- Good evening, everybody. Welcome to spring and welcome to yet another county council meeting. Today
- is Tuesday, March 24th, 2026. And we have a quorum. So we will go ahead and start here in the night.
- You know, we have counselors, David Henry, Iverson, Decker, Wilt and Fidel and not present yet or virtually
- is counselor Hawk.
- So we'll announce her when she's here. But since we have our quorum and we can go ahead and do our business,
- first thing is first. All those that are able to stand, please stand for the reciting of the pledge.
- I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands,
- one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
- Okay, all right. Next up is the adoption of tonight's agenda. Does anybody wish to amend tonight's agenda?
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. Madam President and Council, the Aviation Department has requested that their
- request for additional appropriation, item 8C, to be tabled to our April 14th meeting. All right, and
- are there any other
- amendments to tonight's agenda. All right. And seeing none. All right. So seeing there are no other
- amendments or changes to tonight's agenda, we have a
- We still don't have anybody joining us virtually, so we can still do this by voice vote. So all those
- in favor of adopting tonight's agenda as amended signify by saying aye. All those opposed, same sign.
- OK, motion carries. Next up, we are.
- Item four which is public comment. And so this is for items that are on that are not excuse me on tonight's
- agenda So if you are here present and then at you Hill room, you can come forth to the lectern here
- sign in you'll have up to three minutes to You'll state your name and speak on items not on the agenda
- If you are joining us virtually via teams, you can raise your hand. It looks like we already have somebody
- but again, you can raise your hand state your name and
- and y'all have up to three minutes in Teams land as well. And you can speak on items not on tonight's
- agenda. So before I go to Teams, do we have anybody here present in the Natt U Hill room? Okay. Anybody, anybody.
- My name is Talisha Coppock. I'm with Downtown Bloomington and the Convention Center. And I'm here to
- speak tonight about the properties and the residential units at 424 South College, 432 South College,
- and 222 West Second. As you know, those were purchased by the innkeepers revenue with the purpose to
- develop the Convention Center and tourism 16 years ago.
- It's been part of a long-term vision for that area. I wanted to share with the council tonight that
- we're super grateful to the Monroe County Apartment Association. Together with local landlords, they've
- come together to provide some housing options for the 17 residential tenants that are in those buildings.
- A letter was sent to the tenants last week listing five apartment buildings in one house.
- that represent over 35 units. It's a variety of rental rates from $549 to $800 a month, and we also
- included a heading home telephone number
- the 812-955-0538 number to call for additional assistance if they're interested in deposit information
- or utilities. But I would like to share also that those landlords have come together with some ways
- to reduce a few of the barriers for a tenant who's moving into a new place.
- waived application fees, some credit checks that will save them a cost if they use their current payment
- history. So it's taking some time to work through all those little nuances, but I think it's very beneficial
- and educational of
- you know some of the properties that are out there and are available. Yesterday we sent a flyer and
- today we posted some flyers in the hallways.
- About an open house that those apartments are going to be hosting on April 11th from 1 p.m. To 4 p.m.
- There'll be representatives on site that can help address questions and address some of the You know
- different nuances of those those units. So I think that'll be a
- helpful. It's a tough time and recognizing any kind of help like that is important, and these are options.
- Nobody has to take them, but they're just options and they're available. But we'd just like to thank
- the apartment association for coming together to help provide that for them. Thank you. Thank you very
- much for that update. We appreciate that.
- Now you can go ahead and come on up. And again, sign in, state your name for the record, and you'll
- have up to three minutes. Okay. Good evening, council, county council. My name is Tia Arthur. I'm the
- executive director for Monroe County CASA.
- I think this is my first meeting that I've been to in my official capacity, although I've been with
- CASA for 14 years. I wanted to just share with you a few things that we have going on at CASA. A lot
- of people ask, why should I be at CASA? Why is this important? And it's important to our community because
- we have a problem with child abuse, and that's why CASAs are needed. So the month of April is Child
- Abuse Awareness Month,
- Also Prevention Month, so we'll be kicking off this month of April with a rally here at the courthouse.
- We'll have some speakers, including State Senator Shelley Yoder. She'll be offering some remarks. And
- after the speakers, we'll be doing a walk around the courthouse square. We'll have signs, we'll be offering
- blue ribbon pins
- in order to promote awareness about this issue in our community. Beyond that, we'll be doing every Friday
- in the month of April walks around the courthouse in the afternoon. So feel free to bring someone with
- you and just have a walk around the courthouse square. We'll be on the south side with, there'll be
- a representative from CASA to offer blue ribbon pins to you, signage, some talking points. So if anyone
- asks you what you're doing, you can tell them.
- And also beyond that, I would like to, in addition to inviting the whole community and the council to
- participate in that, we've moved to a new office and we'll be having an open house. It's next Tuesday
- from 5 to 6 30. We're in Fountain Square Mall now. So we are just right across the street. We love our
- new space. We just moved in yesterday.
- officially. And so I would invite anyone in the community who's interested in talking with us or seeing
- our new space to please come and visit us. We're in Suite 321. And in addition to that, we are always
- in need of volunteers. We've got a wait list for kids waiting for a casa. We are always looking for
- board members who are interested in supporting our mission. And that's all I have to say. Thank you.
- And I have these if anyone is interested.
- We actually have an extra one up here for her, so you're good. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank
- you very much for that, and we look forward to participating. And for the record, we do have Councilor
- Hawke that has joined us, all seven of us that are here. All right. Next up, we will go, since we've
- already had two public commenters here, I'm going to go to Teams.
- and it looks like the person with the screen name of Susan Hingwa has their hand raised, so you should
- be able to unmute yourself, state your name for the record, and you'll have up to three minutes.
- Good evening, this is Susan Hingwa with the Monroe. Can you hear me okay? It's a little faint. I don't
- know if TSD would be able to help us with that. Is this any better?
- much better. Okay, perfect. Okay, good evening. This is Susan Hingle with the Monroe County Women's
- Commission. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak. I wanted to briefly address an incident
- that occurred last week involving the Monroe County's Women's Commission, not to assign blame, but because
- it raises an important issue about process and support for our boards and commissions.
- Our March meeting was properly noticed in full compliance with Indiana's open door law. When commissioners
- arrived, the building was locked. After some time, we were eventually let in, only to be told we could
- not remain in the room because our meeting was not listed on the county calendar.
- It was also spring break, which may have contributed to the confusion. This was inconvenient and frustrating,
- but more importantly, it put us in a position where a public body that had followed the law was effectively
- prevented from using public space to conduct public business. What we did, we did what we were,
- what we were required and allowed to do. We had forum and agenda and a lawfully noticed meeting, so
- we met anyway outside on the benches on county property. I want to be clear, I don't believe this was
- intentional, but I do think it is symptomatic of a deeper issue, namely the fragility of the systems
- that supports boards and commissions, especially
- volunteer bodies. Boards and commissions rely on basic infrastructure, access to meeting space, clear
- scheduling processes, and consistent staff coordination. When those systems fail, even unintentionally,
- it sends the message that this work is optional or incidental rather than an essential part
- part of county governance. This matters all the more in a moment when there are conversations about
- reducing or restructuring support for boards of commissions. More broadly, if meeting rooms
- and administrative coordination are uncertain, then public service becomes unnecessarily difficult and
- public participation suffers. My ask today is simple and constructive. First, that the county review
- and clarify the internal processes around room access and calorie
- calendaring to ensure that a properly noticed public meeting cannot be displaced by clerical
- or communications gap. Second, the council reaffirmed its commitment to boards and commissions by ensuring
- that the basic logistical support required to function is treated as a core responsibility, not an expendable
- one. The Women's Commission and all county boards are often made up of volunteers who show up because
- they care about this community and want to contribute
- meaningfully. The county created these bodies for a reason. Our system should make it possible for them
- to do their work not harder. Thank you for your time and for your attention to this issue. Thank you
- and we appreciate you bringing that to the attention of the full county council. Thank you very much.
- Next up I will go to the screen name Maria Douglas. You can unmute and state your name for the record
- and you'll have up to three minutes.
- Good evening, my name is Maria screen name Maria Douglas and I serve on the Monroe County Women's Commission
- as well at this Council's appointment.
- I also want to speak about what happened at our last scheduled meeting and why it matters beyond a single
- incident. So, as Susan already said, when commissioners arrived for our monthly meeting, we were met
- with locked doors. The meeting had been properly noticed in accordance with Indiana open door laws.
- We finally, you know, were able to, I think,
- Well, somebody let us in the building that knew that we have been meeting there for about four years.
- And then we were told by Joshua Huber, which I believe is on this call today, that we had to leave because
- we were not on the internal calendar. So we did, as Susan reported, we met on the Sophia Travis benches
- out on the south side of the lawn with the lovely placard that has a commitment to
- women and women in this community. And just as a reminder, the Women's Commission does exist to advise
- local government on issues affecting women, girls and marginalized genders to bring gender equity into
- policy decisions. Over the years, it has included civic leaders such as Shelley Yoder, Senator Shelley
- Yoder and current county council member Liz Fiddle. It has historically served as both a watchdog and
- a pipeline for public leadership.
- Despite this legacy, this commission, in my time, the last four years, has been largely underutilized,
- even as commissioners continue to show up and do substantial work. Attending public meetings, contributing
- to justice reform discussions, and most recently developing a gender equity rubric to help county officials
- or businesses to evaluate how our policies impact women and marginalized genders.
- It would be easy to dismiss the locked door incident as a scheduling mistake, but process, as Susan
- has said or alluded to, is the backbone of public accountability. So when the commission follows law
- and is still prevented from using a public meeting space because of an internal clerical oversight,
- it sends a message.
- There's also broader history here. This commission has experienced internal tensions, leadership turnover
- and years of being sidelined. That context makes incidents like this feel less isolated, less like isolated
- miscommunication and more like a pattern of marginalization. So as you know, Susan mentioned and said
- that we are volunteers giving up our time because we believe in civic participation.
- We had quorum and we fulfilled every legal requirement to meet, so we went ahead and meet. I personally
- take this body very seriously, especially in this climate when women's rights are being rolled back.
- And I do ask also for a review to what happened and to ensure that this advisory commission, all advisory
- commissions are supported in practice and not just in name. Thank you so much. And again, thank you
- for bringing that to our attention.
- All right. I don't see any other movers here in the night you who room or hands raised via teams, but
- kind of want to go back to both rooms here. So just want to do last minute call for anybody that has
- not had an opportunity to speak on items not on or that are not on tonight's agenda in the room here.
- If I may, Madam President, provide some commentary based on the last two public comments.
- became aware of this issue the night of the meeting. Contact was made with TSD. They did say it was
- an oversight. The TSD was prepared to come in for that night, but the meeting occurred outside on the
- benches and we are looking into the matter. Okay. And then I'm glad you had mentioned that. And has
- anybody reached out to formally apologize to the commission?
- the information that I just provided. In reality this is the first time I'm hearing of this incident
- in detail. I do know that a contact was made with Commissioner Madera that night but I don't know I'm
- assuming she did apologize but other than that I'm not sure. And then I guess once we have a protocol
- put in place
- like to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. In part, this oversight happens because
- typically boards and commissions adopt an annual meeting calendar, and that hasn't occurred yet for
- the Women's Commission. So that led to part of the unusual circumstances for this event, because if
- a board and commission adopts the annual meeting schedule,
- the beginning of the year, the meetings get put in the book, and then it's a reoccurring thing. This
- board meets every Thursday. And I think that led to some of the confusion, and that's neither the fault
- of the Women's Commission for not adopting a schedule yet, and I don't want in any way to make it sound
- like that. But I think that led to some of the confusion because we do get in the habit of those reoccurring
- meetings. Right. And just to be clear, they don't have to as well.
- knowing like my other job and dealing with boards and commissions. You don't have to. Right. Routinely
- all of the boards and commissions do. Correct. And I just like I know you said it but I don't want them
- to hear like just because they didn't this was again a clear oversight. And so something like this you
- know happening. So we'll apologize. You know and we want you all because we have council appointments
- as well want to make sure that we
- have an understanding that we don't want you all to feel like this is something that is completely
- intentional. And being a liaison to the boards or the Women's Commission before and seeing some of the
- past history, we don't wanna make you all feel that way at all. And I hope you all hear the sincerity
- in our voices that we will work to rectify the situation. Let me present that, yep. Hand raise. Okay, okay.
- And so I see Commissioner Madeira has her hand raised. And before we move on, I just wanna take a look
- at any more last minute public comment here. And then I will go to Commissioner Madeira. Hi,
- thanks so much. And just to confirm,
- Yes, it was very, very unfortunate. It will definitely not happen again. We don't want any commission
- to feel disparaged. We don't want anyone to show up and feel that their time was wasted. And it was
- very unfortunate. I could not attend that meeting since I was on the road and for the meeting was absolutely
- properly noticed. And we will absolutely get to the bottom of what happened and make sure that that
- does not happen again.
- Thank you very much for that, Commissioner Madeira. And seeing no other hands raised virtually, we appreciate
- all the public comment that we have received tonight, so thank you all very much for that. Next up.
- we will have department updates. And again, these are for items not on tonight's agenda. So if there's
- a department here in the Net Youth Room that would like to give the council an update, you can come
- to the lectern here, or you can raise your hand via Teams, and you'll have up to 10 minutes per department
- to speak on those items. So do we have any takers? Seeing none there, and do we have any virtually?
- also seeing none. Okay. We will move on. So thank you so much for that. All right. So next up is item
- number six, which is consent agenda items. Council, I move to approve the following consent agenda items
- for March the 24th.
- A, the treasurer's request to fund 1000-0003 County General Treasurer, the creation of account line
- 38010 service maintenance slash repair dash equipment. B, the probation department's request to fund
- 9143-0000 JDAI coordination grant for a category transfer of $1,800 from the supplies category to the
- services category.
- C, the probation department's request and fund 9145-0000 JDAI programming grant for a category transfer
- of $820 from the supplies category to the services category and finally D, the approval of the following
- summary minutes as presented January 22nd, 2026, joint council and board of commissioners work session.
- February 9th, 2026, joint county council and board of commissioners executive session.
- February 9th, Joint County Council and Board of Commissioners Work Session. February 10th, 2026, County
- Council Meeting. February 16th, 2026, Joint County Council and Board of Commissioners Executive Session.
- And February 24th, 2026, County Council Meeting. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second on
- tonight's consent agenda items as presented. Does any council members rather have any questions or comments
- on these items? All right, let's see.
- none. We'll go to public comment. If there's public comment on tonight's consent agenda items, you can
- come forward to the lectern here in the night. You have a room or raise your hand via teams.
- Seeing none, since we have everybody here in person, we can voice vote. So all those in favor of approving
- consent agenda items as presented signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay.
- Motion carries. Next up, we are into item seven, which are the hiring freeze reviews. Council, I move
- to open for discussion and possible approval of the clerk's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze
- and be allowed to hire and fund 1215-0010 election fund voter registration and one part-time
- voter registration clerk with a request to fill date of March 25th, 2026. Second. All right.
- We got a motion and a second, and I see that we are represented here with the county clerk, Nicole,
- or county clerk Brown and Kylie, hey, welcome. Okay, call me Nicole. No. Informal settings, you will
- get your title. All right. And what do you have to add on this item? Are we just doing them in a row?
- Yes, we're gonna do each one separately.
- So this one is the voter registration clerk. I'm largely going to let my election supervisor speak about
- the vacancy, but it was very unexpected for a very good reason. Our part-time voter registration deputy,
- her partner in life got a fancy smancy chef's job in Michigan and
- Was leaving and so she wants to be with her partner understandably. It was it was a shock. She's a very
- talented young lady Obviously it comes at the most inopportune time given that we're preparing To start
- early voting and we will miss her dearly, but we do need to fill that position as quickly as You take
- over so for this position it is a part-time position so for them they are very
- mainly focused on getting all the materials ready for Election Day. So while the rest of us, the full-time
- employees and myself are busy helping with early voting and making sure things are covered,
- They help with covering lunches for us so that we do get a break. And they help with making sure items
- are getting finalized. And it's just very crucial that we have a bipartisan team of them. So at this
- point, we are short on the Democratic side. So it's very important for us to get this filled so that
- we do have the bipartisan. And we're not having to pull our full-time employee to help with the tax
- that they're doing. As for early voting, we will have to have one of our early voting full-time
- voter registration clerks at early voting. Thank you. I already saw hands raised, so I will go to Councilor
- Hoff first and then I'll go to Councilor Iverson. Yes, you answered the question that I was going to
- ask because I know you have to do the bipartisan. I'm sorry that it didn't click with me when I was
- speaking with you at earlier time.
