in the state, so it's been easily controlled in terms of cost.
Aside from that, the appendix just has a reference to that portion of Indiana Code 51120, which is about
retirement plan reporting.
and then a copy of that information that the actuary did provide. And we'll be, again, working with
the auditor here to ensure that that gets posted by January or February, whatever the deadline is. If
anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer it. Okay. I'm looking to my right here to see if anybody
has any questions.
things started. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your patience. I really appreciate it.
Two points I want to make, and then I'll ask my question. Number one, it is fantastic to see that we
have 22 active employees that have hit that eight-year cliff vesting. So that's really good news. We
always like to see that. And hopefully we'll see that number just keep going up and up and up.
And of course, really nice to see that on page, what was that, page eight, that we were above that 50%
threshold. My question to you is on page seven, where you see the actual county contribution is a little bit
higher than the actuarially determined contribution? How should we be reading that?
Very good point. When the actuary prepares their reports each year, they come up with three different
contribution levels. There is the actuarial minimum, that's by state statute, separate from all of this.
There is one that says minimum funding must take place. And then there is a recommended contribution
and an accelerated contribution. The difference between the three is the time frame that the unfunded
liabilities are amortized. So think of it as it's all the same house you buy, but you could do a 30-year
payment, a 20-year payment, or a 15-year payment. That's what the different ones are. They encourage
paying it off a little bit faster because what you're doing is paying off with less interest. That's
really it. And that can help the funded status.
go up a little bit faster than if sticking with the minimum contribution. Nothing wrong with that, just
like there's nothing wrong with a 30-year mortgage either. So that's why the difference is
on this illustration. Great. Thank you. That was a helpful analogy. Yeah. Thanks. Councilor Hull? I
was trying to follow along, and I wasn't looking at it. I was just trying to hear what you were saying.
two things that they look at. Did I understand you right? One of the things would be if we can't meet
the funding that we had. That means for every fund in the county government or just this fund?
Just this one. If we're spending more than we're bringing in, they don't care about that as long as
we're funding this.
You could say that. You could say that they are closely reviewing this, which is an obligation of the
county. You've got many more obligations. This is just one isolated area that is attacked or at least
addressed by this portion of the code. OK. OK. Anybody to my left here have any questions? OK.
Well, I'm sure we will dive into it a little bit more, but we appreciate it and take troubles back.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. We appreciate it. All right. Next up on our regularly scheduled
program in here, we'll move to item seven.
Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval the auditor's request to be exempt from
the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1000-0002, County General Auditor, the internal auditor
position. All right, we got a motion and a second. I see the auditor is along, but I see Carly is here,
so who is persisting this?
We are presenting this item to request that we fill this position. We had originally been exempt from
the hiring freeze. We had a candidate that was qualified. However, we were unable to meet the salary
expectations for that individual and we passed the deadline of I believe it was November 1st to hire.
So we're bringing it back to the table to discuss as to whether or not we can get another extension
to hire for that position.
Thank you very much. And looking to my left here, see if anybody has questions, Councilor Decker. So
if I understand it right, this would enable you to fill something we'd already designated in that interim
process that we had to fill the role, is that right? That is correct. Okay. I saw hands raised, so I'll
go Councilor Hawke first and then Iverson. Okay.
we don't have back our 1782 yet. Uh, which, uh, I understood the commissioner said that the, uh, when
I was hearing the work session, that the bond had been sold people, state bank, whatever. Uh, so would
we not be, I mean, that's what the state waits on before they'll give us a 1782.
So when should we be receiving that? And that's why I think we ought to look at that before we start
saying to anyone, go ahead and fill a slot. We may see some changes on that. We've seen changes in the
past, haven't we? Some real shocks. I don't expect to see real shocks, but I also know that we were
passing things that we knew weren't going to fly.
So I think we need to get a better grip on exactly where we are. And that 1782 should be back within
the week, I would think, by now. So I'm not going to be supporting it until we see. But that's just
me. OK. So just to ask you a quick question, are you saying if we don't get it?
If we get it back in another week, we do have a meeting next week, next Tuesday. If we get it back by
then, is that sufficient for you? Well, it would seem to me once we get the 1782 back, we have a time
to look at it, see where we are. And then we have time to look at it with clearer eyes because I think
there was a lot of this coming down.
We'll have a hiring freeze except for all this many people. And we either recognize that we have to
reduce staff or we don't. And the best way to reduce it is through attrition. I mean, I think our county
employees would prefer that if somebody just left, we didn't fill the slot instead of going to them
at some point in time and saying, now we have too many.
That's just me. I know I'm probably a lot more cautious than the rest of the world, but I've had to
learn to be. I appreciate that, yeah. So I'll go Iris and then Henry. Yeah, so two questions.
Number one, how long has this position been vacant? And number two, do you currently have a candidate
that is willing to come in at the lower price point?
I would have to look back to see how long this position has been vacant. It was vacant back in October,
so it's been vacant for, I think September sounds right, but I don't want to go on record and say that.
Two, three months, something like that. Yeah. And then what was your second question? Do you have a
candidate?
We do not have a candidate. However, we have been made aware that there is a court that is closing and
that there may be options for us to hire other employees from other departments. And so we would be
able to keep that in-house, if possible, if it's the best candidate. I don't want to say we're hiring
from that, but. Sure, sure. OK. All right, thanks. But that's not until the end of 2026, right?
You said, okay, okay, okay. Counselor Henry. Thank you. Do we historically know how long we've had an
internal auditor position? I mean, is this a relatively new creation or is it something that's kind
of long-term or integral in the office? I have the job description pulled up and it was written in 2018,
but I believe the position was,
a position that existed before it was removed for a while, and then it was recreated. Thank you. Anybody?
Okay. Councilor Hawke. Right. Now, this part, I don't know whether it was part of the legislation or
just a part of one of our training sessions where it said, since we're going to not have this court
after 2026 that any employee that leaves and if they need to be replaced, that it is replaced on temporary
position only, that every employee is met temporary if it has to be replaced so that they know that
there's not a permanent slot open for them. I'm talking about for the court. I'm just saying.
So you can see why the judges are going to, the judge in question is going to hope nobody leaves. On
the other hand, if I was the employee, I'd want to make sure I had a roof over my head. Yeah. If I could
respond to that, I do apologize. I thought that was happening this year. That's just information that
I've received and we are trying to find ways not to end employment with other
the employees that are valuable to the county. I was wondering, I was just like, I thought that was
it. So next year, I thought we yet again just found something out. So OK, I just want to make sure.
OK, thank you. But we have to look at whatever happens in that court, if anything should happen, that's
when they should not replace it, any employee, unless we make it very clear it's temporary, so that
we're not having to pay the expenses.
As of right now, they would have to come to us still, I think. Right, right. Okay, because at one point,
I think I had at least talked about exempting a larger chunk of the justice system, but that didn't
go anywhere. Tonight, I'm apparently having amnesia on all past actions that we've had. There's a lot
that's still happening. Okay.
So that does, Councillor Hawks point suggests that we table, I would think, this action for at least
a week so that we can take a closer look. And I think as much as I would really like to have an internal
auditor soon,
especially given some of the recent questions that have arisen around the use of various funds. I think
it is probably prudent to put this off a week and see if we can get more information just to confirm
where we are on this.
particular position. So I moved to table until our next meeting. Can I do that right now? All right.
Which is December 16th. Thank you. Second. Okay. So we have a motion and a second to table this item
until we get more information. Is there any other further discussion from council related to this item?
Council, how did you have your hand raised? No. Oh, okay. I thought I saw your hand go up. Okay. Okay.
So seeing none, if there's any, did the auditor's office have any? Oh, okay. I wanted to make sure.
All right. If there's any public comment on this item to table, please come forward to the lectern here
then at you. Hilberma, raise your hand.
and seeing non-weekend voice vote. Okay, so all those in favor of tabling this item until our next meeting,
which is next Tuesday, December 16th, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign.
All right, motion carries. So this will come back next Tuesday. All right, next item. Council, I move
to open for discussion possible approval of the Parks Department's request to be exempt from the hiring
freeze and be allowed to hire in Fund 1179-0000,
Parks non-reverting operating, 21 part-time positions and in Fund 1000-0803, County General Parks, 11
part-time positions for the 2026 year. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Ms.
Whitmer is back. Welcome. Welcome. Hello. This is Andy French, our park superintendent, and he's here
to answer any questions. But first, I have a question. Do you want to talk about these jobs
categories individually or as a group, because they're funded out of different accounts, and it may
or may not be relevant to you. I would say groups. I was looking at this. Were you talking to me?
I can always talk to you. I sat here so I could see you. I think it would be best if you talked in groups
and then if anybody else had any questions, then we can kind of dive into the specific ones. Okay. If
you would like to talk about day camp counselors. Sure. That is paid by non-reverting. The parents pay
for the counselor's salary, the registration fees, the program fees.
pay for their salaries, so it does not come out of county general. It's at Cars Farm Park. We have had
our day camp for almost 40 years running. It's very popular. We have around 350 children each year.
The parents rely on it. We start programming now. So if for some reason we do not have day camp any
longer, we need to inform the parents, so they need to start looking for other child care.
So it's very simple. If there's no counselors, there's no summer day camp at Karst. So I don't know
if you have any. I mean, I know you guys understand what day camp is. Just keep going. Just keep going.
Oh, keep going. OK. After school instructors, same thing. It is non-reverting money. It is not county
general money. The parents pay us a program fee, and then we pay the instructors. They learn about different
sports. It's not stressful.
They get to make friends. So that one, I think, is pretty easy. And if the parents can't afford, we
have scholarships available for both day camp and after school programs. The CARS Athletic
Complex Supervisor, it is incorrect in your packet. It's just a typo. They do come out of county general.
We have one person in charge of 25 acres.
And we run seven days a week, except in the winter. They help with medical emergencies, field emergencies.
They actually help with calling the games in the evenings. They do adult soccer. They take in all those
registrations. They help people with the rules and any, how do I say, I don't want to say arguments
among the participants.
that we may get in athletics. We do have new synthetic fields, which will have new rules that will have
to educate the people. So this is, it's a highly stressful job because they're also calling the games
as in the fields. They may say,
the weather's too bad, you're gonna need to go home. This is not easy. When you have parents and they're
in sports, the heat of the moment, it's not an easy job. They also take care, they go through the restrooms
to make sure the irrigation isn't going off during the games, they take care of the lights. So one person
for 25 acres, it's a big job. So they help protect the facility, they help protect
the clients that are using it. So that one is out of county general. The park maintenance technician,
that is out of county general. We cannot operate without park maintenance technicians. We have eight
full-time staff that if our part-time staff is not there to help to do restroom cleaning, trash removal,
Mowing, weed eating, trash pickup, invasive control, security is very important to us. Then our full-time
staff, that's what they'll be doing. And what were they doing? They were taking care of all the plumbing,
the electrical, the heavy equipment operator, the bush hogging, the trailering. We have an in-house mechanic.
The splash pad, we have all the athletics, everything that takes highly skilled. So our highly skilled
people will have to backfill the less skilled but very important to us to operate. We also will not
be able to do any work at the Monroe County Nature Preserve because we were all planning that we would
be the general contractor. We have to make an entrance, we have to make trails.
We have to get a maintenance building up and around any of the construction items our park staff would
be doing. We estimate it's about a million dollar savings to the county if our people do it with our
equipment than to hire it out. And if our staff is busy actually, because we'll have to prioritize restrooms,
harsh athletic complex, and trash. Those are the three things that we would try to concentrate on. Everything
else, we'll get to. And if we do not have part-time staff, and you know Marty's known me for years,
I don't exaggerate. We will have to close the splash pad down. We might have to close restrooms down.
We definitely will maybe some restroom stalls, because there's just not enough of us to take care of
over a thousand acres in security.
for these parks. Plus, they work 35 hours a week. They have benefit time. They go on vacation. Sometimes
they get sick. Sometimes they break an arm. So we're not fully staffed five days a week. And we operate
seven days a week. We have to open gates, close gates.
And I think, you know, I wrote the park consequences. I think you understand it. Delayed maintenance
will be done. Things will deteriorate. Liability will go up. You know, they are certified from the Indiana
State Chemist for the chemicals that we spray. They are certified in pool and spa operator for the splash
pad. They are playground safety instructors. I mean, certified.
So they're highly competent people, but they would have to backfill the lower jobs just so we can operate
and be open. So I think you get the gist of the idea. And I understand the position you're in. The money
in county general has been, you approved the budget, and we have the money sitting in there. So I guess
your is, do you want to take our money
or to leave it there so we can pay our part-time employees is the basic questions. Okay. All right.
Thank you for that.
It sounds like I need to amend my motion to include these three people. So council, I move to amend
my motion. In fund 1179-0000, Parks and Underverting Operating, there are now 18 part-time positions.
And I'd like to add in fund 1000-0803, Parks and Recreation General, three positions. 14 total. For 14. 14.
Yeah, for a total of 14. Right, 14, yes. Second. I thought you were adding it from 11 down to 30. No,
no, no. Just moving it. Right, because it's wrong in the packet. Correct. Because the CARS athletic
complex supervisor should be in general. That's right. And the way that it's listed, it's not reverted.
So, okay. I second it. So, we second it. Okay.
right on paper correct so we're good whale okay so is oh we gotta vote um all right so all those in
favor uh i'm sorry councillor hawke what right now we're just going to vote on yeah just to fix it um
so all those in favor of the amendment signify by saying aye aye all those opposed same sign okay motion
carries yes councillor hawke okay uh
We all know that the more parks we take on, you cannot do it with the same amount of staff. However,
recently there was this discussion about whether or not the Nature Preserve would take precedent over
the Quarry Park, which did seem, so I don't know how that ended up. I know that when Commissioner Thomas
went to the food and beverage people. She was asking for money to be used for the query park. And then
she was questioned by one of the members, well, what about the nature preserve? And she said, well,
that was already taken care of. I do not believe it's already taken care of. Have we covered it? I think
she was covering it like in the bond or something. The bond is what you're talking about.
I guess the question could be for us, where do we want their staff to go to do this? Do we want them
to concentrate on Castle Park and the parks that we already have in place? Or do we want to try to get
that food and beverage money over there to help with the nature preserve? These are tough questions,
but we cannot expect them to do
an additional park altogether without the funding for it. So I don't know. Maybe you all really know
the answer to my questions. I think Kelly might know the answer. It was taken out of the bond, and it
was put into the food and beverage money. So we do have funding. We just don't have the people yet.
Right. OK. So you're saying.
This would be county general. For funding, but it wouldn't be because it's coming from. Are you saying
it's because it's going to come from the food beverage? No, the the supplies and materials,
food and beverage. But county general hourly would be. Would be our staff. Hourly, which would then
put our full time staff
two to three of them at the Monroe County Nature Preserve to build it. Now, if we have to put our full-time
staff at Karst because we have no hourly, they physically can't be at two places at once. So we have
hourly money right now in that account. Does that make sense to you?
Well, I mean, I'm perfectly comfortable with the non-reverting operating fund for you to move forward
and do what you need to do with that, as long as the money is there, because that's money you generate
from services. But the park maintenance folks, and then you're saying that would be 14, and that is
14. 14 people.
I'm looking at the page. It says Park Maintenance Technicians, 11 positions, and then we just changed
it to adding three on there. So it'd be 14. Is that right? Well, that's the Karst Athletic
Complex Supervisors, three. Park Maintenance Technicians, 11. Right, 14. Okay, so that... And it all
comes out of County General hourly. Okay, I'm just trying to figure out a way that we can
reduce services to those other two parks that the Nature Preserve or the Aquarium Park, which is really
not getting a lot of people usage right now until we can get a handle on where we are money-wise. And
I don't want you to be cutting these programs for the children and for day camp, just whatever that
takes. I don't want that cut.
Well, good news for us, we're not in charge of the quarry park, nor will we be. So that's off our plate.
So whatever you all and the commissioners decide about that. Well, that's good news. Why were we trying
to get the money out of food and beverage for it? There you go on that. That's good news for us. So
for the Monroe County Nature Preserve, we also have to probably inform the trust officer
who oversees us each year to make sure that we have recreational activities or purposes at that park.
And they're assuming that we're going to be open to the public in a couple of years. If we don't build
the entrance and these kinds of things, we won't be open. And we, County Legal will probably have to
have a talk with them to say, we have the funding, but we don't have the people.
to make this happen. So I don't know legally what that means in the trust document. Sometimes a gift
is more than you can afford. Well, once we get up and going, the trust will give us some money each
year for maintenance of the facility.
but they don't have the money to get us an entrance and get us the equipment and the maintenance building
and all the trails and the trees and the grassland and the wildflowers. If we can get all that in and
stable, then they will give us money each year to maintain what I just mentioned. Okay. Councilor Woods.
So at first it might be worth, well,
The non-reverting, I think, is an easy call. So just kind of removing that from our discussion. Looking
at the other positions, what I am hearing is that we have a project, because of the new property, that
we will not be able to do if we don't. Fund the hourly. Hire these hourly folks to do things in the
manner in which you've already laid out the structure of how your whole operation works. And we have
some legal obligations around this trust. Correct. And that's been adjudicated, I believe,
where recreation was defined and what activities could take place and a timeline was also defined, right?
They were, they said that our farming will cease after next summer, you know, once the crops are out,
which means we will have 150 to 170 acres that if we don't start maintaining it, we're going to have
invasives like
you wouldn't believe. I'm not saying we'll never have an invasive plant there, but we want to plant
trees, wildflowers, grasses, prairies. All these things would also actually be a tourist destination.
If we do it right, people will come to look at the beautiful thing that we made.
But we also, we need a park entrance because we cannot have the entrance where it's at because it's
off of a highway. We need it to come off a night ridge road which does not exist. We have to build it
or there's no entrance. If there's no entrance, you can't get into the preserve. So if we don't have
part-time staff to do the less skilled,
task at the other parks, it will not free up our full time staff who are heavy equipment operators and
trailers and mechanics and these kind of things to go to the Monroe County Nature Preserve to create
it in one or two years, which is lightning fast. Because we're trying to do what the trust asks us to do.
I mean, to build the park in one to two years is lightning fast. But if we don't have our full-time
staff there, it can't be done. Because if we go to hire people, the money will be gone in a heartbeat,
and we'll probably have nothing built hardly. Because every dollar for supplies costs a dollar in labor
if you're hiring it out, basically.
So if we have X amount of dollars, we can make it going very long way. But if now it's cut in half,
you only have half. I want to see if anybody else has any other questions as we wrap up. No?
