- All right, we are going to go ahead and call tonight's meeting to order. Today is Tuesday,
- December 16 2025. It is the last.
- council meeting of 2025. And for the record here, we have present in the net you Hill room. I'll start
- to my left here. Um, we have counselors, vital, Wilts, Deckard and Iverson. Um, not joining us this
- evening in person. Our council members, David Henry and Marty Hawk, and they should be virtual. And I see
- Councilmember Hawke virtual. So we got a quorum in the NatU Hill room. So we will go ahead and get started.
- So all those who are able to stand, please stand for the reciting of our Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge
- allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,
- One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, thank you. Next up
- is the adoption of tonight's agenda. Does anybody wish to make any amendments to tonight's agenda?
- Yes, Councilor. Madam President, I move to pull item 12 C per the department's request and move to add
- item 10 J auditors request for an in-house transfer with regards to fund eight nine five zero dash zero
- zero zero zero America Rescue Plan Act or ARPA. Second. OK, we got a motion and a second. And I also
- wanted to do a quick
- change of tonight's agenda. I know Mayor Morgan and team from heading home are here and a few of those
- folks will not be able to stay for a lot of our meetings. So I would like to add and their item is 11A.
- So I would like to bump that up after consent agenda items. So are there any other amendments to tonight's agenda?
- All right so um all those that are well nope because we got council members present virtually so everything
- tonight will be a roll call vote so may we please have a roll call vote on tonight's amended agenda.
- Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Hawk is still not present is that correct?
- I don't believe she's attending she just sorry to interrupt but she sent an email to me just a little
- bit ago saying that she wasn't feeling well okay okay well we hope counselor hulk is feeling better
- okay thank you counselor iverson yes counselor dekert yes counselor crossley yes and counselor henry
- yes passes unanimous six zero okay thank you very much and next up
- public comment. So if there is anybody that is here present in the NET Youth Hill Room or virtually,
- you can make public comment on things that are not on tonight's agenda. You can do so via Teams by raising
- your hand, or you can come into the NET Youth Hill Room to the lectern here. So do we have anybody here
- present in the NET Youth Hill Room? I already saw a hand just pop up. So just checking here in person. Nope.
- okay um and so i will go to teams so i think it was mr mg so mr mg you should be able to unmute yourself
- state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes good evening uh president crossley
- members of the county council sorry i'm not there do you uh be in person at the historic nath hill u room but
- I did want to check in online. I want to take a moment to thank this body for the care and diligence
- you bring into your work on behalf of the residents of Monroe County. I might have been critical in
- the past a couple times where I don't think that was the case, but this is the case now. The time you
- spend asking some good, thoughtful questions recently weighing some very difficult decisions and holding
- yourselves accountable and government accountable affects a real commitment to good government.
- Even when issues are complex and viewpoints differ, I think there's been a focus on transparency and
- responsible stewardship that helps build the necessary trust that we have to have a local government
- that ensures these decisions are made in our best interests or the community's best interest in mind.
- Thank you for your service, continued dedication, serving Monroe County residents. I'll look forward
- to the rest of the meeting. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. All right.
- Last call for anybody that would like to make public comment on items on tonight's agenda. Again, raise
- your hand via Teams, or you can come forward to the lectern here in the NatU Hill Room. And seeing none.
- We will move on. Thank you for public comment. All right, next up is department updates. And so usually
- department updates are for items that are not on the agenda. So those departments will have up to 10
- minutes to make your update. Again, if you are present here and then at AU Hill Room, you can come to
- the lectern here, or you can have a seat at the table. Or if you are virtually, you can raise your hand
- via Teams.
- Yes, Michelle. I just wanted to bring to your attention from the meeting from December the 9th, there
- was a Scribner's error with regards to the probation's care grant. They used the wrong location number.
- So the auditor went ahead and corrected it to the correct number for that grant year. So we just wanted
- to bring that to your attention. Is that OK? Thank you very much for that update.
- there any other department updates okay seeing none we will move on all right so next up is item six
- for boards and commissions and we saw it in the news but we now have official got
- a word of resignation for Mr. Jeff McKim as the council's appointment to the CIB. Are there any comments
- from council regarding this resignation? Yes, Councilor Iverson. I just wanted to take a brief second
- and thank Mr. McKim for his dedication to the CIB. We can see the fruits of his labors in the steel
- structure that is now where the expanded convention center is going to be. So I think it's just
- a moment where we can take time to thank Mr. McKim for all of his dedicated service. I also want to
- thank him for his service to the county one additional year beyond his previous work but I also want
- to congratulate the city that was a tremendous coup in bringing him to work for their organization and
- if they do well we do well
- and I think that it'll continue to benefit the community of no this is our second controller from the
- county so somebody here is doing something right and let's just keep doing it and and hopefully we're
- not sending the third anytime soon thank you anybody else have any questions or comments yes counselor
- wilts uh just echoing my colleagues and congratulations all around and um
- former counselor McKim will be missed on the CIB. What is the process then for replacing Mr. McKim?
- and that gets into our next item. But for this particular one, anybody that is very much interested
- in being a council appointment to the CIB, then you can go to our website and you can apply at the boards
- and commissions page and submit an application. And we will review those and we will pick the best person to suit.
- to fill some big shoes. Do we have a timeline or at least a goal? I don't think that we have a timeline.
- However, I think given the nature of the position, I don't think we will have any problems
- finding applicants. So again, maybe if all of us could just again pitch out to the community,
- Um, for anybody that would like to apply to be the council appointment for the CIB again, um, contact
- one of us come up after the meeting today. Um, and also just go to the county's website to apply via
- the boards and commissions page. Okay. Councilor Henry, I want to make sure I didn't see your hand raised
- and want to miss you for anything. I'll just say thanks, Jeff. There's no reason to.
- keep that much praise. Jeff's a great guy. Thank you, Jeff. Yes. All right. And I would like to say
- I get to see him in another capacity. So I'm kind of excited with that. So congratulations to the city
- for getting one of the best people here in town. And I again look forward to seeing him around City
- Hall next month. All right.
- That being said, are there any objections to accepting Mr. McKim's resignation? All right. And seeing
- none, his resignation is accepted.
- All right. Next up, as Councilor Wilts was alluding to, we have not one, but two citizen vacancies.
- And so, kind of also reminds me of my day job. So as we pitch for boards and commissions, anybody that
- would like to, anybody that is on teams or anybody present here in the Nattie Hill Room that knows anybody
- that would be a great fit for one of two of our vacancies, we have a vacancy
- for the Sophia Travis Grant Committee. That one would be a two-year term.
- Do we change? Yes, OK. Do your term. And then we, again, as we mentioned, go into the Capital Improvement
- Board, also known as the CIB, as it is very much in the news recently. So if you are interested in applying
- slash Monroe. And again, you can scroll down to you see on the left-hand side the board's
- commissions click that and you should be able to apply for either one of those and if you have any questions
- related to applying for any of those positions you can always contact our county office at eight one
- two three four nine seven three one two for like a PSA all right so next up as we move from six to seven
- six seven all right um sorry you know
- Gotta have some fun. All right These last few days definitely deserve it. All right. Next up is consent
- agenda items Council I move to approve the following consent agenda item for december the 16th the recorder's
- office request and fund 1189-0000
- Recorders, records, perpetuation for category transfer $54,435 from the supplies category to the services
- category. Second. All right, is there any questions or comments on tonight consent agenda items for council?
- and looking via Teams land and looking here at the day, so I don't see any. So we'll take public comment.
- If we have public comment on consent agenda item as presented, you can come forward to the election
- here in the Nattie Hill room or you can raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, maybe please have
- a roll call vote. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson?
- Yes. Councilor Decker?
- Yes. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Motion passes unanimous six zero. All right. Thank you. And now we go to
- the amended portion, which is bumping 11 a all the way up to next. So I believe we have folks here from
- heading home. I see them. So make your way to the table here and we will get started with our discussion.
- Good evening, counselors. Good evening. I was not sure if I was going to have a remote to advance our
- slides. We do have a slide presentation for you tonight. You just say advance. I just say the next slide
- and they'll take care of it for you. OK, fantastic. Well, then in that case, I'm going to open my laptop
- so I'll know where the heck I am in terms of my slides.
- All right. Well, good evening. I'm Mary Morgan. I'm executive director of Heading Home of South Central
- Indiana. And we really appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk with you tonight about not only
- Heading Home, but some of our system work as well. I am delighted that I have two team members here.
- And I would like them just quickly introduce themselves. Hi. Good evening. Tatiana Wheeler. I work alongside
- Mary Morgan and Mary Hamburg at Heading Home. I'm the associate director.
- I'm the strategic partnerships director. All right. Advance, please. We can advance. There we go. So
- we're going to talk a little bit about the housing crisis. We're going to talk about the regional homeless
- response system, our own origin story, and some of our initiatives and some communications and next
- steps. Advance.
- You are aware that housing is key. Homelessness is a housing problem. And just wanted to remind folks
- of some of the challenges that we face, not only in our region, but also as a nation. There is a serious
- lack of affordable housing, especially for low-income and extremely low-income individuals. There are
- an insufficient number of landlords that accept vouchers, which is a subsidy that many people use so
- that they can afford the high rents.
- There is also a serious stigma, which is becoming more and more of a concern to me in our community,
- especially against people who are unhoused. I think you've all heard about it, and we as a community
- have a lot of work to do there. And then just insufficient supportive services for those people who
- need them, including mental health services to keep people stably housed, advanced.
- So how are we responding to the housing crisis? We are part of a six county region. This is a map of
- the different counties that are part of this region. It's a state.
- designation, and Heading Home's work mirrors the state region, which is region 10. Primarily at this
- point, because we are still a young organization, our work focuses on Monroe, Morgan, and Lawrence County,
- but we are also interested in working in some of these other counties, which have very, very few resources,
- and so their lack of resources puts more of a burden on Monroe County in particular, so we need to address that.
- These are some of the key partners in general in moving people from homelessness to housing. We rely
- on emergency shelters and the staff there, as well as our street outreach staff in different organizations,
- and then, of course, housing providers, including landlords. And this is just a quick overview of how
- we connect with people who are unhoused. You can advance. Oh, sorry. Advance. And one more.
- Thank you. There are access points which people enter the homeless response system that can be shelters,
- can be a phone call to an agency or an individual, or that can be connected with street outreach staff
- that encounter folks in encampments and on the street. Case managers and others do assessments to just
- get a general idea of what the situation is and how to address someone's needs.
- And then those assessments are turned into a scoring mechanism and that enables us to more equitably
- understand what priorities people should have in terms of their access to housing because we do have
- limited resources. Those scores will then cause referrals to happen in a coordinated entry system and
- be connected to the appropriate housing. Next, please.
- A little bit of background about Heading Home. Many of you know this because you were involved in our
- origin story. Next, please. We began in 2020 and 21, and many of you were involved in the group that
- put together the Heading Home plan, which is our North Star and guides a lot of our work. You'll see
- some familiar faces. This was a collaboration of the city, the county,
- United Way, the Community Foundation, and other stakeholders, including the South Central Housing Network.
- Next, please. We just included a link to our Heading Home plan, which is on our website, and honestly,
- I feel like it needs to be updated, so we're gonna be working on that in the future. Just FYI. Next, please.
- We have been transitioning in this past year, and one of the things that was a transition for us was
- to expand our board of directors. We now have, I think, a very formidable group, including Councilmember
- Wilts, and these are the folks that helped direct our mission. Next, please. Just a quick overview of
- our status from very germ of an idea in 21.
- The fact that we were originally housed with the United Way We in 2022 and 23 as we expanded program
- and our role in the community we moved to the mill on a co-working space in the trades district and
- This year where we're thrilled to receive our 501 c3 status We are continue expanding our board and
- programs we have
- affiliated with the community foundation now they provide a lot of our back office support and added
- a significant number of staff as you'll see next please our leadership team some of whom you see here
- and then we are also onboarding and have onboarded a significant number of staff to bring our total
- to 12 right now and soon to be 13 staff members
- up from two really for the past four years until this fall. Next, please. So Heading Home was set up
- to be a backbone organization to support the work of all of our partners and to really look at system
- level changes in the region. There are some examples on this slide that we've been working on over the
- past four years. And they are really efforts to bring
- together community partners to tackle big system problems that one individual partner agency wouldn't
- be able to do on their own. Some of those that we've worked on, including cross agency trainings where
- we bring together different case managers from our various agencies and
- provide training on issues that affect everyone, collaborating regionally, doing several system-level
- changes that we will be talking about in a minute. Next, please. And again. So these are some examples
- of the system changes that we've worked on. We created the Heading Home Guide, which is a website that
- provides a range of information on a lot of different topics.
- We wanted to put it all in one place so that not only our agency partners would have access to this
- up to date information, but also people from the general public. Heading home had a commitment to build
- the website, but also maintain it on a regular basis, which is not an insignificant amount of work.
- Next, please.
- We've also done a lot of work on landlord engagement. And we have now that we have a full time staff
- person to do this work. We are really excited. We can really make some significant changes in this area.
- I was going to brag on Mary for a minute. Within the first two weeks of her being in this position,
- she uncovered one hundred and fifty different vacant units in among our landlord partners. Now, that
- is amazing.
- The next challenge is to work on the barriers that some of those complexes have that prevent people
- from accessing those units, credit checks, felony checks, criminal background checks, the fact that
- you might need three times your deposit or three times the income level of your deposit. Is that right?
- Yeah, three times the rent in income each month.
- challenging to say the least. So these are some of the things that we've done over the past four years
- with landlords, but we are really looking forward to this next era where we're gonna make some huge
- changes. Next, please.
- Cross-agency training that I mentioned earlier, this is just some examples of the topics that we've
- done in the past. We're also working with the National Alliance to End Homelessness and are bringing
- in trainers for a two-day session open to all of our agency partners on housing problem solving. The
- NAEH is a really terrific organization to work with and we're happy to be able to host this training.
- session. Next, please. We also do a fair amount of community convenings, whether that's with the business
- group, candidate learning sessions and forums, working with our faith partners. There are a lot of sessions
- that we've had with student organizations in the past.
- And it's just a role that we have to try to provide some education and information and problem solving
- with other members outside of the homeless response system. And then one of our big partnerships is
- with the national organization called Built for Zero. This is an entity that works with over 100 communities
- nationwide and internationally.
- to really tackle some of these seemingly intractable problems and really make a dent in our nation's
- system to address homelessness. We are the first and only community so far in Indiana to be a part of
- this network, and we are really grateful for the coaching that they provide and the resources that they provide.
