Good evening, everybody. I would like to call our meeting to order. Today is Tuesday, April 28th, 2026.
The time is five o'clock. Here in the NETU Hill Room, we have Councilors Henry, Iverson,
um, vital and wilt and other council members, I believe will be joining us here shortly. Uh, we kind
of have a packed agenda, so I'm going to go ahead and get into the meat and potatoes of county council
business. So we'll go ahead. Um, as seeing that we have a quorum. Um, so next up, all those that are
able to stand, please stand for the pledge of allegiance.
States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty
and justice for all. Thank you very much for that. Next up is the adoption of tonight's agenda. Does
anybody wish to amend tonight's agenda?
know changes and we don't have any council members that are virtual we can do this by voice vote so
all those that are in favor of adopting tonight's agenda as presented signify by saying aye aye all
those opposed same sign okay motion carries
Okay next up is item number four which is public comment and these are items that are not on tonight's
agenda so if you'd like to make public comment again for items not on tonight's agenda you can raise
your hand via teams you'll have up to three minutes or you can come forward to the lectern here in the
net you hill room state your name for the record you'll have up to three minutes as well and we already
have a taker here in the net you hill room please good evening madam president this is christopher mg from the
Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. I want to just say as a membership organization with 900 entities,
80% small businesses or nonprofits, that we have to evolve with the business community. And I want to
invite you, the public, the staff, to our kickoff event next Wednesday, May 6th. It's going to be May
already, 530 to 730. At the International Art Project Foundation, we'll be kicking off the Bloomington
Rainbow Leadership Network.
an initiative of the chamber focused on the LGBTQAI professionals, business owners, and allies across
Monroe County. As with the chamber, more than 110 years in this community, we take seriously
the responsibility to evolve the needs of our workforce and business community. The effort reflects
that, strengthening connections, expanding economic opportunity in a way that's welcoming and inclusive
that only Monroe County is.
uniquely set to do. We'll have some brief remarks, time to connect, and of course, food and drinks.
We'll be glad to see members of this body and the public there, so you can learn more about that at
chamberbloomington.org. On a personal note, I want to go on my local high horse on local baseball. It's
happening everywhere. Smithville, Unionville, Danny Smith, Ellitsville. I'll be at Winslow Park from
7 to 8, 45, Tuesdays and Thursdays. So if you ever want to reach me,
Those are my office hours. I'll be in there enjoying a hot dog or a burger. But this is a great way
to talk with community members, see the public, be just enjoying what is outdoors here before it gets
really hot. And unlike, say, soccer or basketball, there's a lot of downtime in baseball for those sort
of talks that you don't get with parents normally. So I would just encourage the council and anybody here
catch a youth baseball game this year, just one at one of our fine locations. I was just at Smithville
this weekend, had a lovely time, but I don't get there enough. So anyway, I just thought I'd give a
quick little community plug and something to respite from some of the daily grind that is Monroe County
government. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much.
All right. Do we have anybody else here and then at you who room that would like to make public comment
on items not on tonight's agenda or if you are attending virtually you can raise your hand via teams.
All right. Seeing none we will move forward.
Next up is item number five, which is department updates. And these are for items also not on tonight's
agenda. So if you are a department head that would like to make an update, you can come forward to the
lectern here in the NatU Hill room. Raise your hand via Teams. You'll have up to 10 minutes. And TSD,
can we make sure that we have a timer on, please? All right. Looks like the health department is here,
so go ahead. Yes.
So good evening, Council. Just wanted to provide a really brief update about a project that we were
able to complete last year in 2025. We have our Environmental Health Services Director, Mr. Kuzmka,
here to help talk about this project and answer any questions that you might have. I did send a PowerPoint.
I'm not sure if TSD is able to share that, but I just wanted to give you a brief overview. So essentially,
the Health Department Environmental Health Services, we address testing
and remediation for 12 properties that were identified as former methamphetamine lab sites by the Indiana
State Police. So properties that were identified go back as far as 2009 with only one of those being
vacant. So through the support of Health First Indiana funding in the amount of $50,000 and through
approval with our local authorities, we were able to hire a contractor to complete this work. Through
those efforts,
11 of the 12 properties were successfully addressed with those $50,000 in Health First Indiana funding.
And so we really just hope that these efforts demonstrate a dedication to mitigating environmental health
hazards, protecting residents, and maintaining compliance with state regulations. I do see the PowerPoint
there. So I thought that, do you want to talk about, if you can't get it back up, that's okay.
Let's talk a little bit about the details about the properties. Two of those properties were moved by
the owners that owned the property, but five of those properties needed decontamination. After the initial
testing, decontamination had to be done. Items from the property needed to be removed, like drywall,
furniture, clothing, pictures, personal items, but then a follow-up testing, a final clearance testing
had to be done as well. For the decon, with the removal of items, that could cost up to five.
But for those properties, we're off the list from the first initial testing. Those properties removed
from the list in 2025. Does anybody have any questions? Yes, Councillor Wilson. What happens to the
items that are removed? I mean, how are they handled?