I think we should go ahead and vote on the nonreverting fund and know we've got that. And if we're going
to put a pause on the auditor, I think we should be able to do the same thing here because it isn't
like as if, I mean, we didn't tell them they can't have anybody. But what we're hoping for is that
we'll see less dollars used, even if it was budgeted, because you did recognize that we were in deficit
of $5 million. I've heard that rumor. Yeah. So we got to get that from someplace. I know. So I'll make
the motion to separate the issue. Second. Thanks. Okay, so we got a motion to separate the
non-reverend from the county general. Any further discussion from council on that? Okay, seeing none,
all those in favor of separating that motion? As presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
same sign. Okay, motion carries. Okay, so we'll start with the non-reverend items first. Any further
final discussion on that? I have a question. Yes, go ahead.
what can you take that you had hoped to get out of the county general? What can you move that back into
the non reverting just for a while until we can see where we are? Are you are you asking the park board
to fund positions out of non reverting that they normally have not? Yes, that's what I sure am. Well,
I have a park board meeting tomorrow and I will say that we're very poor right now because
The park board has approved all of the changed orders for the Karst Athletic Complex overruns and any
of the Flatwoods Park restroom overruns. So I don't think they can even make that determination until
all our finances settle down maybe in January or February. And they may say, yeah, it's really important
to have a security person, so maybe we'll do that.
I don't think they have that kind of money. So when you looked at this, all you're seeing is a part
time day camp counselors for the summer. Is that for summer only? Yes. The day camp counselors, after
school instructors, now those are non-reverting and they're very part time. And the parents pay for
it. I just want to make sure we've got that code. Yeah.
those two groupings. And I would really love to suggest we might be able to get some of that out of
our special purpose money that we, but I think that special purpose monies can be short too. So as we
think about the motion of the non-reverend here, is there any other further questions or discussion
on this item?
Okay, seeing none. If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here
then at you Hill room or raise your hand via James. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
Councilor Fiddle? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Crosley?
Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Motion passes unanimous 7-0.
Okay. And then coming back to the other question about the county or the general, the positions in the
county general, I had a quick question. So when do you start? I know these, like these are, when would
you start? When would they start officially? Some of them work 12 months out of the year, actually.
And others start in March. Late February, early March until October, November, usually.
Okay, and so then it sounds like, so if majority of those start in the very early beginning of the spring,
would you, in normal years, advertise that start in like January or now? Right after Christmas.
Got it, okay. Because the competition to get these employees is rough. Okay. Okay.
Yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you, and thank you for the whole conversation. I would maybe just make one
editorial that's not really aimed at the Parks Department, but this is what happens when department
heads come to us and ask for additional appropriations for things. It's not hard, and I am glad you're
here to do that with us tonight. I do, I think my only heartburn is around about what Councilor Hawk
was pointing to, but it's the gift with a really long tail, right? I mean, what we have is all this
induced cost after we get the gift that just,
And obviously, we're going increasingly sensitive up here to hidden costs or costs that keeps coming
at us for things that we're trying to juggle. And so I guess, is there in the master plan for the development
in terms of short-term, long-term, are some of these costs chunked out that I could get to or take a
look at to try to understand? Because I think you painted a good picture. We got the gift, but there's
an obligation to get it open in a certain time frame because the trustee is waiting for it.
there's now induced costs to the county or someone to improve the entrances, to staff it, to secure
it. Do we have some of those projections so we can get our head around what getting a nature park up
and running is going to cost over a five-year period as costs that we are not getting from the trust,
but we're going to have to find a way to do? If we are able, we have the food and beverage money that
has been promised, and if we can still have our hourly,
you all gave us in August, that's all we need. We don't need anything else from you. We will be able
to maintain it on our own with the trust help. We will not ask you for any more money. That would include
like the annual general obligation bond as well, because we saw some initial, because we initially tried
through the GO bond and then we moved it to food and bev, but. Right. Okay. We are allowed with the
food and beverage money and our hourly that we were planning on,
We will build out what we can with that money and that's all that we're going to do. We won't do anything
for, could be a decade. We will be able to manage that with the money from the trust each year. Because
it's just very basic items. Grass, trees, road, utilities, a porter toilet.
And that's all we're planning. And we're not planning on anything else. And if someone wants a shelter
someday or this or that, we might be able to get a donation for that. Or in 10 years, you all decide,
oh, yeah, let's get a shelter there. Other than that, this is not an athletic complex. This is not one
of those major parks that has all kinds of bells and whistles. It's grass trails.
And we will not be coming back for you for help because the trust will help us if we can get started
with the seed money in with our hourly that we were planning on normally having. We haven't asked you
for any more money. Can I have a follow up there. I appreciate that. But I'd say.
The trust does allow for that kind of recreation if the county chose to go that way. There are like
10 items in there. Oh, yeah. The trust has no problem with what you all want to fund. Yeah, there's
a perception out there that's not been said by anybody in the room right now that it's only for nature.
I bet there are at least nine other options we could go with in that trust. You enumerated some of them,
but right now none of those are being considered, like an indoor facility, outdoor facility, right?
Yeah. Okay.
The reason why it was written that way is because we were trying to write it for the next 100 years.
We don't want someone in year 89 say, gee whiz, I wish they would have put this word in it. There might
be hover ball. There might be a future something we don't know about. The attorneys tried to write it
as broad, but that's not really what's going in the next decade. It's grass trails.
and more grass trails and trees and wildlife. Okay. And we're going to wrap up because we've got more
items on the agenda here. So, Councilor Deckert? Of the options, is the grass trail option pretty much
the cheapest option you could have, right? Yes. We will have one- By far. By far. We will have one ADA
trail that will be solid surface that will go to the back of the park.
That's very important to us, but the grass trails are, we're very good at growing grass. And I appreciate
you talking about an ADA trail because that's always the first that goes when these things start happening
and people say, well, we get a really good deal if we just didn't, and that's. We have ADA parking and
ADA trail going to the ADA restroom to any ADA facilities, but mostly grass trails.
I fear on our present condition, which is why I'm going to start calling this process by which the state
has induced local government to begin to eat each other and fight. My fear on that is we will, if we're
not careful, we'll either
screw up something like this that in 20 to 40 to 50 years looks a certain way, and then we lose a car
or store the trails. I mean, look at the trails. When I was born here, I wouldn't have envisioned any
of those trails. Now it's literally a pathway and a corridor for all these things. And essentially,
the trust is asking us to do where... I'm sorry? Marty was just... Okay. Don't worry, Trent. I think
I still have the floor for a second.
The trust is just asking us to do the bare minimum so that is not overrun and then suddenly you're dealing
with to deforest or not, right? The wrong evasives, invasives. Okay. Because we want to plant something
that visitors actually will come see. I mean, beautiful flowers and prairies and interesting trees.
They will come if we do it correctly.
Okay. Thank you. Um, is there any other further questions on comments on this? I don't have a suggestion.
Yes. Counselor Hawk. Okay. So, um, if I'm understanding this right, uh, would be possible to say, do
some of them, but not all of them. You know, you don't have to have, I mean, you don't have to start
hiring right now for something you're not going to need until spring.
and delay it, that's the whole purpose in delaying hiring and replacing is to allow the money to build
up so the money will, there'll be more to go back. So what about that? Just throwing a suggestion out
there so that you, you know, sometimes a crush of bread is better than no bread. I don't know.
We have to plan properly. I'm just saying you look back there and all those other people, they all want
something too. Which ones do we say no to? Did you want to respond? And another thing is right now we
still have some hourly on staff. I guess we need to know if we can spend our hourly or not.
if some of them are still on staff. Because I don't know, we can't plan if we don't know month to month
if you want to take our money back, which is totally your prerogative, but we can't not plan. Yes, Michelle.
So our part-time hourly is divided up. There is permanent part-time hourly, and that are part-time hourly
people that work
28 hours or less all year long. And then we have the seasonal and the temporary. How many permanent
part-time hourly do you have in your general fund? And that's the ones that work all year long. Because
you said that you've got... We have two that provide security. Now, we also have people that work February
to November.
We don't we've never been in those categories very well County legal has always been trying to put us
in these categories and we never seem to fit very well Okay, if we If we table this until one week from
today I think that might give us the same advantage that it did our last agenda item and allow us to consider
some of your needs I know you have a park board meeting tomorrow you just said that I think it might
be a good discussion to have either with them or after you've spoken with them you know we could talk
as your liaison and just lay out what what the the planning needs are in in the next few months because
I understand that operationally your hands are
really tied by our indecision. And so one week, I think, would be enough. So I'm going to make a motion,
if that's OK. I'm seeing nods. I move that we table the general fund part of this agenda item to our
next meeting, which is December 16. Second. Everybody in unison. OK. Any other further discussion on
this? All right. There is public.
any other questions or comments on this item? Raise your hand via teams or come in and speak at the
podium. And seeing none. May we have a roll call vote on that? Since you're tabling it can. That's right.
Okay So all those in favor of table in this item to next Tuesday. December 16th signify by saying aye.
All those opposed
Well, I mean, oh, yes. OK. Well, we got you know what? I'm just going to take a moment to recess for
a second. And so before, sorry, Miss Kelly, I know you're up next, but I'm just going to take a moment
to recess here so we can kind of gather ourselves and get ready for the rest of the agenda. So if we
can come back at
All right, so we are going to come back to order here and the.
We left off at, or we were getting ready to start before break item C. So now we go to item C, which
is from the Health Department. Council, I move to open for discussion. Possible approval of the Health
Department's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire in Fund 1161-0000 Local
Public Health Services, the Health Services Director position. Second. Second. I hope somebody needs to read.
All right, and I think that was me. All right, Miss Kelly, thank you, welcome.
Thank you. So first I just wanted to say thank you for adding this to the agenda and for providing this
time for this request. So I do appreciate that. So this request is to fill a vacancy. The department
had been granted during the hiring freeze an exemption to fill this position. What had actually happened
is the candidate who was in the position decided to no longer move forward. And so given the position
had evolved prior to what it was before without the nursing
services into making the additions with the nursing services, additional direct reports I think
is understandable. But it's really important that we have this nurse supervisor to provide clinical
oversight, quality control, provide scheduling, clinic schedules, be able to oversee state reporting
requirements.
This is currently funded through state funding. We were looking at also using some old grant funding
that we're continuing to spend down in
into next year in 2027 as an alternative option which would provide flexibility with not having to maintain
the Indiana residency issue that we've discussed before with the Health First Indiana funding. So a
couple different funding options that we've been looking at there. So happy to answer any questions
that you would have otherwise.
Okay. And TSD, I'm getting alerts that our camera in the courthouse is not turned on. And it looks like
that way via cat. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you for that, Ms. Kelly. Council, do you have
any questions or comments for Ms. Kelly? I already saw a hand up. Councilor Epperson. Thank you for
being here. And of course, this is really important because it provides for vaccines for children.
And so we here in Monroe County believe that vaccines are safe and effective, and we encourage everyone
to go get their vaccines. So that's really wonderful. And sorry, I'm buzzing a lot. My question to you
is, I think, again, this is not coming out of your general fund. This is coming out of the Healthy First
Fund. What are you hearing from the state about the future of this fund?
not a lot except for really just trying to put together plans to advocate to get the funding headed
back up towards where it we originally saw but I think that that's that is part of our challenges is
that we don't know what that state funding is going to be in 2028 and so I think that that's why it's
really important that we're giving consideration to again using some of those
old grant funds for some of these positions that we know are essential and that we just have to have.
And as I think that you all have stated is that they're probably tough decisions that are going to be
coming in the future about what's really essential to run departments versus not essential. Thank you
for understanding that. And I guess, yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Does anybody else have any questions? Yes, Councilor Wilts. I appreciate you looking at alternatives
for the funding behind the position. I think that since we had exempted this position once, I think
that the fair thing to do is to exempt it again. Are these alternative old grant funds? Is that something
that you've been talking with? I keep pointing to the auditor's office about.
Yes, so the one that I have in mind is that co ag grant funding that we're continuing to spend down.
So one of the challenges that we're currently in is historically the department has received immunization
grant funding through throughout.
COVID for many, many years, they were also receiving COVID supplemental funding. So hundreds of thousands
of additional grant dollars that were supporting these nurse services that we did not get provided with
beginning July 1st of this year. So we are anticipating and we are hoping that that will return next
year. But again, that's unknown.
That was one hit that we took, but we're hopeful that that will come back. Me too. Does anybody else
have any questions or comments from Miss Kelly on this item? All right. And seeing none, we'll turn
to public comment. You can come forward to the lectern here in the Nightingale room or raise your hand
via Teams. And seeing none, may we have a roll call vote, please?
Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor
Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And I just want
to note for the record that Councilor Hawk did leave during the recess. So that's why her name was not
called. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Duly noted. All right. Next up is new business items. And we'll start
with the aviation department.
Council, I move to approve the aviation department's request and fund 4801-0000 aviation construction,
the creation of account line 30006 contractual, and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation
of $25,000 in the services category. Second. Okay. I think that might be Mr. Leverty that is ready.
and I see that he is present via team, so welcome. Good evening. Yes, the airport's requesting this
appropriation for $25,000. We recently acquired several extremely large pieces of snow removal equipment,
and this appropriation will help us acquire one more additional vehicle that we will use for
spare parts because the spare parts for this equipment is hard to come by. Is the audio okay? Keep going.
Okay, sorry. So this will allow us to get one more piece of equipment for cannibalization and then another
big acquisition of this $25,000
is for the very large runway brooms that we've acquired, we need to purchase brand new bristles, which
will be put on the broom spindles because they need to be replaced from time to time. And we don't want
to be in a position in the middle of the winter without new bristles for the brooms. And then there's
some other small components like hydraulic cylinders and castor tires for the broom heads that we need
to acquire to have this equipment up and running for the duration of the winter.
Okay, thank you for that. Council, do you have any questions or comments for Mr. Lavity on this item?
Yes, Councilor Wilts. Regarding the equipment you've already obtained, were you able to use it over
the last snow event that we had? Yeah, we've been able to use it two times actually. There was one very
light snow where we received
maybe an inch, and then the most recent one that we had, I think it was, I'm not sure how long ago that
was, where we had about two inches on the airfield. And we were able to clear the main runway, the parallel
taxiway, and the main ramp in about 45 minutes. And in previous similar situations with about two inches
of snow, that would have taken, just to get the primary runway open, that would have taken about
three to four hours. Wow, okay. Yeah, yeah. And then to complete the rest of the airfield, the rest
of the total airfield, aircraft parking area, seahanger areas, parking lots, that was all done before
lunch. And in the past, that could have easily gone into a multi-day event. Wow, wow, that's great.
It's really cool to hear.
Yeah, it's amazing, especially for our staff. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Any other questions or comments
from council on this item? All right. Seeing none, if we have public comment, again, please raise your
hand via Teams or you can come to the podium here and then at U Hill Row. And seeing none, maybe please
have a roll call vote. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes.
Yes. Councilor Wills. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening.
You too. All right next up item B. Council I move to approve the council office's request and fund 4116
donations council the creation of account line 30031 Sophia Travis and simultaneously approve an additional
appropriation of $3,000 in the services category. Second.
All right, we got a motion in a second. I'm gonna look to Michelle. Welcome. Hi, so we got a donation
fund and because of all of the budgets and everything, this item just slipped off the radar
to be appropriated. So this is to appropriate that donation fund that was collected in honor of Councilor
Munson. Three agencies were granted
thousand dollars a piece which was Girls Incorporated, Grace Center, and the Heritage Festival. So this
is just gonna be able to appropriate it so that we can move forward with cutting a check for them for
those that total. All right thank you. Council do we have any questions or comments on this item?
just doing some housekeeping stuff. All right. Hmm. I just kind of looked at the date and I just realized.
Nope, not gonna do it. Tomorrow is actually a year that council member Munson has been gone. So that is very,
interesting that we're doing this on the night before. So I just thought about that, because she's been
on the brain a lot recently in light of all the other things that have been happening. And I've been
trying to think of what would she do in some of these moments that we are having in hard times in county
government. So I just looked at the date and just realized,
day it was. So I'm going to stop talking because my nose feels like Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer right
now, because it's getting a little warm, which means I will cry. So I'm not going to do it. So anyways,
anybody else have any other questions, comments, or concerns? No? OK, great. So public comment, if you
do have public comment on this item, you can come forward to the election here in the Night eHill room,
or you can raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none.
maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Feidl.
Yes. Councillor Wilz. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Okay,
thank you.
Okay. All right. Um, next up is item C council. I moved to approve the highway department's request
for a fund to fund transfer of cash of $201 and seven cents from fund 8161 dash 0000 sample road phase
one to fund 1169 dash 0000 local road and street. Okay. We got a motion and a second and I thought this
bridge is virtual. So I am
okay hello um you can proceed i really don't have anything it's pretty simple um that uh that phase
of the project is complete so we're just wanting to close out the grant fund okay newly noted um council
what questions or comments do you have for miss bridge on this item no
Okay. Um, if there's public comment again, you can, um, present yourselves here on this item and the
net you have room at the podium, or you can raise your hand via teams. Okay. And seeing none, may we
please have a roll call vote. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Fiddle. Yes. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Councilor
Henry. Yes.
Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. All right. Thank you, Ms. Ridge.
All right. Next up is item D. Council, I move to approve the prosecutor's request and fund 8123-9626,
the stop grant for the creation of new account lines as outlined on the agenda and simultaneously approve
additional appropriations of $122,809.52 in the personnel category.
Second. All right. We have Ms. Beth Hamlin here. Hello. Welcome. Hello, counselors. This is a request
for newly awarded stop grant funds. We did receive the fully executed contract signed by the state
just yesterday, so we should be good to move on this. This funding period runs from 10-1 of 25 through
9-30 of 2026. It pays approximately half of the salary, FICA, and PERF for our domestic violence and
our sex crime deputy prosecuting attorneys, and the match is covered by P.S. Lit in the amount of $40,928.96.
Thank you for that. Questions or comments from Council? Oh, Councilor Williams? As always, this is great
and appreciate the work that you do to maintain these funds. Congratulations. Oh, thanks. Just out of
curiosity, because we see the
the lovely things that are happening in federal government, and I say that in a very sarcastic manner.
Do you think, is there any belief that you all think that this might not get renewed next year? We have
not received any information to that effect. I don't anticipate that. I think the victim funding is
probably more at risk for the VOCA grant.
Um, but again, there are a lot of things that have happened in the last several years that I did not
see coming. So let's buckle up. I know we can say the same for local government too. All right. Um,
so I'm full of zingers tonight. Anybody else have any questions or comments?
All right. Seeing none. If anybody has public comments on this item, you can come forward to the lectern
here in the night, you know, room or raise your hand via teams. And seeing none, maybe please have a
roll call vote. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wills? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crosley?
Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Motion passes six zero. All right. Thank you.
Next up is item E. Council, I move to approve the prosecutor's request and fund 2503-0000 diversion
slash prosecutor user fees to amend the 2025 salary ordinance and add account lines 13-031 APS case
monitor, 35 hours, Pat A exempt, and 15-115 APS director, 35 hours, Pat C exempt. Second. That was out.
You missed E. Sorry. Do you want me to read the right one? Yes. Yeah. Sorry, Beth. You're good.