- They've guided us in a lot of work, which I'll talk about in a minute.
- We just had a meeting earlier today with our coaches, and we're really excited that they are focusing
- on our community to try to help us address some of the issues related to unsheltered homelessness. So
- we haven't figured out what exactly that will look like. You might have heard of an entity called Clutch
- Consulting that has done some encampment work, moving folks from encampments into housing and other
- communities.
- They are now contracted with Built for Zero to work with partner communities and they have also trained
- Built for Zero staff who will be working with us. We met with one of those folks earlier today. So we
- don't know exactly what that's going to look like. It might be they would come here for a community
- convening, stakeholder partnerships, if we can get the county and the city together to address specifically
- encampments or other issues that are barriers to housing.
- We would love to be a part of that, and we would love to invite you all to be a part of that as well.
- Next, please. Build for Zero was instrumental in helping us put together a data dashboard. Tatiana has
- taken the lead on that. It is updated every month with information from the Collaborative Homeless Management
- Information System, which is a database that are used by partners in this region.
- It's very helpful in having a better sense of what is happening in our community, and so we're not going
- in it blind. We've been working a lot on just ensuring quality data. We achieved that through Built
- for Zero. Was that 2024? 2024? And have been working with our data coaches to make sure that we have
- as accurate as possible information about what's happening in our homeless system. And again,
- I think I said this last week that the data is important. Each of those data points represents an individual.
- Each individual is unique. So while data gives us a great kind of aggregate view, when we're talking
- about people who are struggling in this way, each story is different. And it's important to keep that
- in mind. Next, please. And again.
- So I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that are focused primarily on Monroe County.
- As I've said, what I've talked about so far is regional, although much of the work is in Monroe, but
- we have two specific projects that are focused on Monroe. One is a housing action plan.
- We convened a group of service providers in 2024 to develop really a very targeted list of recommendations
- for what needs to happen in our community to address unsheltered homelessness and what it will cost
- to get there. Some of the things on the slide are part of the recommendations and I encourage you to
- look at that plan. We can send you a link.
- for a more granular level of detail and we do get quite granular. But this is one of the things that
- helps guide us and as we're seeking funding opportunities we look for ways to address the need for case
- managers, the need for diversion funds, the need for medical respite and other issues. Next, please.
- And then some really exciting news. Earlier this year, actually in late 2024, the Community Foundation
- of Bloomington and Monroe County received a significant grant from the Lilly Endowment. And we are one
- of the main partners that is implementing that grant. That has allowed us to hire Mary Hamrick,
- for example. We've also made a hire of Erin Reynolds Nyland, who was here at our last meeting and who,
- oversees the significant number of case managers that we're introducing to this community. In total,
- we'll have six street outreach case managers, hopefully by the end of the year or by early 2026. Three
- diversion and prevention case managers who are already in place at our partner agencies.
- and our strategic partnerships director, as I mentioned. This grant also includes basically a guaranteed
- basic income pilot project that is administered by SCAP and that if we can show proof of concept, we
- would hope to carry on after this grant expires in five years. Next, please.
- And this just gives you a little bit of a chart to show the community foundation has funded Heading
- Home. And then we're working with these various partners in street outreach. We have case managers embedded
- at Centerstone Beacon and Health Net's Homeless Initiative Program. And our diversion and prevention
- case managers are embedded at New Hope for Families, the library, the downtown branch, and Bloomington
- and Perry Township trustee offices.
- And quickly I just want to mention a little bit more of the targeted strategic work. We've been working
- in Lawrence County. We set up a housing task force as a recommendation that came out of a housing study
- that we commissioned a few years ago.
- And we are doing something similar in Morgan County. Currently, Laura Little-Page, she's a professor
- at IU you might know of. She and her graduate students are doing a housing study in Morgan County to
- give us a better understanding of homelessness there. And Tatiana is board chair for Wellspring, which
- is the only shelter in Morgan County. Next, please.
- And just a reminder, you all should be on our email list. Hopefully doesn't go to spam for the newsletters
- that we send out every month. We have information on our website. Obviously, we do have social media,
- which we are going to be ramping up a little bit more in 2026. And we are always happy to come and address
- any kind of gathering, large or small. I don't think we've ever turned anybody down who's asked us to
- come and speak at their
- organization.
- One other thing as part of our outreach and communications, we did a series, and that is ongoing, called
- People of Housing Security because we felt like it was important to put a face to the folks who are
- doing frontline work in whatever way they may be. So that may be somebody at the Township Trustee's
- office. It may be somebody who is working for the city as a downtown ambassador. Of course, it's case
- managers and others who are
- working in our partner agencies. But this is just a way to kind of humanize some of the folks who are
- doing this really challenging work. And finally, I just would like to leave you with a thought. This
- is one of my favorite quotes, choosing to have joy is not naively thinking everything will be easy.
- It is courageously believing that there is still hope even when things get hard.
- Thank you. And I'm happy to take any questions. All right. Thank you very much to you and your team.
- Looks like we have somebody joining online from your team as well. So we appreciate that. I'm sure our
- council members here have a question. I'll kick it off with a question. You have mentioned earlier that
- you're working on training, and you're working with the National Alliance on Homelessness Training.
- And that's upcoming, who exactly like would be able to attend, would we as elected to be able to do
- that, or just wanted to ask, would you want to do that. I mean, I think we should. Yeah.
- It was originally, we can certainly talk about that, it was originally intended for frontline workers
- who will be working directly with people who are in-house to really give them a framework to, especially
- in initial conversations, to be very housing-focused. So it is intended for all of the agencies that
- are working
- New Hope for Families, Wheeler Mission, Beacon, Centerstone, Health Net, et cetera, et cetera. So I
- think we do have a cap on, and correct me if I'm wrong, Todd, do we have a cap on the number of people
- that we can give the training to? For my recollection, I think we have a pretty decently large cap.
- So that's a possibility then. We'll explore it. OK. I was just interested, because I know sometimes
- we as electeds have lots of opinions on things. And so since we have opinions on those things, we might
- not be experts. And you all are. And so sometimes it's easy for us to just kind of take a chill pill
- and be quiet and maybe attend something like this. So if that's something that's definitely available,
- I think I would really think
- I'm speaking for myself here. I think I have council members that would probably take you up on that
- offer and hopefully some other electeds would take you up on that offer. I appreciate that.
- Thank you. And I should also add, I meant to add this at the very beginning of my presentation, you
- all received a letter from our board of directors. So we are really eager, interested, happy to facilitate
- any kind of discussion or give you any kind of support at the policy level or convening or really anything
- that you think in this space you could use some help with. We're happy to do that.
- Appreciate that. Thank you. Um, I'm gonna go to Councilmember Henry since I saw his hand raise and then
- I'll kick it back to the room here. Thank you. And thank you, Mary Morgan and team for giving us presentation
- today I guess I do want to say thank you for your work I know it's really hard work.
- Yeah, and we're dealing with a, you know, another one of those wicked problems which seems to be a phrase
- we've used this year and a lot of the stuff we're facing in the community. I guess my question, and
- maybe something that triggered here in your presentation for me is that, you know, the normal, the day
- to day work of.
- housing in our community and the challenge for those that are unhoused in the community, your normal
- everyday work and the work that our service providers do as a matter of routine is that outreach and
- that scoring and that work to really help get people on a pathway into housing attainment, which I know
- is not easy. And it doesn't happen overnight, but it strikes me that
- what creates emergencies for our nonprofit community, your organization, other organizations you mentioned,
- what creates an emergency or urgent situation is when external stakeholders or even key stakeholders
- kind of disrupt your work through something like
- trying to clear an encampment in a certain time period, like on a timeline that kind of disrupts the
- flow or the normal of your work. And that sort of expedites your outreach and puts people into a scramble
- to try to, I guess,
- get people placed before the urgency comes from the choice we're making to work on the encampments.
- I guess to the extent you're comfortable, I'm kind of curious how we might all get on the same page
- with a shared objective because it seems like the objectives are slightly disaligned or misaligned between
- some folks deciding on the urgency to clear things versus working with our partners that all the best
- practices you're trying to put in. I mean, how might we
- close the gap and get a shared objective here so that we don't blow up the normal work of the organizations
- that are trying so hard with kind of self-induced emergencies through bureaucracy. Do you have any thoughts
- on that tonight? I'm really glad you asked a simple question. Of course. It's exam season. That's what
- it's exam season. That's how it goes. Go ahead.
- I will say that it's been a rough couple of weeks. We really do not thrive in chaos, and I think that
- there's been a fair amount of chaos. What I would say is I do think that it would help the whole system
- if we could get the key players in a room and talk about those shared values, have better communication,
- and really a clear plan for when there is a crisis or when there is something that comes up, we know
- exactly who's involved in the decision making tree and how we can come together to basically make it
- a situation that is in the best interest for not just people who are unhoused or in crisis, but also
- for our entire community, right?
- should have a stake in this. We should have a stake in making a community where people are, they have
- stable housing, and if they don't, they can get it quickly. So I feel like this is a very politically
- correct response to your question, but I do think that we have a lot of room to grow in terms of communication.
- and planning and I would like to see that happen and be put in place at a time when we're not in the
- middle of a crisis and when tempers are not heated. It's really been challenging right now and I know
- that some of our service provider partners are feeling that pain and really what they want to do that
- their mission is is to
- meet people where they are, and ideally, make sure that they are in a place that's stable and secure.
- OK. I'm going to kick it here. And I saw Councilor Decker's hand raised. I've got several. And as I
- always say to a lot of folks, particularly on things that are hard, if you all need to get back with
- me later, that's fine, too. And I also understand that you're managing a lot. And I kind of want to
- start there.
- You have a large selection of folks that you're dealing with just across the board that are doing portions
- of housing and housing solutions in a variety of different ways. And I'm sure having been on the United
- Way staff at one time, there's a variety of strong opinions about how that should be and who should
- get what and when. You see, though, and help me if this is the case,
- The whole purpose of what you all are doing in that plan was to try to get people around some common
- understandings and not the service provider alphabet soup, which is a beautiful thing. It's a bunch
- of people chasing after it. But to get us around a plan and get government officials around a plan and
- try to get us all from stopping to do what we do on every issue and that start inventing solutions from
- the opinion side of things. Ultimately, that was kind of the deal, right? Yes. Do you want me to elaborate?
- Well, if you want to. I think one of the reasons why
- Well, first of all, I think there are a lot of things in the plan that nobody would disagree with until
- you start trying to implement them. And then people will have different opinions about how things should
- be implemented. So that's just part of the process. But I also think that the plan is perhaps overly
- broad. We have a lot in there. And you can really find almost any kind of housing solution
- in that plan. So I think that it would help us to be a little more focused, perhaps, in the next go-around.
- One of the things we did with the Monroe County Housing Action Plan was try to be extremely focused
- in our recommendations, which is very different from the Heading Home Plan, which is quite broad. But
- I think that it's always the devil in the details, right? So we work through it.
- Well, I appreciate that. And I think one of the things I remember when we were in candidate forums,
- and people would say, what are your thoughts on housing? And of course, we could be talking about multiple
- levels of housing. One of the things I always try to focus on was that, well, we have a plan. And yeah,
- things can change in that plan, but that's better than what we used to have, which was, again, all of
- us kind of, let me throw the football that way. I think this is something I heard in an article.
- One thing is I'm looking at your dashboard and I love the dashboard because numbers are numbers. And
- I know that it's hard to get these numbers, but when I look at the dashboard, particularly when I filed
- it down to single adults and the actively homeless in the community, I see a pattern. I even took it
- down to this year, but I see a pattern from when you started this that numbers are going down. And so
- the first part of my question would be,
- Why do you think those numbers were heading down? What do you think was going on that may have helped
- with that? Would you feel comfortable answering that? Sure. Thanks for the question. This is something
- that I've been investigating personally. And I think it contributes to a couple of different things.
- I think any data needs other data to build around those narratives. And I think it's really important
- when looking
- the active number of people experiencing homelessness on the dashboard to also look at the percentage
- of people being housed month to month.
- And we recently noticed that dip in our data. And I think it can be articulated that we also saw across
- our system that there are a lot of people who had outdated assessments. Generally, it's best practice
- to update assessments with clients every 90 days. Generally, across our region, our service providers
- are really generous because they want to make sure they're doing their due diligence.
- to keep that information updated. Though there are times that people disappear from the community, or
- they self-resolve, or they return to other support systems in other communities. And so that's a reason
- why we saw numbers decreasing as well, is because people were being moved to an active. And that's one
- of the outflow categories, as well as housing. And so while we want to say, oh, there's less people
- experiencing homelessness, there's a deeper story to tell there, is that, well, did we just lose touch
- with them?
- Did they self resolve, are they stably house now and so that's some of my priority work looking into
- the deeper narratives within our dashboard coming in 2026. And I will add that the infusion of case
- managers that are doing street outreach now will have more.
- as an agency, more street outreach workers than any other agency in our county with the six street outreach
- folks that are embedded in our partner agencies, that will help us tremendously in not losing touch
- with people that are unsheltered. And then I guess the last thing is I was really intrigued by the notion
- of connecting
- people to, we've got a landlord, we've got a vacancy here, connecting someone in there, and obviously
- the attention right now is on encampments, right? Because that's how this system seems to work where
- we, you know, what is the visibility, what are everybody talking about, what's everybody fired up on?
- And conceivably, those kinds of matchups with, there's no monolithic answer, but those kind of matchups may offer
- solutions for some individuals that could go from here to here or have the option to go from here to
- here and make a decision on that. I mean, am I overthinking that or under thinking it? Do you want to
- take a stab at that? Yeah, sure. I think
- Yes and no. I think on paper it seems very, very simple. If we have 150 open units and we have a similar
- amount of people that are unsheltered in our community, why does homelessness exist? And I think one
- of the key things that we're starting to realize, both just having done the work a long time, I previously
- was at New Hope for Family, so I've been in the work a while, but just as a community what we're realizing is that
- The barrier to having open units and vacancy is not necessarily the barrier to having people be housed.
- As Mary talked about earlier, the barrier is getting into housing. It's not being able to continue to
- pay your rent or to be able to not get into fights with your neighbor and get evicted or whatever.
- stipulations in the criteria for residents or future tenants to be able to be accepted into an apartment
- complex or a private landlord's house is too constringent for people. You have to make three times the
- rent. You have to have a certain credit score. You have to have 650 or 700 credit score to rent a place,
- not to buy, not to lease, not to have a mortgage, right? Just to have a 12-month lease. You have to
- have no evictions, no criminal history. You have to be a perfect
- upstanding person just to have a roof over your head. And that's the big barrier that we have is not,
- you know, pouring money into into helping pay people's rents and deposits is helping and is doing a
- large amount of preventing homelessness. But a huge bigger issue is the accessibility to stable housing.