- But you've already covered that, and so I appreciate that. So I understand it needs to happen. Of course.
- Councillor Iverson. As always, we put this hiring freeze in place because of our concern about the fiscal
- situation here in the state of Indiana and particularly Monroe County. Can you talk a little bit about
- the fiscal impact of this request?
- So for this individual, they are here typically 28 hours a week. We do have them currently set up on
- a schedule of 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday. They're leaving earlier on Friday that a way
- that they are able to still be within that 28 hours. But if there is an instance where they have to
- stay over, they are just working their normal hours. So it's not increasing by having overtime or having
- any of the comp time or any of those individual items. It's just their base pay.
- Any other questions on this item? Yes, Councilor Hall. To be clear, there's no benefits covered. You
- wanna make sure, thanks. And seeing no other questions or comments from Council on this item, we'll
- move forward to public comment. If there's public comment, you can come forward to the lectern here
- in the room or raise your hand via TAMES. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
- Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawthorne? Yes. Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor
- Henry? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. Next
- up is item
- Council I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the clerk's request to be exempt from
- the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1000-0001 County General Clerk a full-time cashier
- clerk with a request to fill date of March 25th 2026. Second. Okay and clerk Brown what would you like
- to add to this? Madam President esteemed members of the council as I stated in my
- paperwork that I was submitted. This is a critical role. We are down to two cashiers from four with
- my predecessor and we bring in an incredible amount of money on behalf of the courts on behalf of,
- you know, prosecutor's office, uh, infraction diversion program where you can pay to avoid getting points
- on your license. And of course,
- As you know, we are subject to the State Board of Accounts, and so those two people help to cover, we
- have a limited number of people who handle the money, and that is to be able to trace back errors or
- concerns or issues, and so it is imperative that we have two people in that role. One person is absorbing
- it now, but the sooner we can get someone in that role,
- Thank you. Thank you for that. I actually had a quick question because I was looking at this. It says
- currently down to down from four. So you already to be clear, like you're asking for one right now.
- OK. And then the other thing that I wanted to ask a couple of things is it says and the checkbox here,
- which Michelle, is this the one
- that you created recently. Okay, it helped tremendously, so thank you for that. Let's see, sorry. Ah,
- this is where it is. It says, have you attempted to distribute these duties among current office personnel?
- And it checked yes, but I just wanted to check in with you since you checked yes. How is that working
- right now?
- One person obviously is very difficult, and if there is an absence, an emergency, a vacation, I do not
- have someone. As far as internal controls, we do not want everybody in previous clerk's administrations
- Everybody had access to the money. Anybody could collect money. There were clerks having to pay out
- of pocket because I know of at least one clerk who took some copy money and put it in their pocket instead
- of receding it in. That does not happen under my administration and largely that is because my predecessor
- narrowed it down.
- so that only a limited amount of people are touching the money. And that helps us. We have always had
- a clean state board of account audit. I want to continue that. I'm sure the future clerks as well. And
- so because of that, the limited number of people who touched the money, I want more one, which is where
- I'm at now with this unexpected vacancy. OK.
- Okay. And then the last thing is because I know other departments have kind of looked at the idea of
- trying to do this as well, but I wanted to ask you since so there's currently a full time person that
- is a cashier clerk right now, right? Okay. Have you given any thought to potentially making the second
- one part time?
- the amount of money that comes through the clerk's office which is in the millions I would be concerned
- with only having a full time and a part time. My preference would be to have it be the full time. Okay.
- Okay. All right. Well, I will open it up to council members and I'll go to Councilor Haug first and
- then I'll kind of background. Right. I know you have a large staff
- So I'm wondering if rather than to see if there's someone that you could move part of the duties over
- maybe you look at the full staff and see which duties you could combine and move one full-time person
- over here so that you know you have that double eye setting on that because that's what I would certainly
- suggest and what I've suggested to other departments who say
- I'm short a person, and I'm going, you're the department head, you're really smart, you're going to
- have to work hard to work this out. And remember, when everybody's talking about how much money the
- county's going to have when we get this income tax, the city will keep their hands to themselves,
- at any rate, that's not going to happen this year, and it's not going to happen next year.
- So we're still, and then to be short,
- But nevertheless, I appreciate if if you've looked at the full staff and see what you might do. Right.
- I actually thank you so much. I would just gently remind the council that my predecessor started seven
- people down. I've lost people as well. And I know of at least one other position that I have not been
- able to fill. So we have distributed the work and we have you know, there does have to be cross training and
- respect to the State Board of Accounts. We don't want any one person to not only handle the money, but
- be able to write themselves checks. So there is a division of labor. And so that's why I'm saying that
- it is critical that I fill this role. Thank you. Councilor Wilts. How long has this position been open?
- Less than a month.
- Thanks. All right, are there any other questions? Yeah, Council Member Blair. Same questions before
- the fiscal impact of filling this position. I believe that would have been submitted to you, and I apologize
- that I don't have it with me. But the person who left had some seniority, so I mean, I feel that this
- person would just be starting out, so we wouldn't be paying out longevity.
- you know, or anything like that. Great. That appears in the documentation. And I think it's up on the
- screen here. So thank you for putting whoever put that up on the screen. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.
- Any other questions or comments on this item? Yes. I just wonder if there has been any consideration
- to delaying hiring.
- I know this is a busy time of year on the voter side, but, you know, is it possible that you could put
- this off? Counselor, my preference would be not the person who the only person that I have as a cashier
- now is getting ready to go on an extended vacation out West. And so I have somebody who covers lunch
- and bathroom breaks, but they are in a primary role within
- the clerk's office, and so the opportunity to get it advertised, get someone in there and get them started
- so that they can at least take simple payments. There's all kinds of payments that come through the
- clerk's office, as you know, garnishments, judgments, things like that, and so even just taking simple
- payments and building on that knowledge base would be helpful to me.
- you're saying maybe I misunderstood that. Oh, one of your staff members is his name on the ballot in
- a primary. So their time is sure. I didn't understand what I did not. I heard you say something about
- primary, so I didn't know what you meant. Did you not hear? I don't know what I don't think she did
- asking me about.
- asking when you if you look back there I think you'll see that that there was something said about there
- was one staff member who was in a primary what I don't understand their primary task are something else
- not to do primary task okay thank you sorry oh my goodness you scared me
- I thought if you get off work to go because you're running a primary we need to know about it. Councillor
- Henry. Yeah, thank you. I'm back on that. Picking up on Councillor Wilz's question though. So you have
- staff that's taking vacation? The cash year, the loan cash year that I have now had already put in to
- go on vacation and it had been approved. I think what she was referring to
- I have someone who typically covers very simple payments so that someone can go to the bathroom or get
- a lunch. It's those garnishments. Yeah, I track that part. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is
- the position has been open 30 days. Do you have a candidate in mind and one staff on vacation where
- you're short staffed? I have some resumes that I can go back to, but I do.
- It's been long enough that I do need to advertise for that. And so I'd like to advertise and get some
- other candidates and get them hired as quickly as possible. So just going a little farther with Councilor
- Walts question. And so is your person that you're so you have a how long is the person on vacation?
- This like does that vacation hit before you expect the person to start? Because if the idea is that
- you're trying to expedite the hiring to cover a I don't know how long this
- If I can advertise. But yeah, if there's advertising hire, the vacation happens in here. There's some
- cross training. I'm just trying to understand your timeline of what you're trying to cover and when.
- So I believe that I can get someone hired quickly. I have a trainer that can work with them to get them
- through or. Understanding having. Having an understanding of what
- the different kinds of payments. We can, not for very long, but for some time, like a garnishment doesn't
- have to be processed today, but it should be processed relatively quickly. So simple payments, I can
- get a new person to learn how to do those are pretty easy to pick up with our Odyssey payment system.
- But the more complicated payments that are gonna take more training
- It helps to have both of them in the office, somebody who's processing those payments while the other,
- the new person is getting trained. I understand that. I mean, I'll get off of it, I guess, but just
- one more time. So the one's the vacation for the employee? When are they leaving? When they are in leave?
- In April. So that's like two weeks from now. Yes, I believe I can have someone hired in less. And they're
- back presumably in May? In end of April.
- And then, but we need to re-advertise the position. Yes, but I'd be prepared to do that tomorrow with
- your approval. So, but you're not going to have coverage for that person with this new hire in that
- time period? They'd have to start like in two weeks, right? Yes. Thanks, Madam President. I guess,
- Again, I just kinda wanna go back to the fact that is there a consideration to potentially, because
- I think this is where, again, just crunching numbers and kinda going through my head and hearing our,
- or remembering our presentation of what we have. I'm a little concerned about
- this full-time and I'm just wondering could it work if you have the full-time person and potentially
- partner that with a Part-time person could you take that into consideration? Because that's kind of
- what is on my head on whether or not like how to vote on this and
- Yeah, I'm just I'm curious again to think or to wonder if because it sounds like other other departments
- have done this as well. And I'm not saying one size fits all approach for other departments, but I know
- the further and further we get into the year, the further and further it's going to be really difficult
- for us to continue to keep saying yes to positions. And so I'm just wondering if there is an opportunity
- where you could take a look at this and go, maybe we could get by.
- with having this as a part time instead of full time. And if we were talking about something other than
- significant amounts of money, it might be something that I could entertain, but there's not a lot of
- margin for error, of course, and to keep it as far as keeping the clean record that we have with the
- money. And so,
- We've we've we tried when we had to full time into part time because that allowed you know for some
- more flexibility. I no longer have that flexibility and it's very positive. So when I talk about the
- employee who can cover lunches and bathroom breaks right now she's
- Having to take off to take care of her mother-in-law and again Which I think is what counselor the counselor
- heard me say her primary duties are not that she's just covering intake Excuse me She's just covering
- and taking simple payments so that long enough for you to go to the restroom long enough for you to
- get you know some lunch down and most of the time, you know lunches are not even possible if if
- It's a day, especially where Mondays and Fridays are really, really tough days because people are they
- got paid on Friday. So they're trying to get tickets and judgments and, you know, child support and
- all kinds of payments through through the system. And so it would leave me tighter than I am. And I
- started at a deficit following my predecessor. OK, thank you. Thank you. Yes. I appreciate the clerk's
- comments here and some of the back and forth that we've had trying to figure out a solution for it.
- Let me throw something else out to see if this might help the situation and see what the clerk thinks.
- I appreciate that you said because of the financial components of this position that this is not the
- one where you want to try one full time, one part time, and I wonder if a path forward here is as the
- clerk either looks at upcoming
- vacancies in other roles or upcoming opportunities in other roles as this would make itself available
- if that down the road since that whatever role that might be would not have a financial component perhaps
- that goes to a part-time to help the county council start to meet some of these obligations gives you
- what you need now on the financial end of this and maybe gives us sort of a path to get
- where councils got the financial considerations and you also have different financial considerations.
- So thank you, counselor, and that is a sell. If you're gonna do a sell today on a path forward, you
- have given me the best sell in terms of consideration. Obviously, it would depend on the role. I didn't
- anticipate my voter registration person moving to another state to get another job ahead of early voting,
- early and absentee voting.
- It just depends on which department it is. I have some that are incredibly busy, like my criminal division,
- for example. They kind of are appalled when they see the number of arrests from the previous weekend,
- and we just start off behind the eight ball on Monday morning.
- I could maybe consider a path forward in a different division, but it would just be, I couldn't promise
- you, the very next role, I'd be ready to go to a part-time opportunity. It would just really depend
- on who left and how dire it was that that role be filled. But I again would remind you, I started off
- with lower numbers than my predecessor, and you know,
- their regard thing to say is you can always come back and ask us for another position that has never
- happened under my administration and I don't I'm not a crystal ball reader that's not in my job title
- but I don't see you approving a brand new position if I came and said I needed one. I appreciate that
- very much and you know I've had that conversation over the years. Yes I wonder if
- maybe to specify a little bit clearer for me. I look at the calendar and I'm amazed how fast this year's
- going, but it's still March 24th. There's still more year ahead of us than not. And we will do budgets
- August, September. I wonder if the clerk would be willing to commit between that this time now and then
- we would find another role that could do that, help us hit some of this fiscal
- concerns that we've legitimately gotta hammer down and figure out. To be clear, do I understand you
- wanting me to ask a full-time person to go part-time? No, just as we, as you're looking at other, I
- mean vacancies occur, other things occur, can we look at some other role that might fit this shoe a
- little bit? Should other things occur? Yeah. I would be honored to sit down with you and figure out
- if there was a path for it, is that fair? And I don't know that that council
- is willing to take it, but we gotta figure out a way forward around what you do running your own department,
- but also how we're going to get through the gate on some of these constraints that we've probably yelled
- about too much up here, but are important to mention. All right, any other questions or comments for
- the clerk on this item? Seeing none.
- None we'll move on to public comment if there's public comment on this item You can come forward to
- the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via teams Yeah, oh looks like I thought a hand raise
- okay This is a screen name is a telephone number so you will Unmute yourself state your name for the
- record and you have up to three minutes to make your comment on this item. I
- Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead and state your name. Yeah, this is Garrett Fig. I'm
- a Monroe County resident and also work at the Monroe County Clerk's Office. And I just wanted to say
- real quick, I just. Can you still hear me? We can hear you. I'm sorry, yeah, I just wanted to.
- kind of reiterate what Nicole was saying, that it is a very important position, especially I believe
- to have two full time ones, mainly just because like she said, they are, they're very complex payments
- on some of them. And when you get, you know, a hundred checks in the mail on Monday or something to
- be processed, you know, some will be garnishment, some will be just other random checks for
- all kinds of different stuff. It could be case fees and people are just confused on what to pay,
- how to pay, because they're paying a different party. But yeah, it's coming through our office,
- you know, it kind of gets lost in translation once they get out of court and stuff. And it's just a
- constant, a constant turnover, constant questions. And it takes probably two years for someone to really
- start to understand all the details of like the different payments that there are. And it is good to
- just have someone seasoned who's full time and you know, it's part time people are good too to be helpful.
- But I think in the past, we've had a minimum of two full times and then hopefully a part timer as well.
- And yeah, I just don't see how it would be possible for that one person
- to be covered with a part-timer in the meantime. But I know that there's obviously fiscal decisions
- you guys have to make. So I just wanted to throw that out there and thank you all for your time.
- Thank you. Are there any other public commenters wishing to speak on this item? All right. Seeing none,
- maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Feidl.
- I would like to hear again exactly what we're voting on. Can we do that? You are voting to allow Clerk
- Brown to hire a full-time cashier clerk. Yes. Councillor Hawke? Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes.
- Councillor Decker. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes majority five to seven or five to two.
- All right. Thank you for that. We will move on to item C.
- Council I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the clerk's request to be exempt from
- the hiring freeze and allowed to hire in fund 1215 dash zero zero six to election fund election board
- 45 additional election day positions as outlined on the agenda Second all right. We got a motion and
- a second and yes, okay, so most of these are going to be
- Judges and clerks, those additional numbers that we have added are corresponding with our numbers that
- we have anticipated to be working at the polls on election day. So I think originally our number for
- judges was 70. We're asking for an additional 10, which would bump it up to 80. Right now we have 76
- that will be stationed out on polling locations on election day.
- These are to give us that space for the backups for individuals who call in on Election Day the morning
- of or they don't show up or they leave halfway through the day so that we have those backups to cover
- and ensure that there is a bipartisan team for all of the different tasks during Election Day.
- And for judges, that's going to increase us to $1,750. For clerks, it would be an additional $2,550.
- And absentee counters, it's an additional $1,750 for that line. And then our absentee worker B, we are
- increasing to another eight. And they are $25 an hour.
- that is again for us to have those backups in case if a team that we have for travel board is unavailable
- to go out or if one of those members of the travel board are unable to go out that a way that we have
- them already in their paperwork's ready and if we need them we can pull them. And then the last one
- is the absentee worker C and those are the ones of requesting that they begin immediately. Those are
- our leads who are
- taking care of absentee military overseas ballots, mail ballots, and then also training will begin next
- week on Wednesday, Thursday, sorry, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and just ensuring that we can
- get them in here, get their paperwork done, and for them to go through their training for early voting
- in less than two weeks.