All right. Council I move to approve the prosecutor's request and fund 2503-0000 diversion prosecutor
user fees for the creation of new account lines as outlined
on the agenda and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of $14,043.58 in the personnel category
and $2,525.36 in the services category for a total appropriation of $16,568.94. Second. Okay. Okay.
Thank you. This request is necessary and I'll be honest, it's extremely frustrating.
It's due to the refusal of the state division on aging to reimburse the final claim for our adult protective
services expenses the month of June 2025. As you recall, the state decided to privatize adult protective
services throughout the state and take it out of prosecutors offices. Our contract ended on June 30th.
We had employees employed until June 30th. We submitted our final claim on
August 29th, we had clear instruction that we had until the 30th to submit those claims. Additionally,
they stated they would not reimburse expenditures made after June 30th, even though we had vacation
time that was incurred prior to June 30th. I could go on. Anyway, we have requested an appropriation
in our pretrial diversion fund so that we can make corrections so that the APS fund can end
at a zero balance and not in the negative. Thank you. Okay. Anybody have any questions or comments on
this item for Ms. Hamlin? It's a shame. I don't say that much. Yes, Councilor, I understand. And you've
received no further response or communication from the state regarding this matter? No, we received
a few emails, exchanges. We involved County Legal, Molly Turner King was excellent in her communication,
defining the contract.
pieces that spoke to our ability to make these claims and we requested a teams meeting to try to rectify
it and they just, it was radio silence. So I don't, the frustration and lack of interest in there,
you know, obviously the APS program is defunct. There is no APS in the county going forward.
They don't seem interested in making good on their contract. So for $16,000, we'll pay it out of the
PDP fund and move on. Gosh. Yes, Counselor Decker. Well, I never liked this switch in the first place.
As a young criminal justice student in the 90s, I can remember that
the discussion being vibrant around prosecutors now having the ability to manage this, think about this.
And I worry while everything cannot be done in a local office, I'm truly worried about a population
that really doesn't have that fair arbiter who is accountable to the public. We've heard about that
all night. Individuals that are accountable to the public and there's something for roles we're in and
roles others are in.
and what that looks like. I think this is gonna be a small walking pneumonia disaster. And the fact
that you can't even get a response is pretty indicative of how the state is gonna manage that. So this
is one that I think we're gonna, much like everything else, we're gonna see the repercussions in our
everyday life in a whole bunch of ways. I agree. It's terrifying, really.
Any other questions or comments? Yes, Councilor Wilts. Yeah, just reiterating what Councilor Deckert
is saying and curious as to even though you're being ghosted on this item, have you heard anything about
what they are putting in place?
I should have brought it with me. I don't have it. It's a statewide hotline, much similar to the DCS
changes when they went to a state hotline. I have not heard much feedback about how that's working.
But yes, there is a process in place. And that's an 800 number that anybody can
use to gain across the state. Okay. Unless you or for concerns across the state. I mean, if you have
a concern and you live out of state and you're concerned about someone that lives in state, you can
still use it. That makes sense. Okay. Let's turn a king. Do you want me to give you that number? Sure.
Please. It's 1-800-992-6978. Lower again. 1-800-992-6978.
Thank you. All right. I think this would be a good opportunity. I know Council Henry kind of joked about
this before, but
kind of think it's a little serious now. Your little idea of how they do in Congress where they just
have like a rolling thing behind people and we can just keep tabulating the dollar amounts that the
state is costing local municipalities. I actually think that might be a sobering idea and we can kind
of throw it back at them and let them know like this is what they're doing. So I think that's something
you should think about in the future. Specifically?
I mean, it was your idea. You have the homework. It was your idea. I'm off to IU surplus to buy a shop.
I think that this is a legitimate and fair discussion. I want to give a really good example tonight.
The pension report that we received, it was quite elaborate. That's nice. That's wonderful. Some state
legislators thought of that. They had a good reason before they went to redistricting rally. And then
We are paying, I'm sure, tonight for that individual to drive down here, to sit back there, to log up
those hours, and that happens every day. Literally, that whole row of tables of staffers are devoted
to making sure that we're compliant with XYZ, but if not, but for October 15th, can't get into your
own penny bank. I mean, literally, for people that say,
government needs to shrink, I have some ideas on where government shrinkage might need to happen because
they clearly are in candy land that they have time for what they're dealing with. Again, with all that
we're thinking about, challenges we're facing, et cetera, these things probably should have a rolling
average. Don't get me started on capitalism. My bad.
Okay, so if there's no further questions or snarky comments here, we can go forward to the public and
see if they have any comments on this item. So if you do, you can raise your hand via Teams or you can
come to the podium here in the Nightingale Room. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
Councilor Wilz? Yes. Councilor Henry?
Yes. Councillor Crosley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Feidl. Yeah.
Motion passes 6-0. Okay. Now we go to item F.
Great, you've heard this before. Council, I move to approve the prosecutor's request and fund 2503-0000
diversion prosecutor user fees to amend the 2025 salary ordinance. And that account lines 13031 APS
case monitor, 35 hours, Pat A exempt, and 15115 APS director, 35 hours, Pat C exempt. Second. Okay,
thank you. This just allows the salary ordinance so we can make that
we don't have any intention to fill these positions. Okay. Thank you. All right. Questions or comments
from Council? Seeing none. Public comment. Raise your hand via Teams or come to the lectern here in
the Nattie Hill room. And seeing none again, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Henry? Yes.
Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes.
Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Okay.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up is item G. Oh yeah and item G is the auditor's office. So I'm
looking at Carly and to give a brief update on this item. Yes.
So when closing out the funds we were just discussing with Ms. Hamlin, we identified that there is a
negative cash balance in the amount of $5,847.69 that exists from about mid 2023 and back. We've discussed
this with the state. The state has agreed that we should establish our period of due diligence and discuss
decide how much this would cost to reconcile these dollars. The auditor has determined that our due
diligence is back to mid 2023. So we've done a correction of error to move these expenses into another
fund. We're just notifying you that this correction has occurred or is in the process of occurring.
OK. Thank you for that. Does anybody have any questions or comments here?
Okay. And then I would assume, just like you're doing today, that you just give us an update once it's
all completed. Maybe via email? Yeah. Okay. That works. All right. All right. Thank you very much. We
appreciate that. That was fast. All right. Next up is item H.
Council, I move to approve the emergency management's request in fund 8178-0000. National priority com
for a deappropriation of account line 30006 contractual in the amount of $100. Second. Okay, we got
a motion and a second. And it looks like Mr. Baker is virtual. So you should be able to unmute and you
should go ahead.
Good evening, Council. The Department would like to request the de-appropriation of the remaining $100
out of the Fund 8178. This was a grant that we applied for in 2023. It was the State Homeland Security
Program grant that we used to facilitate an exercise. And the total amount was $18,100. And the $18
covered the contract
expenses and the $100 we set aside just in case they didn't cover something like office supplies such
as paper and stuff like the reports and stuff. So we are just asking to the $100 more needed. So when
you're just going to get the $100 back to the state. Yeah, I know we just thank you for that. That was,
you know, all right.
Any questions or comments from Council on this item? Seems pretty easy. They didn't use it and they
have to send it back. Wish they could do the same for us in this state, but we appreciate that, Mr.
Baker. All right, so if there's any other questions or no further questions from Council on this item,
if you would like to have 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.
maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker?
Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Okay thank
you very much Mr. Rieger and thank you for your patience. All right next up we will spend some time
with the probation
department with item K. Council I move to approve the probation department's request and fund 9140-0000
pre-trial program grant. The creation of new account lines is outlined on the agenda and simultaneously
approve additional appropriations of $214,746 in the personnel category. Second.
All right, and we have Ms. Linda Brady here. Welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm Linda Brady, Chief
Probation Officer. I know I have a lot of agenda items, but I do want to just kind of give you a brief
overview of what I'll be going over tonight. As you can see, Probation Department has been awarded many
grants for 2026. 10 will be appropriated tonight, and they total about $1.86 million. So it's significant
for our department.
30% of our department is funded by grants. So it's a very important funding source for the department.
For tonight's grants, the three funding sources are the Indiana Department of Correction, which is the
largest portion, Indiana Supreme Court, and Monroe County CARES. We also have an additional grant award
that won't be here tonight, just to let you know it's coming, the sequential intercept model,
the SIM grant. We've been getting that from opioid money from the feds,
we're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have
a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight.
We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have
a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight.
We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have
a lot of fun tonight. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight.
and we have always set the annual CTP budget the same time as our Community Corrections Grant budget
because it's supposed to supplement the Community Corrections program. So we never know until we know
what the grant is going to be, what we should be asking for for CTP. So just a summary of all the grants
for 2026, any grant that pays a portion of staff salaries, excuse me, pays
First of all, only partial salaries. All of the grants require matching funds. And so the matching funds
are used to pay for partial salaries, COLAs, step raises, and the accompanying FICA, PERF for the COLAs.
Also, the FICA and PERF
that if it's allowed by the granting entity in longevity, if it's if it's allowed by the granting entity,
we put longevity. Counting longevity for the employees that are eligible into the grants. Um. All grants
had a hard cap on how much they would fund for. The fringe benefits. So we all want to want to make it
Any grant money that pays for a salary also pays that corresponding FICA and PERF. Thank you. I appreciate
it. This is what you get when you get asthma. And that's also community. Good job. Thank you for taking
care of me. Good story.
health insurance. So for 2026, all the positions that are grant funded have had their self insurance
budget in the employee services county general budget. That was done during budget time. None of the
grants that are being appropriated tonight provided sufficient funding for self insurance due to their
budget caps. We knew this going in, we dealt with our council liaisons. So we already dealt with this
through the budgeting process for next year.
Excuse me. So that is the summary of it. So this particular grant. So this is the first of six grants
that the court received from the Indiana Supreme Court. You probably remember, some of you, if you were
around for a while, the probation department was part of Indiana's pretrial pilot project. In 2014,
we received a grant from the Indiana Supreme Court to start our pretrial release program.
After the pilot program ended, then we officially began our pretrial program in October of 2016.
In 2019, the Board of Directors of the Judicial Conference of Indiana adopted pretrial service rules
forming a basis for voluntary certification for Indiana counties implementing pretrial best practices.
We were certified by the Indiana Office of Court Services in April, 2021.
and we were recertified in July 2024. And because of the certification and recertification, that's why
we're eligible to have these grants. If we didn't get certified, we wouldn't be eligible. And there
are counties who've chosen not to apply for this money. They don't want to go through the certification
process, which is their choice. And so, as I said, achieving and maintaining certification is part of
the process, and we have to do that to be eligible for grant funding.
for calendar year 2026. The Monroe Circuit Court received two grants from the Indiana Supreme Court
to continue providing pretrial services. The total amount awarded by the Supreme Court for both grants
in total is $486,612. Through this specific grant, the court was awarded $200,000
program. The grant also provides up to $10,000 for part time probation officer assistance to help with
collection of the required program statistics. We have a lot of
The dollar amount for this grant is a 6% decrease from what we received last year. And this is due to
the state Supreme Court received a 5% budget cut as most state. Departments did and also they had more
than double the amount of grant requests than money they had to give out for pre trial programs and
that's hence the caps.
There are no grant funds allocated for supply services or capital expenses. It's all personnel. So it
pays for a large portion of the pretrial probation officer's salary and the public defender's salary,
the FICA and the PERF. Any remaining costs for the pretrial services program from this grant are paid
by the community corrections user fees and the public defender's budget.
So just a couple things about our pretrial program. We follow national best practice that maximize release,
maximize appearance to court, and maximize public safety. Those are called the three M's of pretrial.
And while it's not a primary purpose of pretrial services, maximizing release of individuals from the
jail does impact the jail population by reducing the number of individuals in the jail awaiting resolution
of their case.
And for some people, they might not think it's important, but research has shown
that pretrial detention has a criminogenic effect, meaning that being detained longer increases the
likelihood a person will be arrested for a new crime and arrested for a new violent crime. So it matters
how long people are detained in jail. And so thus, this is an important program for our community. Defendants
who are released from jail during the pretrial period are more likely than their incarcerated peers
to maintain pro-social contacts within the community, maintain contact with
family and find and maintain employment or education. In Monroe County all arrestees undergo a state
required validated pretrial risk assessment to assess their likelihood of appearing for court and not
being arrested while their case is pending. There are some people that pretrial detention may be appropriate.
We have this risk assessment tool and also the pretrial services report prepared by our probation officers
to help the judges make the informed decisions about bail. So the
The risk tool is just one of the tools the probation officers prepare a report with more information
for the court. We do collect a lot of data and just a few pieces of data. Since 2016, when our program
started, our overall appearance rate
people come into court without missing any court dates is above 70%. That means all of the 70% of defendants
that we assessed show up for all of their court hearings while their case is pending. Also since 2016,
our overall safety rate has maintained at 90%. That means 90% of assessed defendants were never re-arrested
for criminal offense while their case is pending. That's significant.
I'm sorry. Excuse me. Also since 2016, our overall success rate has maintained over 60%, which means
60% of defendants have not been a rearrested and also do not fail to appear for court. So it's a very
successful program. We've had very good outcomes and it's our
program is considered one of the best, if not the best in the state. I don't mean to be bragging, but
that's what we hear from the Indiana Office of Court Services and the Supreme Court. We're really proud
of our pre-trial program. So that's basically it. So if you have any questions. And we're going to give
you a minute so you can chug some water. That was a lot. So we appreciate that. You are good.
I have one, thank you. I appreciate your taking care of me. We should have had it out. Nope, you're
totally fine. We will take a moment. Okay. Thank you. As we think of, as we allow Miss Brady to catch
her breath there, is there any questions that we are thinking of? Yes, Councilor. Let me wax eloquent.
I'm kidding. I won't do that. This is, I think, the second time that we've had something like this come
to us because the
the Indiana Supreme Court did grant these dollars to literally save the pretrial diversion program.
So whenever I think we have the opportunity, we should look into the cameras and say, thank you, Indiana
Supreme Court, for doing this. Absolutely. We've had so many conversations about the value of pretrial
diversion. And it's just an important, important tool we have in this community.
just congratulations on getting these grants. It's such an important thing for our community that really
keeps people out of jail. Thank you. Thank you, Shannon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the items
that we found out towards the end of the budget cycle that you were
So that's the next one. That's the next one. So this one is the one that we have been getting every
year since we have been certified as a pretrial program. But it got cut a little bit because of the
state budget line getting cut in the Supreme Court's grant. Okay.
All right, any other questions or comments from Ms. Brady? Yes, Councillor Hinnock. Yeah, thank you.
I think maybe that's where I'm focused is on that 6% right now, or just that cut. So as you've heard
tonight, we've talked about thinking through the future and the contingencies of what happens when these
grants get to a point where we start to really impact services. So as I understand it, because of the
match, you've structured your staffing with a,
general fund contribution from the county and then the grant to make a full FTE. So just thinking ahead,
if it hits to a point where those 6% cuts continue, have you had to adjust in the past what happens
when we lose that funding for an FTE? Does the county absorb all of the person's salary at that point?
Or what has been some of the thought that, contingency-wise, looking ahead?
Well, we've been I just have to say that since the beginning of the program, the program has been fully
funded by grants. And so there was not really county general at the very beginning. It's been over time.
There's been a little bit of county general here and there. And we until this past year, any
um supplement that isn't paid by the grant has come out of project income which is community corrections
user fees so really there hasn't been a lot of county general contribution for the program and that
is something that we know that it just we're not going to be able to continue because uh as Kate knows
she's on our community corrections advisory board those user fees i mean we're
barely hanging in there. And we've known this for years that you just can't keep using soft money, client
funded fees to pay for essential programs. And so this is something we worked with back to when Trent
was a council liaison to our department and Peter, you've been at twice. We've been working on this
for years trying to make those funds sustainable.
and we've hit a wall, the perfect storm, I think you would say, with these. So if at some point there
isn't state funding for the grants, this is something that would need to go to our local JRAC, Justice
Reinvestment Advisory Council, because it would have a system impact. If we didn't have this program
to get people out of jail,
what would that do to the jail population? And also, what would it do in terms of the people who aren't
gonna be able to get out to their recidivism rate, to their ability to succeed if they get put on community
supervision after they get out of jail? So it would have a system-wide impact that would have to be
analyzed, I think, by all parties, all branches of government and the local JREC.
You brought up the J word this evening with the jail justice piece. This is one of the threads in the
tapestry. When we think about buying a building versus the system that's built around it, I'm glad that
we have this model today for this fiscal year, but it's easy to conjure, as we've heard all night about
the cuts coming.
of the impacts here, how we might need to reimagine how we provide these services. Yeah, you touched
on it. This keeps our jail population low. And how much does that cost versus X amount of buildings?
So thank you for indulging the question there. I appreciate it. I hear from the community, a lot of
the community commenters talk about, we need to be doing things to keep people out of jail. And this
is a thing we do that gets people out quicker. And also, if the judge
isn't comfortable with somebody not being under community supervision while they're in a pretrial. We
have different levels of supervision that we can provide so the judge feels comfortable letting them
out of jail. So it's a really, really important program and has big impacts. So thank you. All right,
looking to my left. No? OK. All right.
So if there is public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the night, you
know where you can raise your hand via teams. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call. Councillor
Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson.
Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yeah. Motion passes six zero.
Okay next item. Council I move to approve the probation department's request and fund 9144-0000 pre-trial
services grant the creation of new account lines as outlined on the agenda and simultaneously approve
additional appropriations of $271,866 in the personnel category. Second.
Okay we got a motion second yes okay so this is the second pre-trial grant that we were receiving from
the supreme court and this is the one we found out about during budget that so what had happened was
as you know the indiana general assembly cut most state budgets by five percent
for whatever reason, I don't know why, they cut community corrections grants by 10%. And so the DOC,
Department of Correction, had to make some decisions on what they would or wouldn't fund. And they made
a decision that they were going to defund all Indiana pretrial services programs starting in 2026. And
so that was a shock and surprise to every pretrial program operating in the state. So that was, yeah.
That was after six years of being flatlined because again, state budgets were flatlined. So the Supreme
Court, out of their own budget,
they wanted us to be able to continue operations with our pre-trial program. So they gave this one-time
grant for 2026, and it's specifically to make up for the loss of the DOC funding. And they gave us the
exact dollar amount that the DOC did. And that funds the full salary, FICA and PERF for three probation
officers assigned to pre-trial services. And then also it's a partial salary, FICA and PERF for one
additional probation officer.
assigned to the pretrial services program. So our pretrial services program has five probation officers
and one director. All of them are grant funded at some level. So the majority of their salaries in FICA
and PERF are paid by grants. This grant does not pay anything for supplies, services, or capital, again,
personnel. So any questions? Any questions, Counselor?
I was just happy to hear this came in clutch when we were having some very interesting conversations
towards the end of budget. And it was amazing to hear that that came in at the last minute. So, yay.