Um, they're putting a roll off dumpster, but like if you're wanting to keep like a personal item, they
could potentially be like laundered, like maybe it was like photographs or like a wedding dress. It'd
have to be laundered like several times to see if it can pass that testing in order for the owner of
the dress in order to keep it. So, okay. Any other questions? Yes. Council. I understand this might
be addressed in the PowerPoint here. Uh, how many, uh, properties are on the list currently?
So on the third slide, I tried to include a breakdown of what some of those costs are. So essentially
we ran out of funds with that $50,000. The contractor was able to give us a little bit of a discount
of the last one that was being worked on.
It's hard to tell. The testing process could be around $500 to $1,200. But decontamination, it's really
hard to predict what that cost could be. And we had Mike Bolton under contract from Aftermath to do
those testing and the decontaminating. Aftermath. And for the record, we have Councillor Hawke here.
Yes, Councillor Faital. So I see where it says that
The properties were seized by the Indiana State Police as meth labs. Is that the only way you find out
about meth labs? Indiana State Police puts them on the list and then we're notified. So you don't find
out from the general public that somebody may report a meth lab? We get an occurrence report from the
state police or then also checking the clandestine lab sheet on the IDH department website. Thank you.
You're welcome. Any other questions?
Can we see that third slide? What was that again? Third slide. That is the third slide. Oh,
it might be the, I had sent a copy to TS. I can send those figures. It breaks it down per property,
the cost for testing. Well, we appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thanks for your time. Thank you.
I also believe we have an update from the auditor's office for a department update as well. So I'm going
to look to Ms. Gregory and staff for that. Good evening, Council. We wanted to provide three quick updates
on some tools that were created by our office. Some of these are going to be a little newer. Others
have been around for a little while.
lit special purpose tax. We have reviewed that fund and identified that that fund is scheduled to go
negative by 2027. So just to put that on your radar, right now if we account for a 5% increase in both
receipts and expenditures, we're looking at a negative balance by the end of 2027 of just over 2 million.
Speaking of those values, we threw together
an impact chart that will show you how any changes to that lit rate would impact not only the county
but the taxpayers. So this has been emailed out to you. And this cell right here, this yellow cell,
if you update that, that will update all of the values in the spreadsheet. Moving on, we have the SB1
lit at impact. This has a little bit more nuance to it because
there's a lot changing in the state. We know that there's likely more to change. But this is showing
based on our current lit rates and anticipated with how the laws are structured right now, how we think
that will impact both the citizens and the county. And again, this has been emailed out to you. The
cells in yellow are the cells that you guys have the option to change at this point.
The conversion spreadsheet should look familiar. All the way down at the bottom, you can see our reversions
year over year. So our reversions for 2025 are listed in this cell. It's just over 19 million, almost
20 million. Our reversions in 2024 were about the same, but we are trending down. And then in 2023,
we have trended down significantly for the funds that we track.
That's all I had, unless you guys have questions. Thank you all for that. It's almost budget season
time, so it's never too late to look at this. So thank you all for that. I'll look to my colleagues
here to see if anybody has any questions for the auditor's office. All right, we appreciate it. Thank
you very much.
All right. Last call for any other department updates for items not on tonight's agenda. Again if you're
via teams you can raise your hand or if you're here in person you can come forward to the lectern here
in the room. Seeing none we'll move on. Thank you all for that.
Next up is item number six. This is our discussion with our financial solutions group, also known as
FSG. And we have Mr. Greg Garitas here that will provide us with an update. So welcome, sir. Thank you.
And thank you very much. It's good to be here. And this is the third time I did a pledge allegiance today.
and it never gets old today. Yeah, started in Hendricks County and then went to another. So thank you
very much for having me. We have given you a document dated April 24th that was in your pocket. It is
an update on the proposed justice center financing income tax bonds. And we're quite excited about,
we've worked with the team and the Monroe County
staff team and kind of put this together and we're as far as we're concerned we're ready kind of to
start the process if you all are and that would be beginning the bond ordinances and things like that
assuming you like what you see here tonight so let's go there
Okay, so first page, the letter, we point out a couple things. We use number one, the certified 2026
edit and jail lit revenues with the estimated future changes that we will show in the document.
2026 budget expenses for edit and lit will continue to be allowed in the future. In other words, we're
continuing to fund those with certain estimated increases. So we didn't delete them or change that because
We also have been very involved in the putting together the sustainability that will be talking at the
next meeting about, but I've got a good handle on where all of your funds are. So page one, page one
is a similar analysis that you've seen the last time I spoke, but we wanted to put this back in here.
And as you know, from the very, very top here, the,
current legislation is that you could have in the future for 2029, 1.2% as a lit rate, overall lit rate.