- Thank you for that. I'll start off because I had a quick question and thank you for the breakdown of
- the absentee workers because that was one of my questions here, so I'll cross that off. My other question
- is, I know when we did the 473 positions that we approved back in February, February 24th meeting, absentee C
- Had eight and originally they were supposed to start early voting And so this group of C says that we
- need to start immediately. So would we approve in February also start immediately or would they still
- be in early voting? This is the same eight so it's not increasing the number of positions. It's just the
- those that line needed to start immediately. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Okay.
- Thank you. All right. Any other questions or comments from Council? Yes, Councilor Iverson. Could I
- have someone please pull up the fiscal impact, which is page 59 of the packet? I'm a very visual person.
- I like to see things. So this helps me a lot. And for older eyes, could you zoom in?
- Please. I'm not going to. All right. First of all, I the the recruit the note I wanted to make the first
- one I wanted to make here is that there's on the bottom in I guess that salmon. It says the recruiters
- start March 28th. That's four days from now. Correct. So there's there's some some urgency to this request.
- Yeah. And then the blue
- are the numbers that you articulated earlier. That's ten positions for judges, 17 for clerks, 18 for
- absentee board, and then zero for absentee workers because of the change in time. So we're looking at
- an investment in elections about for a total of it's in the green box $22,050.
- Okay. So that's the total fiscal impact of these, what did I say, 45 additional positions. Yeah. So
- that will be also covering your absentee worker B line. Those are where you're going to have quite a
- few hours because they are our travel board. They will travel
- Monday through Friday. They also travel on Saturdays sometimes on Sundays if they need to they're also
- occurring mileage. So if they are going further away, they will be getting extra same thing with the
- hours. I do know that last year we did have one into one
- of our teams that did travel up north went past Indianapolis to go to a hospital. An individual had
- been in a car accident and they wanted to be able to vote. They got to vote, but we had to bring in
- a second team of travel board members in order to cover the rest of those
- trips that we were supposed to do that day and so that's just giving us that extra cushion in case if
- something happens. That way we're not having to rush in here and get a couple of people approved. We're
- not having to try to get paperwork finalized in the last couple of hours and just making sure that we're
- covered for this election. Council Henry. Thank you for pulling together the fiscal impact. So I wanted
- to maybe ask a few questions here. So help me understand.
- of the judges and the clerks and the Election Day staff. So our numbers increased for the Election Day
- staff. Our judges went up in a couple of locations. We've had to increase to four judges at some of
- our locations due to the number of registered voters at them. So our highest location will have
- 7,215 registered voters that will go to that location if they do not take early voting as a benefit
- for them. And then our next highest location is 6,179 voters. So ensuring that there's enough staff
- at those to cover those people and not knowing the anticipation of who's going to go to early voting
- and who's not going to go to early voting. Okay, that makes sense.
- Are these judges that could float or be moved to another polling location in the event? Like those locations
- aren't as robust as you're hoping for. Yes. So what we've done in the past is if a polling location
- has somebody that leaves in the middle of the day due to them not feeling well or any of those items,
- then we'll ask a location that has more if they are comfortable with sending somebody over.
- If they are, then we do that. If not, then we pull from our backup list. And I guess the question I'm
- getting to is,
- These are this is kind of surge numbers right like this would be if we needed to call them in but right
- so you actually want to process them as ready to go employees, but they wouldn't actually start incurring
- a like we wouldn't start paying them unless they actually are called.
- Yeah, so we've actually already worked with HR and E on this. We have we're going to get the paperwork
- ready for these individuals, but it will not be processed until we know they are going to be working.
- So for early voting, we're doing it by week. And so then we have their paperwork. They're trained. They're
- ready to go if need to be. But if we don't need them, then they know that they're not necessarily going
- to work. I appreciate the amount of work and
- Unfortunate amount of paperwork. I kind of missed the days of just hey, it's a pretty I'm here some
- money or not And now they're almost employees that may or may not get an hour's worth of work in Yeah,
- I guess the comment then is that while this is the fiscal impact it is a ceiling and it's possible that
- we will not actually incur the 22,000 depending on how things go. Thank you for that Councillor Fiddle
- and I'll go back to Councillor Decker
- Yes, I was going to follow up on that. So it seems like this would be the max that it would cost but
- it could cost less. So there are they essentially on call. Yes. So for all of our backups we treat them
- as on call individuals. They understand that whenever they're signing up they know that they have to
- go through the training even if they are almost positive that they're not going to work because for
- every election every single poll worker has to go to training.
- election so even if they work in the primary they still have to go to training in the general even if
- nothing changes so I mean we're constantly making sure that they're getting their training done and
- only utilizing them if we absolutely have to if there's a way for us to during early voting especially
- if somebody in the morning leaves early we just call somebody from that afternoon shift to see if they
- want to come in a little bit earlier and then that away we're not having to pull in extra people or
- any of those situations so
- I don't know. Remind me do they get paid for the training? Yes. So they get paid for the training and
- then they're on call but there's no pay unless they actually go in. Correct. Is that correct? Yeah.
- Okay. So they have to sit at the ready. Yes. Go in if necessary. Chancellor Decker. First of all I appreciate
- very much always an election administrator that's thinking about the management of
- the people that you have in both early and election day voting. So I'm going to ask you some questions
- because I think this is a public education component that people truly need to understand because these
- are relevant to things going on. So first, just the travel board. Can you walk through a story scenario?
- of how that, if somebody's out there watching and they think Travel Board is someone that helps you
- take your trip to Panama City, what actually is the Travel Board and what do they do with an interaction
- with a voter?
- So for travel board, there are multiple different people that can take advantage of this. We have individuals
- who are just homebound or they're uncomfortable with being out and about on their own. So we send a
- team to their homes or if they are in a facility or if they're in a hospital, they'll go to that location
- that the individual's at. They come in and they help them with filling out their ballot if they need
- it. They have a communication with them that is better than what
- they sometimes can get at early voting. And so having that is very crucial for all different types of
- people. We've had a couple of individuals who take advantage of travel board as they're blind, and it
- would be easier for them to just have somebody read it to them than to try to use our VPD system, which
- is through, we just switched brands. It's the election,
- We just switched brands. We used to use not micro vote, omni vote and the state just switched over to
- a new one. Enhanced voting. And sometimes it's difficult for them to use those so travel board is a
- much easier solution for them and just being able to have that as an accommodation that we can use is
- very crucial. Is two travel board members why? One Democrat, one Republican so everything is always
- bipartisan.
- see that really throughout that entire both election day and and early voting and just about everywhere
- throughout the election office. So if anybody thinks that their local election is fixed, they've not
- met our workers yet who are pretty tough and they're on both sides, right? I had to tell something that
- Miss Kylie said. I'd like to gently remind the council that
- While I don't expect these kind of numbers in this election, we had an increase in the number of travel
- board members who went out during COVID because, and a lot of it was, my recollection is on the IU campus
- because students who intended to vote early take advantage of that polling site at the Indiana Memorial
- Union. That was me, sorry. Okay, take advantage of that polling site that we have at the Indiana Memorial Union.
- wake up on election day, realize that they have COVID. So I got in my car ahead of time, went to Lowe's
- and we bought the goggles and we brought hoods and things like that so that they could be safe and that's
- back when we put things in plastic bags because we didn't realize that it really doesn't transfer via
- paper. So I don't expect those kind of travel board numbers on election day now like I did when we were
- in the midst of a pandemic, but people certainly as they become aware of Travel Board, certainly it's
- an option that leaves you with some dignity still allowing you to be able to vote and I appreciate your
- consideration of that. I also wanna add the ABSB line is also our reconcilers during early voting. So
- they are the ones that are in the ballot room
- Processing the ballots from the day before alphabetizing by precinct by day and putting them into each
- of the bins So that is also including in case if we need a backup for one of them that a way we can
- bring them in and not have to worry about Not having a bipartisan team or having to pull a lead or one
- of our full-time staff members to help take care of that Here's the last question that I swear. I won't
- I don't there's no more when you think about
- the kind of headaches of Election Day. Election Day is a little different than early, and it's almost
- like two different sports games, but Election Day, what is the headache that you think about that makes
- you say we might need additional staffing at either the bigger ones or whatever needs floated to? What
- is it that you are thinking of so the public kind of hears a little bit about that in your management?
- So the main thing on that is just ensuring that we are providing the most accessible possible
- interaction of voting for each of the voters. And it's not necessarily making sure that we're covered,
- it's to make sure that the voters are covered. Knowing that they can come in and they know that there's
- gonna be a team that's bipartisan, ready to help serve them and help them. And it generally is just
- on election day, when you come in, you don't know if you're gonna come in to 15, 20 people who just
- didn't show up, or if you're gonna come in to only having one or two. In 2023, my first election,
- within the office. I was just down there as a helper, honestly, and we had made phone calls to five
- different people who just didn't show up, didn't call, didn't do anything, just completely were nowhere
- to be found. So then we had to bring in extras to cover those positions, and a couple of them ended
- up coming from another location. And then in 2024, my primary, very first election as supervisor, we
- came in and there was about 25 of them that
- Either are called in saying they weren't feeling well or they just didn't think that they could do it
- or they didn't show up. So it's Really? That's your main concern on Election Day coming in is is the
- staff going to be there and Do we have enough time to get them replaced before 6 a.m? And we in this
- community if we have bad lines
- Everybody up here will be screaming, yelling, and they won't remember this meeting, right? And you will.
- You will, but that's not enough in the moment. And that's 6 a.m., 6 p.m. So I just appreciate you talking
- through that. I think sometimes that gets skipped past and people need to understand for what is essentially
- a part time public service that acts kind of like a part time business. This is a real struggle, particularly
- in that finite time.
- We're doing everything that she said and more, but also on election morning, we're using couriers because
- you may have gotten there and thought you had everything that you needed or there wasn't something in
- there, and we've gotta get those to the polling sites. I get out and drive to the polling sites if someone
- has forgotten something or we didn't have it available at that time, but we would have it before six
- o'clock. There's just a number of balls being juggled ahead of,
- six o'clock and I may remind you that I believe there was a home in Ellitsville that caught fire a few
- election. And the fire department was our polling site, can you imagine? And so there's just a lot of
- different balls trying to get somebody to help us do what we need to do. So because at six o'clock we're
- wanting to
- open those polls and get everybody who's in line ahead of going to work ready to rock and roll. Thank
- you for your consideration. I'm still a little confused on absentee worker C. Are you asking for eight
- positions tonight or is that part of a previous request?
- No, so the previous request was the eight positions, but their start date was early voting. And these
- individuals are the ones that take care of military oversea ballots, mail ballots, and all of those
- ballots had to be out by the 21st. So they worked last week to process those and get them out in the
- mail. But then also the other four ABSC workers are our leads for early voting, and they need to be
- making phone calls, getting people scheduled,
- We're coming down to the last couple of weeks, actually days, honestly, because we have training next
- week. That helps. Thank you. Yeah. So in this just kind of conjured, another thing is for absentee see
- because originally it was said that these are additional positions that we are needed, that we approved
- from almost in May, February 24th. So
- because absentee see originally back in February, we approved had eight and then there's eight here.
- Are we saying this is an additional eight? So that's 16 total or no, it's just eight, just eight. And
- this is the group of people that are going to be started immediately. Yes. Got it. Yes, Michelle. I
- just want to say there there there's this confusion with requests that they begin immediately. There was
- no timeline with regards to absent worker C, that only applied to the recruiters per that fiscal impact.
- So is absent worker C and recruiters the same? No. So when I looked at the one that was approved the
- original time, it says early voting dates. So it would have been prior to the early voting dates.
- Well, OK. Early voting dates begin on April 7th. All right, because that was what was forwarded and
- I put that in there. So let me I want to pull something really quick. Yes, for clarification.
- I think it was right when we pulled up the fiscal impact on the screens, absentee worker C was blank
- in terms of positions for tonight's request. This was what was submitted for the 473. So it says no,
- absentee or down at the bottom it says ABSB and ABS and mileage.
- The only thing that says recruiters start March 28th and through including Election Day. There's nothing
- else on this that said any other dates. So that's why I was confused on why you were saying could they
- start immediately. So when I looked at it, it was showing that it says that the judges, clerks,
- not judges, clerks, absentee worker A, B, and C would begin early voting dates
- And my assumption was that that would be April 7th, which is the first day of early voting. And I'm
- not seeing that. Where are you seeing that? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Where did that come
- from? What is that on? That was on the document that was presented to me. I'm not sure where it came
- from. From our last meeting? I think it might have been from the meeting where we approved it. Yeah.
- This doesn't really have a fiscal impact though. I was just saying there shouldn't have been a timeline
- because there was never one stated. The only one would have been for the recruiters, correct? Yeah,
- there was only one for the recruiters. Okay. So there any other questions or comments on this item?
- All right, and seeing none, I'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment on this item,
- you can come forward to the lectern here in the room, or you can raise your hand via Teams. Seeing no
- hand movement, or anybody coming in the room here, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Hock?
- Sorry. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor
- Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Thank you very much. Have a
- good night. Next up is item D from the probation department.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and approval of the probation department's request to be exempt
- from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire two part-time probation officer assistants with a request
- to fill date of June 1st, 2026. The two positions will be paid from several funds that are outlined
- on the agenda. Second.
- All right. We got a motion and a second. We are joined here by our chief probation officer, Linda Brady.
- Welcome. Thank you. Good evening. Thanks for taking the time to listen to my request. I did come before
- you the last time at your February 24th meeting. And at that time, I mentioned that the probation department
- had 18 staff vacancies. There were five full time vacancies and 13 part time vacancies.
- However, in the past four weeks, we've had two additional probation officers resign plus one community
- corrections field officer resign. So yeah, so at this time we have 21 staff vacancies. So of that eight
- full-time, 13 part-time. So at this point, we also know that two of our community corrections field
- officers have advised us they're gonna leave us in the next one to two months. We don't have dates,
- but one is,
- Leaving when her lease ends in May and the other has been given a job opportunity in another county
- He's waiting on to come through so we know we're losing two more So at this point, we're asking to only
- refill some part-time positions our probation officer assistance just a reminder I
- spoke about this last time I was before you and also during the county budget hearings that we didn't
- refill 12 probation officer assistant vacancies in 2025 to save money in our user fee funds because
- at the time we those of you who've been council liaisons to our department know that our user fee funds
- were just dipping and dipping and dipping and so in order to stabilize those funds we didn't refill
- those positions
- So we're down to now two probation officer assistants, and what their job is is to operate the day reporting
- program. Some people call it blow and go. People come in in the morning, somewhere between 100 to 200
- people in the morning between 7 and 9 a.m., and take alcohol tests. And also, if their number comes
- up, their color comes up, they would submit to a drug test. And all of our drug tests, for the most
- part, are urine drug tests. They're observed.
- Collections with most of our clients being male and so we only were down to one male and one female
- On staff at this point and they are working the maximum number of hours that they're allowed to work
- as part-time workers So we reassigned POA duties probation officer assistant duties to our full-time
- community corrections field officers However, we're now three short of them and two more leaving so
- we're just down to the bare nubs of
- being able to reassign duties. We just, we can't do anymore reassignment. So the season for filling
- POA positions is right now after IU spring break. That's the time their students start looking for jobs
- for the summer and for the next fall. And so we would like to go ahead and during this hiring season
- to go ahead and refill the equivalent of two 28 hour part-time
- probation officer assistance for up to 56 hours a week. Now, we always work around class schedules,
- so we never know. It's almost always IU students who get these jobs. That's who applies. That's who
- It's not the most glamorous job. Let's just be honest about that. So IEU students want to get some experience
- and that's typically who applies for these jobs. So we try to work around their class schedule. So it
- could potentially take two, three, or even four people to
- get to the 56 hours it just depends on the class schedule because we have very specific times the 7 a.m.
- to 9 30 ish a.m. in the morning is our big big day reporting time and then we have an afternoon drug
- testing session as well so we need very specific times for them to be working and so I can't sit here
- and say I've got it's going to be two people because
- I have to be sure that we have at least one if not more males and have to make sure their class schedule
- matches. So I'm really asking for the ability to fill the equivalent of two 28-hour POA positions around
- 56 hours. So that's it in a nutshell. Thank you for that explanation. Thank you. Looking to my colleagues
- here to see if anybody has any questions. Councilor Iverson.
- Yeah, I was wondering if you could walk us through briefly the different funds that you're utilizing
- to make this happen. I was afraid you were going to ask me. Well, if it's confusing me, then I imagine
- it's confusing other people too, so. Well, it is very confusing. We have eight different funds that
- pay for probation officer assistance, and I can read them here. It's also in the packet on page 61.