- Thank you very much. The last thing I'll just say is I appreciate just clarity around complexity, because again,
- If you go on social media, you listen even to us. Sometimes we think that we understand every bit of
- this. But literally in the last five years, I've heard very passionate, very what sounds like credible
- articulations around who could be outside and how long they could be outside and what is reasonable
- and what is not. I've heard people argue every side of that and multiple sides beyond that with such
- seriousness and
- that you would look at it and go, oh my heavens. And I think that the complexity of this is just, it's
- beyond our minds. So thank you for letting me ask you a couple of questions. Thank you. Councilor Iverson.
- Thank you all three for taking time out of your evening and joining us. As I've said before, the work
- you do is so important to this community. And I'll echo what Council Member Crossley said, is that learning
- for us is paramount. We get stuff thrown at us all the time, and your website, your newsletter is really
- important. I pay attention to it, and I try to digest as much as I can. Obviously, as Council Member
- Decker just stated, we're not perfect, but we're constantly learning. And so I appreciate that. Particularly,
- I heard tonight two interesting
- interesting tidbits, rent sometimes is three times income. I haven't heard that number before. That's
- a really interesting number and I believe it. So actually, that's a stipulation for getting into housing
- is that your income must be equal to three times the rent. Yeah. So not that rent is that people are
- being asked to pay more than what they actually make. But still, that's a shocking
- number or that there's this organization called Clutch Consulting, which is coming in and talking about
- their specialty is encampments. I think that's all really interesting things to learn about. And I think
- the previous conversation that, Mary, you just had with Council Member Deckard about housing and the
- availability of housing leads me to my question I have for you tonight is we're all reading the news,
- we're all listening to the news, and the availability of federal funding seems dire.
- What are you hearing? I'm losing sleep over this. What should we know? I wish I could give you a clear
- answer on that. I think that part of the anxiety that we all feel is because we don't have a clear level
- from the federal government. And although the really I don't even know how to describe it. The federal
- government is trying to pivot very quickly from a
- philosophy of funding that has been in place for decades to a different philosophy, and it has just
- sown chaos, uncertainty, fear, and will, if implemented, I believe, lead to an increase in
- unhoused people. I just don't see how it, if we don't have those housing supports that we rely on, I
- don't know any other way that could unfold. So the federal government now, because of a lawsuit, has
- paused its decision, and HUD is not really giving any indication on what's going to happen next. So
- the challenge is that some
- of the funding cycles are coming up starting in January. I think that locally from the permanent supportive
- housing side and you're on Beacon's board I believe so you've heard this directly from them. Their grant
- cycle is a bit later in the year. I think September. Centerstone I think they said it was closer to
- the summer.
- time frame for some of their complexes. So, you know, people are waiting and seeing and trying to advocate
- as much as possible with elected officials. So if you have any sway at the federal level, I would
- I would encourage you to deploy it, because right now we're at a real turning point, I think. And if
- this is a philosophical change that has to be made, then at the very least we need a longer lead time
- to make accommodations for these changes. And the current proposal, or the proposal that was pulled,
- was not allowing for that.
- My heart goes out to folks who are living in encampments in this weather and the threat of evictions.
- But the main reason why I personally want to take you up on your offer to facilitate a conversation
- is for this reason. The future, I love your quote, it's important to be hopeful, but the future seems
- like we really need to start talking. Definitely. Thank you. All right. I thought I saw some hands here.
- So Councilor Vidal.
- Yes, I'm interested in the income requirement for the rent. So I wondered how we might, as a county
- or a community, compare to other communities who have situations like or not like this. And do you know
- any data on that? Do we compare? Do landlords elsewhere have that same requirement, or is it just kind
- of just here, or where is that all at? So that's a good question.
- And I think many landlords have two, two and a half or three times the rent that you must make. I will
- note that multiple studies year after year show that Monroe County, across the state, Monroe County
- is the most unaffordable and hardest to obtain housing in the entire state. The only county that sometimes
- beats us out is Tippecanoe County, which is where Purdue is, West Lafayette, and usually in third place is
- Muncie, and I'm blanking on the county for Muncie, but where Ball State is. Thank you. Yeah. So these
- big schools.
- these counties where big schools are, are what are really increasing the unobtainability and unaffordability
- of housing. And so I do know a lot of other properties are doing two times the rent and things like
- that as well. But the reason that we're having that trouble is because HUD sets what's a fair market
- rent or FMRs. And HUD, just in a conversation with a landlord I had a week or two ago, they said that
- HUD set their FMRs
- in a unit. It's actually the retreat at Switchyard, which is a brand new property here in town. And
- HUD told her that the median salary in Bloomington is $52,000 a year. And so therefore, they set their
- FMRs as such, which I think is surprising that that is the median salary. Because I think that if you've
- lived here long enough, you know that that's not true. But because students are here and people affiliated
- with the university are here,
- which is a wonderful thing, and the university provides so much to our economy, but because those people
- are kind of driving up that median salary, it then is impacting housing. And so then people who live
- here and are townies and are from here, but aren't affiliated with the university and don't have that
- kind of income, then are forced to come up to that standard as well. Thank you. Wow, okay.
- Anybody else have any other final questions or comments from the heading for that? Yes, Councilor Wilts.
- Thank you for coming. I appreciate it personally and on behalf of county government. Regarding your
- letter and your presence here.
- It went to not just county council, it went to the commissioners as well, I believe. That's right. Have
- you heard back from anyone in county government, I know it just, it just went out this afternoon and
- I actually
- I've been sitting here. So not that I'm expecting that you have, but I also know that you've offered
- to meet or present to the commissioners. Have you heard back from anybody in county government yet?
- I haven't heard back from any of the commissioners yet, but nor have I reached out specifically directly
- to them yet. I have talked with
- I exchanged emails with Angie Purdy and I told her to expect the letter and I sent her the encampment
- guidance from the South Central Housing Network and offered to meet with them, give a presentation to
- the commissioners if they wanted to do that. So I will be following up more directly. Great. Yeah. Well,
- I'm hopeful that we can work together to make things a little bit better, at least
- from the county government perspective on how we do this. So appreciate it. Great, thank you. All right,
- well, I definitely appreciate you all taking the opportunity, given the circumstances over the past
- several weeks, to come in and educate us on things that you all do. And as it's been mentioned, I look
- forward to continuing conversations, but not just conversations, but really having those
- after having the conversations really kind of put an action to it. So I appreciate all the work that
- you're doing and I definitely know on a level and former life I used to work in property management
- for 10 years. So the fact that you have to the deposits were always things where it killed like the
- application process for people because
- Depending on your credit score, as you had mentioned before, if you had a decent credit score, you might
- not have needed a huge deposit. But if you didn't, if you had bankruptcies, evictions, all of those
- different things, then you had to have double or triple the amount. And usually, that was something
- where people just gave up and just
- went away from that. So but it all comes back to what we do here in Monroe County. So and Monroe County
- government has a lot of work to do. We talk a lot and so now we need to start getting some work done.
- So appreciate you taking the time to plant that seed to us and we hope folks across the hall here will
- take you up on your offer and you get to present to them again. All right. So thank you so much. We
- appreciate it. Thank you council members. Appreciate it. Thank you.
- All right, next back up, we got item eight, and it looks like we're going to the hire and freeze conversations.
- Council, as a reminder, this item was tabled from the December 9th meeting. I move to open for discussion
- and possible approval of the auditor's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and to be allowed
- to hire and fund 1000-0002 County General Auditor, the internal auditor position. Second. All right,
- we got a motion and a second and we see the auditor here. Ms. Gregory, hello.
- Good evening council so um this is coming back before you today and I'm hoping will be an easy and brief
- conversation this is a position that was part of the exempt list when this hiring freeze was implemented
- unfortunately I was just unable to find a qualified candidate prior to my November 1 deadline so this
- is just requesting your permission to continue what you've
- kind of already improved initially. To proceed with finding a good candidate for this role, which is
- it does take some time. This is a specialized position and it is very important for the county. This
- is an added layer of control and
- you know this person conducts like you know obviously internal audits for the county but assists with
- the budgets it consists with assists with audits with report compilation and all kinds of other things
- that assist the county to ensure you're on the right path so i'm happy to answer any questions or specifics
- but i do want to note that we do have the support of fsg financial solutions group who the county contracts
- with for financial guidance and they think this
- position is very important as well. I forwarded that email to you. Okay, thank you very much.
- Thank you. And look in the council to see if anybody has any questions. So, Councilor Henry's hand raised
- first, so you go first sir. Yeah, thank you Madam President and thank you Auditor for
- the explanation there. I'm supportive of getting this position filled. And it seems to me over the past
- few weeks, it's all the more important to have the internal auditor role filled when we look at like,
- for example, the way the commissioners attempted to use the cumulative capital fund during the encampment
- discussion last week, or the work your office is doing to help the Board of Health sort through its
- Well, I guess it's like nearly a million in grants that are kind of messy in that office over the past
- year. The internal controls are important. So yeah, it's it's sort of a core function here. So we understand
- what our bottom line is. So the only thing I'll say maybe is another comment too, is that I think as
- we look at all of the
- the variations on the freeze or the exemptions on the freeze that we really do need to work with department
- heads to start thinking through. If we're hoping for attrition over the next calendar year to reduce
- the budget in positions, we need to work with department heads on what that means rather than just kind
- of hoping that positions go away through attrition. I know that's been raised a few times here, but
- it kind of feels like
- reaching under the hood of the car and just yanking out pieces indiscriminately rather than trying to
- figure out over the next calendar year how we might be able to work with department heads on the savings
- we're gonna need and subsequent fiscal years to help in our workforce here to keep everybody employed.
- So I'm supportive of this one and I hope the others are as well, thanks. Thank you. All right, looking
- here at the dais to see if anybody has any questions or comments.
- Yes, Councilor Woods. Since Councilor Henry brought up kind of the bigger picture, I wanted to chime
- in and say that I agree that we need to be more strategic about how we're doing this and what we're
- thinking. I know we've put a lot of thought into it. I'm not trying to say that we haven't, but this
- is part of what I envisioned that our long-term financial committee would be
- talking about and thinking about and I think it might be worth as we move to the new year, new committees,
- new whatever, thinking about redefining or expanding the role that that committee has in looking at
- literally what is it over the next three to five years that we're trying to get to in terms of budgeting and
- put in our revenues. And I know that's not, I'm not saying that that committee has not worked on that.
- It's just, we need a little bit more, I think. And I think this falls under that. Also, we have two
- resolutions that we are operating under right now. The KSA and the hiring freeze. Do both of those expire
- at the end of this month? Okay.
- and we do not have anything on our agenda to really talk about those. Is that correct? Okay. I was looking
- at the discussion. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Any other questions or comments from
- council? I know staff, we've been trying to schedule for a while now. And with FSD, a long term finance
- committee,
- meeting so hopefully we can do that and get in contact it's not like staff isn't trying not saying that
- that's not what you were saying but it's a little difficult to find people this time of year yes um
- you know i think people get on autopilot after thanksgiving so um you know staff we're definitely trying
- to think about that yes um and to both of the counselor's points we definitely need to hit 2026 um
- you know, pretty hit the ground running with a lot of things that we have mentioned that we'd like to
- do with this past budget season, what we have to implement going forward. So I appreciate that comment.
- All right. So seeing no other questions or comments from council, we will move to public comment. If
- you have public comment on this item, you can raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern
- here the night you help around. All right. And
- Seeing none, may we 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 unanimous
- six zero. Okay, next up is item B. Council, as a reminder, this item.
- was tabled from the December 9th meeting, and I move to open for discussion and possible approval of
- the Parks Department's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1000-0803
- County General Parks, 11 part-time positions, and three part-time Karst Athletic Complex supervisors
- for the 2026 year. Second. Okay. We have Ms. Whitman here joining us again. Welcome. Hello. Well,
- thank you. Do you want me to go over what
- We talked about last week, which is absolutely fine. I think if you want to hit some highlights, because
- we had a very robust conversation. I will hit the highlights. The Karst Athletic Complex supervisors
- will probably work March through November. It's one person for 25 acres. They do everything from calling
- the ambulance, making sure everyone's playing well together. They operate our adult soccer league.
- And obviously they can't be everywhere, but we usually try to prioritize the fields that they should
- concentrate on the park maintenance technicians. They do everything for us. They allow our full time
- staff who are highly skilled as our mechanics, our plumbers, our electricians, snow plow drivers.
- Heavy equipment operators do their things to keep the park safe. So if we don't have part-time staff,
- those eight staff members have to backfill the lower skilled things, which means we will be closing
- the splash pad. We will be closing the restrooms on and off depending on what's going on that week.
- We're a 35-hour department with eight staff, which means we are never fully staffed all week. They're on FMLA.
- They're maybe sick. They may have an injury. They're on benefit time. So now we could be down to six
- people to run the entire park system. We will obviously prioritize the athletic complex and toilets.
- And that's where we're at. We have, which means the greenways. We can't do what we're doing now. This
- golf course, the dog park, a lot of things
- are going to shrink and the park board will want a list of everything so they can know what's going
- on and the park board has instructed me to make sure I put a one page notice up so the public knows
- what's closing and why they're closing and we can't do anything about it because we're not magicians
- here. We can't make things happen without people.
- and we can't do any construction at the Monroe County Nature Preserve, which has funding for us to be
- the general contractor to save the county $1 million. So that's where we're at. Is that fast enough?
- Okay. Yes. Appreciate that. Thank you. Nice recap. All right. Any questions or comments from council?
- Yes. Councilor Wilks. I wanted to
- wanted to just draw your attention to the email that Michelle forwarded today. I know it was late in
- the game, but kind of went over some information about these positions and why we're in sort of that
- rehire situation and kind of give some background. So if you haven't, I'm happy to go into it, but it's policy.
- Maybe you should. Maybe. OK, I feel like I'm giving testimony on hearsay or something. You got this.
- So at the park board meeting, we talked with we talked amongst ourselves about the nature of the positions
- and the fact that it is HR policy
- to in the county to take seasonal positions and basically terminate the employees who are filling those
- positions in the off season and then go through the process of rehiring. And since no one at the meeting
- really knew why our county legal department conversed with our employee services department and kind
- of summarized
- the reasonings, which I know we have employee services here, and I do want to just say if I get it wrong,
- we might need some help. But the reasoning rests on a lot of things that can happen, I guess, in the
- off season that we wouldn't necessarily know about and be able to account for if we kept people hired
- but weren't interacting with them, like something that might show up on a background check, for instance.