Okay. Yes.
So seeing no other further questions or comments from Council, we'll go to public comment. You can raise
your hand via Teams or you can come to the lectern here in the NatU Hill room. And seeing none, may
we please have a roll call? Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor
Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Next up, item M.
Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund ninety one forty two dash zero
zero zero zero community corrections grant. The creation of new account lines is outlined on the agenda
and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of one million forty nine thousand one hundred
sixty seven dollars in the personnel category. OK, anything else to answer this?
So this grant we have been getting since the inception since Indiana created Community Corrections grants
more than 40 years ago, we have gotten one of these brands every single year. We already talked about
the budget being cut by 1010% so.
This is the first of three grants that we're going to talk about tonight that are for supporting of
the Community Corrections Program. The other two grants that we'll discuss are for Drug Court and Mental
Health Court coming from the Department of Correction. This grant award funds partial salaries and partial
fringe benefits for 16 full-time employees of the Community Corrections Program. It doesn't fund any
supply services or capital, all personnel.
So as we know, for many years, the salaries have been supplemented out of the community corrections
user fees, and they'll continue to be supplemented from there as well. As I already mentioned, their
insurance is in county general and employee services line. So this grant is specific to supporting the
core operations of the community corrections program, and that includes the home detention,
program, electronic monitoring, day reporting, and drug testing program, and also to continue the use
of the department's evidence-based practice and continuous quality improvement initiative that promotes
accountability, enhance public safety, and encourage positive behavioral change among participants under
supervision.
And I looked at a DOC snapshot for November of 2025 and according to theirs there in this is on their
website and they had 228 admissions from Monroe County.
and another 290 offenders were admitted to our community corrections program. So more people are sentenced
to our community corrections program than go to prison. So this is truly an alternative to prisons.
It's almost all felonies who are dealt with in this way. Also from our stats, we had
One hundred and four individuals on home detention electronic monitoring, ninety of those being for
felony offenses and more than half of the offenses they were on home detention for were drug related
or crimes involving violence. And of the electronic monitoring home detention cases that were closed
in twenty twenty four, ninety three percent were closed successfully. That's very high.
percentage. And also the judges had 59 individuals on 24 seven alcohol monitoring is an at home kind
of like a personal alcohol test that they blow in and it's connected to GPS connected to our department,
and we get
breath test and it's those are usually used for someone who has many drunk driving offenses and the
judge would to keep them out safely in the community from jail would has them on alcohol monitoring.
So we had 59 on on that. So that's kind of a summary. Any questions or comments from Council on this
item Councilor Wilts.
someone from having their buddy. It takes their picture. Thank you. I was like, there's gotta be something.
Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. Any other questions or from council? Okay. Seeing none. If there's public comment,
either raise your hand via Teams or you can come to the podium here in the Natt U Hill room.
but I do believe that I see Councilor Hawke virtually. So now we, well, regardless, we would still go
roll call vote, but just wanted to acknowledge that. And can we please have a roll call vote? Councilor
Henry? Yes. Councilor Hawke? I have to pass. I didn't hear that. Okay. I'm just not getting on. Sounds good.
I didn't hear the motion. My client will read it. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor
Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes 6-0-1. Okay. Next up is item
in. Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund 9148-0000.
drug court grant. The creation of new account lines is outlined on the agenda and simultaneously approve
additional appropriations of $137,209 in the personnel category. Second. All right. Motion and a second is Brady.
Okay our drug court program our problem solving court program is part of our community corrections program
and because of that we were eligible for the department of correction funding for that and so this grant
from the doc pays partial salaries and fringe benefits for one probation officer case manager and two
field officers
judge Mary Ellen Dieckhoff presides over all four of our problem solving courts, and they are all for
certified by the Indian officer court services with our most recent certifications being in 2024. And
then part of the state certification, all problem solving courts must undergo regular independent program
evaluations. So we just underwent
our most recent program evaluation. And I just give you a few statistics from that. Drug court participants
serve 50% fewer days in jail for sanctions than those who opted out of the program.
A statewide outcome evaluation and cost benefit analysis research found that Monroe County Drug Court
reduced recidivism by 67% and saves taxpayers money. The study also showed that recidivism rate for
drug court participants, including dropouts, was 17%, while the rate for a comparison group
of those who opted out was 33%. And then drug court participants, regardless of graduation status, were
found to be half as likely to have had any arrests in the two year follow up period relative to the
comparison group. Drug court graduates had an even lower recidivism rate of 11%, which is extremely low.
So we just had a research from the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department of Indiana University.
They did an evaluation of all four of our problem-solving courts. They found that all four showed reduction
of risk level, the risk to re-offend. They all showed increase in education level, increase in attainment
of employment. The recidivism rates varied anywhere from 8% for reentry court
mental health court was our highest recidivism rate with 35%, but that's not surprising because it's
a very difficult population to have under community supervision. As previously mentioned, the drug court
award was reduced for this year by, it was reduced by 14% from the year before. These, I just want to
also point out that these three positions that are being funded by this,
They have been funded by grants since 2001. So that was our first year. I wrote a federal drug court
implementation grant. And since then, we had four years of that. And we've had many years of Edward
Byrne grants until they finally kicked us off the program and said, OK, you've had enough. It's time
for you to get some local funding. So we've been getting a lot of grant money for this program. I should
probably sometime just
figure out how much I've gotten since 2001, but all of these positions have been grant funded for really
long time. So that's it. Yes. Good. Okay. Looking to council members, either virtually or in the net.
Does anybody have any questions or comments on this item? I see Councilor Hawke has her hand up. Go ahead.
Yes, and I regret that I wasn't here for the other positions discussed, so I don't know what all has
been discussed. But I will say that my concern on all of these is that rather than putting a part of
a salary, a part of a position and splitting it out like that, it would be far better to put
one whole position where the grant would cover one whole position instead of like two or three part-time,
you know, half of a position. And further, it would be best practices to cover the health benefits for
the health insurance. So was there any movement on that at all to try to save us from ourselves with that?
Because what I, and I think you're looking at this wrong and I acknowledge it could be, but it would
seem to me that what we have is if we, we've always said when a grant goes away, the position goes away.
But if you only put a fourth of a price of that position in the grant, the grant goes away and the general
has to pick up the difference.
too many of them were picking up the insurance. So those are my concerns. And in the past, when we had
the money to do it, there was no problem. Now we're going to be looking at not enough money to do everything
everybody wants. So those are my concerns. I don't think there was a question. The question is, which
of those, which of these
grants could you have moved one person one whole expense over into the grant instead of several different
ones could you have moved just one oh how much so the grant whatever the grant could hold and cover
all the benefits so rather than splitting it up i'm not really sure what you're saying marty but i have
to say that the doc funds partial positions they don't fund
a particular percentage of, they just give you, here's how many dollars I'm giving you for this position.
Here's how many dollars I'm giving you for this position. And so the rest of it has to come from somewhere.
So we don't have any say over how much money they give us per position. They just decide it. And it's
not based on a formula. It's not based on a percentage. It's just an amount that's given. Then we have
to make it up.
So let's say, well, no, we don't really, we can just reduce the amount of the number of people, right?
That's what we'll be, let's say, I mean, are they saying when we get the, and I don't have private community
corrections, we have to, we have to do that. But with the probation, a lot of probation budgets, you've
got a lot of split positions, part in a grant and part in general.
Do you agree with me when I say that? A lot of the grant funds, you've got part of the grant position
covered under the grant and part of it covered under general.
And I'd say that that's not unusual with, I know I've talked to Councilor Henry about this before, that
it's really not an unusual situation for grants to require match funds. And so having them ask us to
pick up parts of salaries or benefits, that's a pretty normal thing for grant entities to do. Well,
but are we doing whatever they require?
for match funds or are we doing more than that? And I'm just saying this because we have to overall
look at how hard this budget was hit because of the insurance funds. I'm not just saying your department,
but throughout. And so I'm just trying to figure out how can we get a better handle on it? But if you're
saying, no, we just have to do this or what, I know that the Indiana County Council Association statewide
is really protesting the fact that the state courts are saying probation officers should be paid for
entirely by the state and whether or not that's going to go any place that they're pushing hard for.
So that's something to look at too. Anyway, thank you. It's late in the day, so move forward. Duly noted. Okay.
Um, any other questions or comments from council? Okay. Seeing none. Excuse me. Um, we'll go to public
comment for this item. If you have public comment on this item, come to the lectern here than at you.
However, I'm a raise your hand via teams and seeing nine, maybe please have a roll call up. No.
Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor
Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes 6-1. Okay, next item. Council, I move to approve the
Probation Department's request and fund 9150-0000 Mental Health Court for the creation of new account
lines and simultaneously approve additional appropriations
of $42,958 in the personnel category. Second. Okay. Okay, another grant from the Department of Correction.
This is a 13% decrease over last year. Okay. So, Council, does anybody have any questions or comments
on this item? No. Looking at Council Huff, don't see anything.
All right, so public comment, come to the lectern here in the Nightingale Room or raise your hand via
Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson?
Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Hawk? You're muted
Councilor Hawk.
Yep, you're still muted. Okay, yes, I may as well go ahead and say yes on these things because I don't
know what the decision was about encouraging them to put more at more of the position, more of the expenses
over into these grant funds. And I apologize, I had to leave the meeting. So I don't, I maybe just need
to leave this discussion because I didn't hear the rest. Okay, all right.
So that was a yes. Yes, and then I'm gonna leave the meeting. Okay. Because I don't know. Okay,
good night. All right, so that was a yes. Chancellor, you want to vote on this and choose? I'll pass.
Okay, thank you. Thanks. So motion passes 6-0-1. Okay, thank you, next item.
Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund 9172-9626 Drug Treatment Court
for the creation of new account lines and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of $9,920
in the supplies category and $2,500 in the services category for a total appropriation of $12,420. Second.
Okay we got a motion a second miss Brady. Okay these next four should go pretty quickly there they're
all four grants that are from the Indiana Supreme Court that because we have separate problem-solving
court programs we were eligible to apply for a separate grant for each of these programs so three of
the four received
the same amount of money, and we'll get to the last one, which will be Veterans Treatment Court. That's
the only one that includes personnel. All the first three that we're talking about, the drug court,
reentry court, and mental health court, all of them received a 3% cut over last year. And what they
pay for in this grant is outreach materials, supervision incentives, which is usually bus passes, drug
test supplies, which helps to reduce the cost of drug testing for our participants,
and travel training for the training of our Drift Court staff and team. And so again, this will be the
same for the next, this one and two more. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions or comments from Miss
Brady on this item? Seeing none. In public comment, please raise your hand via Teams or you can come
forward to the lectern here in the Na'i Hall room.
for this item and seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor
Decker? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. And Councillor Crosley?
Yes. For the record, Councillor Hock has left the meeting. So we are at six zero motion passes. Okay.
Thank you very much. Item Q.
Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund 9168-9626 mental health court
for the creation of new account lines and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of $9,920
in the supplies category and $2,500 in the services category for a total appropriation of $12,420. Second.
Okay, that's great. Nothing to add. Thank you.
Okay, so she has nothing to add. Does anybody else have anything to add on this? No? Great. All right.
Public comment time for this item. Come to the podium here in the night. You will raise your hand for
your teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Decker. Decker. Yes.
Councilor Fiddle? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor
Iverson? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Okay, thank you very much. Item R. Council, I move to approve the probation
department's request and fund 9166-9626 reentry court program
for the creation of new account lines and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of $9,920
in the supplies category and $2,500 in the services category for a total appropriation of $12,420. Second.
Okay. Ms. Brady? Same as the last grant. Okay. Nothing to add. Council? Looking to my left. Looking
to my right. Checking my list. Okay.
public comment Tom if you have any public comment on this I don't come forward to the lectern here in
the night either room or raise your hand via teams and seeing none maybe please have a roll call vote
counselor vital yes counselor wilts yes counselor Henry yes counselor Crosley yes counselor Iverson
yes counselor Deckard yes motion passes six zero all right item s
Council I move to approve the probation department's request and fund nine one seven zero dash nine
six two six veterans treatment court for the creation of new account lines as outlined on the agenda
and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of eighty six thousand nine hundred seventy four
dollars in the personnel category nine thousand nine hundred twenty dollars in the supplies category
and two thousand five hundred dollars in the services category for a total appropriation of ninety nine
thousand three hundred ninety four dollars second
all right miss brady okay as i mentioned before this is the only one of the problem solving court grants
that funds a position and it funds most of the salaries and fringe benefits of our veterans court case
manager probation officer he is also a veteran himself and does an excellent job and also our veterans
court is regional we can the judge can accept uh transfers from lawrence county green county
And Owen County, I believe are the ones that are in our region. Thank you. Council would say you on
this item. Yes, counselor Decker. I just had a quick question. So when they transfer from another county,
because the grant covers that.
it takes care of the cut. Do those counties have to throw in any dollars? No, they don't. They don't.
And it's just a matter. Usually it would be somebody who either works or is doing either works in Monroe
County, lives in Monroe County, or is doing treatment in Monroe County. There'd be a reason that they
would want to have that person supervised in our county. Any other questions or comments from council
on this item? Seeing none. Public comment time if there's public comment on this item.
I'm forward to the lectern here in the night. You know room or is your hand via teams? And seeing none,
maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes.
Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Okay, next item.
Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund
4924-9624 probation cares grant for the creation of new account lines as outlined on the agenda and
simultaneously approve additional appropriations of $1,162.50 in the supplies category and $1,462.50
in the services category for a total appropriation of $2,625. Second. Okay, we got a motion and a second,
Ms. Brady.
We apply for this grant every year to help our department address the problems related to substance
abuse. We one of the grants is for purchase a portable breath testing unit, and that's because we do
about 21,000
alcohol tests a year with our clients. Most of that's in our day reporting program. The other award
is for instant cups. So it's drug testing cups. So persons who use the drug testing cups, if it's negative,
the test is free because if it's negative, then we don't have to send it off to the lab for confirmation.
So it significantly reduces the drug testing costs for our clients. And only about two to five percent
in our problem-solving court test positive. They're very low compared to the department as a whole,
it's about 28 to 30% positive rate. So yeah, this really helps cut down the cost for our participants.
Okay. Sounds good. Okay, Councilor Wilks. About how many tests can you buy for both of these with this amount?
That's a good question. So it says in 2024, we purchased 6000 instant cups, but that was between this
grant and the problem solving court grant. So we bought 6000 test cups.
And is that reflective of how many tests were done then? In the instant cups, we only use the instant
cups for the most part for problem solving court. Because for the regular probation tests, we go ahead
and do a regular test that's sent to the lab. Yeah. So if you do 21,000 breath tests per year, does
this even come close to paying for that? Well, the breath test is just you blow into the machine so
that there's no
no urine situation going on that so how so this is buying a unit right it's a unit right it's a unit
for for us to do the testing and it's reusable yes there's a there's a straw kind of thing that people
put on it they blow they blow into that actually i've never had to do this but um so i appreciate you
explaining it thank you council is there any other questions or comments on this
Seeing none, public comment on this item. Raise your hand via Teams or you can come here and then at
you over. All right, seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor
Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts?
Yes. Motion passes six zero. All right, next item.
That's the last one. This is it. Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund
1123-9626 Community Transition Program for the creation of new account lines as outlined on the agenda
and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of $19,000 in the supplies category, $26,000 in
the services category, and $5,000 in the capital category for a total appropriation of $50,000. Second.
Okay, that's great. Okay, Community Transition Program. It's a program by the Department of Correction.
So certain offenders, if they are eligible and if they wish to participate in the early release program,
they can apply. And if our court accepts them, they come out of
jail or come out of prison early and the department of correction reimburses us $25 a day so that helps
to pay for any of their drug testing costs or any of their if we have their own electronic monitoring
or home detention it pays for that and it helps ease people back into society early from their term
in prison so that we we never know how much we're going to get so we just
put a budget out there. If the money isn't there, if we don't have enough people on the program, there's
not enough money, we can't spend it. We only spend what we collect from the DOC. So this is our best
guess. Council, do you have any questions or comments on this item? Yes, Councilor Wilts. So with this
program, people are coming from a state institution. Presumably they were
they're from Monroe yes they have to have been sent right they have to have been sentenced out of Monroe
County on here yes yes okay yeah and the judge it they would be unlikely to accept somebody if if somebody
didn't have any ties or if they came here and committed a felony offense and they don't have any community
ties the judge probably won't accept it because they got they have to have some some reason that we
would be supervising them in this county
Right. To be out on a community transition. Approximately how many of these folks do we have in a given
time period? No, it's very small. It's a small number. I can't remember from the stats, but I want to
say it's fewer than 20 a year. Okay. And how long are they under your care?
Wait, this is above my pay grade. This is a Becca strike. She's on on knowing there someplace. It depends
on how the seriousness of their felony level 123456. So the the more serious the felony, the longer
they're on for. But I think the minimum for the least is 60 days, I think, for the lowest.
I think, but if Becca's on there. I can connect with you all later. Yeah, I can't remember, sorry.
Thank you. Okay, any other questions or comments?
Yes, Councilor Decker. I just want to say, I am always amazed when someone gets a question that you
can't answer because you always have your stats. I have a team, I say. You've got a good team. Yes,
I do. I have a really good team. And I think it's huge. A lot of times people on our side of the table
start talking about systems and how they should look and work. I think you're actually coming in always,
which you always do, with numbers that show
this does this, this program does this, here's what we know about this, this is all those details. And
I think that's kind of a model to figure out other things as we start to do that, because clearly the
dollars have been invested in the community, sending books here, trying things out, pilot programs,
all those things, because those efficiencies. And so you don't always see that in every program and
we don't always get these kinds of answers. Thank you. All right.
Seeing no other further questions or comments. If public has item, or comments rather, that they'd like
to say on this item, come forward to the lectern here in the net, you will raise your hand via Teams.
All right. And just thank you to Anthony and Becca for staying online as long as they did. So you definitely
have a good team indeed. With that being said, may we, excuse me, may we please have a roll call vote?
Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor
Wilts? Yes. And Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen
and vote. I appreciate it. Thank you for getting that great. Thanks for staying out late. Thank you.
Have a good night. All right. Next up, we are near the end of our agenda, y'all.
Hooked down and let's finish up. Next up is County Council Business, item eight. Council, I move to
approve resolution 2025-54, pledging support to the BEDC or the Bloomington Economic Development Commission.
Second. All right. And then I'm going to look to Ms. Turner-King for this. Hold on one second. I think
I said commission, but I think I need to say corporation. Yes.
I want to verify because there are there is there is one of each one in the city and we're talking about
the corporation and not the Commission. Okay. Thank you. So I'm fixing
that language in the resolution. But what is before you as resolution 2025-54, which pledges a $30,000
donation to BDC. We similarly did this last year. And so this is just a continuation of that practice.
All right. And again, this is the practice that we have to do because
It is usually budgeted in our item and we ran into issues with it being paid by county commissioners.