- In case folks want to look at it, too. I have it. I have it with me. So so county general is one special
- purpose lit and the public safety lit for alcohol and drug program user fees and adult probation user
- fees, community corrections, user fees, problem solving court, user fees, juvenile probation, user fees.
- be it. They're eight. Right. And those eight accounts are then on the screen here. And so what you're
- doing is you're taking the percentages listed on the right hand column from those accounts and that's
- how you're splitting this up. That's how Anthony split them up to be clear. I was on vacation. Credit
- due or credit is due. Right. I think Anthony's watching. Anthony Williams, he's the one who came up.
- It's very confusing because
- So many of these budgets have very specific things that we can spend them on. And so if it's adult,
- it has to be for adult services. Juvenile has to be for juvenile services. So we just have to be really
- careful how they're used. So it all fits together. But just to let you know, we were very careful with
- how we assign duties. And what I guess the takeaway that I'm coming from here is that reduces the burden
- on the general fund.
- by using these different funds to split out? It does. That's how we've done this for the past couple
- of years this way, so the general fund is just one of the many funds. Right. Okay. All right. Any questions?
- Yes, Councillor Hock. Yes. What's the dollar amount that you're suggesting come out of the special purpose
- because we're watching. Whatever is budgeted. I don't have that in front of me. I'm sorry. Whatever
- is budgeted. The reason why I ask that is we know that we're running tight, trying to make sure that
- we get through before we need to change the rate there. Just for the public, we reduce that rate and
- purposely in order to spend down because that
- Oh, you're talking about the I'm sorry. I was thinking the special public safety special purpose. Yes.
- OK. So that I'm asking because we need to be watching that very carefully because we did reduce that
- rate and the dollars going into there. And we know we're going to have to adjust it at some point in
- time to make keep making them whole, which we promised. Right.
- And I don't want to break that promise. So I want to make sure whatever is happening that we are watching
- it carefully. Well, to let you know, all of this is already I mean, it's all budgeted. There's nothing
- there's no appropriations being asked for. That's all was already approved during last year's budget.
- So everything's accounted for. I understand that we have to recognize that even if we did approve a budget,
- we approve budgets far more than what our revenue. See, that's what a deficit is. When you plan to spend
- more than you plan to bring in, that's what brings in a deficit for some reason. Some people didn't
- seem to understand what a deficit was. I know that you don't. Well, I do understand what a deficit is,
- Marty, and I also want to point out that we've been around this a lot before. So I just want to make
- sure that we're
- keeping an eye on special purpose. Yes, we are. And which of the other positions are you speaking of?
- You're saying I heard you say 28 hours. So. On some of them at any rate, so I'm just asking, is there
- anything that is needed for benefits for any of these folks? I'm sorry, you're you're talking about
- the POA. Sorry, I need to say benefits for any of these folks that you're hiring.
- And also to let you know, Marty, we had a long-term 20-year-plus juvenile probation officer retire at
- the beginning of this year, so her salary in special purpose lit is sitting there not being spent because
- we haven't asked to come refill that, so it's more than covering that. Good, don't. Let's keep us whole
- there. Okay, but the others, you were talking a lot of
- The part-time only gets FICA. That's my question. That's it. Okay. No health, no overtime. No. We don't
- have any paid overtime for anybody in our department. No. Health benefits. No health benefits, no. No
- part-timers that I know of in the county get health benefits.
- Correct. Okay. And considering how long you've been in county government, is it between 38 and 40 years?
- 41st year. Okay. Thank you. I'm pretty sure you know what deficits are and how to run budgets. So I
- appreciate that. All right. Council members Decker.
- Well, one thing, I'm sorry, I can't use the microphone. You should probably be careful about the advice
- you take from this side of the podium sometimes. But one thing I just want to say is, when I look at
- this and what you've done, essentially, you've had a pantry of things we've not gotten into. And it's
- now at a point where, what, two to three years, maybe beyond, it's got to get in a little bit so that
- functions happen.
- Am I trying to sum this up pretty well? I'm not sure. I'm not sure which one. Basically, you've kind
- of held the fort and we've not had to engage these positions, but you've reached a point where... Right.
- We, on our own, came up with a way to try to cut spending because
- All of you know who worked with us before that the user fees are just going down, down, down in terms
- of the collection percentage. There's only so much you can do to get people to pay. We don't want to
- put people in jail, and we don't. Our judges would never put anybody in jail for not paying their fees,
- but because people can't pay their fees,
- It gets absorbed somewhere. And I believe one of you had even asked me the question about what about
- like pretrial? Does that if someone can't pay fees to be on pretrial, does that keep them from being
- on the programs? No, it doesn't. But it gets paid somewhere. So if they're being ordered to get drug
- tests, it's coming out of our budget, meaning our budget. And if they're put on home detention instead
- of being in jail, it's coming out of our budget.
- budgeted by you all and being absorbed for those kinds of things. So we don't turn anybody away because
- they can't pay or can't afford to pay. That just that doesn't happen here in Monroe County. Well, and
- the reason I asked that question and my metaphor is poor, but
- the reason I ask that is if we have a department head who is being exceedingly thrifty and trying to
- figure out how to manage it and also the state is always watching how you do it and trying to either
- model it or the legislature trying to change it or whatever, but if we have that I think we need to
- occasionally say thank you and reward that a little bit with
- Otherwise other department heads will say I didn't matter if you don't save them or you do save them.
- It'd be better just to kind of con them and and move on down the road because they just they don't recognize
- it. So thank you for doing that. I also think that the values of the community are reflected in supporting
- the effort to keep people either out of jail or into programs that help to keep them out of jail.
- So I just want to offer that. Well, thank you. And you bring up a good point, too, because we have an
- annual justice services conference in Indianapolis every year. It's all the probation officers in the
- state, pretrial officers, court alcohol and drug program officers, and problem solving court staff.
- So it's a really big conference. And they have asked our department and Judge Dikoff to present about
- our pretrial program. And so they know that
- we are a high quality program or they wouldn't be asking us to train other programs in the state. So
- that's a compliment to our judges, Judge DeKoff and our staff. Any other, yes, Councilor Wilts. It looks
- like it's 6% of the position what comes out of special purpose lit.
- It's a really small amount that comes out. Regardless, I thought I would get that out there.
- First of all, thank you for your diligence. I support this for all the reasons that Councillor Decker
- points out. You've been very thrifty and it's much appreciated and obviously we need these positions
- and you're cobbling together
- Basically, you're cobbling together this role out of part-time positions. I think this is a great example
- of what we were talking about earlier, or I should say Councilor Deckard was talking about earlier with
- different departments. Looking at these, what can we do? So thank you for that. This past week, as a
- member of the Community Corrections Advisory Board, I received an email from
- Becca, and in it, we were being asked to look at several things that need to be submitted, and that's
- fine. One of those was the collaboration plan that is being submitted to the Department of Corrections.
- That's required by statute, right? So when I read that, it really lays out
- beautifully. I mean, if not a little stilted because it's question answer, but it really lays out what
- y'all do. And I was wondering, is it possible to share that with the rest of council? Yes, absolutely.
- That would be for your reading pleasure, just because it's not long. It's not long, but it really is
- like, okay, so this many people work on this, and that does this, and so this many people work on this
- anyway. It's just
- Those are the types of things where you're like, oh, this is just a handy resource. It is. And it was
- actually required because years ago, there were many probation departments and community corrections
- departments across the state. They were in competition with one another for the same clients you might
- have in some county. You might have a probation officer and a community corrections officer, which is
- kind of redundant, as we know, and because there are
- There are only about 20 counties like ours where community corrections is part of probation. So the
- legislature wanted to ensure that everybody's collaborating with all the different partners. And this
- was even before the local JREG, Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council. And we always post this on our
- website. And I do get calls from judges, actually, from other counties and other chief probation officers,
- you know, can we borrow your collaboration plan?
- have at it, we'll share with anybody. So absolutely, we'll send it to you. That'd be great, thank you.
- All right, any other questions or comments from Ms. Brady on this item? Seeing none, we'll move on to
- public comment. If there's public comment, you can raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the
- lectern here in the room. And seeing none, may we please have, before we do?
- I think what I would like is to have the motion restated because the motion says two positions,
- but Ms. Brady is actually needing two to four positions with a maximum hours of 56 hours per week. So
- we don't wanna limit her to two people, but she's actually going to need three.
- Am I understanding that request correctly? Correct. Council, I'm going to restate the motion given the
- information just shared. I move to open for discussion and approval of the probation department's request
- to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire two and up to four probation officer assistants
- with a request to fill date of June 1st, 2026. The two positions will be paid from several funds that
- are outlined on the agenda.
- And limited to 56 hours per week. And limited to the 56 hours per week. I think that should say 56 hours
- for total of all positions. So it's not 56 hours per position. Right. Gotcha. The total request.
- All right, so I'm going to restate the motion so that it's nice and clean because I can see the legal
- department screaming over there. I move for I move to open for discussion and approval of probation
- departments request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire two and up to four part
- time probation officers assistance with a request to fill date of June 1st, 2026 and the minimum numbers
- of hours needed to 56 per week for all positions.
- The two positions will be paid from several funds that are outlined on the agenda. Why did you say minimum
- instead of maximum? I meant maximum. Okay. That's all they're going to get paid. The most that they
- could get paid and they could use is 56 hours. And we're good. At a minimum but a maximum, right? Isn't
- that what you're saying? That is exactly what I said. Okay. And you don't need them before June 1st.
- It just depends if I can get them hired before June 1st. Any other changes? Okay. We're going to open
- for discussion and approval of the probation department's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze
- and be allowed to hire two and up to four part-time probation officer assistants.
- with the maximum number of hours needed 56 per week for all positions. These positions will be paid
- from several funds that are outlined on the agenda. Second. That was beautifully stated and restated.
- Okay. So we all got it. Okay. So everybody clear on the motion? And as we were going before, may we
- please have a roll call vote? Thank you very much.
- Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes.
- Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Feidl. Yes. Councillor Hawke. Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
- All right. Thank you. Thank you very much.
- All right. You need to buy a lottery ticket. All right. I know. Next up, we're going on item eight,
- which is council business. And first up is Highway Department Council. I move to approve the Highway
- Department's request and fund eleven sixty nine dash zero zero zero zero local road and street for an
- additional appropriation of two hundred thousand dollars in the services category. Second. Right. And
- we have Miss Lisa Ridge here. Welcome. Good evening.
- We're still working on closing out these projects. We've been negotiating back and forth with contractors.
- So we did actually get it down to a decrease of $58,370. So we just need to do the appropriation so
- we can work towards getting this project closed out. Pretty self-explanatory. But checking with my colleagues
- to see if y'all got any questions on this item.
- Seeing none, we'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment, you can raise your hand via
- Teams or come forward to the lector. Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Henry?
- Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes.
- Councillor Hawke? Yes.
- Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right, thank you. Next up is item B. Council, I move to open for discussion
- and approval of the Highway Department's request to amend the salary of account line 15815 Highway Engineer
- SO Special Occupation Exempt. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Ms. Ridge, what would
- you like to say on this item?
- I provided some information in your packets for comparisons for county and licensed engineers across
- the state. Also for the four current licensed engineers at the city of Bloomington. I believe they actually
- were getting ready to hire their fifth. You have those comparisons in there. We've had this job posted
- since November with not much luck of getting some good candidates.
- We also can receive a $40,000 stipend which we have for the last ten years for having a licensed engineer
- on board. Since we had one in 2025 we've already received that. We would really like to work hard of
- getting another licensed engineer on board so come 2027 we can apply for that 2026 stipend and continue
- forward. So my request is increasing that salary.
- I believe in my work back here. So if you did an average across the state of Indiana for engineers,
- it came out to comparable counties, $109,440.63 as an average of just those comparable counties.
- Those counties which was Clark County Gibson County Harrison County Morgan Bartholomew Madison Vigo
- and boom Monroe County right now in the salary ordinance our engineer would be paid ninety seven thousand
- three sixty five if you look at the current 2026 salaries for the city of Bloomington The city averages
- a hundred and twenty one thousand four hundred and seventy four dollars I believe they were actually
- getting ready to offer a
- the fifth position at a higher rate than the base of the 92-474, which will go up. I'm just asking to
- come up to the county comparisons. The extra funding, right now the county engineer position is paid
- from 1176 and 1197, which is Stormwater and MVH Motor Vehicle Highway. I would be requesting that this
- additional be paid out of cumulative bridge
- we've always considered of taking some of the salary from that because it is such an important role
- for our bridge program and our federal aid projects and overseeing those projects. So if it is approved,
- the extra funding from the difference between the 109-440-63 to the 97-365, I would come back to you
- and create the line in the Kuhn Bridge Fund.
- Right. Thank you very much for that. And council members, do you have any questions? Council Member
- Henry's hand first. So Council Member Henry. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Lisa, for walking
- through that. So the use of the CUMBridge caught my attention in that you had mentioned certain federal
- activities there. Do we have to
- Identify if the engineer do they have to bill against that fund? The hours must only be for federal
- or certain things. Are any of these restricted in that way? Counties actually pay 100% of their engineer
- out of Cambridge. So we're tapping three funds to fund the position at this point. Again, we wouldn't
- have to catalog. Correct. Our engineer does serve on different capacities with all those divisions of
- the department.
- They will look at plane reviews. They help with drainage calculations. They help with the stormwater
- projects, especially the ones that are in-house right now. Redbud Heights is going on. So we utilize
- that engineer. Bid documents, bid preparations. So. I got that. And then the benchmark counties, are those
- for just this role or are they the ones you usually go to as benchmarks for like county highway things?
- So I went through the most recent copy that I had that LTAP puts out that are comparable counties to
- us and I think there's around five listed in that list and they list that out by population. I believe
- the latest copy I had of that was 2023 so I just pulled those counties but then I went online to Gateway
- and pulled what the salaries were. I appreciate just
- for public edification where the basis of why those counties we have had other department heads I think
- select counties that might have maybe bumped the average up a little bit if we're comparing to say you
- know Hamilton County for example which would not be comparable. I see the smiles because we all know
- what that means. I looked at some of those. I appreciate that. I appreciate the good benchmarking there
- too. I think we're good here.
- Yes. I'm just wondering really how much the reluctance here for administration here at the county for
- allowing housing starts and be assisted so that people will want to live here and can afford to live
- here because
- an engineer can pretty much choose to live other places and so we need to put our best foot forward
- and make sure that these folks want to come to Monroe County and that we welcome them with an opportunity
- for housing. Now it's not our place to build houses but it certainly is our place to get out of the
- way and let others build this housing for the
- people we'd like to employ and in addition to which I would like for them to live here so that when
- they pay their income tax we'll get it to help support county services so I know you don't have anything
- you can't stop or start housing projects but I think that's something we have to keep in mind at the
- forefront is what are we doing to
- make sure that we are putting our best foot forward to get the best employees we can and that they'll
- want to live here and that they can afford to. Any other questions or comments on this item? Yes, Councilor
- Wilts. I am just now, I'm sorry, seeing this because I missed the email. So I got, you know, I read
- the agenda request but I'm just now seeing the numbers.
- And so I just want to make sure that I'm understanding that your request is asking for an additional
- $12,000? $75,000? Okay. I'd have to come back to do the official create the line and I just wanted to
- start the discussion that if it's possible to move in that direction to be able
- So I have to come back to create the line, do the salary ordinance, and do an additional encumbridge.
- I'm going to go to the auditor since I saw her hand up. Sure. I was just going to comment on the health
- of this fund. The cash balance is currently $2 million, roughly $29,000. It's budgeted at $2 million,
- almost $73,000, and we're
- we're expecting, you know, for two settlements to get about $2,362,000. So it's, you know, it will roughly
- have that balance remaining that we expect to get this year between the two settlements. I was just
- going to say I also appreciate you bringing it forward discussion. In fact, I think when we were having
- the conversation about this,
- or three weeks ago. The recommendation was that this is now an issue that's larger than what a department
- head can do. It's larger than what a liaison and a department head can do, and you have two of those,
- and now the council has to, with all the constraints that we have, have a discussion out here in the
- open about this, and I think that what you presented
- And again, when we have thrifty department heads who figure out how to bring money in and manage money
- in that kind of way, I think we often need to just stop sometimes and say thank you for that. And also
- we've got to be aware that there's a reason there's a vacancy here and how do you get this moving so
- that you fill it. So I appreciate the discussion and look forward to hopefully this coming back with
- the specifics that we'll vote on.