- So this enables us to check in, I guess, in that way on employees before they are re-installed in the
- position. That's the one major one that I remember. There's also that kind of a tracking
- So if somebody just doesn't come back, that would be harder to know that. And so this allows our employee
- services folks to really better track who in the payroll list is actually being paid, being and working
- and that kind of thing. Did I get that right? Do you need to add? I'm trying really hard here, sorry.
- I think there were three things and I named two poorly. On the fly, you did good. Yeah. And so I think
- that Justin was trying to give you the highlights, but there, I mean, I could list probably 50 reasons
- why keeping accurate records are really important for us. And so that's the gist of that is that we are
- It was mentioned by a department earlier in these conversations like why don't we just make them inactive
- and then make them reactive because we can't do that state board of accounts requires us to have a form.
- for every change that we make in payroll because they audit all of the entries that we make in payroll.
- So part of that process is filling out a termination form. So then we make them inactive and then to
- make them reactive, they fill out a new hire form. And those are the forms that we have because those
- are the forms that we already use for those same purposes. So that's kind of, and we have to report
- the things for lots of reasons. We have to report our payroll
- our employee data for a variety of reasons and some of that is for employees benefit. We do public student
- loan forgiveness verification of employment. We do loan verification of employment. There's just a lot
- of things that we do that are based on keeping accurate records and that's why it's really important
- for us to be able to pinpoint. If somebody didn't work for six months, we need to know that information
- and that's how we document it. Also really important if
- a department didn't bring if we kept them active and department didn't bring them back then our roster
- of people just keeps growing and growing and it leaves more room for error both on the department when
- they're processing payroll they might try and pay somebody who um isn't working and then on our side
- when we're processing payroll to make sure that those inactive those people who aren't working aren't
- showing up that we could
- It's an internal control. We just talked about the importance of that. So that's the gist of why we
- do this process. Does that help? And probably, and I don't know without looking at the numbers, we probably
- rehire 80% of the same people. And they come back year after year. And we have to do this every November
- and rehire them and do all the stuff. I wonder.
- About the expense of associated. Are there, I mean, I'm assuming there's a cost to these processes and
- I, I'm not trying to, I am throwing a wrench. I understand. I will tell you the cost of an error is
- more costly than having departments consistently do the same thing.
- that is where we're coming from. If a department turns in payroll to pay somebody who shouldn't have
- been paid, the cost of us trying to get that money back is going to cost
- us, the legal department, it just involves more people. So us having policies that we apply consistently
- to all departments, making sure they're doing all of the same things, that's easier for us because we
- are expecting the same things consistently than having to be like, this department does it this way
- and this department, when you have turnover and then things that institutional knowledge doesn't really
- get translated. So consistency for us is the cost
- effective nest. I just had an inquiry point but for E if I understand it right we're in this freeze
- discussion in this first parts just rhetorical we're in the freeze discussion because of the state cuts
- on the flip side you're essentially saying there's a million reasons why
- this has to be done as a rehire process. But bottom line, state board of accounts requires form to release,
- form to do, right? That is correct. I mean, the auditor's office can tell you that when we have an audit,
- I mean, they're asking for a million types of forms for us to document why we did a certain thing. Well,
- so just to kind of cut to the chase, I mean, in that case, ladies and gentlemen, and in the audience,
- Farrow has spoken.
- there's no other everything else here is just debating whether or not you want to well do you want to
- take a bathroom break or anything else that the state might permit this is literally
- a requirement from them. It's a CYA kind of thing, right? That's why we have forms and that's why we
- go through those processes, because eventually the auditors office is going to ask me, do you have these
- things that match this thing over here? And then I will have to produce that information. OK, I have
- other comments, but I don't have to now. Well, and, you know,
- I wrangle with all this and Kate raises an interesting point. I'd love to have a giant tally like you
- would if you, you know, we're talking to an attorney on hours spent trying to comply with state law.
- I'd love to have that because then we could send that again to Farrow and then we could get that taken
- care of. And that takes time to calculate too. Exactly. And that's ours. And I mean, literally, if you
- look at the last two meetings we had,
- We rock that bell till the midnight hour and there was a time I'd be in downtown I might hear that bell
- but not inside this building and that has changed and that's all because of all this one thing I just
- want to say bottom line on this I think we're kind of going around in this circle about whether or not
- to do it and somebody said something to me one time that really hit home for me both experientially and just
- I'm not sure if you've ever been to a park in your life and Kelly it may been you when I was out visiting
- parts. With the parts of the great equalizer in this community. Because if you think about it to go
- in a state park you have to pay a fee right. To go to an amusement park you definitely have to pay a
- fee a lot of our families particularly right now they'll never be able to get an amusement park. To
- go join a sports
- we generally have a large set of lands that have been established by our four county people who set
- those aside. Our duty is to take care of them with a little bit elbow grease, maintenance, and good
- wisdom from that table right there. So that in 20 years, the next ones at this table have guaranteed
- that for future. And I just worry that sometimes we start needling into cuts
- and then suddenly we're not gonna have some of this stuff that somebody tupped it out. The cool thing
- about the Parks Department that I always like is you don't get those shelter houses for free. Now some
- people try to squat, right, and do that. Not often. But not often. And they're reasonably priced, so
- everyone has a chance. Yes. And so we've got access for folks, but we also, they're trying to make sure
- some revenue comes in so that
- There's things maintained, but the bottom line is it's just like Lisa Ridge and Rhodes. If you don't
- maintain it, then it becomes a disaster.
- And the other thing is, and I've seen this before, and Kelly could write a book on it. If you don't
- update the parks per the clientele, and guess what? We have a lot of people that want to make sure it's
- got the latest grades. We can't ever afford always the latest grades, but they want that. If you don't
- do that, they'll say, well, it's not safe. You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. What are
- you doing with my tax dollars? So I always worry when things like this start to
- get up on the chopping block because this is the only chance somebody may not make the south football
- team for a variety of reasons but they can go to cars park as many times as they want as long as that
- gates open on a normal hour and i i think that that's if nothing else from county government young people
- that may be what they get flatwoods out there that is the last stop
- for a good park. There's tons of snakes, which I don't appreciate, but that's my business. But that's
- your last stop. And then, you know, I know that the new park is the one that is controversial, but Peter
- and the East Side kids, they don't always get lots of anything. And if we don't do something now, that
- won't be a karst in 20 to 30 or 40 or 50 years, or Kate, for that matter, on the East Side. So, I mean,
- there's, look, there's things and there's things, but it's just,
- I worry that we're trying to, again, squeeze Pharaoh's money here out of something that's not going
- to come. Oh, and I bet you that quote came from Jeff McKim. On Pharaoh? No. The equalizer. That sounds
- like him. You know, it probably was. He's a pretty smart guy. Sidney knew that. All right. Any other
- questions or comments or any group names to give today?
- Nope. All right. Seeing none. Public comment time. If you have public comment on this particular item,
- excuse me, you can come forward to the lectern here in the Net-E-Hill room or you can raise your hand
- via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yeah.
- Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimous six zero. Thank you and I forgot
- this is Andy French. Thank you. Our park superintendent who works very hard. Appreciate it. And you
- all may not know that we get called out the same time as the highway garage for snow plowing and we
- take care of the jail and the youth services and all the things. And we may have to close the parks
- in order to continue, you know, this is what we do.
- And people don't appreciate because they don't know they're out there doing that at one in the morning,
- too. Oh, you appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good night. All right. All right. Next up is item C, the
- highway department.
- Council, I move to open for discussion. Impossible approval. The highway department's request to be
- exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire. In Fund 1197-0000, stormwater management, the
- stormwater equipment operator position, and or a stormwater slash highway position vacancy that results
- from a possible internal department hire for the 2026 year. Second. All right. And joining us tonight
- in person is Ms. Lisa Ridge. Welcome.
- Good evening. I was thinking I was a tabled item after those two tabled items and I was like oh you
- don't need to hear this again but no it's first. So this position became vacant on 11-21-2025. The employee
- seeked employment at a different location. This is not paid out of the county general fund. It's out
- of the stormwater fund so it doesn't affect anything in the county general.
- The reason why we need to keep moving forward and fill these positions. One of the current equipment
- operators that we have on staff is out on FMLA, possibly leaving for a 90 day leave at the first of
- the year. Another employee in Stormwater is gonna take the six week family leave in March.
- The position is also used for snow removal. We use the whole stormwater crew. They're assigned a route.
- So without those, the persons, the employees in those positions, those routes are not covered. It takes
- other employees more time to get the roads cleared because there's not anybody in that position to take
- that route. So we have to find different ways to cover those areas when we don't have that position filled.
- It's already a small crew, so replacing the position is in the best interest of the department and the
- public. With the award of the CCMG that was announced on December 1st, this crew does consistent work
- for getting those roads prepped by ditching. They have a gradle. We use that crew to prep all these
- roads before we pave. So we do utilize them. So that's kind of the reasons why we would like to fill
- this position.
- I anticipate that this is an equipment operator position. We are a collective bargaining unit, so we
- are required to post that position if it's approved to be filled in-house for seven days. I anticipate
- that there will be employees in-house to apply for that that are current truck drivers in the highway
- out of the MVH fund. And we do a skills and test.
- ability test for running equipment. I would foresee somebody moving up into that position, leaving open
- an NVH position. So I don't know if it's approved. Do I have to come back and start this cycle again
- when two weeks ago you approved me to fill the highway positions that I have filled? We have our last
- employee starting tomorrow, but this
- could start that cycle again. It's my understanding we might have a mechanic that will be possibly leaving
- in January. I'll be right back for that MVH position also. Again, none of these positions are in the
- general fund, county general. It does not affect your deficit that you're trying to fix. It's just,
- I see this cycle.
- We've gone through it for years that with this hiring freeze, it's possible I'm going to keep coming
- back. So. Okay, if you have any questions. Thank you for that. And given the circumstances of early
- snow season.
- That's a very expensive week when I did payroll yesterday. I could only imagine. And we're not even
- in winter yet. Well, yeah, winter officially starts Sunday. All right. That being said, do we have any
- questions or comments for Ms. Ridge on this item?
- So again, so your concern is because none of these positions are in the general fund because you'll
- have some potential movement that will be happening because of people potentially that are already employed
- filling those, which is a good thing, by the way. At least we're keeping people. This will kind of restart
- the clock. So it almost sounds like from what I hear, maybe three, potentially.
- So how I think this will play out is I believe that a truck driver will move into the stormwater equipment
- operator position if it's filled. That would leave me of posting a truck driver position and still leaving
- the one open that I said I would not fill. And then if the mechanic gives their notice, I would have
- that one to post. So I ultimately see that we could have a truck driver and a mechanic position open
- in January.
- Okay. All right. Okay. Well, we appreciate that as there are no questions. Yes, Michelle. So the way
- that the motion was typed up so that based on what she submitted is you would approve
- her to fill that position. And if it is internal, she could go ahead and move forward with filling that
- position that would become vacant due to that internal. So that would take care of one step that she's
- asking about. So if you approve that for this, she could go ahead, make that internal move, and then
- go ahead and post that truck driver position. So that's what the script
- motion has stated okay you have to come back or if for that's perfectly fine mechanic did yeah later
- but that will take care of I wrote it that way on purpose after reading what she had submitted so if
- you want to do it different that would never come back no yeah okay and I think that helps well again
- the mechanic is still not in general fine
- Is that it's not and I have no problem of waiting for that. I know I have agenda items to come to you
- on the January 27th meeting. So I haven't doing it with the truck driver and the equipment operator
- that that would be perfect for me. Okay. Okay. All right. Just making sure we're trying to
- I appreciate that. Thank you, Michelle, for clarifying that. Seeing no further questions or comments
- on this item, we'll go to public comment. If you have public comment on this item, you can come forward
- to the lectern here in the night yellow room or raise your hand via Teams. Seeing none, may we please
- have a roll call vote? Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes.
- Yes. Councilor Wills. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Motion passes unanimous six zero. Okay. Thank you.
- We appreciate it. All right. Next up on the agenda. I think we're in new business, correct? No ongoing
- business. That is correct. All right. Council, I move to approve the commissioner's request and fund
- four nine zero zero dash zero zero zero zero employee morale.
- the creation of account line three zero one eight five employee promotion and simultaneously approve
- an additional appropriation of four thousand nine hundred twenty two dollars and forty five cents in
- the services category second okay we got a motion and a second and i don't i'm actually gonna cover
- this oh okay okay your voice yeah okay um
- So this is money that's from the vending machine, and the commissioners often use this money to do something
- for employees for Christmas. And so they're asking for the appropriation to be eligible to do that this
- year. All right, Councilor Feidl. So do all employees then benefit from this fund? Typically, what they've
- done in the past is like donuts or fudge or cookies that get delivered to each individual office so
- that all employees can benefit.
- Thank you. All right. Any other questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, I see faces,
- but I see none. All right. I'm going to go to public comment on this item. If you could come forward
- to the lectern here in the Nattie Hill room, if you have public comment on this item, please do so or
- raise your hand via Teams.
- Seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor
- Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Motion passes unanimous
- 6-0. Okay, thank you. Next up, item B. Council, I move to approve the Employee Service Department's
- request and fund 4700-0000.
- self-insurance an additional appropriation of three million three hundred thirty eight thousand eight
- hundred ninety three dollars and 31 cents in the services category Okay, we have you joining us. Hello.
- Hello. Uh, let me start by saying I don't need three million dollars. Um Yeah at the time that I made
- this request due to all the
- the timing of when that request is due, there were three anthem invoices that were going to be coming
- our way. Since that time when I submitted this request, we received and paid two of those invoices.
- So currently in that fund, so the way that
- this works is when we receive an invoice, we pay a portion of that invoice from a line called Anthem
- Contractual, and then we pay the rest of the invoice from what is a line that's called health insurance
- claims. That's the bulk of where the invoice comes from. Typically, at this time of year, we're seeing
- a credit in the contractual portion of things because we've met stop loss, and I saw your face. We met
- stop loss and things like that, so we're getting credits back from that.
- And so at this point in the health insurance claims line, thanks to the auditor's office for working
- this week, they transferred every single dollar that I had available in other lines because we've paid
- all of our invoices into this line. So we have remaining funds of $318,409. We have one invoice left
- that will come in on Friday.