So it's not like we're just pushing, you know, donation through. This is the other alternative method
that we have to do because we got denied. So, Councilor Henry, and then I'll go down the line.
Thank you. A few questions because I'm trying to
wrap my head around this. So is this payment retroactive at the end of the fiscal year or is this in
anticipation of next year? Like this goes. So it just normally gets paid out at the end of the year,
but this is for this year's donation. So it's this year's donation at the end of the year. Correct.
When is the first SIMTRA payment expected to go to BEDC from the tax abatement?
I'm not 100% sure I could try to find the tax abatement paperwork, but it might take me a minute. Okay.
I mean, that's one question I have. I guess the next question I have here too, and thank you for catching
the typos, is, and I'll just raise this with my peers, the BEDC has been in the news in the past two
or three weeks, and I don't know if there's anyone on from the BEDC in Teams. I don't know if there is.
You know I'm kind of curious what's going on in the organization, you know it's been you know there's
been reporting about a change in leadership I don't know if that's a change in strategic direction over
the past year. I believe there was some conversation about the BBC merging into other organizations
in the community. So the strategic plan that we help underwrite might be a little different.
or what we think we're buying might be a little different than what's going on. So I would be comfortable
tabling for a week until we can get either maybe someone from BDC to chat with us and also maybe to
get some clarity about when the Simtra tax abatement first hits them, because it would look like potentially
30 now and 30 in a few months. And I'm kind of curious what that looks like. But that's my thought on
that. Good point. Yes, Councilor Decker.
I would agree with the tabling notion on this, because we will be back here in a week to kind of run
a new show to make a longer meeting but sometimes you can't avoid it in these times. I also think that
it's incumbent upon.
a council a county commissioners and anyone else really that's an entity to to ask good questions of
this organization about future and what their vision are and what steps and support they might need
from us, including either this support or something else in lieu of that and I think it'd be good.
It would be good to know. It's important for us as a county not to kind of put our head down and say,
I don't know what's going on over there and I don't want to know. I think that we not only need to know,
I think for the sake of this economy right now and the affordability issues we have and the job issues
that we've got, including the ones we supply, I think that we need more information here and then come
back again on a week from today. All right.
I thought I saw another one down the way. I did, but I agree with the comment that's just been made,
so. Okay. So, Council, without, with no objections, I'd like to table this item to our December 16th
meeting. Second. Okay. All right. Will, all those in favor of tabling this item signify by saying aye.
Aye. All those opposed, same sign.
all right motion carries thank you next item council i move to approve resolution 2025-56 pledging support
to seven oaks classical school second all right and then i would look to mr nanking for this this resolution
that's before you pledges 1800 to seven oaks
Originally, this relates to the Sophia Travis Community Service grant funding. The committee had met
and approved an award, seven oaks, in the amount of $1,800. And this is the mechanism that would get
him that funding. OK. Can we read the resolution by chance? Yes. Can you put it in, Sharon, so we can
see her? Thank you.
My computer is being weird. Would it be helpful if I just read it into record? I like that. This is
resolution 202556, a resolution approving a donation to Seven Oaks Classical School.
Whereas seven oaks classical school here after seven oaks is a tuition free public charter school located
in Monroe County that serves nearly 600 students and.
Whereas Seven Oaks applied for Sophia Travis Community Service grant to fund two school initiatives,
one, to pay AP testing fees for AP chemistry for all current Seven Oaks AP test takers, to remove the
financial burden placed on students and their families due to recent legislative changes, and two, to
provide food security for students and families through free lunches and the backpack blessings program.
whereas the Sophia Travis Community Service Grants Committee supported awarding Seven Oaks funding in
the amount of $1,800 to fund these initiatives and whereas the Monroe County Council recognizes that
supporting Seven Oaks' efforts has a compounding ripple effect throughout Monroe County affecting education
including civic engagement, health, and the quality of life of Monroe County constituents.
And whereas due to circumstances beyond the County Council's control, Seven Oaks did not receive funding
as part of the 2025 Sophia Travis Community Service Grants Awards. Now, therefore, be it resolved by
the Monroe County Council, Monroe County, Indiana, that the Monroe County Council hereby donates to
Seven Oaks funding in the amount of one thousand and eight hundred dollars to fund its AP testing fees
and food security initiatives presented to and adopted this
blank day of blank 2025 by the Monroe County Council of Monroe County, Bloomington, Indiana. Thank you
for that. Council, do you have any questions or comments on this item? Looking to my left here, Councilor
Wilks. Yes, so do we have the $1,800 just sitting in our Sophia Travis account
Correct, this is in part why we changed the account line in the beginning of the meeting so that we
could accomplish both donations and grant funding from that account line. So it would come out of the
Sophia Trav, what is now the Sophia Travis Fund. Okay, that was gonna be my next question. And then
is there going to be a way in the ledger or somewhere,
in in systems to identify grants versus donations coming from the same fund when when we put the um
claim into the computer it's we mark it as um in the notes as donation okay cool that's that's my main
my main concern thanks all right yes counselor iverson so i'm going to be supporting this but i'm
deeply uncomfortable having public tax dollars going to a charter school. This is a really, really awkward
vote. I understand, though, that the narrative around this is not about that. The narrative around this
is about making sure that kids get access to food, and that's why I'm supporting this. I think it was
a huge mistake.
by the county commissioners, particularly Julie Thomas, to pull this out and vote against this. And
so it's regrettable that we have to take the time to do this, but I'll be supporting this. Yeah, Councilor
Henry. I would just echo the sentiments, but it does come down to, I think all of us have made statements
about this item, and that this is a effort to make right what was, well, harmful.
And so I think this is an easy vote to take. I hope the commissioners see the same way. Yeah,
I would agree. And to counsel ever since point. We actually talked about this and Sophia Travis,
because the, the notion is.
you know, I think. Whatever you think of charter schools versus public schools. You know, that's neither
here nor there. Um I am very much pro public schools by all means of born and raised throughout him
and raising. Um three Children through him at least one graduated and two more still at MCC SC. Uh so
that being said, they met the
$1800 for this versus one other charter school that was allowed to go through of this one was a little
suspect. And so, you know, we were
This was also done in the middle of SNAP benefits being taken away. So how toned-up and how crass was
that type of decision? And boy, what a time it is for county government right now. So I wish we could
be on the news for something positive. But nonetheless, this is what we decided. The committee did it,
council did it, and then we got stonewalled. So this is our way of, again, like Councilor Henry said,
trying to do what was right, which is
what we did initially in the first place. So I'm going to go to Councilor Feinstein and then come back
to Decker. Okay, I'm very glad you brought up the fact about they met the criteria because I think that's
really how the committee, as I remember serving on it, labored over it because that was the criteria.
We did have some discussions. I'm pro-public school also, but this particular charter school met the criteria.
and it met the criteria of what we wanted to fund. And so we went with that and I'm happy to support
this so that they can have the money that we intended for that purpose to begin with. Thank you. You're
welcome. All right, Councilor Decker. One thing that we heard from the trustees about nine days ago,
no, earlier tonight, one thing we heard from the trustees is about food depletion in their pantries.
And food is food.
We heard in the Sophia Travis Grants request, we heard from Ivy Tech, they needed a food bank. And the
one thing I always think about, I had an uncle passed away, I think it's been about seven years from
now, and he often would find himself unhoused and be in situations and one time he and I were riding
the bus together and I said, you doing all right? He goes, I'm all right. So you getting enough to eat?
And he said, one thing about this town,
He said, if you're not getting fed, you're not doing something right because the food resources are
there, but they're at places like community kitchen. It's at these pantries, et cetera. And that's something
we should hug as a unifier in the community, that food, which is classically what it does. We all got
to eat it. We all need it that that comes to it. And so I look at this, they had a request for it. They
met those stipulations. And to me, that is not a question. There's a lot of philosophy.
about schools the General Assembly has been talking about that for it seems like 30 or 40 years now
steady and I'm sure the voters will too but food is just food and people in this community border to
border are people regardless of how they get here regardless of their situation and regardless of what
how people classify them and once we stop breaking stuff like that down I mean you got to close the
shutters on this inhumanity
Thanks, colleagues. All right. If there is no other further question or comment on this item, you can,
we'll go to a public comment. And then if you have public comment on this item, you can come forward
to the lectern here in the night in the room or raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, please have
a roll call vote. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes.
Councilor Crossley? Once again, yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes 6-0. All right. Thank you
very much. Now we go to the amendment item and then we'll be next to the last here soon. But I felt
like it was incumbent for us to have the discussion of the encampment evictions that were supposed to
take place this past Monday and now
What looks like is to be postponed to next Monday on the 15th. And so we've been, you know, we had 18
public comment. Yep, 18, because I wrote everybody's name down and synopsis of what they were saying.
So we had 18 people that showed up either via Teams or NatU Hill Room.
just today, but I'm sure all of us at some point have had conversations with you all that are out there
and in the community as well as lots of emails as well. And so I am
I'm gonna try to keep it PG-13. I'm appalled at the decisions that we are making in county government
right now. In particular, the decisions that happened on Thursday morning at 10 a.m. You know, I think
number one, 10 a.m.
on Thursday, where people aren't really paying attention. That's one thing, but that's neither here
nor there. Government, as we heard tonight, should be accessible. And there's things that are happening
right now.
And I spoke out against the encampment remover removal back in 2021. And I still stand with not doing
encampment enclosures, especially one thing I wanted to correct public on I kept hearing the middle
of winter y'all it's not even winter yet.
It will be winter in the next couple of weeks. Look at how cold it is right now. And I think prediction,
because I'm a weather nerd, is supposed to be below normal. Let us sink in for y'all. Yep, there you
go. And so that's cold. And we all, at some point, some of us,
We'll go home and be warm. And we have those that are unhoused that will not. But we also heard from
somebody speaking to that experience, Ashley, and was explaining how they are feeling when they are
outside, and the choices that they are making.
And so these are kind of decisions that I would think would go to types of vote situations. But again,
I'm not in the commissioner's seat. I'm not in the business that pays me, which is county council. But
that being said,
As we heard many times tonight, we have to have a checks and balance system on what our friends on Thursday
morning are doing versus what we do every second and fourth Tuesday of every month as we conduct our
business. And I find it very rude and very disrespectful that we have no idea things that are happening
or what's going on until we see a Reddit post and then waiting to be a part of a meeting and hearing
the public
that are happening because they are doing the work. They are continuing to talk to people that are there.
So, yeah, that's frustrating. And I've spoken to several of y'all and via email and whatnot. And I know
people, like we have said several times that, you know, at least for me, I've thought about
the the things of where people are saying what are you going to do about it what are you going to do
about it and while we are not the executive and legislative slash legislator we are the fiscal legislative
and guess what we hold the purse strings and so we got to have some type of check and balance um because
again as i just said in our previous conversation that county government is in the news right now for
all the dang going wrong reasons it is
Um, deplorable. It is embarrassing that we cannot like this is what we are getting at right now. So
to my colleagues, I ask, and I'm looking at everybody here to figure out how we can do things, how we
can make checks and balances. I know we have thoughts. I really hope we can say those out loud. Um,
tonight, I think personally, I would like to see a thing. I don't know. We had the items table indefinitely,
but again,
It might come back because we don't have any idea as to what is about to happen either on Monday or
two Mondays from now or whatever the case is. We still have no idea what is happening. I reached out
what Friday and asked the question of what the hell is going on and got an email sent to us about, Hey,
here's this press release. I'm a colleague of commissioners here.
I don't have to pick up a phone. I should be able to freaking email and have a conversation and be respected
enough for my colleagues to tell us, hey, council, this is what's happening. Every single second Tuesday
and fourth Tuesday of every month, item number five, department updates. Items not on the agenda.
That is a time where I would expect, just like many other departments here tonight, give us a department
update. So if there is a department update, such as an encampment eviction, a pending one at least,
I would think that somebody that has something to do with that will come into this room and talk to
us about it. That's what I would think, right? But it didn't happen. So here we are.
Staying in my lane, as we were told many years ago, to that's what we can do. Well, now I'm doing it.
And now I'm going to start doing it. I'm going to look at my colleagues and figure out, how are we going
to stay in our lane? But how are we going to do this with effective change? Because there has to be
a checks and balance. And the other thing I'll say is, there's no procedure. I know there was cut our
emails going about, what is the procedure? What is the plan? We see our colleagues over on the city.
They have a plan and procedure. And it was really embarrassing to see them put their whole plan out
online. And we're sitting here going, I don't know. How crazy do we look when we have no plan? And we're
telling constituents, yeah, I don't know. I'm just there with you. And I'm an elected official. All
seven of us, six of us that are here right now, we are elected officials. And we have no plan. We have
no idea, y'all. None. But that's not our fault.
But what we can do is try to figure out how we can have a checks and balance system. And to my colleagues,
I'm looking to you all to see maybe going forward, we can set forth a resolution that says, when things
like this happen,
This forces people to come back to us to tell us what is happening, what's going on. And we can take
a vote on whether or not the funds will be appropriated and move forward. So this is something that
we can do. We just did that earlier this year with overtime and we switched that around. I think that
is something that's similar for us to do. And that is a conversation that
I'd like to have with us maybe not as long because we still have a little bit more just one more item
left. But that being said I just I just wanted to thank everybody to come out or come here tonight.
You're still here with us and again many thanks to
Ashley, and I think her name was Lydia, who was the mom who said she was close to being in house. It's
situations like that that kind of made me choke up, and I had to get up and walk away, because many,
many years ago, that could have been me. In fact, yeah. So without going into specifics about my life,
I think that's what makes a public servant versus a politician.
That's what we need more of. And if that's what we need to do, democracy needs to happen and we have
time to do that next year. So that being said, I'm gonna shut my mouth and I'm gonna go to council and
see what we got to say and go to my left or nope, my other left, my right. So I'll start with council Henry.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam President, for adding this to the agenda and speaking tonight. I'm a little
low. I'm not going to have a lot of animation here, because I also wrote out some stuff to make sure
it gets into public record. I think it's important that words are said in this room. I'm exhausted,
but not nearly as exhausted as the people that are in the house that have no idea what their fate is
in the next few days. And I'll just leave it there to start.
I want to speak very plainly about what I've observed in the clearing process or the lack of the process.
And I want to say that this action's not in my name. I don't agree with what we're doing. Last week
when news broke that the county intended to clear the Thompson encampment, I did not learn about it
through a formal government channel. I learned about it with someone sending me a link from Reddit of
the flyer that was posted in the encampment.
I then called our emergency management agency, as I'm the liaison to that agency from this body, and
talked to Justin Baker and Jamie Nibel, whose phone numbers were listed on the flyer for contacting
people or for contact. I assumed at the moment that we were running it very similar to the 2022 encampment
where we had an emergency declaration and we had the agencies involved with planning for that, but that
was not the case. Our emergency management agency was,
The phone number was put out there. They were taking calls for public information, but were not empowered
to be the public information officer or spokesperson for the county on the issue. They were overwhelmed
with calls while trying to figure out what their role would be, which was basically directed by the
commissioner's office to inventory the property of individuals that would be at the highway garage.
At this point, and I'll just share a personal anecdote.
I teach emergency management at IU. It happened to be the night that I was lecturing on crisis
communications, which my colleague, Counselor Deckard, may appreciate this comment. That is, I'm lecturing
to my students and trying to share the best practices of how a community ought to go about its time
in crisis to elicit empathy, to be truthful, to explain to people the who, what, where, when, why,
and how, and the next time we're going to tell you what's not going on in the very government I serve in.
And at that point, I had a bit of a shock to my system with my students. At that point, I had started
to request from our county board of commissioners the very things I teach in emergency management. What
is the action plan? Not the legal authority, but the operational plan for how we're coordinating all
the resources of this county to
handle the project called the encampment. What is the objective of this operation? Is it just to clear
property or is it to be humane and try to find people's shelter? I asked who the point of contact for
the media was. I asked who was in charge of the operation and I have yet to get that formal answer from
the board of commissioners.
To be appalled is not the right word here for me. And to teach a public affairs school one of the best
in the country where we teach public management and not see it running in this building has been incredibly
frustrating. It's not my apology to give right now, but it's definitely, I think, our action to figure
out how we maintain the safety of people that are unhoused in our community, from the service providers,
to the activists, to the people themselves. We are being asked why now
Why now? And all I'm getting is feedback about a bureaucratic process, about a vendor and a contract
issued in July, and it just so happens the vendor's ready to do some work. Those are unacceptable answers.
And they're indisputable. And so to have anyone to the contrary say, well, David, we've told you this,
or we've given you this answer, I'm saying publicly I don't have it. And I would defy them to show me
where it's happened.
seal back at this point Madam President. I'm gonna make six points I'll make them quickly and I'm glad
to see that there is at least one commissioner that's watching I would bet that there's more. Number
one you've heard it before we do not have an operational plan but I'm so glad that Mary Morgan and
came here tonight and talked because there is the outline of a plan at heading home indiana.org it would
be so easy so easy for the commissioners to just take the elements of that and plop it down and it just
It boggles my mind that we have got intelligent people who have been working on this for years, who've
been working with lived experience, people lived experience working on this. It just boggles my mind
that we have not codified a single operational plan, and one exists at headinghomeindiana.org, at least
the shell of one. I will also note that during the commissioner's meeting,
There was a lot of religious language. It was really interesting to hear that. And it doesn't escape,
I think, a lot of people in the faith communities that we are now in the second week of Advent. Hanukkah
starts on Monday. And for those celebrating Yule, the equinox is December 21st. This is a terrible time
to be professing on one side of your mouth, joy, love and peace, and on the other, kicking people out
into the snow.
Number three, the public hearing that happened in the commissioners meeting, which featured not only
two recesses, but lecturing of people to be quiet and respectful, is not how democracies work. Ken Burns
has this great new documentary on the American Revolution. If you haven't started watching it,
it's fantastic.
Our country was not born by people sitting around being quiet and being respectful. We're throwing tea
off boats. Like, all right, I'm getting, I'm getting, like sing more Beatles, right? Like if that's
what it takes, let's sing more songs, right? So some Arlo Guthrie in there. Number four, during a public
comment, there was a lot of talk about cumulative capital, one of the funds that we have. We don't have
claims for
for things in cumulative capital that we can even approve much less see. So this idea that bio one is
being used, that's not appearing in our ledger reports. So this is a huge problem where there's obfuscation
of the ways that they're funding these things that are on these flyers. It's wild to see. I'll get to
that in a second. Number five, there is no communication plan.
This blows my mind. Where is the press conference where we are saying, what's the count of people living
on the property the commissioners own? What are the agencies involved? What have they been doing? Can
they be invited up to the microphone to talk about this?