- So I have a question about engineers. So it says 2025 engineer salaries, county comparison, and I get
- that. But then down below, it talks about the city of Bloomington and you have different types of engineers
- there. So I'm wondering why those figures were there. That's the they're all licensed engineers,
- transportation engineer, but I don't know why they call them what they title them.
- Are your engineers what type of engineers do you have? Basically a transportation can special specialize
- and do minimal drainage calculations and such can do some bridge design review Paul was Paul was unique
- as our engineer. We were very fortunate to have him for ten years. He was very knowledgeable on railroads and he
- learned more about the bridges, but he was a much more transportation type engineer when he came in.
- But he had he brought so much knowledge of everything else and different aspects of the projects. So
- we would probably be looking more of a transportation engineer like other county highways tend to hire
- versus a drainage engineer or some specialty in that area. So are the engineers you have, are they licensed
- professional engineers, LPEs?
- The one that I'm requesting to hire, I only have one. OK, yes. And to be able they have to be licensed.
- OK, and that's in the job classification. And then that's the only way that we can get the $40,000 stipend
- back into the county. Thank you. Michelle, did you have something? Yes, I have a couple of questions
- if I may. Currently have a highway engineer on in the salary.
- ordinance or he's retired? He retired February 6th. February 6th. Okay. Because I was just going to
- ask where, you know, this salary needs to be effective just for the new person because I didn't want
- there to be any confusion with the current person and the new hire. So that's why I wasn't sure if we
- still had someone.
- It's bacon. It is bacon. Okay. All right. And then the other thing is, if you could, when you make your
- salary recommendation, could you round it up to the nearest dollar? Because that's what we do with all
- of our salaries. So there's no change. All right. Councillor Wilts. So in just still processing your
- your information sheet here. It does sort of look as though you are comparing 2025 salaries from your
- comparison counties to the 2026 salary for us. So you're actually shorting your request. Sure,
- I'm sure I am, but that's the only way I could find it in Gateway was the 2025s and calling around.
- compare it then, but if you compared that to the $94,000 salary, which is our 2025, and then you look
- at that difference to request. Ours is... Okay, I see what you're saying. See what I'm saying? You could
- be asking for more and justifying it, and I'm making... I don't know why I'm doing that, but it just
- seems like... No, I totally... I completely understand. That makes more sense. If we're really trying
- to look at, hey, getting this on par with others, that
- And that's why I kind of threw City of Bloomington in there, even though I knew it was really out of
- range for us. But it was their 2026. Yeah. And I didn't want to. You also have to look at the special
- occupations and things and where other positions fall and where they fall in the classification and
- the flow chart.
- in the organizational chart. So that's also keeping that within that chart, if that makes sense. Okay,
- thanks. I'm just doing a little. And you know, I don't even know if the salary will work.
- I could be coming back to negotiate something else. You know it's really hard to get an engineer right
- now. They're in high demand and then other places offer you know they work from home. So many days we
- don't really do that because we don't do VPN and everything anymore. But some work 35 hours some work
- 40. So it might come down to have to negotiate if I get
- It's just this is getting us into at least a more competitive area to be able to get candidates to even
- be able to talk to. Councillor Henry, I think you had your hand up next.
- Yeah, I did. Thank you. And I thank you for bringing up the VPN. It seems like every three months we
- hear about that. It's a benefit that never came back. And yeah, I know that at least the commissioners
- and their staff are listening to this on our meeting tonight. But there's another example of how a benefit,
- which gives us really no cost, would give us an opportunity to bring people to the counties an added
- benefit and the offer to somebody. I guess my question is,
- Focused on the benchmark counties, we may have already touched on it, but I just may want to ask this.
- So Harrison County and Morton County, and yeah, those are counties that population and geography are
- considerably smaller than ours. Do we know what mix they're using to get to the salary band there? Harrison
- County has, I believe, the riverboat. Okay, so. They have more money than we do.
- Is the city wants to create a district north of here that maybe we can put a riverboat in Miller showers,
- I don't know Morgan Morgan County, I mean that we it's neighbor neighbor But do we know the mix as to
- how they're funding or I do not okay? Cuz that's like right up the street and they're paying considerably
- I do know they've had a lot of turnover in the last few years So I don't even know if they have a position
- filled at this point Probably the Harrison County
- Okay, anyway, so I guess the reason I'm asking this is that, yeah, I'm looking at counties, but I understand
- those populations are a third to a half of ours, and they're finding ways to fund this position north
- of us in terms of it is a comp. So we're lagging a market of counties that are much smaller in what
- I'm seeing here to try to attract that personnel. In this case where maybe. Some counties split engineers now.
- Some of them will hire one engineer but then split them within within two counties. It's just it's so
- broad over the whole state of how everybody is dealing with the engineer capacity.
- I see your hand raised. Yes. Thanks for mentioning the fact that many counties share the same engineer.
- That's something I was going to bring up. I know that's something we talked about road school years
- ago that it was so important for us to get a good engineer and to pay them the proper amount many counties
- had to share one and it worked better because you could get someone who was top tier to
- to make sure you get the job done right. I think when we talked about this, it's been a month or so
- ago, that I was suggesting, I know highly unlike me, but I was suggesting you go for a higher amount
- because that lower amount, it's clear, unless they just love Monroe County and want to live here and
- can afford to do so, I don't know
- that what we would be offering would be enough of enticement to get them to take a position here rather
- than someplace else. I don't remember the number we were talking about, but I know I was talking about
- something higher. I think we were just talking like the 110 range, basically. If I recall right. Well,
- at the time I was trying to hopefully
- thought maybe we could take it out of major bridge but that didn't get us where we wanted to go because
- we could get that done. It's much easier if we could take it out of major bridge. More money there.
- There is more money there. You just need to get that restriction taken off at the State House. That's
- your answer. It's been done. That's just your answer. I've reached out. Allen County did it. If Allen
- County can do it, we can do it.
- I know somebody up there. That's next year's agenda. All right. So I don't know. Yeah, I don't know
- if we're getting to anything, you know, settling on anything except that it looks like you're making
- the case and it makes sense. I would point out that Kim added change our put in the difference that
- would be make a make it a line with the
- I felt I needed to go this route because I can't post it. I can't post it without having approval that
- the salary is going to be higher. That's that is correct because the motion was a discussion and impossible
- approval. So if we I cannot read that. But OK, hang on. Oh, you're putting in the total. Thank you.
- That's what I was going to ask. So this is
- The 109, 440 is the total of, it's the current amount plus the 12, or the 112 is the current amount
- with the 14, 924. Basically, you know, adding the 3% from last year. Correct. I guess I can't read the number.
- I'm going to move to open for approval for the Highway Department's request to amend the salary of account
- line 15815 Highway Engineer SO Special Occupation Exempt and set to $112,289.63. I think she wanted
- us to have a rounded up. But we didn't have the cents in there. All right, then I will. You're good.
- That we approve the highway department's request to amend a salary of account line one five eight one
- five highway engineer SO special occupation exempt to one hundred twelve thousand two hundred ninety
- dollars All right, we got a motion and a second by counselor Henry. Are there any other further discussions
- on this item? Seeing none
- We'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the
- lectern here in the NatU Hill Room or raise your hand via Teams. And still seeing none, may we please
- have a roll call vote? Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Feidl.
- Yes. Councillor Hogg. Yes. Councillor Wilz. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
- All right. Thank you very much. All right. And as you recall, we tabled the aviation department's request
- to April 14th. And next up is item D from the surveyors office. Council, I move to approve the surveyors
- request and fund ninety one eighty dash zero zero zero zero IGIO seed grant the creation of account
- line three zero zero zero six contractual and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation of
- twenty nine thousand nine hundred thirty dollars in the services category.
- second. All right, we got a motion and a second and coming up next is the surveyor, Mr Tron. Welcome.
- Hi. I'm going to just kind of start it off. Unplanned I was high fiving Linda Brady just a moment ago,
- not because she got the support and approval, but she was been with the county for 41 years and I thought
- that was amazing.
- As of Saturday, last Saturday, I've been with the county for 21 years. So that's pretty cool.
- Thank you. And this is the first time I've ever worked on a grant and I'm excited to be here.
- So as stated, I'm looking to create a line and simultaneously appropriate the grant, the full grant
- amount. It's a contractual grant.
- So we'll be meeting milestones. And as we meet those milestones, we'll upload it to Unigov. The state
- Indiana office or GIO, Indiana Geographic Information Office will send us the installments of that grant.
- And I'm here for any additional questions.
- Sorry about the 100 plus probably pages I put in your packet, but I'm very thorough and gave you everything
- that I had. We appreciate your thoroughness. All right. Any questions or comments for Mr. Randolph?
- Council votes. I'll at least say congratulations on the grant. Yeah. It's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah.
- I think going through this I've learned a lot and I think I'm going to try to keep my eyes wide open
- and cast a larger net to bring in other funds through grants to, you know, invest in our county. So
- I'm excited. I'm sorry, Madam President. I am the department's liaison. I already said that to Tron behind
- So I'm sorry. I just I should have publicly taken the baits, but thank you for the praise. Good job.
- Thank you. Any more kudos for or any questions? I have to say it's it's a team effort at the office.
- So all your thank you and congratulations is also for everyone at the office that helped support this.
- And that's our G.I.S. team. John Baten and Nick Angelo's our new G.I.S. technician.
- Okay. Seeing no other questions or comments from the council here, we'll move on to public comment.
- If there's public comment, you can come forward to the lectern here in the night you Hill room or raise
- your hand via teams. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor
- Fiddle. Yes.
- Yes. Councillor Wilz. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Decker. Yes. Councillor Cross. Motion passes
- unanimous. All right. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Next up is the Health Department. Council
- I move to open for discussion possible approval of the Health Department's request for the creation
- of a new position, clinical assistant. Second. All right. We got a motion and a second.
- Looks like we have Lori Kelly here and then board member Lisa Robinson joining us. Hello. Good evening.
- Good evening. So just to start us off this evening, as we know, we are transitioning our public health
- nursing services to public health nurses that are county employees within the department. So we have
- had two new nurses.
- who will complete six weeks of training as of April 6th. And we are going to be again starting services
- for the public in April. So opening up our vaccines and our health screenings. So the request tonight
- is to discuss a clinical support position that will help
- supports the nursing services and in the clinic. So this role will essentially be answering the phone,
- scheduling appointments, be able to do inventory, medical records, be able to pull vaccine records for
- public, be able to assist with our milk bank. So if people need to come up and pick up their supplies,
- we'll have somebody who's in the office Monday through Friday to assist with that.
- and handle billing for our services through our vaccines. And we would like to be able to expand our
- billing services for the lead testing, lead risk assessments, and for maternal child health. Thank you for that.
- Council for any questions or comments. Yes. So this is news. Congratulations on the forthcoming press
- release. And can I mean I don't want to break the news cycle. But can you tell us more about what's
- going to be in this clinic and kind of more about what's going to be part of that.
- Sure, so we will be providing vaccines, so both public stock and private stock, so if you have private
- insurance or if you just need access to a free vaccine, we'll be able to stock and provide those for
- all age groups. As far as our health screenings, we're really focused on chronic disease, so cholesterol,
- glucose, A1C, blood pressure, so those are all free for anyone who comes in to schedule an appointment.
- because the nurses will have to balance the work that they're doing in the clinic with other duties,
- so our communicable disease investigations, school health, community outreach programs, we will have
- dedicated times where we'll schedule the services in the clinic, and then there will be times that they'll
- be out in the community working. And who's gonna be directing this new clinic? Me.
- We don't have a health services director. Okay. And how long has that position been vacant? Most recently,
- maybe six weeks. Almost. Okay. And then underneath that direct or you or in the best of times a health
- services director, are there other vacancies that we currently have within that administrative structure
- for the clinic?
- No, but we have one other public health nurse position that is vacant. Okay. I'm going to I have a lot
- of questions. I'm just going to stop talking and let my colleagues ask questions. Well, let's look to
- see if anybody has any other questions or comments first. We're enjoying the listening. I thought you
- were doing great, Peter. I don't want to like. Just keep going.
- I was asked to share the org chart. So here's the org chart. You have one of the largest departments
- in the county. Where in this org chart should we be directing our attention? So the purples and the
- pinks, if that looks right. Let's see.
- We'll also note that we have two vacancies within that division. When those became vacancies, we did
- not backfill those positions. So that is our senior community health specialist towards the left there
- and the community health specialist tobacco MRC. So those duties were transferred to other positions
- within the department
- to oversee some of those services. And then the three nurses are down there in that purple color. So
- all of the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight direct reports to the health services director,
- they're all in place. There's no vacancies. So there's a vacancy with the public health nurse. Okay.
- All right.
- So, and we don't currently have an intern, but those, you know, come and go. So the public health nurse
- positions, the way that they are structured is and why their titles are a little bit different are they
- have primary duties.
- And then they each have duties where they're cross trained to provide cross coverage and make sure that
- we're covering all of our nursing services, but also making sure that we still consistently have who
- that main person is for our school health liaison, who is our main person with there's a large communicable
- disease outbreak, who's focused on those health first Indiana,
- core services that we have to meet while they will all be providing vaccinations and health screenings.
- So they do a lot. And to think about having to add on, when you're doing that case investigation,
- You're also going to need to answer the phone and schedule appointments or make sure that you're entering
- insurance in and doing the medical records. So they're still trained to know how to do those duties
- and be able to cover lunches and vacations and short term absences, but not take these on in a full
- time capacity day to day that this clinical assistant position would be.
- And where does the clinical assistant fall into this organizational chart that you're showing us today?
- So it would be going to the director. So it's an arrow yet to be determined. Correct. There's no it's
- not currently on this. And where is the financial manager? I think all the way to the right.
- Thank you. Laurie, thank you for answering an email earlier today to get me a little caught up on our
- timeline here. I just had some questions I wanted to ask on it. There's a startup activity going on
- to get ready for all this, right? So before the clinical position, if that were to be put in place,
- Who's managing some of those activities right now? Because before you open the doors, you have to have
- some processes in place. There might be already invoicing behavior at the state. Where's all that activity
- going on right now in this potential future position? As far as developing and creating some of those systems,
- That's really where a lot of my time has been spent. So creating the forms, what patient intake forms
- are we going to have? Making sure that we have all the vaccine information statements available that
- we're required to have available to the public. How are we going to compile the medical records? What
- is our scheduling system? So creating the scheduling templates, submitting all of the paperwork to the
- state and to our third
- party backs care for the vaccine program. So I've really been pulled away from other duties that have
- kind of fallen to the side to be able to work on some of these. Yeah, thanks for that. How much of that
- has to be recreated or can be borrowed from either the last clinic we had or the IU health
- public health clinic or other clinics the counties run. I mean are you whole cloth recreating this or
- are we absorbing their processes? We're creating everything from scratch essentially. I mean even the
- VAX care was a huge issue trying to transfer that from IU and Laurie got it transferred to us and we
- basically are starting all over again. So we're trying to create the infrastructure to have patients
- be able to call, make an appointment.
- business side, so to speak, of this clinic, which will generate some income, but we're just having to
- recreate everything, and we have to be ready to go mid April. We're going to be administering vaccines.
- You know, we had abruptly IU left, or deciding not to renew their contract, so we're doing this all
- from scratch. Yeah, and I appreciate that. I guess when we last really talked about this,
- You know, late last year, early January, there were two kind of overriding questions. You know, one
- was an urgency that we had to have something in place come the beginning of the year. You know, it's
- April now. And the good news is we're going to have something open. But in the intervening months, have
- we had any communication from State Department of Health on our activities or lack thereof or not having
- the clinic in the county? Has there been any correspondence?
- As far as like providing updates and where we're concerned that we wouldn't be meeting our obligations
- I think that was the big question that if we didn't have a clinic we would be in some sort of hot water
- Have we received anything on that from the state? No, we're providing we're referring individuals to
- the Morgan County Health Department For that for that vaccine all of for that particular but we are
- providing Access to all of the other services. So we're doing the
- investigations. If someone needs testing, we can technically provide that. We're just not fully open
- and functional to the public for all of these. So we're building it up and getting ready to hand it
- to hopefully a clinical assistant to manage these things. I guess my last thought is do we have a you
- mentioned kind of the gender revenue generating piece of this. Do you know how many referrals we've sent out
- in the past quarter, because it's been three months, there would have been potential Monroe County patients.