- I am hopeful that that will cover what comes in. I am fearful that it will not. And so that's why I'm
- here, because it is possible our invoice that we received two weeks ago was, for the claims part of
- things, was around $400,000. The one we received two weeks before that was around $200,000.
- I recognize we've talked about this all year long about wanting to understand and being able to predict
- what's coming and at this point in the year I just can't do that for an invoice coming in.
- basically in the last possible minute that the auditor's office can process it to ensure. And that invoice
- is due before the end of the year. We have seven day terms for a turnaround, which due to the holidays,
- it will still be before the end of the year. So this is purely an administrative task where I need some
- more money from you to make sure that I can pay that invoice that comes in on Friday. It needs to be
- paid no matter what. I would like to make that happen in this year so it's not a next year problem.
- eating into the appropriations that we have for next year. All that to say the number, I don't know
- what that number is. I think I would feel confident if in the highest claim that we paid in the health
- insurance line this year was a million dollars. I guess I'm thinking that if we could have the health
- insurance line balance be a million so that if that is what
- comes through on Friday that I could pay it. I know that's not, I don't have concrete numbers to give
- you. I've tried to get any information from Anthem, but I just can't. I don't have the information to
- give you before this conversation. I don't know, I'll answer questions. And then maybe we can come to
- an agreement on what I might need. All right, thank you for that.
- hands raised. So I'm going to go Council Iverson and then I'll flip it to Councilor Feidl. My question
- is directed at staff. Is there a number that I need to amend the motion or do you think we're okay with
- what was read out in the motion? You'll need to amend her the request because her current balance in
- that fund is not three million so
- Yeah, I suppose that if that's the way you want it to go, and you just want to appropriate the cash
- balance, I can give you that number too. OK. I have current cash balance. And Kim, if you could correct
- me if I'm wrong, or somebody, try and find it on my paper. I passed it. $2,644,935.79? Yes. OK, cool.
- I'll say that one more time. 2,644,935.79. Yeah, Council, I understand. Council, I move to amend my
- motion to a new number, which is 2,644,935.79. Second. OK, we got a motion and a second on that amendment.
- All right.
- Councilor, I'll go to Councilor Feidl and then I'll go to Councilor Henry next. So am I understanding
- it correctly that this will be the last payment for this year, whatever we appropriate now? Correct.
- I just want to make sure. Thank you. Yes, sorry. That's my fault. Sorry. Any questions or comments on
- the amendment to change that number?
- Councilor, okay. I wasn't sure if that was why your hand was raised. Okay. Yes. Could we restate the
- amount on the amendment, please? Mm-hmm. Okay. $2,644,935.79. 2644935.79. Okay. So there's no other
- further questions on that amendment.
- I'll go to public comment. Public comment. Raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern
- here in the Net Youth Overroom. All right. And seeing none, we'll need to have a roll call vote. See
- Councilor Henry's hand out. I think it's on the overall. Oh, yeah. OK. Further amendment. Councilor
- Wilts. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor Deckard. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes. Councilor Feidl. Yes.
- and Councilor Iverson. Motion passes unanimous, six zero on the amendment. Okay, thank you. Now we'll
- come back to overall. Now go back to Councilor Henry. Thank you. I guess my question is more forward
- leaning into next year, because I know we've done a few of these settlement votes here in the last quarter
- and they are seven figure votes. What's the forecast for next year on this? E, do you have a sense of,
- What are your head looks like I know I previous commissioners meeting I called in to say that I really
- do think council should be talking with a packs and commissioners administrator and you as you look
- at contracts from year to year just so we understand the risk but.
- Do you have a crystal ball for next year on what this cost looks like for us? I don't have a crystal
- ball, but I have talked with both Apex and the clinic, and they do annual reports where they are evaluating
- the health, Apex specifically, the health of the plan, the health of the employees, all the things that
- we can factor into, things that will accrue costs for us. And I've thought about you all as part of
- that reporting, and I'm asking them to put together extra information.
- and to share with you so that we can make some decisions. And I think looking forward, we have a lot
- of thoughts about some things we can implement that will create some cost savings. I think we've mentioned
- some of those in various meetings that we've been in.
- Looking forward, those conversations will need to happen early on in the year because by July, we're
- starting to talk about those contracts for next year and renewal rates and all those types of things.
- So I'm hopeful we can get you some information. Typically, the annual reports once they've compiled
- them, like end of February, beginning of March is when that stuff's available. Does that help?
- Any other questions or comments on this item from council? Okay, and seeing none, I'll go back to public
- comment for the overall public comment. If you have public comment, come raise your hand via Teams or
- you can come forward to the lectern here in the night you have room.
- All right. And seeing none, may we please. Oh, I'm sorry. I just have a question for you. I want to
- I want to make this what you need it to be. I don't want, you know, I'm coming. I recognize I'm coming
- in the last minute asking you to do this thing. If if maybe you could in your conversations figure out
- what's the process you would like this to be for me to to
- provide some consistency. And this is the first year we've appropriated this fund. So we're kind of
- figuring things out as we go. You tell me how you would like this when we're coming to year end and
- having these conversations, what you want that to look like. I will do my best to work with that and
- make it something that is beneficial for everybody. Does that help? Yeah. OK, cool. Appreciate that.
- Thank you. All right. And may we please have a roll call vote?
- Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wills? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor
- Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes unanimous 6-0. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate
- it. And back up, well, item C, but we have Highway Department coming back again. That's right. Council,
- I'll be combining Highway item C and D into one motion.
- So I move to approve the highway department's request for a fund to fund transfer of cash of two hundred
- twelve dollars and fifty cents from funds ninety one seventy four dash zero zero zero zero lake and
- river enhancement or Larry to fund eleven ninety seven dash zero zero zero zero stormwater management
- and simultaneously in fund nine one seven four dash zero zero zero zero lake and river enhancement or
- Larry approve an additional appropriation of three thousand six hundred dollars in the services category.
- second okay um miss ridge is back what do you have to tell us about larry or layer layer yeah it's okay
- you can call it you can call it larry if you want that's the first time i've heard that so um so i'm
- here to correct the layer larry grant um
- A lot of the cards in this grant anyway, so that's it. It's kind of fitting. So we had a lot of players
- in this with soil and water. We had property owners contributing their portion because part of it was
- on private property. We had stormwater contributing their portion. So this the work has been completed.
- We received the grant funds. This is just to finish out.
- cleaning up the the last part of it moving that fund to fund because that was part of the local match
- not part of the grant so it's basically so we want to get this done before the end of the year since
- so it can be closed out all right thank you for that and already saw a hand raise and council votes
- you're up could you give a brief description of the project just
- So the public kind of knows. So they were two log jam cleanups. And basically when you get that within
- these creek areas and such, then you can create a flooding in the areas. So the stormwater department
- applied for the layer grant, received that. I think it was a max of 25,000. So we worked out with the
- property owner soil and water. Then we hired a contractor, I believe at the time it was Bluestone. And
- then when it was dry enough for them to get their equipment,
- remove those log jams, so that way it keeps everything flowing. Thank you. All right. Any other questions
- or comments from council? And seeing none, we'll go to public comment. Raise your hand via Teams or
- come forward to the lectern here in the Natt U Hill room. All right. And seeing none, may we please
- have a roll call vote? Councilor Pidl?
- yes councillor wilts yes councillor hawke a big partner councillor henry yes councillor crossley yes
- councillor iverson yes councillor dekert yes motion passes unanimous six zero thank you thank you all
- right next up is item e from the sheriff's department
- Council I'll be combining sheriff's items E and F into one motion. I move to approve the sheriff's fund
- request and fund 1000 dash zero zero zero five county a general sheriff a deappropriation of five thousand
- four hundred ninety eight dollars and fifty cents in the personnel category and simultaneously approve
- and fund eight one zero three dash zero zero zero zero operation pullover an additional appropriation
- of five thousand four hundred ninety eight dollars and fifty cents in the personnel category
- second all right we have Jamie here welcome hello I'm just end of the year housekeeping that's all it
- is really just moving the funds around thank you for that any questions or comments from council on
- this item see none we'll go to public comment raise your hand via teams or come to the lectern here
- in the night you'll roam for this item
- And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Crosley? Yes.
- Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Woods? Yes. Motion
- passes unanimous 6-0. Okay, thank you. Next up is item G.
- Council I move to approve the sheriff's request and fund four one zero seven dash zero zero zero zero
- donation sheriff the creation of account line three zero zero one four other services and simultaneously
- approve an additional appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars in the services category. Okay. Anything
- to add here. This is just occasionally we have the public that comes in and donates money to the sheriff's office.
- And sometimes they say it's at the sheriff's discretion. Sometimes they have something specific that
- they want us to use the funds for. It's never been utilized before. And we would like to start using
- that or have the ability to. Okay. Look at that. Okay. All right. Any questions or comments from council?
- Yes, Councilor Feidl. So about how long has this amount been accumulating?
- we know Brie how long this has been created i don't off the top of my head but we could definitely get
- that information for you just curious sure okay any other questions or comments on this item from council
- yes councillor wilkes i just feel the need since uh councillor hawke isn't here to state the obvious
- that you can't spend what you don't have so we're appropriating 15 but you have 14 735 according to
- or yeah so was there something guidance of the auditor's office it can be amended to what is actually
- in there you want us to amend it okay could we amend it to yeah yes counselor okay council I move to
- amend the motion to a new number which is fourteen thousand seven hundred thirty five dollars and ninety
- two cents I concur okay we got the motion
- And a second on that. Any other further question or comment from council? All right. Seeing none, can
- we have a roll call vote on this friendly amendment? Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes.
- Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. And Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion
- passes unanimous 6-0. All right. Thank you.
- Oh wait, we gotta do the overall. All right, any other questions or comments? And thanks, Councilor
- Wilts, for keeping the spirit of Councilor Hawk going. All right, and seeing none, we'll have public
- comment. You can raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern here in the Net Youth Hall
- room. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote?
- Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor
- Crossley? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous six zero. Thank you. You're welcome.
- Thank you. Okay. Next up is item H for
- Hava from the auditor's office. How'd you think I was going to say that? I don't know. All right, council,
- I'll be combining the auditor's items H and I into one motion. I move to approve the auditor's request
- in fund 8956-0000. The Hava grants a deappropriation of $35,873 in the capital category and simultaneously
- in fund 8958-0000.
- grant, approve the creation of account line 4001 equipment with an additional appropriation of $35,873
- in the capital category. Second.
- Okay and I'll look to the auditor for this. Hello what do you have for us on the HAVA grant? It's a
- fun word right? Yes this is just a really simple housekeeping item. We're just asking for your assistance
- with correcting a small error. Unfortunately this is the only way to correct. We clicked the wrong box
- when setting up this fund and unfortunately it's not just a simple fix where we can unclick and click the
- correct one, we have to totally add a new fund and kind of start from scratch, which is not a big deal,
- but it's just coming here and presenting to you and explaining we need to de-appropriate then re-appropriate.
- Understand. We did work with Lau, our financial software company, and confirmed this is the only way
- to do it, unfortunately. OK. All right. Seems understandable, but does anybody have any questions or
- comments from the auditor on this?
- Seeing none, we'll go to public comment. Raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern here
- in the Night Eagle Room. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Crossley? Yes.
- Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. And Councilor
- Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimous 6-0.
- All right, and because we combine those, we'll go to item J, then add it one. Council, I move to approve
- the auditor's request and fund 8950-0000, American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, an in-house transfer of
- $8,550 from account line 367100, ARPA septic assistance, to account line 36714, ARPA program support
- in the services category. Second.
- okay and yes yes thank you for accommodating us and adding this to the agenda we appreciate your support
- this is just to transfer from one project line into another already established project line currently
- the auditor's budget has
- has supported an invoice of a little over $1,500 for our outside administrative support from Baker Tilly
- and this will just move some excess funding from a project that's not going to be able to fully utilize
- into that line so it's not coming out of the county's general fund so it is in the best interest of
- the county if you're willing to approve. All right any questions or comments from council on this item?
- And the only thing I would just add is a year from now, we will have to figure out a plan to make sure
- that everything that we did through ARPA is spent down to the penny because this all has to be done
- by December 31st of twenty twenty six. And so considering how fast this year went, it would be very
- helpful. I know we kind of mentioned earlier this year
- to try to have a follow-up joint meeting with the commissioners to do a plan to talk about some of that
- or to have an update rather on some of that because I know I thought if my memory serves me well that
- there were some things that we were thinking that we would switch and change and so I would really hope
- that we wouldn't wait until next year's grand finale to scramble and try to figure out because
- That's actually something we did last year where we kind of had to scramble this year for it. I think
- I saw the auditor's hand raised again. Yeah, thank you for noting that we would like to address this.
- very minimum by you know the midpoint of the year preferably before we like to be proactive rather than
- reactive so having that plan in place something in our pocket just so we know how we're going to proceed
- if and when projects do come in under budget and where we would hate to give back this this these resources
- that we can certainly utilize rather than you know expending on a well-deserved already approved project
- right yeah so maybe that's something that we can
- I don't know if maybe we can pass on the message to commissioners. I know sometimes we need to make
- sure that they get our information from our meetings. So I just wanted to, I guess, I think that maybe
- that would be a good idea for us to do maybe first quarter is to have a meeting to kind of go over projects.
- And then just as you were saying for that midpoint year to kind of figure out maybe right before budget,
- That would be very helpful to figure out what we still have and to kind of finalize as we enter the
- fourth quarter of next year to make sure everything is kind of put in play.
- Yes, we did provide a very basic update of where we are now, but we would like to have a little bit
- more of a formal presentation at the beginning of the year, just to kind of start us off along that
- path and then we can reassess later in the first quarter, if that's okay. I think that will get us on
- the right track and we have communicated with the commissioner's office and we hope that the plan update,
- the ARPA plan update will be on their agenda for Thursday. I'm not certain if it is or not,
- but I know that it is on the radar. Okay, okay. Yeah, since both of us, both bodies have to do all of
- that, I definitely think that we need to make sure that we schedule that joint meeting with them. So,
- all right, any other questions or comments related to this item? All right, seeing none. If there's
- public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the net, you can raise your
- hand via Teams.
- and seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes.
- Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes
- unanimous six zero. All right, thank you very much for that. Next up, since we moved item 11 and we're
- done with that, we'll go to item 12.
- which is the county council business. And we'll start with item A, which is a resolution approval. Council,
- as a reminder, this item was tabled from the December 9th meeting. I move to approve resolution 2025-54,
- a resolution pledging support to the BEDC or the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation.