You know, some people have been housed. Some people have gone to hotels for homeless for a night. Explain
that. Let's talk about that. Let's have this dialogue. But there's no communications plan. There's been
no updates. The press release is on Friday, nothing on Monday, nothing on Tuesday. And number six, and
let me conclude with this, federal funding for rapid rehousing is ending. This is bad, but it is about
to get worse. There is a ticking.
timeline that we need to have both an operational plan and a communications plan in place. And we need
to do it soon. And part of that operational plan has to include a plan for when moratoriums exist and
how long they exist. And there's so much to do. And we have to start doing it now.
go ahead and start yeah yeah go ahead thank you very much for giving me a chance to talk i have so many
thoughts last night i had a meeting counselor wilson i had a meeting with some of our our folks here
and uh i i took note after note after note after note that helps me make sense of things and figure
things out i'll say that when this all occurred i was teaching a class and as it always happens when
something goes wrong my
phone starts blowing up with a text inbox. So I'm looking here, looking at this and trying to figure
that out. And I was trying to make sense of what was going on. And the thing I always come back to on
all of these situations are always, if I'm struggling to make sense of going on, what's going on as
a county officer, used to be the president of the council, try to stay up on things that doesn't always
do a good job. But I'm struggling to keep up on what's going on. I can only imagine
the average person or even the person that is even worse affected by this. I couldn't tell what was
going on. I don't know that the public still fully understands what's going on. And the only thing that
really has saved this discussion right now are passionate private citizens who have literally used their
personal time and work time and taking time off work
and done all sorts of things, not only to help their neighbor, but to try to figure out how do we make
change on this postponement, on the original eviction notice, et cetera. I recognize fully, and I think
I shared this last night, I recognize fully that my understanding of what is happening for our unhoused
community has rapidly changed over the last few years.
Back in the day, I'll say this to the public, I had this very odd, I don't know, almost Oliver Twist
Dickens-like thought that if we just go to folks and say, if you want to come with me, we can go do
this. But life is not that easy. And that savior type complex is not that connect the extension cord
and fix this.
We are talking about humans living with us, among us, all around us. And so often I get on social media
and I just see these stupid dehumanizing comments and quotations that people make about someone else's
brother, sister, neighbor, or themselves, depending on the time. And I'm just boggled by it. Here's
one thing I do know. So that's just some commentary. So I'm just trying to make sense of that. Here's
what I do know.
If there is a process, I don't know what the process is. And I'm not sure any other county official
fully knows what that process is. If there is a process, at least on the county end, it's not been vetted
or discussed. I think, my gosh, we've talked about the jail forever. We've talked about some of these
line items we covered tonight, which are important, don't get me wrong.
They've received more vetting than this discussion on something that's impactful to lives that are literally
living among us. So there's not a process. We need a process. People need to understand what that is
so they can either get it, know it, or object to it, which is, as Peter was saying, the democratic way.
It's everyone's right to say, Trent, you're full of it, or Trent, you're right, or Trent, I don't know,
I just don't like you. That's the democratic way. The second thing is, I've gone to several different
sources over and over and I'm like, help me understand this, help me understand this. The timing, I
still have not got an answer on. I don't understand the timing. Whether you take faith arguments, whether
you take cold arguments, whether you take anything, I don't understand the timing right now.
I understand there could be a lot of different arguments for the timing, but as I look at that, I don't
get it. I also think this is what happens. Earlier tonight, I made a comment. A lot of times, elected
officials do this. I'd like for it to be this way. I'm going to go order a pizza. You all work on that.
We'll send a check. I think we've got a lot of providers
doing things. I think there's a lot of providers trying to do things. I think there's even more people
trying to fill gaps and trying to be providers. I think we are so new at all of this. And because we
lose focus talking about the third funding line and we can't find that for the semicolon and well, we
got to do public notice. Because we get so hung up on that you Hill issues, we don't get hung up on
humanity issues. And so for me,
I think the action on this one's cooked. I think that for a variety of reasons, including humans, they're
in a place trying to figure out life as it is. I think if there was a goal to persuade folks elsewhere,
we've broken the fundamental persuasion, and that is trust. In persuasion, you're helping
building trust, bring someone, let's try this. Maybe we'll try that. Let's look at this. I feel like
that is, is not happening here. And so I, if things move forward, I don't know that it's not going to
turn into 40 other different things that then suddenly it's, well, now we've got a new side issue and
other issues. And this weather alarms me to no end.
And so that's a lot of me entering thoughts there, but when I look at this, how this developed what
Thursday, the meandering of that and trying to figure that out alone. That is a process, I do want to
say, I want to thank the people.
who have sat through this meeting and all those semicolons and lines as we do our jobs to help us do
our jobs. I also want to thank the people who are actively pursuing further discussions with
our commissioners. As was reported to us earlier tonight, that meeting time has changed, and the meeting
time has changed, and the meeting time has changed. This is a big enough county now
where a commissioner meetings or any public meeting of significance, and I think that's a lot of them,
unfortunately for maybe the people in them, they gotta go to more evening accessible times and not times
that don't work for people. This is still a community of working people who need to be able to weigh
in on issues and not simply, well, I don't know what they're doing down there, but they always seem
to fight. So anyway, I've said too much, but thank you. Thank you, appreciate it. Council Welles.
Yeah. Luckily, the general public in our county is not so general or average. Luckily, y'all are amazing.
And we've heard the most articulate public comment, I think, of any public meetings I've ever seen.
And so I just want to echo the thank you for coming. Thank you for sharing your passion and your expertise
and staying for so freaking long. But I think I'll try to be succinct. Famous last words. I see some
specific issues that
we must work through. And the first one I see is the lack of communication, not just like what Councillor
Iverson was describing, but the fact that we as a body didn't know this was happening until it was in
a public meeting. Thank you again.
didn't know that there was a special meeting called this week until I was told by someone else. So therefore
also don't know that it was changed except for thank you. There's no communication about the use of
funds and that's gotta change. All of this has to change. I think another main issue is that we are
that check and balance that is if you look
at Indiana history. That is why our body was created. We're not in the Constitution. The commissioners
are. And then the state was like, whoa, we got three people up here just doing whatever they want. Let's
put in county councils. So that is our role. That is our duty. And it's a fiduciary one. But it's important.
We are stewarding your money. And that is not something to take lightly.
We need a better understanding of how and when and to whom spending is going on. And that needs to be
outlined and we need to take control of figuring out how to make that happen. We can't just call for
it. It requires some work on our part. We lack a transparent process. I think that was Councilor Crossley's
first point, but we also,
that the process we lack must be transparent. It must be fair and kind and just and compassionate. It
has to be all of those things. I mean, the fact that we talk about codifying and putting in a protocol
isn't enough. We have to make sure that we don't lose sight of
of the human aspect of this and the fact that these are our neighbors and it's not okay to sweep and
shovel things aside and look at the new day as though it's been all right, because it's not. We have
to stop being fearful about risk.
liability or looking like we don't know what we're doing because Lord knows I do not know what I'm doing.
I'm up here trying my best and we're going to not get it right the first time, but we have to stop being
afraid of doing something. So that said, I think we have to agree on some sort of statement about this week.
We have to implore the commissioners through written communication. I'm hoping that everyone on this
body can sign on to laying out the absolute necessity for a stay on eviction, at least through to warm spring.
And by warm spring, I'm talking April, and we've seen snow in April, but that at least, at the very
least, the weather is not predictable enough between now and then, and they've admitted that the weather
is a factor by staying it for a week. So I feel like this is very justifiable. We must write this, we
must write this by tomorrow,
early afternoon and get this communicated. I mean, I'm sure those who are interested will watch our
comments tonight, but those who are not interested, I want to make sure that they get the message. Our
longer term strategy must include developing specific protocol around what to do to address
unhoused neighbors situations humanely, ethically, and consistently. And I think it starts with a protocol
around knowing the money situation better, requiring that we are specifically asked about appropriating
when these actions are being taken. And I mean, we will have to work on that wording.
of course. I think secondly, and I'm going to look at my cheat sheet here because this is what I wrote
down, you know, last week real quick. But I think there needs to be a timeline incorporated into that
protocol so that we aren't giving people 30 days or less. 30 hours. I mean, I think Councilor Decker,
last night you pointed out like if you're if you're late on your mortgage, you
There's a long process, you know? And so why would we not afford that to everyone? I think that we have
to be very specific about how we notify folks. This can't be just posting a piece of paper
and calling that good, that's no, that's not how you would do it. That's not how you do it. I think
also in whatever protocol we put together, we have to identify the partner agencies, their roles and
a timeline for communication and a way to circle back and have an after action. If an eviction is part
of it, if it's not part of it, let's also debrief. We do way too little debriefing
in county government. I'm shocked. I am shocked at how little we do. That should be a part of it. I
will end soon, I promise. The storage and retrieval procedures and the plan for non-retrieved property,
if we do eviction, and again, I'm stressing that part because eviction is not the only path I see for
what we want to tackle. I think
that has to be articulated and it has to be done in a way that is much more sensitive to the conditions
and the livelihoods and lives lived that we're affecting. There's so much more because we could address
systemic issues as well. And to your point, Councilor Iverson, there is a lot of guidance on this.
pulled a stack of it and was looking through it today. We can put something together. Whether or not
it's perfect, it doesn't matter as long as we're not doing haphazard, not undirected action. Thank you
for my time. You're welcome. Thank you. Councilor Feidl.
I come at this with an activist heart. So it really warms my heart to see you all out here still this
evening. I've done my fair share of protesting in a variety of areas, a lot of my working life. And
I'm just excited that you're all still here, hanging in there with this whole process. I, too, would
like to see something happen. I'm interested in impact. I'm very interested in the impact that
anything that's happening will have on the citizens that are being affected by all of this. I want to
eliminate harm. I don't want harm anywhere. You know, we're just talking about property here. We're
not talking about anything that we can't work on to make it work for everybody involved. So I would
really like to go along with a lot of the things that have been said here tonight
and implement something where we can have a process. I'm very upset that I, as a now county counselor
for less than a year, not quite a year, can't find out what this is costing, who it's paying for, and
where it's coming from. I don't seem to see the bill for this thing that they had planned.
Where is the bill? I don't know where that is. If somebody has that, I'd like to see it.
I don't know where that is. It seems like that's our role, right? So we weren't asked to approve money
to make this happen. And that seems wrong, first off the bat. I think that's totally wrong. I mean,
I thought that was our job, was to approve the money. We're the pocketbook here. So I don't like that
at all. It doesn't seem like that that check and balances
that process has been adhered to, and it really disturbs me that that has happened. So I will do everything
that I can do to make it better, make it have a good impact for all involved, and go on from here. So
I think a lot has been said. I don't need to repeat everything, but that's kind of where I'm at. I appreciate
that. And to your point, Councilor Feidl, just one thing that I just thought of that kind of sobers
you up a little bit is,
If nobody, if y'all didn't make the noise that you've made Thursday, this item that was sent out as
a draft was on the agenda for today. The original eviction was yesterday. Let that sink in for a second.
Look at how like ask money after. That's it.
And the impact, right? Yeah. Exactly. So I guess now, now that we've all had an opportunity to say things
and listening to the public this evening, what do you all have an appetite to do? So many things.
I know. Personal Jen Crossley, I know what she wants to do, however,
putting my county council hat on. Yeah, what are our options, right? That is my role and my responsibility.
Again, I still think that there is a resolution that I think that we can put into play here and hand
deliver. And again, put the checks and balances in. I think that's a start. As we give them an opportunity
to come up with a plan or heck, maybe work together. What about that?
earliest we could do a resolution, which we need to do is next week. I think tomorrow we have to have
some written communication statement put together. That's really difficult to coordinate amongst us,
but I'm confident that we can lean on some folks to help us without violating open door law, get something
together. Please.
Councilor heard Iverson and then I saw Henry's hand go up. I think in the near term sounds great in
the most immediate term after that. And when we're talking about a plan, it is super important. And
we heard this in public comment today is we need lived experience at the table to craft that plan. So
There is the Ashley's of the world, the Lydia's of the world. Katie Norris needs to be at the table,
right? Hotels for the homeless. Folks need to be at the table who know what they're talking about. And
so I think that's going to take time to coordinate, but I think that's worth doing, and I think it's
worth doing soon.
Sound like pre ambulatory clauses in the resolution, right? Because I appreciate all the brainstorming.
I also appreciate I don't get to be the emergency manager of the county or some of the other roles here
yet. But in any case, the the challenge I have is I think I think listing and enumerating the expectations.
The short term is assuring that there's no misuse of county funds because we can't seem to figure out
where this is coming from.
And which means I think, which is a larger conversation, which unfortunately we still have to talk about
the edit and I'm already looking at that document, also seeing some of these constructions that kind
of box us into things, right? That we're gonna have to, from a fiscal standpoint, understand when a
process like this happens, who pays and how and where's it coming from? When was that authorized? And
to answer some questions up here, I mean, look, FEMA has been around since 1979.
There's a process for stakeholder engagement and writing operations plans that goes back 46 years. We
don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we can bring partners in and encourage through a whereas clause
what we expect to see. And it's probably making sure that this is run by an informed vibe and preparing
for these types of things by the partners that we're expecting to do them.
You know, when I have stakeholders in the county tell me that they've not been informed, that they have
a role in the directive, I think is one of the terms of art that has been shared with me this week.
Not a plan, not whatever. But we need to understand that stakeholders are stakeholders if we think so
or not, and they need to be involved, I think to Peter's point, right, that we need them there. So I
think that's a lot of operational or kind of pre-ambulatory clauses in a resolution. But I think the
short term is we've got to make sure there's not a misuse of county funds.
I'm not persuaded that there is not at this point. And I guess that would be working with the auditor
this week to figure that out. Well, is there, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Is there a way, because Councilor
Feidl just left me, we have to put a stay on it, you know? And we don't have that power. So is there
a way, I'm looking to people who work here who are knowledgeable, for us to,
affect immediate change on the plan? I mean, anyone got ideas on how we can impact what's happening
on Monday? Besides just asking what's the plan? When is this happening? Where is this happening? Who's
doing the work? We've asked all week. I mean, I'm sorry. We have no idea. I mean, all we know is something's
happening on the 15th and it's going to be devastating. That's all I know.
And so that's why I'm asking, is there something else? Does County Council have anything else that is
quick? And we are not built to be quick. I understand that. There's reasons why, but is there anything
at our disposal? On the spot, I'm not thinking of anything. I mean, this is like,
county executive function. But we fund county executive functions. And that's the and I'm not saying
that for you. I'm just saying in general because you know, we they do with what we do because we go
through budget purgatory every year, especially this year. And there has to be
But it shouldn't. First of all, it shouldn't have to be this way. We should have people that are duly
elected individuals that come to us and talk to us and actually not talk to us, talk with us and make
adult decisions. But here we are. So, yeah, and I just feel like there has to be if you can't find it,
that's fine. But it's just there's there has to be something.
because I'm tired of playing games at this point. Madam President, can I follow up with a question?
Yes. Mr. King, I was going to ask some very direct statements here, so bear with me. Are you able to
provide us a maybe Socratic legal counter argument that would defend our position if we decided to challenge
the executive position on this based on the fact that you are from the county legal department that
works for the commissioners? Could you give us an alternative answer to it's an executive function you don't see
a way around it. What's the law school counter-argument against what you just said? I mean, I was kind
of unprepared to talk about this, so I'm not really, I don't know that I can give you the law school
argument without researching it. That's fair. Let me ask the legal, maybe the fiscal question. What
would be the process if we wanted to de-appropriate funds this evening? Would it have to be publicly
noticed? You can't do it. But could we notice it for next meeting? No. No. It's three weeks. You have
to have 10 days.
notice. So we wouldn't even make our next meeting because it's a short week. Correct. You wouldn't be
able to de-appropriate the 2025 budget. However, there is a process for
claims that you cannot make an advance purchase without going through those processes. Since the services
have likely not been performed, the claim would likely not be issued until closer to 2026. So unless
it was submitted as an emergency claim or services have already been provided, then it would likely
be a 2026 claim.
So it's probably important for the vendor to know that if there's a potential misuse of funds, they
may not get paid. They may be taking on a liability that they do not get paid for. Is that a way to
think about it? You can't really answer that. I can say that from up here. Okay, that's it, Madam President.
All right, any other questions or comments? I get, yeah, Councilor Wills. Could we just,
take two minutes and we'll just bullet point out what would be in a letter tomorrow. Like, and I'll
just type my notes and then we can workshop via staff. So I have letter to commissioners. We scheduled
encampment eviction. Number one, don't do it until like,
I mean, no, seriously, like, so, you know, postpone this until spring. I think I would really like to
say postpone until there's a definite plan agreed to by all parties. I would be in favor of that totally. Right.
because they have to have the funding to do what they want to do and that's us and then they want to
do the plan or they want us to work with them to do a plan to make that happen okay well let's let's
have a plan that everybody agrees upon and then we can go from there okay yes sounds like a plan to
me yeah look at that we request the reason why now
Is there a mitigating factor or something that requires this? I don't care about the reason why I'm
going to stop. Well, I mean, I agree, but I don't think we'll get it. But it's not, you know,
nothing better, nothing. Other points. I have some. Yes. So during public comment, it's been raised
a couple of times there. We're talking about people and we don't know how many souls
are on this property. Some people are saying 10. Some people saying five, some people saying 20. How
many souls are sleeping out there right now when it is bitterly cold? Number two. What agencies are
doing street outreach right now? Is it just health net? I hear you. I hear you. So like, is like,
What is going on with agencies, right? Number two, or number three, what housing entities are involved
here? Are there any housing entities involved here? Is hotels or homeless involved? Is Crawford involved?
Is Friends Place involved? Go down the list of where people can find a warm, safe, secure shelter
Like how many of those places are being consulted? Or are we just trying to figure out who's gonna cart
away people's stuff the fastest? Can we ask some questions that are people-centric? I'm caught between,
I don't really care about the answers to that if they're not gonna stop. So I think what it is is that
these are the things we want to find out
after they have agreed to stop. These are some of the things that we would like to work with them to
better understand. And as an entry toward creating a, I don't know if shared's the right word, but a
agreed upon and informed approach.
make sense? I mean ultimately this is a county government approach, right? Yeah. We all represent county
government here. It's not just them, it's not just us. Everybody represents county government, including
the staff sitting here tonight, right? We have in this whole building, all a bunch of buildings, right?
I mean I think it's a black eye on the whole county government, you know? It's not just us, not just
anybody, it's everybody, and our citizens, right? Our community is counting upon us to look at this
whole big picture and figure out what we can do collectively to make the best of the situation, right?
What is that going to be? I do think we need to keep the meta questions in there. I mean, this is important.
And yet I keep coming back to like, OK, I don't want to say lane, but like the things that we really
do affect from our seats, right?
What fund is this? Have there been transfers in that fund? If it is pointing back to the, you know,
we need to know where we're going to expect to see the claim hit. Mr. Iverson is looking at the ledger
here all evening and we're waiting with bated breath. We think we know from the public meeting where
they're pulling it from, but that fund has restrictions.