- Do we have a number of how many humans that is, or how many? I don't have a number on that. And this
- may go back to, I know when we had this conversation, Councilor Hawk and I were talking about, I think
- we called it a business plan and confused half the county when we used that word, business, but some
- sort of operational plan. It sounds like that's been, that's what you're building right now is that
- plan. Is that something that's shareable to us to see how
- Operations would work. I think the issue has been thus far We had a really difficult time trying to
- get data and information from IU When we made that transition, so it was entirely unclear You know exactly
- they had different employees doing part-time work and exactly how many full-time employees they had
- and then I frankly, you know, I I kept asking for sort of an accounting and
- some sort of PNL and they just weren't, I mean, that wasn't available to us at all. So we're creating
- all of those things real time. We don't have any past data for you. No, I appreciate that because,
- I mean, and you raise a good point there too to say these aren't one for one. Like we didn't have however
- many employees they had and there's 15 over here to catch 15 people's effort over at IU Health, right?
- It's really, I appreciate that this is sort of being recreated.
- a government service rather than a what? Thank you for that. I appreciate it. The contract amount was
- $350,000 and so that is at least that is what they were using to provide services for our county. Thank you.
- just take a liberty here and ask a couple of questions, because I wrote this down just to make sure.
- And I think Council Henry kind of touched briefly on the January deadline, since that was one of the
- things that we kept hearing about last year. So since this is something that we're moving to that will
- be open in mid April, which sounds great. Are we in jeopardy of losing any funding because this is open at late?
- Not to my knowledge, and the state's been working with us well, and we've been keeping them up to date.
- I just met earlier this month, I think a week or two ago, with the Director of Immunizations, so came
- down and did the site visit, reviewed our vaccine management plan, and our refrigerators, and the data
- loggers, and everything that kind of goes with that system. So, you know, making sure those ongoing
- communications are occurring with updates.
- From my understanding, the state understands that, you know, even there's times that a health department
- only might have one nurse, and if that position becomes vacant, then they're gonna have a little bit
- of a gap in times that services are being provided, so. And the other question that I wanted to
- ask is since you just talked about the vaccine plan. So because it's my understanding that we had to
- have everything like the plans and everything put into play before this could open. So it sounds like
- we're good on that front. So I've submitted all of the paperwork and we have that's been approved from
- the state. Okay. And then the only other question that I had left
- was going back to this position and seeing how it says process and payments and billing. Is there any
- particular reason why the financial manager that you currently have couldn't do some of that financial
- or process and the payments and billings or payment and billing for this instead of putting it on this
- particular person here?
- the financial manager handle that? So I have thought about this and so I think potentially some of those,
- yes. If we start kind of divvying up certain who's billing for which services and is it private insurance
- for one position and Medicaid for another position, you know, is that going to create
- more kind of confusion and chaos and then you have a financial manager who's reporting in a different
- division but it's crossing over now to the clinic and so then that's kind of getting involved in clinic
- duties but then they're really supposed to be working in this other division. When I've gone to see
- how our VAX care system works so when people are coming in you have to you know enter in all of that
- information you have to make sure that you have a go button that
- You're not gonna get chargebacks is what it's referring to. So then are we having the financial manager
- sitting at the desk entering that in? So it's just kind of, I think it would be too chaotic. And visiting
- and talking with other health departments, they really have a person who's kind of working that front
- office and taking on those duties within that position.
- Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. There's also insurance denials are very frequent and so there's
- going to be a small margin to aid if it's private insurance. So if that's rejected then there has to
- be someone who's versed enough in rejections and appeals to try to get paid for those services. Thank
- you for that.
- A question about the motion that I read. This is a new position. So does this need to be factored by
- WIS and classified by WIS? So we're not actually... I'll let you answer the question. Sorry.
- You're correct. This would have to be... It needs to go through the process of filling out the forms,
- going through the process with the
- council office, and then it would have to be forwarded to WIS for classification and review. So council,
- should we be approving this, or simply approving it to go to WIS, we're not saying that this is available
- to be advertised immediately? Yes. I mean, we can't advertise because we have no salary. I mean, there's
- no way to classify it.
- So if we do approve this, it will come back to council once there's a classification which allows us
- to put it into the salary good. Correct. Ernie King, were you like, I couldn't tell if you were. I had
- a thought. Part of the process to that we have to go through is I think in other job descriptions that
- were recently created, there might be some duplicative duties. So we need to look at the other
- job descriptions to clarify.
- how those interact and things of that nature, like we would with any other job description that's created.
- I'm going to switch over here now. Yeah, I go to Councilor Decker and then Wilts next and then I'll
- circle back. So the clinic opens April 1st. Am I saying that right? No, we're looking at starting to
- schedule April 7th, April 7th.
- OK, I'm sorry. I had it wrong. One one question I had just is kind of listen to this. I would be curious
- to know about referrals, particularly folks getting vaccines in Morgan County, because the thing I always
- think about is just distance traveled. Right. And I always get a little heartburn over sending anyone
- somewhere else for anything, let alone for vaccinations. And I'd just be curious about that if you all
- have it. But the one thing I as I listen to kind of some of the things you're talking about and I know
- that we get into the details of like a WISC classification and the org chart and those are all important
- things. But when something opens and it it's going day to day and managing it
- It's just got to be managed well. And so when you were talking about the clinic manager position bacon
- right. And you're kind of filling in doing that in addition to your own role and you're looking here
- to create this position to help kind of manage the managerial kind of you know who's coming in what
- they're getting scheduled for. Am I saying that right.
- that that's fair. So who's that point person who's interacting with patients who can help you know here's
- the scheduling template. So you know if I've identified this is when nurse A B and C can schedule and
- see these types of point of appointments then this position is basically then plugging in appointments
- for that time. So I could see that kind of being like
- So when I think about it, and I'm not in your field, I'm just kind of listening, and I'm glad that the
- chair of our board is someone who manages the practice and knows the hard questions to ask that I'm
- too dumb to figure out. But when I kind of look at this for the function as it starts, as it starts
- off, getting someone that is managing
- how people get into the services that are offered to see what I would call the talent, the talent who
- then treat or do all the things. Again, I'm not smart enough to know. To me, that's a bulk of the kind
- of management that's missing, at least for the public's need. Like I got to get in there. That's all
- I really care about. And while having a manager
- is probably ideal. I am worried about that function. I am also I just want to say I'm worried about
- you having to do both because public health is a massive thing and here in 12 seconds something else
- is going to be invented that becomes a headache and then in two months the legislature will change something
- else or Congress will or a bird flies the wrong way and suddenly we have something else. I just
- long-term I worry about it I feel better if the person making sure people get in and all that were managed
- better so I guess that's more of a comment here's just the last question I'll throw out to you is there
- anything we are doing not doing not asking not considering that makes that April 7th not possible so I think
- this is tricky right because some of this is reputational so and for our clients and for our taxpayers
- I mean they have to have a level of hey I can pick up the phone I can call I can get what I need so
- if we can't provide that then they're going to be going to another county and then we're going to be
- dealing with another futures situation where the health department is on everyone's
- not good list. So you're right. We have to get this right. But the thing that we need from council is
- I guess maximum cooperation to try to. Well really what we need to know from council is do you want
- us to be providing these services take over these services that you can no longer provide. And you know
- we we are moving forward hoping that we can provide those things. So is that is that what council wants
- from us because I would think
- you know, the taxpayers would expect that. And I expect that. So yes, we need this person. We need this
- person yesterday. And I would like to see cooperation so that we're not then in budget time, September,
- and we still don't have this person so that we can provide the services we need to provide adequately.
- Thank you. I appreciate that candor. I think that's the kind of thing we've all just got to say a little
- bit more of.
- among the semicolons and other things that we get into in here, and those are all important. I'm not
- discrediting that, but ultimately someone at that phone saying the 8 a.m. or some system. So the next,
- right, I'm sorry to interrupt you. The next scenario will be someone's gonna be publicly saying, well,
- they're sending people to Morgan County to get these vaccines, and the person has to get on the road,
- as you said, and that is not gonna be good.
- short for anyone. So we're the only we were and we heard this in the Community Health Day. You're the
- only I think we're the only health department, maybe one of two that is not providing these services.
- So it is a for anyone watching at home. This is a going from what we use. We did for a long time. Right.
- Yes. To a new system. And that's really what we're bridging here.
- So before I go back to, there's lots of hands, so I want to make sure we get adequate time. I see Ms.
- Turner-King has something, and then I'm going to pop over to Councilor Wilts next. I just had a comment
- related to Councilor Decker's comment about the April 7th and if that's possible. And I just wanted
- to note that since this would be creating a new position and there isn't a job description and there's
- a whole process, there is no way the WISP process can occur by April 7th.
- even after it comes back from West it has to come back to council and there's salary amendments and
- that's not gonna happen before April 7th. So yes we're we're behind and so you know it's it's frustrating
- for me because it's really challenging to try to set systems up in place
- you are going to have to work with. So we're a little bit behind in that way. So, I mean, what we're
- going to have to do is the phone calls are going to have to go to a voicemail and try to return those
- calls and schedule appointments when you can because that's like without a dedicated person kind of
- filling that capacity that's, you know,
- the option. We have to slowly just start providing the services that we can and try to adjust along
- the way. We can get positions if we can fill the director role and just kind of adjust. But you know I've
- I've talked with the nurses and said, you know, we're moving forward. We're going to do this. It's going
- to be okay. And, you know, we'll start slowly. But I'm not comfortable just sitting back and not doing
- anything. We have to move forward. Councillor Wilts, did you still have something? I do. Yes. The director position.
- still open. You'll have presumably this position open. That's two important pieces to the puzzle of
- making this work that have not been filled. So Mike, I guess what's happening with the director position
- right now? It's posted.
- You know, it's Morgan County, their starting rate just for their nurses, their starting pay is $36 an
- hour. These positions in this health services, the nurses and the health services director covers so
- much. I think it's really hard to bring in the qualified candidates at that pay.
- You have to get all the work done in 35 hours a week. I think it's just really challenging. So you're
- not getting qualified applicants still? We have not gotten received any applicants recently. We've done
- paid advertising. But yes, for the qualifications, background, history, experience.
- Yeah, so, I mean, clearly, that makes me a little nervous. It makes me a lot nervous. I mean, as one
- of your liaisons, clearly, I mean, I see it posted, and I know it's been posted for a long time. So
- the creation of a new position, that makes me really nervous. As a fiscal agent, right? I mean, that's
- just another FTE that we're going to have to
- be putting and considering for our future budgets. So feeling a little nervous. I guess one of the questions
- that I think about where to take this. Are we still going down the route of having that mobile unit
- that can provide vaccines at like township trustee offices or other community sources? Like, is that
- still happening too?
- Yes, we are still working on that. OK, all right. And but. That's also a yes. Councilor, I think proceed.
- I mean, again, this is a huge department. You have a lot of FTEs. You're dealing with a lot of community
- like issues. OK, so I there's a lot of grace that needs to be given here. And there's a lot of understanding
- that those of us sitting up on the dais do not do what you do. And and there's there's a lack of
- I think there needs to be some some empathy here. OK, so I think that needs to be put out there. So
- but but I do think if we're going to have this clinic and have the mobile unit, that's that's I'm asking,
- is that still the vision? Yes, that vision has not changed. OK. All right. And then the the the generators
- still coming and that's that's coming soon, right? So we have the generator to
- I know when they were doing the installation, they found out that the gas line needed to be resized
- because it was not going to meet the capacity of the generator. So that work has been being done.
- All right. And the generator is important because that's how we keep vaccines at the temperature they
- need to be kept at, right?
- It's our backup. Should the electricity go off? Otherwise all the stock is ruined. Right, right. Okay.
- I'll go Councillor Henry and then I'll go to Hock next. Thank you. I appreciate that. The longer we
- go sometimes the more questions come up and much of it's been answered.
- Let's talk about mitigation here because we got a timeline problem. So at best, if we approved a position,
- this person wouldn't be in place for a bit because of the WISP piece. I appreciate Dr. Robinson, your
- comment about what it comes to
- what led to other clinic failures, which was in part the trying to manage the paperwork, right? When
- we lost those paperwork management positions, we had nurses that felt overburdened and then left government
- service as a result. So to avoid that happening again, if we go live on the seventh, you know,
- right now, Lori, you're handling the paperwork. Is there an opportunity to train other staff in the
- health department to handle the finance piece and the other pieces? Because this might
- be a bit you know as I'm trying to I'd like us not to have that conversation again in a few months I
- agree but I but right now it's I think I kind of need to understand you open the doors you start invoicing
- people. What is your mitigation for that right now while we're trying to work through our process if
- we do move forward with. So the nurses will be trained.
- but they'll be doing so one will be covering like that front office some of these capacities when the
- patients are coming in and the other one will be doing like the vaccinating. So they'll be flip flopping
- but doing those sort of dual roles so that they have knowledge of that. We could look at training other
- employees in the department. That's
- take us down a different path. So it's not going to have this position. And so so doors are open and
- voices are coming. I guess on one one difference here from the last time we went through this is that
- the new hires understand this is part of their job description. It's not an added duty just already
- been hired and then has been asked to do other things like these folks are hired understanding they're
- going to have other things to do. Right. That was in the job descriptions. That's good news. These are
- the same people that are also potentially going to be driving the mobile
- unit out from the building. How soon do you think that mobile unit goes into operation? I'd have to
- check with facilities to see where they're at. Soon. It's not going to be like, is it possible that
- gets mobile and active before we have a clinician assistant in place? I think that's possible. You've
- got two clinics for managing with staff. I mean, one's moving around, one's here.
- and we don't have that administrative piece. And it sounds like at least the nurses can handle some
- of the administration piece, but then there's other pieces that you're either doing or being delegated
- at this point. Okay, that's it, thanks. Council Hawk. Yes, when I was hearing all of this and thinking,
- well, this is a great thing, we've decided to do what I hope we do to begin with,
- instead of running around in a mobile unit, keep it where the public knows where it is, where they're
- able to get to it, where public transportation can get it there, and it's a better operation. We don't
- have to worry about what we're going to do if the mobile unit is broken down or repairs or where we're
- going to store it or whatever. We're going to have it in a county building and where people will know
- every day where that is. And now you're saying, no, we want to do both. And so that sort of spoiled
- my joy. I just don't think it's wise whatsoever. And because I think wasn't that almost like a half
- million dollars or something like that for that mobile unit? We had covid funds. A big one.
- We had COVID funds left that we could use for a one-time purchase. And so those funds we decided would
- be best served, the board did, with a mobile unit to go to where people were for chronic disease management
- or what people needed. But you do understand.
- the money fell out of the sky, which you're saying it just fell out in your pocket somehow. And so we'll
- go out and buy this mobile unit. But let me tell you what. Buying that piece of equipment is not the
- end of an obligation. You still have to maintain it. You have to have the insurance on it. You have
- to figure out where you're going to park it, how long it's going to last, where's the money going to
- come from to replace it, and repair costs. It's just I thought, well,
- they woke up there and we're going to put it where the public can see it and reach it and everybody
- throughout this county will really know right where to go and it won't be running around trying to be
- chasing around where they are so anyway and I don't see an operational plan and you know
- I remember when Bill Cook could say ready fire aim because he could afford to say that. He had the money.
- Well guess what? This is not ready fire aim. We cannot do that in county government. We need to see
- an operational plan, something. I applaud your enthusiasm for moving forward, but for the fiscal body
- to move forward with you, we need to see
- more of a an operational plan. For me, I'm disappointed that you're going to go consider going ahead
- with this boondoggle of a moving van. So I was excited about having a clinic. We department building
- has a clinic on the main level.
- the public will be coming to the health department just across the street to access these services.
- The purpose of the mobile unit is to be able to go out on certain scheduled times to provide these services
- in special capacities because if you, for example, want to have a large testing event, it can be challenging to try to
- have a whole lot of people coming into the department. If you can, we were going out and providing community
- outreach services, now we have a mobile unit that has the equipment and has the personnel that can go
- out into the community to provide these services. But that's separate from the clinic that's on the
- main level of the health department. The only thing I'll say to kind of get us back to
- where we are here is, I guess from my understanding, last year, late last year, I was, maybe it's just
- me, was thinking that you all were, in addition to trying to get the clinic up and running, the mobile
- unit always was something that you were doing to both of those at the same time. Okay. A lot of hair
- changes have changed for me too, so I just wanna make sure I understand.
- Then it was something that we had had discussions about with IU Health and before Health First Indiana
- and these new positions about how can we have this mobile unit and work collaboratively to go out into
- the community. So it was something that was already in discussion. Yes, Councilor Wilts. Okay. I still
- have basic questions and then a bigger picture would.