- I don't see it. Second. All right. I'm looking to our council attorney to see if you wanted to start
- off anything first. Okay.
- All right, and I see we have a BED representative, BEDC representative here. Clark, please go ahead.
- Well, good evening, Council. My name is Clark Greiner. I'm the interim president for the BEDC, and it's
- certainly a pleasure to be here this evening. I want to thank you for considering funding appropriations
- to support economic development efforts in Monroe County. The BEDC has served as the primary community
- organization for economic development on the business retention, attraction, and expansion for Monroe
- County. And over the time that I've been with
- BEDC over the last six years we've tried to function in that capacity as a sole economic development
- organization for the county. As you know BEDC our membership has over 117 members we continue to try
- to grow that and our members are made up of
- most of the major trading sector employers such as Cook, Medical, Cook Group, Simtra, Phoenix Closure,
- and then other community partners such as the IU Health, Indiana University, Monroe County, the city
- of Bloomington, Ellitsville, and our board leadership consists of and includes organizations such as
- Smithville, Forbes, IU Credit Union, Cook Group, Weddle Brothers, just to name a few.
- And it is our goal to really help bring prosperity to the citizens of Monroe County, which I know that's
- consistent with what you guys endeavor to do as well. I want to give you a little information about
- some of the history of what the BEDC has done over the past five years. If you look at our budget and
- added all those dollars up and then divided that by the amount of capital investment we had, for every
- one dollar that you invested in the BEDC,
- there was, it led to $289 in capital investment back into all of Monroe County. That resulted in more
- than 900 plus new jobs and more than a billion dollars in that capital expenditure investment. And consistent
- with that, we are still on target with our 2024 through 2026 business strategy, which is in place. And
- that's one of our primary economic drivers for leading us forward on that. But as you know,
- plans and economic development is dynamic. It's not static. And if you look at that, when we first drafted
- that plan, there were things that have popped up since then. Some of them are tariffs.
- which wasn't around when we were really talking about that. Some of the tech innovation, there's more
- and more information being talked about that. Also one that we're dealing with that's top of mind right
- now is the SCA-1. We're addressing that and some of the changes that it makes. We confront those things
- and try to adjust and adapt to those as we go about our economic development initiatives. And of course,
- then on the positive side here, Big Ten champions, you know, Go Hoosiers, you know, that's very exciting.
- Heisman winner, again, very exciting.
- And we have one of the coolest coaches in all of college football. So we have a lot to be proud about
- our community. I want to just kind of review some of the things that have happened in 2025. Semper purchased
- the former GE site in July of 2025. That was a major redevelopment. Many of you up there had an opportunity
- to kind of look at that facility ahead of time. And as we drive there, buy it now, how exciting is that
- to see? Those are efforts that the BEDC has been involved with, and that started way back
- when we fostered those initial relationships with Syntra, their growth and expansion after they acquired
- the Baxter operation. So we've been engaged for some time on that.
- I also wanted to talk about some of the actions and things that we're doing right now. We have also
- attracted a company called Omboy. They're a Canadian based company. They are right now leasing space
- in the existing Phoenix Closure Facility. We hope that in the not too distant future that they'll be
- constructing the building to house their employees and to continue to grow and expand. Another company
- that we've also attracted here recently to the Monroe County Airport is a company called Swift Energetics
- and Engineering.
- And that's been a very exciting thing. They're still in their initial growth stage, so we're still working
- with them on critical issues and stuff. One of the things I also wanted to point out really quick, and
- this is very exciting, over the last six months, the airport has been, the BEDC, along with airport
- leadership, has been engaged with multiple different
- organizations that are looking at the airport as a potential home for their business growth and expansion.
- It's super exciting. If you look at everything that's been involved in that, this could potentially
- lead to hundreds and hundreds of new jobs
- high paying jobs out there. So some of the technology, the innovation that's happening out at the airport
- and that's in the aviation industry and aerospace industry is very dynamic. And the Monroe County airport
- has positioned themselves well to be able to do that. I've been involved with them and attending a lot
- of their board meetings so that we become very familiar with what goes on and what takes place out there.
- So we want to use
- the funds that you're considering appropriating us to continue to level up, to offer, again, prosperity
- back to the community. So thank you for your time. Thank you very much for coming this evening and explaining
- that to us. All right, anybody have any questions or comments? And Councilor Feidl's hand is up, go ahead.
- So I remember last week when we had this on the agenda the first time that, as I remember it, we tabled
- it because we wanted more information about some of the developments that had been occurring in BEDC.
- And honestly, I don't feel like I know much. And I think that's disappointing as a partner in this endeavor,
- if you want to call us that, that I don't know what's going on. So I'll just leave it at that.
- Okay, all right. And Councilor Henry has his hand up. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Clark,
- for presenting a little bit about the year review there and what's going on at the airport. I agree
- that there's a lot of excitement and opportunity with our Board of Aviation. I know a few of us have
- been involved in those conversations. I guess for me, as someone who
- suggested tabling last week and we tabled this item to get some of that feedback. I'm content with what
- I've heard here today. It's a pretty good ROI to have a $30,000 a year donation yield. The work that
- you all do for the county on economic development that otherwise we'd have to bring in house and have
- an FTE with benefits doing that work. So I'm good with that moving forward, but I will say as I think about our
- donations generally. I guess this has nothing to do with BEDC, but we conveyed through resolution our
- desire to do a donation last week to the Board of Commissioners that somehow didn't happen. There was
- not clarity on why that item was removed from their claims because we
- did communicate our intent about another donation. I guess I'm just maybe as a point of information
- for staff, how, if we do vote in favor of our resolution to make this donation, how does that get into
- the commissioner's docket for Thursday so they understand that we have a resolution that is saying words
- that shows our intent? Does it get in that packet or how is that presented in that meeting on Thursday?
- I'd hate to see us,
- I go through another round of our intent not being clear because we clearly wrote a resolution to that
- effect. Can staff answer that? For resolutions, it's included as it would be processed through the claims.
- And so the resolution that was passed is included in the claims docket and the claims are subject to
- commissioner approval. So it's just really a matter of reading their packet, I presume. Okay. I'll just
- leave it at that comment.
- And again, thank you again for coming in tonight, Clark, and making the presentation there. I will say,
- I think, too, in the future, as we think about our donation pattern and what we do to basically delegate
- as a council activities like communications and economic development, that, yeah, there may be other
- opportunities to invest in other organizations basically doing the work that the county could be doing.
- So I'll just leave it there. But I'm happy to support this resolution this evening.
- Thank you very much for that. Any other questions or comments? Councilor Wilts, and then I'll go to
- Deckard. You mentioned that the BEDC had been tackling issues or impacts around SCA 1, and I was just
- wondering if you could give me a little bit more information about that. You know, one of the things
- that we want to look at, if you look at some of the primary drivers, it's our understanding right now
- that SCA 1 is all about
- income tax right to raise the revenue for that so what that means is as we approach the market we're
- looking for good paying jobs trying to figure out how to get those jobs locate here to not only just
- help with revenue but to also help potentially reverse some of the population decline that we've seen
- over the decades so
- our efforts are going to be much more assertive in reaching out to companies that we feel are a great
- fit for our community. And it could be because we know when I've worked with you all in the past that
- when we bring an opportunity here and it's the right opportunity, you guys have been very supportive.
- So we're going to go outside of our community. We're going to identify companies that align with what
- we're trying to accomplish here to increase wages, to increase the number of people that can come here
- and live here. And those are things that we can do to influence
- those folks. And so we'll do that. So the money that we are gifted, so to speak, we will use that to
- develop outreach programs, talking with site selectors, specific companies that may be aligned with
- our traded sectors or support our traded sectors. So we've got multiple tools in our toolbox. Those
- aren't immediate things. Those things take time to evolve, but those are things we're going to be paying
- close attention to.
- So obviously, we can't tell people where to live. But it did come up with Cimtra that really the benefits
- to county government from local income tax depend on those folks living within Monroe County. And so
- when we attract businesses to the county and yet their employees choose
- for whatever reason and quite justifiably in some cases I'm sure, to live outside the county, that's
- not bringing income tax into our coffers, it's helping our neighboring counties and that's great for
- them. So my question is, are there strategies that we could work together on or do you have ideas around how to
- get those income tax dollars, those residents, those employees into Monroe County? Well, I think it's
- starting with acknowledgement. So some of the first things that we've got to recognize that when we
- talk with our traded sector companies, the larger employers, as I've mentioned, anywhere from 48 to
- 50, maybe slightly north of that of their folks live outside of Monroe County.
- right? So the question is, is to meet and talk with these folks and say, why is that occurring? And
- I think some of the things that we've got to be aware of is, what are these folks looking for? A lot
- of it's going to be housing, particularly single-family housing. So we've got to look at our development
- standards and see how they align with SEA 1 so that we can continue to incentivize that. And those aren't
- necessarily easy things to do, but they're necessary to address some of those questions. And so those
- would be things that we can sit down, talk with our traded sector companies, talk about
- about some of the challenges they're seeing, maybe talk to some of their employees to say, hey, how
- can we do this better? And those are some of the things. So I think it's kind of a community solution.
- So it's a combination of traded sectors. It's about acknowledgment of some of the challenges that we
- face, and then how we go about strategically addressing those to, A, help us, number one, identify how
- we can increase revenue through the income tax of those people that live here. So that's going to be
- one of the top things that we're paying attention to. And again, these things don't occur overnight,
- but I think those are
- things that I think are going to be important to address. And we all have a contribution to do and give
- to that to make that work. Thank you very much. Thanks for being here, Clark. And thanks for taking
- my call yesterday to get additional information. I do appreciate very much that the BDC has been a constant
- presence, both through you and your predecessor
- in some of these conversations with the county talking about jobs talking about what we got to do and
- even convening people to it i mean i think we've all been to a few of us at least have been to the airport
- numerous times for numerous things under various entities um one thing is i i do want to comment i think
- the counselor henry was
- I'm not sure that's the issue I think they get our point I think they're sending their own message.
- And I think they'll send a message and this Clark this doesn't necessarily have to do with you. But
- they they'll they'll send their message until.
- you know, that word sends a different message or maybe they won't. I'm like Mary Morgan was saying earlier,
- I have always joy and hope and optimism, but I don't know how it'll turn out. But we'll find out one
- way or the other. And the show goes on. One thing I will say is this. I'm not sure, friends, given the
- population numbers, I'm not sure that the community is in the position that it sometimes thinks it is
- of convenience on jobs.
- In fact, I don't think we are at all. We're in an age right now where the attacks on higher education
- in a college town, and Clark, you don't have to comment on that, but I will, the attacks on that could
- massively disrupt for a variety of different reasons. We got through a pandemic with our fingers crossed.
- Now, some people didn't get through it, but we got through it.
- you can only take so many hits and so many bad policies from Indy or DC or wherever, you can only do
- that before you have a risk. The other thing is we have diversified our workforce, thank God, through
- life sciences. Meanwhile, how we define science and healthcare is also rapidly taking some hits. In 2020,
- on the the vaccine my gosh we were I I was in my classroom teaching in person one a few instructors
- there on campus they said there's a they've got the vaccine my wife's texting me everybody's gonna I
- said I'll gargle the thing every day if it if it takes care of this now and now ever ever I was down
- with that until they weren't and now things are different so I sometimes think that the folks like the
- BDC who are having those discussions about places
- And things that we offer I think you got to be doing that as they're doing that under whatever form
- it is because I remember vividly and Liz Fidel could write the book in the nineties when the plants
- we had began to say.
- this isn't working anymore. And everyone said, that'll never happen. That'll never happen. That turned
- from never happened in regional traction, people driving daily from as far as Evansville and Illinois
- to fill those jobs, including all the locals, by the way, McDowell Gardens and all their parking spots
- and all those extra driveways were not because those people wanted extra driveways. They did it because
- they sold parking lot spaces for the plant. That open field was vibrant. And then it changed. And someone said,
- what are you going to do? Mayor, what are you going to do? County, what are you going to do? And what
- they said is, we've got to attract new jobs. I think today, sometimes I listen to people and we speak
- with the convenience of, well, we could do that, but I'm worried about growth and infringement on that.
- Folks, I don't know that we're in the catbird seed that we think that we are. And so I think the BDC,
- either this year, next year, many years, all years, I think Clark out there and others hustling on this
- is our only hope
- in case something gets more wild than it is. And those population numbers do not lie. The school recognized
- that. I think other government entities have to recognize that too. There's something that is up and
- we gotta own it. All right, thank you very much. Councilor Iverson. Mr. Greiner, thank you again for
- being here and waiting till the end of the meeting. Really appreciate it and for your phone calls to
- us. Appreciate, that's always helpful.
- I'm not going to speak too much on this, but I do remember the BEDC was there front and center talking
- about housing during the CDO debates. And that was a really healthy debate. We really got to talk a
- lot about the pros and cons, the ways the sky was thinking about zoning. And BDC offered a lot of helpful
- advice to that debate. And I I think the absolute key benefit for me, though, and the reason why I'm
- going to be supporting this is
- I've been able to get out there and tour, a lot of these factories, a lot of these sites, and I don't
- need to have a tour, but it was meeting the people working there, the people who were coming in and
- that is that is really the key indicator and talking to them about you know what do you need what are
- you seeing and that's just.
- great access to folks that I otherwise wouldn't have access to have a conversation with. So I'll be
- supporting this. And I certainly hope that the commissioners see it that way as well as they came out
- on a lot of these with us as well. So I think I'll leave it at that. Thank you. All right. Thank you.
- Yeah. Nothing else to add.
- to what my fellow council colleagues have said. I think, well, just one thing. The only thing that I
- would like to see is just using public comment to come in and give any type of updates in the next coming
- year, whether that's if you're seeing something that is proposed legislation from the General Assembly
- that we should be mindful of, that we can work together with, definitely let us
- know of course email but definitely like to see your face here and just explain that to us so that the
- public could also know as well so definitely wanted to just express that and thank you very much for
- that um i think councillor henry touched on this earlier but i'm going to look to miss turner king again
- with this just to clarify because again what we heard last year or last week is they didn't know so
- should this
- I don't want to go through. Is there something as me as council president? Do I need to send a formal
- email so nothing gets mixed and lost in the sauce? I don't. Yeah. I think an email would help, but I
- will also add that this has been preemptively added to the commissioners meeting as an agenda item that
- hopefully my voice allows me to present tomorrow. OK, OK. Well, maybe as a council president, actually
- Thursday send an email just as a double and triple check.