Well, in some way. But we need to know what fund and what in-house transfers, what they're doing, how
they're moving money around to accomplish hiring. That plus, as I spoke with our friends that are in
the audience when I visited the encampment, it's also the indirect cost. It's not just bio one. There's
a lot of indirect costs we don't understand. Has that been accounted for? And where is that coming from?
So those are, I know, fiscal questions that are not as
urgent, but they do speak from our seats, from what's going on. Well, I think in the beginning, and
I still don't understand what was the impetus for this now. That's the why now. Right. That's a great
question. Why now? Right? Why now? Nobody ever answered that that I saw anywhere. Why, and then why
now? Right? Cruelty. So given the weather and the lack of any immediate
need, we are requesting a postponement of any action regarding the encampment until there is a protocol
or plan in place for addressing the commissioners and communities concerns about the welfare of the
folks there. May I, I mean, may I add a counselor Hawk just texted me. I just want to share it. Um,
but she, she was asking where the expectation that the people, where do they go?
I mean, it's part of whatever this plan is, we don't really understand where people are going. That
was her question. Great. Should you join the meeting? Yeah, OK. She's still awake. I thought I saw a
hand raise over here. Maybe? Yes. I'm pondering thoughts.
I get that you're trying to draft this letter, and I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I'm also hired
to do a job and point out other concerns. And I think there goes, and this is not my personal opinion.
I'm just doing my job. I need to say that. But there are legal concerns. There are public health concerns.
I haven't been to the encampment. I don't know what those concerns are. I haven't been to all the meetings.
I don't know what those are.
I don't want to say drafting a letter is premature, but I think you have to have a lot more information
on what those concerns are and why. And maybe this is not a letter with here's our bullet points, but
can we have a meeting? Can we set down so we can have this conversation? Because I think it's beneficial
if you're in the same room talking instead of exchanging emails and letters back and forth.
But you know, the only thing that I would, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, no, go ahead. No, go ahead.
You can finish. And I know, I know that the emails have tried to establish that, but I mean, I think
there's been a lot of moving parts last week alone that has not. I mean, like there's a lot of moving
parts, so I don't know there's been time to process all those moving parts and answer all the incoming request.
Yeah. And I think to that degree, sure. But they've had an opportunity tonight to even come in and say
something. And like, yeah, that too. And so they also had an opportunity to have the meeting with the
groups tomorrow, which sounds like it got postponed to Thursday at 1 PM. And again,
I'm just going to say it, because I work a 9 or an 8 to 5 job. Doing it at a time frame where people
that have true concerns and who are trying to advocate and do a job, those are at times when we can't
even be here. I usually try to use my lunch and my personal time from my job, my actual 40
hour a week job to do this work. That's not anybody's concern, but that's what I do. However, I don't
know what they like, you know, our public has, I can only imagine. And so I get
I understand. But I guess at this point, I've been in rooms now where commissioners have been sitting
here and talking to us. And then County Council Theater turns on at 10 AM. And then I see something
completely different. And it's like, where was that energy when we were sitting in the same room talking
to each other? And at this point, I think this kind of gets
A conversation and it looks like Marty or counselor is on and and has her hand raised we thought she
went to bed Marty and so um you know we're just trying to figure out like again.
we have to have a checks and balance. The public is asking us for checks and balance. We've gone through
many different scenarios and different types of things. We still got one more conversation where there's
another checks and balance. That has to happen. The moral of the thing, you know, the moral of the county
government is there's a checks and balance, but I guess certain restrictions may apply for certain groups.
So that's, I think that us sending this to them,
and having it public and being able to go about and doing this is us doing our job. And this is us trying
to get them to communicate with us. Because as it stands, I'm not certain if one commissioner is still
online right now. And that's just one. The main nucleus that is over the presiding president
I would think we should be in here and at least talking to us or at least giving an update. And that
has not happened. So that's kind of where I think we are in terms of trying to send this letter out.
Councilor Hawk. Yes. Seems to me what we need to really be thinking about is where are these folks going
to go? That's the plan we ought to know now. If they are, if this happens,
Where do they plan for them to go? Just move them down the street a little ways and set up encampment
there and they won't even have their tents anymore. I mean, I think the plan has to include a part of
the transition of where they're going to go because right now they're on county property. Are they going
to move them someplace or then they're going to be at someone's backyard?
I mean, that is all a part of it. However, if we're just looking at the funding, because I was trying
to figure out what fund was this paid from, if it was, or to be paid from, wasn't it, it QMTAP is what
I thought it was, and that there was going to be a transfer between lines and
And if that's the case, I don't know how you stop it from doing that because they already have
the appropriation for the total. They can do a transfer with just the letter of transfer. Is that correct,
Kim? I don't know for sure. Are you looking at the? Yes. I mean, they can do in-house transfers to fund
whatever line they anticipate that coming out of. Right. So this could happen.
Madam President. Yes. Except, if I may, I've looked at that ordinance. Kim Cap has limitations. There's
about 11 of them. And one of them requires a declared emergency to use the fund. It's there. And it
was done in 2022, the last time we tried to do this. It was not done by the county commission at this
point. I want to follow up on the comment made by Ms. Turner-King. I'm probably the only person in the
room that's done level three hazmat training, like worn the suits.
and worked with civil support teams in the country. I think we have to be very cautious when we start
throwing around what's a public health hazard, because we don't have a declared one. And if there was
an emergency, we would have a declared emergency from the Board of Health, and there isn't one. And
so as far as the, sorry, we have every right to put a resolution out, because it's a public document
that's expressing the will of this body.
It's the what about-ism in the council, the commissioner's meeting last week that got us into this point
to begin with. So I'm just, I'm a little, I'm gonna leave it there, because anything beyond that is
gonna bring out some anger. I've been on the ground out there. And again, I've trained on this stuff.
I've worn the blue suits. I did not see what could constitute quota cesspool. So I put my word against
whoever suggested such a thing.
And they may be helpful to have an emergency management mindset and to work with our law enforcement
entities that plan and do these things. Sheriff Marte has experience with encampments in Indianapolis
from his previous career. He would understand from an operational perspective what we should be doing.
Those voices haven't been included in planning. And we do not have a shared objective of a county of
what we're trying to do out there.
And we don't even know how it's being fiscally managed. We do not have a shared objective. And with
no offense to people that spend a good amount of their lives and time maintaining our buildings and
facilities, it might not be the right incident commander to have to manage this activity and treating
it just like a facility project. And I think it's becoming abundantly clear. And that's all I have on
this. I think I've said enough this evening on this activity. Thank you. OK.
Is there any other points that we need to give to Councilor Wilts at this moment? I have a question
here. Yes. If indeed this property is still under consideration for where the new jail location is going
to be, and if that's a part of it,
And I don't know, because you folks know what you're doing. Nobody's telling me anything. But if that's
the case, then why would there be such a rush to get them out of there in the next month or so before
springtime? Or do they want them out of there so they can sell it to somebody else? Have we given them
permission to sell it? Nope. No, we have not. Yeah.
OK, I mean, that's just part of the conversation. Kind of a question. And no, I did not go to bed. I've
been watching you. I just watched on cats instead of this. So my dog wouldn't bark. We're just jealous.
Well, let me tell you what. You can have my bad news, and I'll stay there. How's that?
Yes, Councilor Decker. I know the hour is getting late. I do want to say this. I think there's an underlying
theme that might get a little bit missing from some of this and that truly, if you look at our agenda,
most of the items that we linger over is a sense of has at its root, some sense of care to try to do
it better by
somebody else in the county. I mean, we spent forever on probation with the notion that, as someone
said to me once, if we get it right in probation, then one issue that gets someone in our court system
doesn't turn into one issue that gets someone in the court system out of their job, away from their
family, out of their marriage. Things don't rocket into other things. And I think that that underlying
genesis of care for
each other in this policy, in policies adopted, in how we go about this, and how do you want to find
out about things? I mean, the foreclosure comparison, I looked it up, the average in 2025 on foreclosure
is 645 days. I don't have to do rocket science to figure out how long that is, but it is longer
this process and I worry that sometimes in again these line items and other things that we lose a little
bit of sense of that we're talking about humans with dignity who trying to figure out things people
trying to do right by them our social service providers other entities in the county and I think that
that is a reminder that needs to to stay in into this it's about getting to that
to try to get to day two, because here's the underlying thing that's getting ready to hit us like a,
like a steel hammer. When those federal changes are fully implemented and there's funding laws and shoot,
I just looked online while we were sitting here today, there were several citizens in Indianapolis that
were slated to be take their oath as naturalized citizens. They just didn't have the swearing.
I don't know what that means, but it means to me that things are changing and they're not changing in
a positive Mr. Rogers way. They're changing in the crappy kind of way that we've seen in other communities.
So at least here, that genesis of care and compassionate care has got to be an underlying guide for
us. Okay. So as we wrap up this discussion, I think what I'd like to see one is
what Councilor Wilts has crafted and get sent to commissioners. And then ideally next Tuesday on the
16th, I would like to have the discussion where we do talk about a resolution. And put it on the after
the 15th. I know, which is so unfortunate.
something together. I think it's important that we work through this table. So I can pull a draft of
a very drafty draft together and get it to you tonight.
Ms. Turner King, do you have time in the morning to take a look to make sure that there is at least
nothing that is false or we're not suggesting something inappropriate legally? I mean, I just, I know
I'm not asking for you to spend a half day kind of researching things. I don't want that.
necessarily this time around. Maybe you all disagree, but it would, I think it would be good to have
your eyes on it. I will rearrange tomorrow to make time. Okay. So if you could Kim, sorry, Michelle,
if you could send out my drafty draft and people could reply to Michelle.
And then, I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. One of us should incorporate and kind of finalize for
their eyes again. Give me a second. Tomorrow is the 11th. I can work on.
Tomorrow's the 10th. Excellent. A whole new day. Yeah, I can work on stuff. I have some time in the
morning and in the afternoon. Just a little chunk in the middle, I can't. So I could be the one who
rounds up everything after you've sent it to Kim and tries to
Put everything back together, send it back to Kim, send it out. Texting to let people know when we've
reached. Thank you. Thanks. So is this a letter? Right now, it's a letter. OK. So what's the goal of
the letter? Stopping the eviction until we have procedures in place. And it's going to say something
like that.
Do you like me to read the bullet points? No, I just want to make sure it encapsulates that. But that's
OK. Yeah. So yeah. OK. Hi. We don't have public comment right now. But we are more than happy. We need
to finish this up here. It was a suggestion, actually, or a question, because you asked about paths
forward of making action happen.
given the questions of procedural flaws potentially, is there room for filing an injunction until you
all have had the chance to review this if there is no stay of the eviction through reasonable responses
to this letter?
if they do not respond to this letter, they do not change the eviction date, it sounds like there is
reasonable question of if they follow procedural norms of whether it be the contract or the eviction
notice, things of that nature, open law rules, things of that nature. Is there cause for an eviction
to be filed at least until the attorney or
other individuals to review this. That is a legal question. That's way above my pay grade. Very interesting
idea. I don't believe we have standing as elected officials, but we do as taxpayers. Is that generally
my understanding? Again, without looking at laws on injunctions, I'm not going to be able to provide
a legal answer on that tonight.
It suggests though, if you are writing a letter that you decide tonight after the draft is circulated
via staff and in accordance with open door law, are you delegating the authority to sign that letter
to someone? Ms. Schell? So it's come, going to the commissioner's sign with all council signature, like
who's names on this?
I think it should be everybody's, and I think we should send her a text or an email, whichever you prefer,
to say, I'm signing off on this version. And that is a point of privilege here. Is this something that
we need to make emotional? Because I'm seeing another. Actually, city council did this when they sent
the letter to us about North Park. So is this something that, without getting involved with Open Door,
Is this something that we can say we make a motion to authorize the letter to be sent via council staff
with those who want their names to be approved on it to be sent on to count or to commissioners?
I can also, if you like and you approve the memo, I can apply your digital signature to it. Okay, I
guess by show of hand,
would like their name to be on? We have Marty online, so. Oh, yeah. Well, just kind of getting an idea
of who would like to have their names, like, signed on to this letter. Okay. Councilor Hawk, would you
like your name on this letter? You're muted. I would have seen what the letter said before.
Because once again, I think the most important thing here for the people that we're trying to help is
what's the plan to help them, not just to win an argument with the commissioners. Let's find out what
our plan is. But maybe I'm looking at it wrong. So would you be OK with saying if Michelle
without, and I don't know if this would violate open door, if it gets sent to you all and Council Hawk
is OK with it, could a motion be said, we all sign on it, and Council Hawk could contingent upon her
approval of this letter?
I do know that open door will not allow you to take official action, which was proving and signing this
letter as an entire council via email would not be in compliance with open door. I believe my memory
of the city council meeting was they in their individual capacity and not as an entire council signed
it already drafted letter because.
There were individuals who did not sign on to the letter because it was in their individual capacities.
So it wasn't an entire council letter. And I am very cautious and hesitant and feeling all sorts of
bad Spidey sense lawyer vibes. And the idea that you would approve signing a letter via email.
Councilor Decker. If we were to instead say, such as a motion, which I'd be prepared to give, that we
move that Councilor Wilts be given permission to take a draft she is developing, circulated among councilors
for their individual signatures, if they choose, would that satisfy? That would have to be in, like,
Councilor Wilts can't send all of you or a quorum of you a letter
with staff. In accordance with open doors. So there'd have to be staff coordination. I think you could
delegate writing the letter to one person. Which is what Councilor Wilts technically is already doing.
I'm happy to give my notes to someone else. If you want to be the person writing it, that's fine. No,
I think you're... Okay.
Don't have to be me. Yeah, you took the initiative. OK. So. So we can sign on as individuals. Yes, I
do not think it can be a council action. Unless improved at a public meeting, and it's a little hard
to do without the draft letter, it sounds like. Not as fast as you are. OK, OK.
So the- What if you- Yes, Councilor Hawke. We got to wrap it up. Why don't you put something together
that said we are very concerned and we wish to see better cooperation or something and we want to follow
this up with more information that we're going to send to you or something rather than anybody could agree to.
I don't know if one of you guys want to do. That's what, that's what we actually, I'm not certain if
you were in or watching, but that's technically that's what we're doing. What I, right. We want to have
more cooperation and we want to be able to work with them with this. Right. Right. So yeah, that's,
yeah, that's what we're saying. Right. Okay. Okay. So to move forward.
Councilor Wilts will work. Oh, and then. And so if we all say we're gonna sign it now and you can just
sign my name onto it, it's fine with me. I think that's what we're checking on now. It sounds like what
we can do is we can sign on as individuals. Well, if we know what it's gonna say, we could just go ahead
and have Kate send it out from all of us.
excuse myself for a moment and take this with me. And I will be back and please proceed with the meeting.
Okay. All right. So we'll go for it. All right. So we, we, we can't, I'm sorry. We, we, we can, um,
after it's been adjourned, we can have a conversation, but we really got to move forward. So yeah, if
you want to go out and talk with councilor Wilts and run safely.
All right. I have one more question if it's possible. Maybe this would help if I just leave the baby
and don't want to be a problem. For the Monday potential eviction, was another sign put up somewhere
down there about this or how are people being notified about that? Do we know? No, no. Okay.
The first event, right? Okay, thank you. Okay. Just because we can't hear what he's saying. So he said,
if I remember heard him correctly, you said that the first notice was posted, right? The first date
of the eviction notice was posted, right? But nothing for the 15th, is that correct? Right. Okay. Okay.
All right. So we got to get moving forward with this last part.
um so next up is item c or d our new d council i move to open for a discussion the capital improvement
plan for the economic development income tax fund or edit shoot second all right we got a motion and
a second miss turner king
So I believe this discussion is to identify our council recommendations on what you would like included
in the edit plan. There was a list put together for the commissioners meeting that listed potential
projects. And so I think the question before council is, how do you feel about that list? Are you okay
with the list as is? Do you want some things included in the list, not others? Do you want things on
the list changed?
I will say as a caveat, whatever is included in the list, absolutely you have to, I would recommend
that you include the 2026 budgetary expenses and that the list that you're recommending has to be of
a value of $19 million to meet the statutory requirements
I think it's 75%. All right, so Councilmember Henry and I were there on Thursday to talk about this
with the commissioners. The list that's here sounds a lot like what Mr. Cockrell listed out in the meeting.
So this is not a surprise to see this here. So clearly
I think Commissioner Thomas wants to leave in the County Justice Center. And just technically, there
needs to be a renumbering of all this because the Justice Center on page one doesn't have a number.
The operational costs, I agree with you, need to stay in there. The airport terminal, I could take it
or leave it. I mean, I want an airport terminal. It's important for economic development. We've talked
ad nauseam about having an airport terminal.
Really, I think what could be in there that's not in there is bituminous. Every single year, we just
invest so much money in bituminous and that's an economic development tool because when people come
in to watch the Hoosiers play football, they're driving on our roads.
And if Lisa Ridge were here right now, which I don't even know if she's still watching, she would say,
we never have enough. So let's put that in here and and make sure that our roads are drivable when people
go and watch the Hoosiers play. The the other thing I'll mention is that the sewer, the sanitary sewer
expansion is absolutely amazing. It goes to
what we're talking about tonight, which is housing. And one of the key reasons why I heard over and
over again from the planning department we could not expand housing was because there's no sewer there.
So I think that's a really good idea to put that in there. And of course, you know, transit's great,
fire protection district. So I think this is all good stuff. My only addition would be bituminous. And
if I could get away with it, self-insurance,
But I don't think we can make an economic development argument for self-insurance. As a follow-up question,
if I may. Yes, please. If you're going to include bituminous, how much? Is there a further thought on
how? Well, let's see. What do we budget in the 2026 budget for bituminous? Do you recall at the top
of your head? I want to say it's a million five. I was going to say two.
I'll tell you here in just a moment. But I would also want to check in with Miss Ridge to make sure
that because I don't think that number includes cul-de-sacs. I'm sorry. Not cul-de-sacs. Oh, sorry.
It's 11 o'clock. Words are failing me. Sidewalks. What did you say? Sidewalks.
Sidewalks, yes, but in the developments, these side neighborhoods. Anyway, we need to talk with Lisa
Ridge. Mr. Deckard's laughing at me. Yeah, so that's what I would say is around two million would cover
what we budgeted and then anything more would come from Ms. Ridge.
Councilor Henry. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Iverson. Yeah, we both had the privilege of speaking on this.
It was only last week. So my observation about the draft in front of me is that it's a little more complex
and longer than the previous version of the capital improvement plan. I have some questions here based
on the dialogue that we had in that meeting, which was spirited.