- Just to clarify something that was said very early on, do any of these services overlap with the IU
- community health services that are now? I know they used to, but are there is there now overlaps of
- what you will be doing in the clinic? To my understanding, I think they're going to try to provide some
- vaccines, possibly two days a week. But I know
- The last we were aware of, they're really focusing on reaching these other counties within the southern
- region and being able to do some community health and outreach. I don't know what specifically those
- plans are, but a lot of kind of tapping into more of those rural areas instead of having people here
- in full-time capacity.
- Is there any level of coordination with them at this point? They're separate from them. Okay. Yeah.
- That makes it difficult, I'm sure. Have you? I guess my question now is given kind of the fact there's
- no director yet.
- clinic or office manager type of position, whatever this is. Is there a reason you're targeting April
- 7th and would there be a possibility to delay that or are there implications that we're not aware of?
- Well, so then you're going to have staff that we've hired, I think, waiting to get vaccines and we have the
- refrigerators and we're working on the generator. And so you want to, you know, utilize those people
- and those resources. I guess I'm kind of envisioning. Yeah, and I appreciate that you've got stuff in
- place. Let's not just sit there and twiddle our thumbs. But my understanding is there are other things
- they mentioned that these nurses would be doing so they probably are able to do.
- whatever the outreach components of their jobs are, right? They could certainly stay busy doing other
- things. I think the concern in my mind would be, well, how long are we not going to be providing all
- of the services by law and by our funding? Totally agree. And don't get me wrong, I'm just, I'm concerned
- about starting something that
- not ready and then fails and how does that, like how do we make sure it's going forward with its best
- foot forward? You know, is there a difference in your mind between maybe soft launching, like starting
- to provide, but then, you know, we've got these positions filled to kind of announce and go with it.
- If we wait until we have positions filled, it will be probably set
- October. And so we've missed this window where we're communicating with the public, hey, this is where
- we can provide you, you know, we have taxpayer dollars, your money to take care of public health issues.
- And so while I don't want it to be all focused on reputation, that is part a piece of it because we
- don't want to lose that momentum.
- Because people will be kind of lost as well. So I understand I understand your concern. I certainly
- do I Think I would it would be helpful for me to know like well, how are we defining failure? Question
- but I mean Maybe
- I think we've seen it in the closing of the clinic before. I think that probably... I don't think it's
- the only way in which that could happen. I guess I have concerns around... I don't think there is a
- lot of momentum in the public. I feel you all have momentum and I guess it's...
- we're trying to get on board that train and see that momentum and I sense my colleagues having some
- trouble with that and while I would be supportive of a position like this because I think that is a
- critical piece to make it work, there's more, I see more need and I'm concerned about the whole and
- maybe I'm looking for reassurance that it's been
- thoroughly thought through. So on this I went and looked at the health services director job posting
- and then I got thinking again about where you want to go from what I'm picking up today and I thought
- about the April 7th opening the fact that you're sort of double
- kind of double teaming administration of both, and you're looking for someone to come into this role
- and to do the clinical assistant position. If I were having my druthers today, like if this were left
- to me and what I would be doing, I would say, and again, there's seven of us up here, but for me, I
- would say that we would send this to WIS for evaluation of what that clinical assistant position would look like
- But when I think about what the service that's provided I think about this kind of reality. We've got
- to get people successfully from the public into the facility to meet the medical talent that we have
- that treats them. And I'm wondering if it's not fully dependent upon the clinical assistant being in
- the role but it's dependent on
- the department much like you're saying you're kind of double timing the administration of both. It's
- the department managing that intake through what we have until the council would get something back
- from with get the position codified. I mean if we're really talking about the schedule and again I may
- be way off here but we're talking about scheduling people getting people in matching
- A to B with the right personnel or right medical personnel in there, to me that would be a holdover
- until WISC came back with something. I will also say this council, as long as it has 48 hours notice
- and has, and I'm not committing the council to that, I'm just making this comment, but the council,
- as long as it has 48 hours notice, can be in here as long as we've notified the public and our media.
- there's there's flexibility and ability. I'm thinking if we have the administrator who's kind of managing
- both and trying to figure out how to get this started. I'm wondering if the task of managing here's
- here's some openings for this software or whatever would would be in. And perhaps that gives confidence
- for opening. I do worry about it not opening and people getting there and getting a hard reputational
- Because, you know, and to be honest with you, all these questions come from places, right? They come
- from things. In 2024, I had to sit in a public meeting, I'll just say, of an electoral nature where
- somebody, they wanted answers. And I said, well, I was council president. I'm sorry it happened. Shouldn't
- have happened. I'll accept responsibility. So for the solution, I'd like to accept some sort
- of responsibility of perhaps a path forward. But ultimately, it's you that could say whether or not
- that sort of, we've got someone that can manage intake while I continue to double so that people get
- to the medical personnel. But if that isn't possible, it might be April 7th is a week too early, two
- weeks too early, or something along those lines. My concluding remarks, I think, are going to be along
- the lines of, I think,
- of this new position, clearly the building is needed. That's a needed service, right? And particularly
- when you have the doors open in the clinic. But I mean, if you were gonna ask me as a fiscal agent where
- I would invest taxpayer dollars, it would be in fixing whatever's wrong with the health service director
- position. It seems to me that when you're in front of an open mic with the cameras going saying, we're
- just not getting any applicants,
- there needs to be some tweaking done there. And I think that for me, that would be top priority moving
- forward. That would be a salary increase, essentially. There's a lot of options. Okay. I'm sorry. I
- come at things from a business owner perspective and not necessarily county government.
- But the bottom line is if you need someone who's talented in this realm and you're dealing with people
- and they're a nurse, so you have to have a competitive salary. And so the end of the day, no matter
- how we get there, it would be an increase in the salary. Because if this comes back at a salary that
- you like, at a classification that you like, and there's still no director, that's still a problem.
- But if we get a director in,
- and this person comes on board, I think that's a path forward. And I share Trent's optimism, Council
- Member Decker's optimism, and I think we want to see this done, and we want to see it done well, because
- we're part of county government with you, and we want to see this succeed. Yes, Councillor Feil. So
- I've listened a long time here. Ultimately, at this point,
- How do we even know what the need is if we don't know what everybody's doing? I'm struggling with that.
- You mean by what everyone is doing? I thought I heard that we don't know what IU is doing as far as
- serving things, or did I misunderstand? IU's finished. IU's finished, but is there something that, I
- thought I heard some verbiage at some point during the conversation about not knowing something about
- IU, and I'm concerned about that.
- I don't know what their regional plan is for going in and into those rural counties. So this we have
- taken over the services that are required that were required by law as a local health department to
- provide. They are no longer providing that they don't do any of that. What's that? They don't do any
- of that. IU doesn't do any of that now. I believe that they are still planning to vaccinate provide
- some vaccinations. I don't know what
- that stock is, but they are not providing a communicable disease investigation. I mean, we've taken
- all of those other services back over. Well, I think some of us went to an open house on Miller Drive
- also for IU Health recently, and it seems to me like there were some conversations there about some
- of the things we're talking about in services.
- seems to me like they are doing some things. Now, whether it's under the same umbrella that was done
- before, I don't know, but I'm concerned about what the real need is. It would be really nice to figure
- that out. I don't know how to do it, but it'd be really nice to figure that out. I think from
- our perspective, our need is we have services that we have to provide by law.
- as in vaccines, those kind of things, or? As the communicable disease, we also have to provide all of
- the additional core services under Health First Indiana, so the trauma and injury prevention, the chronic
- disease, the school health fatality review, lead case management, tuberculosis, infectious
- disease prevention. Let me just interject this question. Is there a way to figure out, we know what
- the population is, is there a way to figure out
- how many people have actually had those services in our county? Is there data somewhere that tells us
- this? Is that previously, is that what you're saying? Does the state keep track of the things that you
- provide or whoever provides in vaccines or whatever, right? Yes, so we have data from 2025. So that
- shows some of our services. So for access and linkage to care,
- Let's see we had nine hundred and one referrals for adult referrals for clinical care immunizations
- two thousand four hundred and ninety six children in twenty twenty five adults two thousand and forty
- eight. So I mean there's there's data that's on the Health First Indiana Web site that shows some of
- this information.
- But then that still doesn't tell me what percentage we're missing, right? Who are we missing by not
- providing these things? I think we're missing Monroe County. OK. All right. OK. So I guess. Lastly.
- You're opening April 7th, no matter what, is that?
- we're slowly going to start scheduling appointments. I mean, I suppose that we cannot, but that's not
- a decision that I can make. Okay. Yes, Councilor Wilts. So what's it before us?
- I'm looking for a little clarification that we can take the next step here. So we should decide yay
- or nay on sending a job description to WIS and following the normal processes. In the meantime, it sounds
- like it's the hope of at least some of the people here on council that the health board and the
- the health department can, as a whole, consider the idea of a soft launch while maybe really re-examining
- how the director position in play as we're working on administratively trying to get this clinic assistant.
- That, because that's the messaging I'm hearing. It's like we don't, I think Dr. Anderson said it.
- And as one of two liaisons and part of a seven-member body, I think that's something that we can continue
- to talk about. Clearly, the motion before us today is simply to take this position and ask WISC to classify
- it. And no, it's, and Council Member Feidl, to your point, that will come back
- to council, we'll have to have a conversation about it. And to Ms. Molly Turner-King's point, that is
- going to take longer than anyone wants. Well, to be clear, though, there is no, like, this is a discussion
- to figure out what we want to do next, right? And so it sounds like if it is the will of council to
- say yes and take this to wilt, take this to wilt, to not take this to wilt, but to take this to wits,
- then somebody would have to make that motion. So that is the decision that we, yes, council member Decker.
- Council, I would ask that the position of clinical assistant for the health clinic within the health
- department be sent to WIS for potential classification to be considered by council.
- All right, we got a motion and a second for this position to be considered by WISC. Is there any other
- further discussion that has not been exhausted yet on this item? I'd like to declare. So I want to offer
- this to preserve us this option to help the department figure out how this is done, because I've not
- I've not yet heard us have something that will solidly
- make us feel comfortable. This is what they've proposed, and I think that we need every option on the
- table for the public good that's got to be done. Any other questions or comments? Councillor Hock. So
- is there a job description that's ready to be sent to us? If we can't do it, we'll send something that
- we don't have.
- There's one in the packet, but I will need to work with the health department, as well as Molly, just
- to ensure that duplicative duties over other job descriptions. Can that happen? Yeah, I will reach out
- to Lori tomorrow, and we'll schedule a date to get that done as soon as possible.
- Any other further questions or comments on this motion? All right, seeing none, I'll ask for public
- comment on this item. If you have public comment, you can come forward to the lectern here and raise
- your hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor
- Hawk? No. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes.
- Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes six to one.
- Okay. Thank you very much. So the next step is you all will work with Michelle and Ms. Turner-King and
- we will go forth and we'll await and see what WIS has to say. All right. Thank you. I appreciate that.
- Thank you for your time. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you so much.
- Next up is item F from the legal department. Council, I move to approve resolution 2026-07, approving
- the interlocal cooperation agreement between the Bloomington Public Transit Corporation and Monroe County.
- Second. All right. And I believe Ms. Turner-King is going to be presenting. So this is the interlocal
- agreement that would provide for that transit route that was discussed at a couple meetings ago.
- I believe that the interlocal was already presented to the commissioners and approved with a vote of
- three to zero. And so this is a resolution that would approve the interlocal agreement by council.
- All right. And is there any other further questions or comments from council? I see that we
- have a commissioner aligned. I want to put them on the spot, but not sure if they need to say anything
- or add to the conversation here.
- I'll go to Council Hogg. Yes. Could you tell me the beginning and ending date of this interlocal? The
- term of this agreement shall begin on January 1st of 2026 and shall end on December 31st of 2026. It's
- just for one year. Is there anything in there that says it's going to be extended? But unless we give
- them so much notice,
- certainly not trying to stop this. I'm trying to figure out where we need to budget for the dollars
- because it's not going to go on for free. Why not? I like free.
- I don't see language regarding an extension. I just see language in the agreement regarding
- early termination. So I think that is a set term. And if I recall when this was being presented to us
- a few weeks ago,
- that this was a conversation where it was said that we need to figure out the funding mechanisms going
- forward on how we would like to have this. And so considering that it's a year, it looks like it's the
- end of the year, yep, December 31st, 2026, and that's a conversation that we should probably have maybe
- prior to budget, definitely prior to budget.
- So that we could start thinking ahead of some things Throwing it out there And I was just whispered
- that there is an LTF meeting coming up so maybe that's something they could talk about all right As to why
- We have the pleasure of signing on to the interlocal. The interlocals have to be approved by both the
- commissioners and the county council and if that doesn't occur the interlocal gets sent to the Attorney
- General for approval and since also have to be approved by transit so for example when we do interlocals
- with city it's approved by all parties to the interlocal. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you.
- Any other questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, we will move on to public comment. If there's
- public comment on this item, you can come forward to the left and if you're still here or raise your
- hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor
- Wilts? Yes.
- Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor
- Feidl? Yes. Motion passes 7-0. All right. Next up is item G. Council, I move to approve the resolution
- 2026-05, updating a Sophia Travis community service grant for people and animal learning services or PALS.
- This is an amendment to the 2025 Sophia Travis agreement that Powell's received.
- So originally in the agreement it provides that PALS will offer weekly equipped sessions for four eight
- week sessions totaling 32 sessions. However PALS had the opportunity to partner with Girls Inc. and
- kind of change the structure of those lessons. So what they would be doing instead is offering an hour
- and a half grounded based equipped
- sessions for up to ten youth in each session and it's going to be ran more like a camp that will serve
- 20 girls. The camp will run from ten to four instead of the original plan. So they are still doing and
- providing the equipped lessons. This is just to clarify the structure of the lessons and so we just
- wanted to do an amendment out of basically precautionary.
- And this was presented to the Sophia Travis committee. Correct. It was presented to the Sophia Travis
- committee and they approved unanimously the amendment or recommending the amendment to council.
- I was there. All right. Any questions or comments from council on this item? Council Henry. Thank you,
- Madam President. Mr. King, thank you for bringing this forward.
- Are you able to speak to the sentiment of the water commissioners and their support of this? No, because
- I doubt it hasn't been brought up to them yet. So I don't I don't know. I think it's worth raising this
- evening from the dais here that we've had. I've seen something like this before come through with I
- think it was the Women's Commission, in fact, that attempted to fund stem program.
- for young girls and at the time the board of commissioners had I guess some concerns about I guess gender
- based STEM training and I'm raising it because it's been raised publicly in the past. My concern is
- that's basically what this is but through a different. I do think that was a different situation because
- the Girls Inc. or not the Girls Inc. the Women's Commission
- STEM camp was in partnership with Luddy and there was concerns expressed by IU about not opening the
- camp to both genders, and this is not specific. The PALS, they're not going to use all of the Sophia
- Travis funding for the Girls Inc camp, so they will still have additional funds to provide other equipped
- lessons that would be open to all youth.
- I appreciate the distinction. I mean I'm in support of this period. I was also in support of that activity
- before period. So I just want to make sure this is not another round of the council's expressed its
- will on a Sophia Travis grant only to bump into something on Thursday. So if you're if the thought is
- this should be kosher you know because of the variations of the funding. Great. But again I don't want
- the deja vu all over again. It feels like deja vu night between the Board of Health conversation and now
- So thank you, Madam President, on that. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. Any other questions or
- comments on this item? Seeing none, we'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment, you
- can come forward to the electorate here in the room or raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, may
- we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes.
- Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. And I want to note for the record that Councillor
- Hawke has left the meeting. Motion passes six to zero. All right. Last but not least, item H. Council,
- I move to approve resolution 2026-06.
- reestablishing the Long Term Finance Planning Committee and amending membership composition. Second.
- All right. We got a motion and a second. And look into Mr. King for this item. So when the Long Term
- Finance Committee was originally established, it's by resolution, the resolution provided that the committee
- shall consist of the council president and two additional members selected by the president. However,
- this amendment makes it so that the committee would either consist of the Council President or the Council
- Pro Temp and two other Council Members selected by the President. Pretty self-explanatory. Council Iverson.