- We know for sure that this is coming. Yep. OK. All right. That being said, got to cross our T's and
- dot our I's. All right. Public comment time. If you'd like to make public comment on this item, you
- can come forward to the lectern here in the night. You have a raise your hand via teams. Thank you.
- Thank you. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. It seems like a clerk. I might have one more thing.
- I talked a little bit about my frustration about not what's going on, and I would like to ask that we
- receive more communication about updates within the workings of the BEDC so that I, especially, I don't
- know about others, but I can speak for myself. I want to know what's going on. I like to know what's
- going on in an organization before I support it. And so I would like continued updates on what's happening
- within the organization.
- happy to do that thank you okay and look forward to it me too okay all right yeah one more and i think
- if the board because i know this is not in your hands to add to counselor vital if the board could tell
- us officially their window on the the leadership role
- precisely and kind of how that's gonna work. I think that will help as a partner to know. I don't know
- if the city wants that or Eltsville, because they're in those board meetings, but I think that's a helpful.
- Those discussions are taking place now, so. All right, and last call for public comment. And seeing
- none, may we please have a roll call vote.
- Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor
- Feidl? Yes, and I look forward to the partnership. Motion passes unanimous 6-0. All right, thank you.
- Thank you, have a good night. All right, next up is item B.
- Council, I move to approve resolution 2025-57, a resolution approving the Highway Collective Bargaining
- Agreement. Second, please. All right, we got a motion in a second, Ms. Dernike. So for the last several
- months, we've been meeting with the Collective Bargaining Unit for the Highway Department and Highway
- Management regarding the Collective Bargaining Agreement that's set to expire at the end of this year.
- What is before you today is the finalized version of this agreement. And I'm going to point out the
- substantial changes. So the first one is that this is a two-year agreement instead of a three-year agreement
- like we normally do. No, this is a three-year instead of a two-year because it seemed it might be problematic
- to try to negotiate in the end of 2027. The agreement now allows for the highway department to sign
- up twice a year for overtime.
- previously you signed your name up one time and then if you missed too many times you were taken off
- the list and so this allows them the opportunity to break the year in half. The major change is there's
- some now limitations on when an employee can be called in on like a snow removal or an emergency call
- out. We wanted to limit it so that if an employee calls in sick that day
- They couldn't then be called out that evening for an emergency situation for liability purposes. It
- now allows the highway employees to convert 40 hours of their sick time to personal time, and it allows
- them to use it all at the beginning. So this is not them getting more time. They still get the same
- amount of time. They're just allowed to convert more hours to personal time.
- And this is because the union wanted to stay with the old scheme of benefit time. So most of the county
- has transitioned to just having personal time and vacation time and not personal time, sick time, vacation
- time. But they liked that old structure, so they kept it. And so we're allowing them to convert more
- sick hours to personal time. And I think those are the major changes. All right.
- And so counselor, I've ever since handed up and then I'll come back around. Am I reading this correctly?
- This has been signed by both the commissioners and the union representatives. Mr. Cockrell did presented
- to the commissioners last week. Yeah. OK. Councilor Fido. And you mentioned one or some of the changes
- were union initiated. And so I just wanted to make sure that
- that was okay what the employees wondered as well, right? I assume that's what that means, right? We
- did a lot of back and forth, but we came to an agreement. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments
- from Ms. Turner-King on this item? All right. Seeing none.
- We'll go to public comment on this item. If we have public comment on this, you can come forward to
- the lectern here, the Nattie Hill 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 Deckard? Yes. Councilor
- Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous six zero. Okay.
- Next up, we will go to item D. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval to extend
- the expiration date of resolution 2025-14, which temporarily suspends the personal administration committee
- and job position requests. Second. Ms. Darnit King.
- So I went ahead and prepared an amended resolution that I'll display on the screen. The only change
- to the resolution is in paragraph three, which previously stated the resolution implemented a pack pause
- that would expire in December of 2025 unless renewed by the council prior to that date. The resolution's
- now gonna read, let me try to display it.
- The resolution was set to automatically expire December of 2025. However, after further consideration
- and review of the county's budget, the council believes it's fiscal fiscally responsible to extend this
- pause until December 31st of 2026. And you can amend that date. I just put a placeholder in there for
- now, unless renewed repelled or amended prior to that date by the council. Okay. Yes. Counselor Decker.
- This is probably a really dumb question.
- but this occurred to me as I was thinking about these last two items. This sitting council now, which
- is the same sitting council theoretically in January that comes in here, we can set something for next
- year, same as this year. It's just in this case, we set it to expire at the end of this year.
- Is that right? It was set to expire at the end of this year. Yeah, yeah.
- So there's nothing that would make this action not good for next year. It's okay. I think it's okay
- because, um, as I'm displaying paragraph three, it says, unless for nude repeal to amend it prior to
- the December 31st date, which allows any future council to change it. All right. And no dumb questions
- to box said, even the genius has questions.
- I'm full of quotes tonight. All right. Anybody else have any? Yes. Council Iverson. So this is going
- to come up in both this one, this item and the next item. But I have not seen and maybe I missed it,
- but I have not seen new economic data for Indiana that suggests that the next budget cycle is going
- to be any easier than the last cycle.
- I'm not seeing anybody that's indicating that they have seen anything like that. The next, I think,
- thing on our calendar is an AIC legislative session in late January. We might get some more information,
- maybe. But until I see anything contrary to the struggle that we had this last budget cycle, I am really
- hesitant to make a change.
- And then I'll go to Councilor Henry. So thank you. This is more of a legal term question. So is there,
- it's, is, is repel being used for a specific reason or is it meant to be repeal? It's supposed to be
- repeal. Okay. Well, I guess we need to change that. All right. That's it. I just want to make sure we
- caught it. Cause I understand there's a legal, we can,
- legally repel something too. I just don't know if we're trying to do that. Okay, thanks. Nice catch,
- Councilor Henry. I think the only thing that I would add to this for council members is I think earlier
- we heard about how we need to have a long-term finance discussion with this and I think considering
- the forecast of a lot of things with SEA 1,
- I don't feel very comfortable in allowing this to, I guess, to sunset at the end of this year. I think
- we need to kind of pump the brakes on some things as we continue to navigate. And maybe again, this
- is something that we could come to the long term finance and ask the question of, because again,
- we can make amendments to the resolution. So if we chose a date after hearing, if we have a long-term
- finance committee meeting and we speak to Greg Garantos about this and FSG about this, and they feel
- comfortable with it, and we feel comfortable with it, we can always amend the resolution to change the
- date. And so again, because the forecast is very frightful, I'm not very hopeful.
- Yes, Councilor Wilts. Thank you. I just wanted to say that I agree that we're not quite ready to lift
- this. However, as I've mentioned, I do think that there is business that the PAC could be doing. And
- I didn't notice that it says that in the resolution. That's what it's called.
- So I would, and maybe there are pieces of what long-term finance is looking at that come to PAC to process
- and bring to council as well. I think we should utilize some of these committees strategically. And
- so just wanted to point out that this doesn't mean that PAC cannot be meeting to do other things.
- I agree. Well, I could, to your point, and I think you said this a while back when we were discussing
- the higher end freeze, maybe Pat could come back to the table and discuss the higher end freeze in different
- ways to figure that process out. Because I still think that people still have questions and concerns
- about it. So maybe that's something that Pat could do and then bring back to council
- for a larger discussion and our approval. Okay. Yes. If the intent is for PAC to still meet, then we
- would have to make an amendment to the resolution because item one says the personal administration
- committee will not meet. PAC may continue to meet to consider procedural matters. Does that
- not mean what I think it means. I don't think that sentence is in the version that was passed. I'm just
- looking in our packet. It's at the end of number one.
- I didn't submit a resolution to the packet, so I'm not sure where the resolution that was in the packet
- came from. I don't know. Everyone else has one in their packet, right? Am I looking at the wrong document?
- Nope. Okay. Yep. Councilor Henry. Lord, this has been a crazy meeting. Yeah. Councilor Wilson's point,
- I guess the question or the way I'm hearing it is if we allowed a little pack to happen,
- um, that to make sure that it's, it's clear to departments that that doesn't open up PAC to do its regular
- business, that it's limited to, I think the way you were going at it was in the right direction. This
- idea that it's, it's really about the rules and procedure and not, um, the PAC process, right? So like,
- like if it's, I mean, I mean, I, it's almost like a,
- And I think I just, I'm careful about the word procedure because the procedure is for people to bring
- things to PAC, right? So like, we don't want them doing that. But what we're talking about is opening
- the committee up to deal with policy related to personnel. Like that would help us with department heads
- and trying to figure out what a more severe budget cycle could look like if our revenue really drops,
- right? Like it's not about opening the PAC process up. It's really about like a rules behavior. Does
- that make sense?
- Yeah, thanks. What it says, at least in the one I have. I checked S drive for approved resolutions and
- there were two versions. And so I looked at the wrong version. And so that sentence is in what I would
- consider the latter past version. So I have now added it to it. Cool. Thank you. Just to clarify, the
- version in the packet that the public can see is the correct version? OK.
- No amendment. Cool. OK. All right. Any other questions or comments from counsel? Who's on first? Yes,
- counselor. And Ms. Mallory Turner King, may I ask you another question? The times that PAC has met this fall,
- has been at the pleasure of the council. So the council has said you can meet on whenever and do whatever.
- Section number one seems to indicate that PAC can schedule itself for meetings on procedural matters.
- Am I reading that correctly or does council still need to provide guidance to say you can meet on January
- 14th as an example?
- for the 2026 calendar resolution we did include a PAC meeting schedule. I remember that. And then in
- that resolution it says if the PAC meeting schedule is that the PAC chair has the authority to address
- any scheduling amendments necessary for PAC meetings so it allows the chair to amend that. We would
- just need to ensure that if it is amended that it is noticed in accordance with open door. Got it.
- So technically this is just a discussion. And so now we need to have a motion to extend. So council,
- I guess with no objections, I would like to extend our pack pause to December 31st, 2026.
- Am I second? I think you can simplify it and say I would like to move to approve amended resolution
- 2025 14 and then that has the new date. OK, so what you said. All right. Does that suffice? OK, second.
- All right. And so that is what we are doing. All right. Any other further questions or?
- comments from council on this. Yeah, I just have the point of order. Is the document that Molly,
- that you, or that Mr. King amended, is that the same resolution we're talking about that's in the packet?
- It wasn't clear to me. Yes. What was apparently in the packet was the version that was passed in March
- and then the resolution
- The amended version is the one that I displayed on the screen, and I'm happy to re-display it. Wait,
- so we just said we were doing it as amended, though. So you're passing the amended one. The one in the
- packet is not the amended one. The one in the packet is the original one. I don't know where the one
- in the packet came from. I put it in there so that you guys would have a reference of what we passed to what
- she was working on because at the time of the packet, the amendment was not ready to put in the packet.
- My understanding was that the motion on the floor was amending section three of the packet, simply updating
- the year to 2026. So the document in the packet would not change at all.
- except for section three, updating the year to 2026. It is correct that the only change is to paragraph
- three, other than it says amended at the top. It adds the language in section three changes to
- What is displayed on the screen? It was set to expire December 25th. However, after further consideration
- and review of the county's budget, the council believes it's fiscally responsible to extend the pause
- until December 31st of 2026. Can you scroll up to number one just for my own peace of mind? Thank you.
- Okay, thank you.
- Yeah, this is my question that both documents are verbatim except for what we just changed, right? Because
- I hate to have an amended over here and then something else that was a prior version that we somehow
- merged together here. If it's clear to folks in the room that that amendment is on the most
- recent resolution, then I'm good. It's not clear way out here. It's clear in the room. Okay, good, all right.
- Ms. Turner-King, were you about to say something? I'm sorry. Okay. Because I think to Councilor Wilts's
- point, it sounds like you wanted to ensure that we could still do procedural things for PAC, and that's
- in what we see here that was in the PAC. Got it. Okay.
- Okay, so we got a motion and a second on the floor. Any other further discussion from Council on this.
- So is this for the amendment or the overall piece document now. This would be on the amendment.
- We're voting on the amendment now. Thank you. It would be a motion to accept the resolution as amended.
- As amended. So that's the whole thing. Because the only thing that we were doing is changing the date
- in item three to extend to December 31st, 2026. Thank you. You're welcome. OK. So any other further
- questions or comments? OK.
- Um, seeing none from council, we'll go to public comment. If there's any public comment on this item,
- come forward to the lectern here. The night you hope room or raise your hand via teams and seeing none,
- maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Woods.
- Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes.
- Motion passes unanimous six zero. Okay, thank you. Next up is item E. Council I move to open for discussion
- and possible approval to extend the expiration date of resolution 2025-24, which temporarily suspends
- the KSA or knowledge skills and abilities practice. Second. Okay, Ms. Turner King.
- Similar to the previous motion, I prepared a resolution and the language changes to item three in it.
- It previously stated that the KSA pause ends December 31st of 2025 and now reads as on the screen.
- Okay, yes, Council Iverson. I support the possible amendment or the amendment being shown on the screen
- for the same reasons that I talked about the previous point. I've seen no economic data that suggests
- that the budget in the coming year is going to be any easier than the previous year. Councilor Decker.
- Well, I appreciate that comment.
- And the more I look at this resolution, it reminds me of my griping from when we adopted it originally.
- And it seems to be more so the case that my griping that rescue not coming, change not coming is probably
- imminent. I mean, just to kind of set the timeline, if I understand it correctly,
- The general assembly is in technically right now and then they're out in February and that's shoot.
- We won't even be done with snow trucks by then, let alone whatever. And so we're in this trouble. I
- do appreciate the reassurance from a year ago that the council can, should something manifest, the council
- can undo this resolution just like we could amend it all year and sometimes we do. So I appreciate that.
- the ability we have to do that. All right, any other questions or comments from council on this item?
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. Council I move to approve the adopted resolution 2025-24-25. Second. Hold on.
- What I wanted to do with that motion, I'm gonna verbalize this, is adopt what was on the screen, but
- then I got confused as to the naming of the resolution. No, we need to say the same, we're just adopting
- that resolution. It would be a motion to adopt the amended resolution, which is 20, 25, 24. That's what
- I wanted to do. I think that's what I said, but we've been here a while.
- do I need to restate the motion I would say yes to clarify or you could say so moved all right okay
- so we have that clarification there is there any other further discussion from council on this item
- who seconded
- Thank you. Yes, sounds like question is bigger than this item, but related. Nothing that we are doing
- here or in the last one is addressing the hiring freeze right. And when does that expire. Next year. Wait.