And I agree that, yeah, under capital projects, project one, which is really what we call the justice
center project, I have some heartburn about setting a cost of 225 million after we've had some challenges
about being able to raise that amount. It locks into another public document that we think that's what
this is going to end up being. And we have yet to sort that out as a conversation about what our new
vision for what a jail and or justice center ought to be. So I have,
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm
campus design is the number, as opposed to setting it as something that may be less, especially given
it's a five-year and not 20-year plan, which is what we're going to have to do to build anything anyway.
So I'm curious if my fellow counselors would want to see a reduction in the estimated total cost on
the edit, as opposed to putting a $225 million number in the thing. And maybe, again, we have to put
an estimate. But I have some concerns about that number being locked into a future-facing document.
Secondly is under the planning development and construction schedule, which is a three sentence line
in the previous version of the plan. We now have the kind of schema for what we've heard in the past
about what state legislative changes would need to happen in order for us to do certain things. This
seems to be a lot. Michelle, do you have a comment on this? No, I was just going to just say when you're
ready, I have the edit numbers.
Okay, and then I guess the only other question I have more from a legalese perspective is the big word
or in there gives us some flexibility if for some reason we want to, I guess, have some other mix of
projects that are not either operational costs or us committing to the jail and or justice center that
I guess I'm fine with and I appreciate Councilor Iverson's suggestions of other things, but we have a,
We have a new document that is 144% of the total allocation as opposed to 100% even. That's what it
says is the percentage of total to be allocated to projects during the term of the plan is 144% of the
edit. And I'm a little baffled by that number. At the very bottom. So there's some things I
think, unfortunately, this late hour, we've got to sort out if this is going to be the plan that we
have to submit by the end of the year.
We've got this mega number in here for mega jail. Is the mix correct for 75%? Do we need to have all
this language on page 519 about without legislative changes, bonding, 2028, dot, dot, dot? Is that really
necessary when the previous version had three sentences? And yeah, I know this is a lot, folks, but
this is going to walk us into a five-year plan for this fund, and there seems to be
And I'm trying to be empathetic and be open and have some integrity here. We've had a whole evening
this evening of trusting but verifying what happens across the hall around here. I want to make sure
the document before does not lock us into something. Because I'm not sure what I'm seeing here is not
that. So that's a lot of words. So I guess the question is, Turner King, can we make amendments to this
thing and send it back? Or are we making amendments to this document or accepting the document as presented?
think that you can make amendments and this would go back to the commissioners as a recommendation for
inclusion in the plan or exclusion plan. Okay, that's it right now. Madam President, I may have some
amendments then. Well, and I guess our thing is we have our last meeting of the year next Tuesday and
they have their last meeting of the year next Thursday. So
If we make amendments and then if we, for some reason, decide to come back next Tuesday and then this
gets sent to them Thursday or the Thursday the 18th, my concern would be they reject some of the things
and there's nothing else that we can do about it. Yeah, go ahead, Peter, sorry. Yeah, Councilor. This
came up on Thursday during the work session that, um,
There is no deadline here. The sense of urgency that the commissioners were raising is actually false.
We could pass something that said that we're going to fund the Justice Center. And then the very first
meeting in January said we're funding the Justice Center and sewer expansion. And then the meeting after
that, we could come back and say, oh, yeah, and we're supporting bituminous. So this plan is imminent.
You can edit this plan over and over and over again.
That's what the conversation was, is that we just need to, the commissioners need to pass something.
It does not have to be perfect right now. And the minimum being what we committed to in the budget.
Yes. 4.6. And then an agreement that we use the rest for a jail and or justice center and stop using
that term as if it's a very large single facility. The minimum in the plan would be 19 million because
it has to have 75%.
So the balance, the balance of 4.668 is set aside for a potential jail on Door Justice Center. It's
really two things that we can agree on right now. The rest of the stuff we can add on later.
I think this, I heard Councilor Iverson relay it. And just so that you catch this too, the Justice Center
project is not numbered on the first page and it is not included in the list of expenditures on the
last page.
I think because even without the justice center project, you are above the 19 million threshold. Right,
right, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I just wanted to make sure that that was being caught. Councilor
Huck. Okay, since we've not done this before, where we voted on everything having to do with the jail
inside that budget,
Let's say they, however they pass this, will we vote on everything before they spend it? Or if they
pass this, do they have the authority to just go ahead and spend it with no appropriation? That I don't
understand. How many years did you say this was for? How many years?
It's locked in for five. Did you say five years? Yes. Well, just say no to that. No, no, no. We don't
know what's going to happen past two years. Absolutely. We're not even going to have an edit, but we
cannot lock it in for five because we need that
edit money to be rollover into the 1.2 to operate county government. What are they thinking of? Can't
do it for five. One information I want to ask Ms. Turner King another question tonight. If this is adopted
and that budgetary amount which we've went to
to save our budget. If this is adopted, can we come back in January 2026 and amend it as we literally,
or ask them to amend it literally as we just did for this year? So if it's adopted as proposed, could
you ask them to amend it in January? Or altered.
Let's say it's adopted. If it's adopted as proposed, can you come back in the next year and say, well,
no, it's we got to adjust it even more. In looking at the capital improvement plan statute, I think
it doesn't preclude the option to amend. It just says that you have to have a plan in place before you
can spend and that you can't spend for anything that's not within the plan. So basically,
adopting it or them adopting it with the budget in there makes that go. We know that we're not anywhere
near on a justice center or jail operation, depending on what you want to call it. We're not anywhere
near on doing anything there because of obvious issues that have been discussed. So that couldn't go
anyway. This is a plan with
plan, but the actual preparation process that we go through, where it comes in here, it's posted, blah,
blah, blah. Those are just individual items yet to come. The budget is the one thing that is the ship
that is set sail. Yes. Even if the, for example, even if the justice project is included in the plan,
they would, if they want to, so the plan
proposes, you know, purchase of land in 2026. They can't just go purchase land in 2026. They would still
have to meet all the statutory requirements to purchase the land. So council would still have to approve
the purchase agreement. All those things would still have to occur. It's just including it in the plan
would allow the funding to be used for those reasons. I guess my point is this council, because I feel
like we're getting into multiple weeds and multiple debates here, is
stripped down to just budget or stripped up to this plan. None of that matters until truly we start
appropriating and going back to the drawing. Otherwise, they would just pass one of these and my gosh,
North Park would be just humming along. The other thing I just want to say is that sometimes we speak
uncertainty based on changes that have happened this year. There is nothing certain.
with the crowd in Indianapolis. And when we think about the constraints that have been passed on that
justice discussion, which seems to be downtown, and which also we know from our own employees, there's
issues in the non-jail portion, we may be talking about some of these dollars going to both some jail,
some jail remodel, whatever, to pick on whatever side of the issue, or conversely, some alteration of
the judicial building as it exists because you can't just have two floors sitting there and all those
other issues. So I just, there's not certainty on a lot of that, including if the jail were located
downtown, which has been the preference of the city council, where that is. That is now a theoretically,
if real estate market is, I understand, a more costly environment, much more costly.
So I throw all that out because I don't know. If we strip it down to the budget or max it out, I still
think there's unanswered questions that literally every public official on both sides of that ledger
will have to answer. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Council Hawke.
I'm just really worried because I think I'll be losing sight of the fact that we cannot tie up this
edit money for five years in any way, shape or form simply because there won't be an edit come 2028.
It will be a part of our operating money, the whole total operating money, 1.2. And so we cannot,
put, tie up this much of it and for five years, that's a kill us folks. Do you think I'm, you just don't
do that. It cannot, in mid 2027, this council will, the city council will no longer be in charge of
changing it or any of it.
You know, they won't have, we'll each have our own, we'll each have our own role to play in the income
tax. And at that point in 2027, we're gonna be deciding whether or not to go the whole 1.2 for operations
and the 0.4 for fire and the 0.2 for the townships and whatever. And you start chunking off this great big edit
and pull that out, because we're not gonna have that. We're not gonna have public safety. We're not
gonna have any of that. All we're gonna have is the 1.2. I mean, right? Right? Yes. Correct, Councilor
Hotway. Here's the issue. You've got two conflicting laws, right? The one that requires you to adopt
a plan for how you're gonna expend this and to lay out
I guess by, well, no, by project, but you've got that. You've also got the changes to the landscape,
which if you, whoever you listen to, the crow or the legislator, you get different advice on what that's
going to look like and what that's not going to look like. So once again, the state has done a fine
job of giving us a conflict scenario and compliance in this plan.
So clearly we gotta be smart enough to know we don't do five years. It says we, it says that I think
that legislation says we have to do two years, but, but, but no more than two years, folks,
no more than two, because then we'll get ready to decide what we're going to do for 2028. And we'll
have our hands tied behind our back.
You could still do two years, but the underlying point is all that's going to get appropriated here.
There's nothing we will do tonight that'll make this any easier, any harder than appropriating and going
through every hiring freeze and every jail discussion or non-jail discussion that we have. It's still
the same thing. Madam President, I'd like to make amendments. Hold on a second. I thought, did I see
your hand up? Carly or somebody over there? Okay.
Yes, Councilor. Let me attempt an amendment here and we can at least get somewhere on it. Madam President,
I'd like to amend the draft for consideration by the county commissioners to the following. Amendment
one, to set the term of the plan to two years from date of adoption. Amendment two, is to label the
Justice Center project
project one, so strike justice center project and say project one instead in the document. Amendment
three for general description is to say county jail and or justice center. I'll wait for folks to catch
up. Yeah, thank you. So term of plan two years.
Correct justice center project to project one. And correct general description to county jail and or
justice center. Set estimated total cost to $150 million. And I'm okay with the rest for now. Second.
And I'd like to ask a question.
Why the change in estimated total cost for the justice and or jail? I would like to set it back to the
initial estimates by DLZ that were around 150 million. Also, since we've rejected the North Park purchase,
the facility that we will be building will probably not be the one estimated by DLZ at 225 million.
I also don't want it in writing that that's the new number.
I think we need to negotiate that still, but I don't want it in writing that that number somehow still
survives the vote of this council unanimously not to go forward with the North Park purchase. So there
is a motion and a second. Is there any other additional questions or comments on those amendments? Seeing
none. We can't do a voice vote because council hawk is online.
So maybe please have a roll call. Yes. And maybe we should list those amendments back because I'm going
to make sure I got this right. Okay. So, um, amendment one is to set the term of the plan for two years
from the date of adoption.
Amendment two is to label the justice center to project one. Amendment three is change the
general description to say county jail and or justice center. And amendment four is to set the estimated
cost to 150 million. Okay. May I speak? Yes, go ahead councilor. Okay.
I don't like the part where it says two years from date of adoption because, you know, they could delay
adoption. Is that me causing the feedback? I'm sorry. No, it's in the room. Okay. I would think what
you would rather say is to expire, you know, that it's a B for
26 and 27, so that we know that's gone at the end of 2027. I would think, because otherwise, what if
they delayed the document for six months or something, and then we wouldn't be able to do the 2028 budgeting?
Because we need this money to set up within the 1.2.
Point of information, Madam President. Yes, go ahead. So Mr. King, I'm just borrowing the language from
the previous capital improvement plan, like the last draft that used the term of the plan as X years
from the date of adoption. Councilor Hawk raises a point that maybe having an actual expiration date
like we would do in a resolution like December 31st, 2026. No, 2027.
Yeah, right. Okay. Does it set a fixed date rather than two years from date of adoption? Is there any
legal reason to... We could set a fixed date of expiry to make this work. Does it have to match like
the language from the previous version? No. I think it just has to match the language in the statute
and it says a capital improvement plan must encompass a period of not less than two years. Okay. Right.
Whatever give them two years,
Can I ask a friendly question to my colleagues? So do you have a recommended end date then if we went
with December 31st? What would that be? 27? Would that work, December 31st, 2027? So it looks like she's
shaking her head yes. I'm going to take that as a friendly amendment that I would accept. Who was seconding
me? Was that Iverson? Yes.
Okay, so then as I understand it, then the new term would be the term of this plan, or the term of this
plan will expire on December 31st, 2027. Does that make sense to the desk? And for purposes
of administration, I consent. I think we're gonna give Ms. Turner-King
opportunity to where you hear what Council Henry was saying in terms of making to expire December 31st
of 2027. Yes. We're good. Okay. All right. So any other further discussion on this? All right. Um, I
skipped public comment on this. So I'll try to give a I don't know if anybody has it.
but let me go back to public comment and see if there's any public comment. Okay, but counselor Henry
made a motion and it was seconded. Now he amended the motion. So I think we need to vote on the amendment
to that original motion. I consented. It was a friendly amendment. So as the original seconder, I simply said,
That's fine, because he was just. We don't have to. It was a friendly amendment. OK. Legal says that's
not really clean, because on our other amendments, we always take a vote. So we will go with whatever
you decide.
recommendations. Yeah. Let's just recommend it. Okay. So it was a friendly amendment. And so we're just
going to keep going. Um, okay. Um, I'll again go to public comment. Uh, if you have public comment,
please make a comment on this item and seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
a moment of motion. With the amendment. Do you have no idea what's happening? Yeah. Go ahead. Councilor
Feidl? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Oh, does she need to read it out? She didn't show what the motion
was. Councilor Wilz? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes, I can.
Yes. I don't know. I didn't hear the rest of the motion. I just got cut off with the five years. Just
put me down. So, yes. Want me to read it again? No, no. Okay. No, go. Just go. You guys can go home.
Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Motion passes 601. Okay.
So looking back to Councilor Wilts, just in case, do we need to come back to anything? Are you good?
Because if you're good, we don't have to do this. Like, we don't need to do anything else. Do we have
to improve the entire thing at this point? Oh, yes, sorry. It's just a minute. Okay. All right. So now
we'll need to have a roll call vote on the overall.
Councilor Hawke. This is on the overall, Councilor Hawke. The whole resolution. On the resolution, totally.
I guess I'll say yes. Councilor Wilz? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor
Feidl? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes 601.
Okay, so we're done with that item. Yay. Okay. Um, so council will there's nothing else that we need
to do at this point. I believe there might be a draft letter for consideration and approval. I have
a draft letter that needs one more sentence added to it that I just received a note about so I'm going to
It was a note from the public, not from y'all. We're not hiding stuff that I think I want to add. And
maybe we could do the comments from folks, and I'll be done. And in time for my comment, I can.
Is that how? Yes. Sorry, I got so distracted. I'm just trying to keep it. Sorry, sorry. It's OK.
It's OK. So let's see if anybody has any comments. Make it brief. Looking down to my right. We're doing
council process. Yeah, so we can finish.
eloquent. Can I talk? No, you're fired. Just talk so you can go so we can go. Okay, all right. So there's
been a lot made of the fact that the Indiana Hoosiers are Big Ten champions. Fantastic, right? Our football
team is amazing. But what I think has gotten buried is the fact that the economic impact of
The success of our football team has had reverberations to the point where the food and beverage tax
receipts are significantly higher this year than they were at the same time last year. There's a great
article in the Herald Times that enumerates some of that. But the good news is that if you're not a
football fan, you're still benefiting from it. So there you go. That's my comment.
anybody else for this matter. I have too much to say. I'll save it for next week. You're okay. I'll
save it for next week. I'll give Kate Wilt some more time here. Number one, I appreciated very much
the tour of the jail that Sheriff Marte and his team gave to Kenneth Falk. I appreciated also very much
the questions that Kenneth Falk had at the time of that tour and the
way that the sheriff's team discusses operations in depth. There have been significant improvements
in that facility. At the same time, the work continues and the work is ongoing. And so I was pleased
to join other counselors there in that facility. I also want to say thank you to Reads Across America,
which will be decorating veterans graves, as was mentioned earlier, this week. That's always a important
time in the community, among many other important times that we have. Thank you. And that's the council,
oh, sure. I'll talk. So I also toured the jail with ACLU and counselors, Deckard and Wilts, and it was
a very illuminating discussion.
I also wanted to talk about the Monroe County Fairgrounds, the canopy of lights I attended.
And that was, I think, my 40th year at that. So I was pretty happy about that. But the Monroe County
Airport, the holiday lights there, they're going on every weekend through Christmas and a little bit
after. And so you can go there and take a carload and see and drive through with a radio station. I
forget the number.
but it's a nice family and they change every year. So there'll be, this is the second year they've done
it. They'll do another display next year to be a different display next year. So, and then they'll rotate
after that. So I got to go through them when I went out to the last fair association board meeting and
got to drive through it. It was really lovely and just a nice thing to do with a group of people to
enjoy the holidays. I have been,
doing a couple of BEDC meetings and downtown Bloomington meetings and things to do with the airport
discussions, what they're going to do out there eventually. So, yeah. And then there was Thanksgiving
in there somewhere. So, yeah, thankful. I did just finish a draft letter that could be sent or signed.
or both. And I emailed it to Ms. Turner King and Michelle. I'm happy to just read it. And if we need
it displayed, one of them has it. So dear commissioners,
Knowing that our ethic of care as county officials and public servants is aligned in support of all
members of our community and none of us wishes to do harm in our work, we as concerned individuals
respectfully request that the board of commissioners officially stop all action regarding the removal
of people and property from the Thompson property. We appreciate the one week stay on the planned eviction
and note that the winter weather played a role in the decision given that
One, the weather conditions are and will remain unpredictable for the foreseeable future, and two, that
our conversations with constituents, service providers, and members of the public have underscored a
lack of an immediate threat to public health and safety. There is at least considerable ambiguity and
differing positions on the conditions on the property
would warrant action by the county. Please postpone all eviction action until there is a protocol or
plan for addressing concerns about the encampment. Such a plan will be informed by a number of entities
internal and external including members of the unhoused community and worked on collaboratively to address
our concerns. Collectively our immediate questions and concerns include
And this is a bulleted list. What was the process for notifying the residents of their eviction, both
for the December 8th and December 15th planned events? What fund is being used? What are the contracted
services? What internal county resources are being committed? How many people are residing at the encampment?
Who is providing street services currently at that location?
what housing entities are involved, where are the impacted individuals going? In the absence of adequate
response to this request, the council may consider deappropriation in certain lines of the communal
capital fund that we assume are supporting encampment eviction activity. We look forward to hearing
your response.
ahead of or during your meeting on Thursday. Thank you for working with us to address these concerns
and improve our county's approach to managing property and caring for our residents. Sincerely, individuals.
So thank you for that and thank you for working with members of the public that are still here with
that. Is there
So again, we can all sign as individuals. Definitely sign my name. So I'm good. Okay. Do we need to
do this with staff? Could you send it to me so I can read it again? Yes. Okay. As I read it, I stumbled
on a couple
type of thing, so I'm just going to send it again to you in a little bit. Send it to me and then before
I leave tonight, I will send it to everyone. Okay. Should we respond directly to you to confirm that
you want? Yes, respond only to me, don't reply all or anything. Thank you. Thank you. All right.
So without, Council Hug, do you have anything else to add this evening?
No, I was just reading the bottom part of it, but I'll see you later. Okay. All right. Sounds good.
So I've said enough too, so I'm not going to say anything else. So that being said, we are adjourned.
Thank you.