- I'm in full support of this because I think at the time that President Crossley was running for presidency
- the comment was made we need to be really careful about how much we put on the President's
- And I think that's slowly crept up and up and up and up. And presidents are expected to do more and
- more and more. So I think this is a good step out of the direction. And I'm willing to share. Other
- questions or comments on this? And also for the I'll say I know Council Iverson has been very much interested in and
- trying to like with budgets and things like that. And so I think it's only fair that you get an opportunity
- to. So I'm sharing the wealth. You're welcome. All right. Yes. Is this just kind of codifying
- the appointments that we made in January? OK. Thank you. And it also there was the appointments in January
- and then I believe there was a modification to the LTF appointment as it went from
- President Crossley to Councilmember Iverson. So it's to ratify everything that we've done. Thank you.
- So the other two people are still the same? Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure. And the wealth between
- the pro tem and the president. You're welcome. All right.
- Seeing no other further questions on this item, we'll go to public comment. If there's public comment,
- you can raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern in the room. And still seeing none,
- may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Henry? Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley?
- Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes.
- Motion passes unanimous six zero Great. Thank you all for that And we don't have any other presentations
- or discussions. And so now we are at the tail end of our Items here, which is council a liaison updates
- and comments and so I'm gonna surprise everybody and start over here to my right this time I'll start
- with councilmember Henry. Thank you, madam president. I don't have any
- real thoughts to share about community activities or liaisons. I actually wanted to reflect a little
- bit about the beginning of our meeting with I think the public comments from the Women's Commission.
- And it's not just about I think the Women's Commission in terms of the volunteers and people who give
- their time to the boards and commissions in the county. We're having some challenges I've noticed in
- some of my other boards and commissions that I'm on. For example, the EMAC, the Emergency Management Advisory,
- commission, we've now had two consecutive meetings where we've not had quorum to meet. And so we haven't
- had a formal meeting of that body since October. A challenge with that is that people do volunteer,
- and if they feel like they all can call in on a hybrid, we can't do the quorum for the meeting. And
- some of that is just, I think, it raises questions for me about how we maybe value our board and commission
- volunteers or assignees or proxies.
- Yeah, if they feel supported I mean we heard from two women's commission members about feeling supported
- and their work and whether or not their work maybe has value or is heard you know because if you why
- would you come to meetings if you don't feel like.
- what you're producing is actually impacting as an advisory body in the community. So I think what's
- on my mind is I heard that this evening, you know, and I don't know how much it is, you know, us recruiting
- people and trying to attract people to serve in boards and commissions, or if we're just treating this
- sort of box checking, which is a challenge. You know, I actually remember I wrote an op-ed about this
- about a year ago in the Herald Times that talked about what our board and commission composition looks
- like in the county.
- You know, when I ran the data, it's mostly white, mostly over the age of 65, mostly men and mostly people
- that own houses in the community. They're half a million dollars or more. You know, that's a very homogenous
- group of people that get appointed to things. And so when I hear a body like Women's Commission members
- who are much more diverse than that, you know, speaking up about maybe being locked out of the building
- or forgotten about it, it has my concern tonight.
- The last thing I want to say about this is, I mean, I think we do a great job of pointing diversity
- to our boards and commissions and trying to attract new or newer different voices from our council seat.
- But there's another thought on my mind, too, about this, is that some of the boards and commissions
- operate as patronage positions. I think of the Affordable Housing Advisory Commission I was on a few
- years ago. That was a project of
- former Commissioner Barge and when she left office the commission was disbanded shortly thereafter.
- I think about the opioid settlement fund committee that Commissioner Giddens was involved with quite
- a bit that still has money to disperse and hasn't met probably as frequently as it should to get that
- money into the community. And so I guess that's just a lot of meditation on what I think
- I heard this evening to make sure we value the people are serving in these bodies that we support them
- We pull their work into our decision-making. Yeah, and if there are blocking blockers making you preventing
- their good information getting to us We need to open that up a little bit but but I don't want to lose
- good board members over things that feel like I don't say neglect is the right word, but it just feels like I
- maybe showing more gratitude and appreciation for the hard work people put in. On that note, again,
- EMAC did not meet today, which I think was the long way of me saying that, but we have a...
- We have a scheduled meeting in April and that list is getting longer. I will ask my colleagues to if
- there's someone who would like to be my proxy for that meeting in the spirit of making sure that meeting
- happens, I would appreciate some cross coverage. And I know they're working hard to make sure there
- are proxies that that meeting continue those good conversations. But thank you for letting me indulge
- here. But I just wanted to let folks know I heard them at the beginning of this meeting and we got to
- do some we got to do better on this. Thank you.
- All right, thank you, Madam President. I have four things this evening, and I'm going to start with
- the cost of an unconstitutional war. We now know that what is going on now over in Iran has cost 1,407
- lives. Of those, 214 are children. This is a costly unconstitutional war, but it's coming home.
- The Circle K gas station in the first district, it's on East 3rd Street over by Brewster's Ice Cream.
- One week ago the price for a gallon of gas was $3.89. Today on the way over it was $4.19 and everything
- that we know is that this is not going to get better, it will only get worse. The second thing that
- I'd like to point out is that
- If you're interested in the ways that fiscal policy is impacting Monroe County, the Long-Term Finance
- Committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. That is on the county calendar. You can join virtually
- or come here to the NatU Hill Room. We will be discussing topics that include but are not limited to
- the health of Monroe County, employee self-insurance,
- jail funding, and potentially more. It's going to be a very full agenda, and we're actually talking
- about maybe even splitting it into two. We hope that you can join us Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. for the Long-Term
- Finance Committee meeting. I will note that the Substance Use Disorder Advisory Commission continues
- to be very busy. We are moving full speed ahead with the Recovery Summit
- which is going to be September 1st and 2nd. We are very close to publishing the Eventbrite page where
- you can register for this event. In the meantime, if you or your organization can sponsor this event,
- we are taking those sponsorships now. And the last and final thing that I'll be sharing is that the
- A lot of us at the last meeting came into this meeting and were surprised to hear that yet another eviction
- was happening in Monroe County on Monroe County property and our hearts went out. And I know a lot of
- us talked about the different resources that were available to folks. And I think at the beginning of
- today's meeting, we heard that the Monroe County Apartment Association is going to be hosting an apartment
- open house.
- particularly targeted to people who are facing this special eviction. That'll be April the 11th. We
- will at least I will post the flyer on my socials and on my website. We want to make sure that folks
- are aware of this and that we are not throwing people out into the cold. Instead, this county council
- is part of the solution, not part of the problem. Thank you.
- Well, I also want to join in comments honoring those folks that stand up as volunteers serving on our
- commissions, our committees. You know, a long criticism that I've had over the years is that often some
- of these ad hoc organizations come about due to the tremendously bright ideas that people have during campaigns
- But unfortunately, sometimes those things go away when something changes, either an office holder leaves
- or they get settled into a job and they get busy or the headaches are there. I truly think if you ask
- someone to come forward to serve on a board or commission, you should honor what they do, listen to
- what they do. And here's a big thing with all of that, accepting.
- what comes from a boarding commission. The Sophia Travis Grants Committee, which has met since the last
- time we met, it's got two community reps that join three council members. The ordinance very specifically
- cites how we get our membership. Those individuals in turn wrestle and make decisions about
- which not-for-profits receive crucial dollars.
- probably more crucial by the day due to larger economic factors that go beyond our borders but still
- affect us much the same, and I think that when there's a recommendation the county at every level, council,
- commissioners and beyond, has to honor some of those wishes, and I know that you can always do a lot
- of things under the law, but it doesn't mean you always should. So I think that all of that
- said I appreciate those folks that step up public services hard enough public service that you're doing
- as volunteers even harder and we definitely don't want to discourage it. Beyond that I just want to
- say I had a very lovely meeting with our superintendent and I appreciate Dr. Winston very much because
- of the way that she outwardly communicates.
- on a lot of crucial issues that really affect the public. And I just enjoyed the ability to sit down
- with her, learn more about the MCCSC school system.
- not from the view of a parent, but from one leader sitting and talking to another. And I think that
- that was just, it was a real breath of fresh air. Sometimes as a constituent looking inwardly into schools,
- school policies, school calendars and everything, things get overwhelming. But I was really pleased
- by the way that the superintendent really takes
- all the complexities of that and makes it so clear and is so engaging with care for our kids. She said
- just a wonderful thing is she said, you know, I worry about when the babies get here until the last
- school bus drops them off. I think sometimes in public service, we've got to get down to those basics
- in turn ourselves. But I'm going to keep it short and wrap it up from there. I know we all have a lot
- going on and I just appreciate
- The ability to kind of report out on what what's going on Okay I'm gonna just talk for a second about
- the housing summit that is taking place in our community on April 14th, which is rapidly approaching
- I cannot believe it but it is and That's being
- brought to you by Heading Home of South Central Indiana and the Community Foundation is sponsoring.
- To that point, they are accepting other sponsorships as well. Since we already had the one plug, I'm
- gonna give the other plug if you're feeling in the sponsoring frame of mind. Here's another opportunity
- for you and you can contact Marriott Heading Home.
- for that. The keynote speaker is Vu Lee, who is an internationally known keynote speaker, writer, and
- nonprofit leader. So that's pretty exciting. And there'll be a variety of sessions, breakouts, and all
- kinds of things really focusing on all aspects of affordable housing and
- community-based housing efforts, and a lot of the types of barriers to housing that people experience
- in the community. So it's really coming at things from a variety of viewpoints and positions. I think
- there'll be something for everybody there. So be sure to check that out. And then again, that's the
- Housing, Regional Housing Summit taking place on April 14th.
- The other thing I wanted to mention also has to do with housing and heading home and a small group of
- just those of us in government, city and county have met and begun kind of thinking through
- what possibilities there are for coordinated
- Action addressing homeless encampments in our community and we're at the very beginning stages, but
- we are looking at Working with heading home and their partners Who offered a technical assistance training
- actually a couple of weeks ago on moving
- folks from encampment to directly to housing. And it's a really innovative approach. There have been
- other communities around the country who have employed this specific kind of methodology to really just
- rapidly address encampments.
- and meet people's needs working intensively over a shorter period of time. So we're looking at that
- as a possibility among other things trying to think innovatively. But I just wanted to let you all know
- that we are we are working on things and hopefully bringing opportunities and discussions to broader
- community focus.
- So I participated in seven events or meetings, and I want to highlight three of those meetings and things
- I learned there that I wanted to share. So I learned that the Indiana Avenue Safety Committee improvements
- will happen in twenty twenty seven and twenty eight. And that will be a big project. They're they're
- looking forward to all those things. So stay tuned for that. The little five hundred this year is a
- special year. It's seventy five years.
- so I'm not sure everybody realized that. There's gonna be a documentary about the Little 500 on April
- 21st at the Buskirk Chumley. There will be a concert on Little Five on the 22nd at the auditorium. There's
- an alumni race on April 23rd. The upcoming graduations for graduate students is Friday, May 8th at 2.30.
- coming graduation for undergraduate students this Saturday, May 9th at seven fifteen at the Memorial
- Stadium, which I will see a grandson graduate. I'm excited about that. The Convention Center, you may
- or may not know, is scheduled to open on January 8th, which they're billing as Elvis Presley's birthday.
- So that's a nice tie in. Then so far they have right now they have 100 contractors working down there
- now, it's been told.
- There's nine conferences scheduled in the new space already. So the downtown Bloomington group has been
- working on a five year downtown activation plan and excuse me I've got it mixed up. So there's a downtown
- activation plan headed up already in Bloomington April through October. It will include each the first
- week of the month will include Bloomington Bites Bingo.
- The family night out on Kirkwood the second Wednesday five to eight thirty each month. Downtown shop
- night will be the third Wednesday four to seven. The bus get dusk. I'm still learning about that will
- be the fourth Thursday each month from five to eight. Then it was mentioned at that meeting that there
- was the vote for Hopewell should be tomorrow with the city. The city economic development
- group that I go to talked about the opportunity zones and they'll be identifying them and working on
- it with ROI which is regional opportunities initiatives. It was highlighted that the city has 52% tax
- exempt properties.
- It was announced and reminded us that Senate Bill 89, this time, approved two additional alcohol permits
- for Bloomington. And David Hittle is working on small business UDO. The last Downtown Bloomington group
- talked about the annual Shred Day coming up at Comprehensive Financial Consultants on South College
- Thursday, May 7th.
- 130 to four only, so they won't do it in the morning and not until 130 in the afternoon. Applications
- are coming in for their two arts positions they have. They've had over 156 applications so far. Sidewalks,
- I learned, are going to be power washed. I don't remember that ever being done before, and nobody else
- could either. Between College of Walnut and Kirkwood and Eight. I don't know the exact date yet, but
- it's upcoming.
- Then the strategic action plan for the downtown Bloomington group is a five year plan. And some of the
- highlights I thought were interesting. They've discovered where that 81 percent of households connect
- with IU. They're going to be create creating engaging environments and having an authentic experience
- for visitors. Exploring creative partnerships with IU.
- thought about doing was selfie stations, right? Then maybe promoting wearing red days and then more
- murals. Who doesn't like a good mural? And that's all I got. Thank you all, as always. The only couple
- of things I wanted to remind people of is just a couple of, since Councilor Decker had talked about
- or mentioned something about Sophia Travis is the fact that this year we've done Sophia Travis a lot
- earlier this year and so for the public and I know our council staff has asked all of us to really help
- spread the word so anybody here that wants to help continue to spread the word since we've bumped up
- Sophia Travis since it's not
- bumping against our budget seasons so we are now accepting applications and applications will be accepted
- from by now up until Monday April 27th and so this is a great opportunity for any social service programs
- and organizations that are really doing some good work and you need a little bit of help of funding
- this is your opportunity to apply for
- I think also the city of Bloomington is bumping up their Jack Hopkins grant as well this year. So it
- sounds like all of us are doing the same thing around the same time. But since I represent the county
- in this regard, I'm representing Sophia Travis. And so again, applications are available through Monday,
- April 27th, and that deadline will be fastly approaching.
- I'm speaking of Sophia Travis. I think sometimes we don't get to hear the good deeds of what council
- does as well as our committee does in terms of what people are receiving and their gratitude. And so
- we got an email today from Catholic charities and I just wanted to just kind of read a little bit in
- the record for this because I really and a lot of darkness and a lot of
- hopelessness that I think we all feel right now. Sometimes you just need a little bit of light. And
- so they said, Dear Council, it is with a grateful heart that we say thank you for your partnership with
- Catholic Charities. Your cash contribution has been received and allocated to Catholic Charities Bloomington
- where most is needed. In a time of widespread mental health challenges,
- Catholic Charities Bloomington is a vital source of hope and healing, providing essential mental health
- care to our community's most vulnerable. With a dedicated team of professionals, we ensure that every
- dollar of your generosity makes a meaningful impact, directing 92% of your gift straight to those in
- need. Your support is more than a donation. It's a lifeline, a fresh start, and a beacon of hope for
- those struggling to find their way. So we just appreciate, you know,
- Hearing those types of things come about and so I just wanted to read that into the record until Then
- thank you for your words And I'm sure we might see them again this cycle Lastly, I know some of my colleagues
- kind of touched base on this But I also again want to reiterate as well that
- In the time where people feel like they are wanting to be called to action and they want to be able
- to do something because of whatever we feel, I got myself started and activated by actually being a
- member of Jack Hopkins Social Service Committee. I was a young lad and was trying to figure out how
- to be involved in any way possible. And if it wasn't for
- Miss Beverly calendar Anderson who is now retired from the city who I talked to to say get involved
- You know, that was my jump start to where I am and sitting in front of y'all and so I say all that to
- say that You know as we think about boards and commissions it is really hard to find true talent and
- to really try to
- to be in these seats and to actually stay in those seats for a really long time. Um and so new fresh
- faces and perspectives are always needed. And so again, I know we had two members of the Women's Commission
- speak, and I know I said it earlier at the meeting, but I also want to reiterate that we do take your
- participation very
- intentions or any way of you all feeling like no one cares about the work that you're doing, because
- you are doing some good work. I see the work that they do in conjunction with the Women's Commission
- in the city, and I'm pretty sure we'll see those members tomorrow at the Women's History Month luncheon
- that's also happening tomorrow as well. So I just want to make sure that anybody that's watching, anybody
- that wants to get involved in something,
- you are definitely wanted and needed and we appreciate the work of the Women's Commission, all of the
- commissions and hopefully we can get quorum happening on all of these commissions so Council Henry could
- finally meet with ERAC in April. So with that being said we close out March and we are closing out this
- meeting and without that being as my last thoughts being said we are adjourned. Thank you.