- I for some reason thought it expired at the end of this month too, but okay. The hiring freeze resolution
- expires December 31st of 2026.
- Look at that. Way to go. Okay. So again, the underlying thing is, yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay.
- All right. Any other further questions or comments on council related to the resolution as amended?
- Seeing none. Public comment. You can raise your hand via teams or come forward to the lectern here in
- the NatU Hill room. Okay.
- And without further ado, may we please have a roll call vote on the final item of twenty twenty five.
- House Iverson. Yes. Also, Decker. The counselor, Decker. Yes, counselor. Yes. Counselor Wilts. Yes.
- Counselor Henry. Yes. Counselor Crosley. Yes. Motion passes unanimous six zero.
- Okay. Okay. All right. So that brings us to, there was a little confusion here in the night, you know,
- room. Um, everybody good on before we move. Yes, counselor. So I'll just bring it up. So we look at
- the agenda. It's got 12 C, which is the meeting schedule, right? Right. And did we get rid of that or
- it was removed? That's the one that we did earlier.
- Where miss well Michelle can you or Molly? Explain that again Originally, we thought we were gonna have
- to amend the meeting schedule to accommodate for a change in deadlines since the way Additional
- appropriations is going to be advertised as changing but after all right after further review We don't
- think we need to amend the deadlines What's gonna happen is?
- additional appropriations will be advertised through Gateway, and there's a 14-day advertisement, but
- I think our current advertising deadlines accounts for that. What we were afraid of was that we'd have
- to advertise in Gateway and the newspaper, and our advertisement schedule wouldn't have accounted for
- that, but after confirming with DLGF, we don't have to advertise in the paper anymore, we could remove
- that item. I apologize for missing that if that was said some other time. Okay. I missed it. I was completely
- confused as to what.
- implementing all kinds of craziness over here on this end. All right, so if we're all good, we'll come
- down to the last item, which is council comments and liaison updates. And it is the last one of the
- year, so make it count. I'm going to start with Councilor Vidal. It's not color code, but I do have
- a list. Okay.
- So I just wanted to remind folks to shop local with this Bloomington gift card option. 50 vendors or
- businesses are signed up to be part of that. So you can go on the City of Bloomington website and find
- it there. It's called the Bloomington gift card. And you can find that at BloomingtonIN.gov. The 250th
- anniversary events will be occurring, I've learned, between February and July of 2026.
- I remind people that there's a copy of the Declaration of Independence at the Lilly Library and the
- IU campus. In one meeting I was at recently, it was about from the people on Kirkwood Avenue. And they're
- concerned about when emergency management notifications occur and information goes out,
- were seeking a more collaborative approach into how that all gets disseminated. I think they were feeling
- a little non-unification in messages they were receiving. And they didn't give me exact examples, but
- there was some discussion about that. The taste of Bloomington next year will either be Saturday,
- August 1st, or rain date of Sunday, August 2nd.
- And they will be closing down Dunn and Grant this year. So that should help with people walking back
- and forth on Kirkwood there. Visit Bloomington is working on a culinary passport trail. They'll have
- it ready approximately in January next month. Freeze Fest is coming up on January 23rd and January 24th.
- And that'll be at Switchyard this year. And then
- We were alerted that the economic impact of each home football game is six to seven million dollars.
- And then we talked a little bit about, I think, the ice arrest that happened recently. And as I understand,
- the hearing for that will be tomorrow in Chicago. Yes. So that is still ongoing. There are there is
- good legal counsel, as I understand.
- and we're hoping for the best there. So that's, I'll leave it at that. Thank you, we appreciate that.
- All right, Councilor Wilts. Yeah, cool. I have a couple of things that are just minor updates.
- Let's see here. I am trying to find my minor updates
- I'm messing everything up. There we go. The Waste Reduction District of Monroe County does a lot of
- really cool things. And one of the things I learned as a member of their board is that we now have a
- private entity offering curbside residential compost pickup
- weekly to anyone residing within the city limits of Bloomington or in the northern half of Monroe County
- for now. They are out of counties up north they've got a wide coverage area and the company's name is
- Richland Farms so if that is something that interests you please go ahead and go to their website and
- go to the compostery
- section of the website. It is very reasonable in terms of the cost. I'll leave it at that and let you
- all explore. It's Richland Farms. The other thing I wanted to say from the Waste Reduction District
- is that we've lost a couple of members of the Citizens Advisory Committee to the Waste Reduction District
- and it's a very, I would say it's a very impactful committee
- of citizens and if you have any interest in waste reduction and recycling and composting and learning
- more about how to reduce and reuse throughout the county, consider applying to the citizens advisory
- committee and that application is super short
- And it is on the wastereductiondistrict.com site is what it looks like. Monroe County Waste Reduction
- District, wastereductiondistrict.com. And you can navigate to the CAC or Citizens Advisory Committee.
- That I believe is all I had. Crazy. Let me see here.
- Yeah, that's all I had. Thank you. Liza, my voice. I just want to start off and I want to thank our
- highway workers who have been out clearing roads in a really early front end kind of winter before I
- think we were prepared for it and some real
- Arctic blasts. So thanks them. Thanks also to our friends in the city who do the same in the city and
- over in the town of Elstville where I was cruising around in some of that. And you can see all these
- folks out there doing that. They're away from their families, they're out.
- questionably bad weather, as well as our law enforcement, who also stuff respond and other first responders.
- And so thanks to all those heroes, they get the job done. I also will say this. I try to say this annually
- to folks at home. I sometimes watch social media and I get a little nervous because sometimes we expect
- miracles out of massive snow storms where temperatures are dropping. Please be patient.
- be patient with those who work with you for you and where you have to go. And I know that's easy for
- me to say now, but these things are what they are. And we've got a lot of folks trying to cover a lot
- of ground quickly. I also want to point out that in this weather, as we've talked about for numerous
- times in the last couple weeks, severe
- winter hits a lot of different people, including those who find themselves unhoused and outside, which
- we've talked about a great deal. I want to thank the churches who banded together for the Bloomington
- Severe Winter Emergency Shelter.
- that it's downtown, you've got First United, you've got First United Methodist, First Presbyterian,
- kind of doing that rotation. I'm sure there's other entities that are also jumping in there as well
- as our traditional, and I hate to use that word, traditional providers that make things happen. These
- are volunteers that go overnight, that they get this done so that others will be okay. And so that we
- try to make sense of how we do this. One thing is if you're out there
- and you're thinking that you've got a little time and you want to help that effort, I'm sure they would
- love either support in being a volunteer or supporting financially, because a lot of times these folks
- are raising this money as they go and doing it with just volunteers and best wishes and good hopes.
- To find out more about that, you could go to BSWERS, B-S-W-E-R-S dot wordpress dot com. And then the
- last thing I'll just say in this season is the council is a
- we are allegedly done for the year. I look at Councillor Crossley, no one's more excited than her. But
- as we are allegedly done, this is the last time at this mic, and Councillor Feidl talked about a hearing
- for a member of our community up in Chicago. And I, friends, I don't know what is precisely going on.
- I cannot put my feet on it or hands on it, but the snatching of people,
- the grabbing of people, the things that go bump in the night on public property and grab people. That's
- creepy stuff. That reminds me of stuff I read in history books in Little Grandview Elementary, and it
- wasn't in the United States. Now, we haven't been saints. And there's a lot of folks that know exactly
- what I mean by that in a variety of ways. But is this who we want to be?
- And so, in a season where some of our faiths talk about nativity scenes and people that wandered across
- border to flee oppression and ruin and death, is this who we really want to be as a country? So, more
- than any time, look out for your neighbor, but my gosh.
- If you're not down with any of this, let's let our federal representatives know this because this is
- the United States of America built by people from all over this world that make it stronger. And this
- community is a place that literally was built stronger. There was no original townie other than our
- first generations that were here. And so we only get stronger with more people. We only get stronger
- by being kind.
- And friends, we got to do better than this. And if you're mad about it like I am, then call somebody.
- Erin Houchin is your congresswoman. Todd Young, Jim Banks, they're your U.S. senators. And you can find
- any of their information online and otherwise. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yes, Councilor
- Iverson. I want to share four things today. First,
- We've talked a lot about the cold. We've talked about being patient with folks plowing, where folks
- can go and sleep. But I want to mention something fun. On January 1st, Pain Town will have its Polar
- Plunge. I will be there yet again. Costumes are encouraged. It is a really, really fun time. You can
- find more details on Facebook. Just look up Pain Town Polar Plunge.
- Crack of Dawn on January 1st is a lot of fun. If Crack of Dawn on January 1st is not when you are at
- your best. There is another opportunity, people of Monroe County. The Lemon Drop Polar Plunge will take
- place on January the 10th at 10 a.m. on Lake Lemon. Again, costumes are encouraged. Or, you know, whatever
- bathing suit you want to wear on January 10th at Lake Lemon.
- Number two, SUDAC is going to meet tomorrow. We are really excited. The commission has approved a contract
- for us to have the Opioid Summit next year. We're working hard on that as well as getting a treatment
- list of recommendations put together for the county.
- The health board will meet this week. And so I'll be attending that and see what they're up to. And
- then in addition to the last thing I'll mention is thank you to President Crossley for her year of service
- to this community.
- It is a lot. And there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. And so thank you for your dedication
- and your courage. Thank you also to our staff. Thank you for everything all four of you have done this
- year. This has not been an easy year. The packets just seem to get longer and longer. And people add
- stuff at the very last minute that you have to add and all the minutes. So thank you. Thank you. Thank
- you to each and every one of you. Happy holidays. And may you all have a joyous new year.
- Thank you. All right. In virtual land, Councilor Henry. Thank you, Madam President. And I'd like to
- thank my colleagues for a good first year here on council. There's been a lot and we've worked through
- a lot. I appreciate when community leaders leave from their seats and they have agency and we all just
- stay in our lanes, but we lead from the seats we have. And I think everyone's done that this year.
- It's been a joy to work with all of you. I have one kind of update comment and then I'll finish on a
- light note since I'm the last to talk. So the Convention and Visitors Center Board of which I've served
- on as a liaison for the past year, we had our last meeting. The first thing we're gonna see on our docket
- in January is a request to appropriate funds for the Visit Bloomington's relocation of that center to
- downtown on 4th Street from our old 37 location. They're eager to get their architectural work going
- to get the visitor center piece opened, which will complement the work on the convention center. There's
- a lot of good news coming out of that board. One statistic that came out that really relates to Mary
- Morgan's heading home presentation earlier is that we have over 880
- Airbnb is in our community. By comparison to other counties in Indiana, only Indianapolis and South
- Bend have more. Places like Fort Wayne have less because they regulate them there by a sample. And so
- when we think about the housing choices in the community and the 880 units are set aside for short-term
- or Airbnb rentals, especially in the city of Bloomington, there's another rock to look under into maybe
- how we're creating some challenges for housing for what Mr. Greiner mentioned
- with the BDC and attracting businesses here to house workers as opposed to those units being rentals.
- And so while that is going on from an economic standpoint, those homes do generate in keepers tax revenue
- too. So while we are also beneficiaries of it, but there's,
- There are some challenges there with that many units in our community that are set aside for that Airbnb
- use. I hope the city of Bloomington through their hand office really takes up some regulatory behavior
- in the next year to really think through how much is too much on that. But on the last note, I am sorry
- I'm not with you all. I'm in the state of Ohio next door where there's a really a lot of sad Buckeye
- fans, especially as I'm wearing my IU hat all over the state. I will do so on my way back through Columbus tomorrow.
- I'll just leave it on that. Go IU, et cetera. We'll see you on the flip side after the Rose Bowl. Thanks,
- everybody. Thank you. And make sure you chant the O-H-N-O as you wear your hat. Appreciate it. All right.
- Thank you. OK, so last but not least, again, as we are in the spirit
- Hopefully we can continue to have the spirit of the holidays all year round. But because there's a lot of dark.
- I don't know how many times right now. But I will choose to shift focus to light. And so I just want
- to say to the auditor staff, I always call them the team, the table team. I appreciate that. Everybody
- has gone through or is going through a whole lot of stuff this year. And you all continue to show up
- as much as you have for us. And we definitely appreciate that.
- see other teams around. And I think that we have a better team in the county. And I'm not just saying,
- but I'm saying. So that being said, I just appreciate all of you all. I know sometimes we can kind of
- irk each other and just kind of do all the things. But we still smile and we say thank you. To the two
- newbies on council, y'all did a phenomenal job. Counselor Henry and Counselor Feidl for stepping in.
- There was a lot this year and every month this year we can highlight at least
- to at least one event where the next month was like, hold my beer, there's more to come. But we continue
- to persevere and we'll continue to do so in 2026. To my colleagues here, all of you virtual and Councilor
- Huck who aren't here, I continue to be very grateful for all of you. There have been moments where I
- did not think that we would be banded together with certain votes and situations.
- that we you're shocked me. And I really appreciated that. And I think that, you know, again, sometimes
- some of us kind of maybe pushed us more than others into uncomfortable moments. But again, I think,
- you know, we need that because I think that I don't think I've seen the level of scrutiny of county
- council ever.
- And I think that we are doing this all for the right reasons. It's not for vanity. It's not for fame.
- It's not for any of that. But we really care about our community. And we appreciate that. And I just
- appreciate my colleagues really coming together, especially last week after I think it was Kat said
- it was a six hour and 27 minute meeting. So I appreciate that. I know our meetings are a little bit
- longer. But at least we get through a lot of the business.
- and don't let people sit through there and table them. So that being said, I just, again, appreciate
- that. I appreciate everybody. Also, we got a very nice card from the Monroe County Humane Association.
- I think that was one of our group's people that we funded through the Sophia Travis Grant Committee.
- So we appreciate hearing or seeing that. Again,
- The other thing that I wanted to say is there has been a lot of conversation and I want my colleagues
- to pay attention to it close as we continue to go through the year with the CIB and the redevelopment
- commission and the city and the conversations about there's been some talk from council members on the
- city side about land swaps and I've been trying to pay close attention to that. I don't think any of us have
- have been privy to the conversation. However, I think we should stay tuned and be very mindful of what
- our council colleagues do on 401 North Morton Street. And maybe they'll talk about it tomorrow. They
- have a meeting. Their last meeting tomorrow is at 630. So again, just appreciate everybody, all the things.
- department head and council or, you know, employees of county government. We definitely appreciate that.
- And without that being said, we are adjourned for 2025. See y'all in 2026. Thank you.