We put on this document also then in order to break even with the 2026 lit numbers that are down below
that we would basically need a 0.93. So what that is just telling you is there's breathing
right? So and it does not if you look at the footnote one does not include the special purpose rate
for the juvenile detention fund 1114 and I had them put the fund number so because there's so many different
fund numbers sometimes that you may get mixed up or I do and the lit
obviously for property tax relief was not included here. So these are, as you see, the COET Fund 1000,
which is basically what goes into the general fund, PS lit, jail lit 1233, PSAP basically lit and added.
And so we know that might've got confusing before when I spoke about this the last time, but you see
now we've put the
fund number. So now if we turn then to the next page, the next page is really the telling page,
page two. So what we've done here is we have used the estimated or basically the lit revenue as of 2026,
and you can see our footnotes, but we took
the 2026 numbers and extended those to 2030, basically projecting out five years. And as again,
as you know, what I've always called SB2 that's coming to a theater near you will be out there in 29.
So we wanted to cover that period, not only the period, but beyond that period.
down below, then you see the added fund expenses and the lit fund expenses. These are the expenses that
were basically in the budget. And I know there was a lot of supplies included in added and moved over.
I went through that in great detail. And so then you see what we've done as we've modeled in the proposed debt
service. That proposed debt service comes from Kate's best schedule, schedule three. She loves
the amortization schedule that kind of sets forth the debt service. Now, you'll notice that on page,
if you go to page three,
you'll notice the debt service is a little less in the beginning. What we're proposing as we would do
this, if we do it as a basically a building corporation bond, we would basically have smaller lease
rental, what I call interim lease rentals. We would use the current jail asset since it's unobligated
as our asset and while we build the new building. And then when we build the new building,
that the basically the obligated asset will be the new building. Okay, so we are able to kind of give
us a little breathing room there and as you can see then back on page two, I'm gonna make you jump back
to that Kim, page two then we factor in the proposed debt service. This is again just an estimate. You
noticed on the amortization schedule we used
interest rate, that is the coupon rate, and I've explained Finance 101 before, how the current rate,
if you went out and bought a municipal bond right now, it would be around a $350, maybe a $370, and
so the coupon rate would be five. They would pay you a little more. We would basically have a premium.
Okay. And so we would get more than 135 million, but that is what the market wants for municipal bonds
at this point in time. So you ultimately pay the 5%, but you ultimately get more money upfront to reconcile
it back. So as you can see now, the important item that we wanted you to focus on is the net. As you can see,
In 26, 27, and 28, we're very comfortable with the net. And we're comfortable in 2029, we haven't introduced
the new lit rate or increased the lit rate at that point in time. Nowhere in this have we done that
other than we've increased the lit revenues. The revenues obviously are the revenues you receive based
upon adjusted gross income of you all.
living here in working in Monroe County times the tax rate. And so we did raise those and we raised
the expenses. And so we have made an assumption in the decrease in 2028 due to a possible Ellisville
consolidation in Bloomington. So we really tried to take absolutely as much as we could into account.
It is an estimate. There's no doubt about it.
But you can see that we are very comfortable with getting to 20299 and then beyond that, we're still
safe. And you could eliminate at some point in time some of the expenses that we assumed in 1112 or
1233. We did not decrease those, we increased those, so you could always switch those back right to
the general fund.
or something like that. So what we're saying at this point in time, then back to the amortization schedule,
we've assumed $135 million for the principal. We have assumed that this would be an income tax bond
with a property tax backup, just like we've done every financing here in Monroe County since I've been
around. And the way we've done our TIF bonds too, meaning granddad,
would basically be backing it. But as you can see here, uh, we wouldn't call on that backing. Also,
you know, we got some legislative help in the last session that the let's say for some reason in 2030
account, the county council totally changed that. They said we want a lit holiday for a year. We don't
want to charge lit.
very extreme right and you'll say well Greg then we'd have to have you know the property tax bill go
up well no because what happened in the most recent late legislation is that they said your minimum
no matter what the minimum lit rate would be 125 of your debt service remember if you went back to my
presentation last year I said we were trying to get that
because I have, I had Hendricks County go out on a $40 million road bond to finish Ronald Reagan and
obviously Representative Thompson heard that. And so that's good. And I feel then, you know, the backup
of the property taxes, remember that's only there to enhance the credit rating and make the value to
the bond holder better and get us a better interest rate. It's not to,
because we've got other safety nets now too. So I think we've got an awesome schematic design. So I'll
open it up for questions and witnesses prepared for cross-examination. So go for it. Thank you very
much. I serve as an expert witness in utility rates. Anybody have any questions for Mr. Garrett? Yes,
Councilor.
Let me open this up because I think I was lucky enough to be on a phone call with some of your folks
where we decided that it would probably be best if you came tonight to talk about this because of our
last long term finance committee meeting. We kind of talked a little bit about needing to look at the
schedule for a jail bond and there just wasn't enough time to discuss it. And so tonight hopefully we
have that time for discussion. And so I wanted to start kind of where we left off
from long-term finance meeting, which I know you watched assiduously. But that is to say, we have received
documentation suggesting that we need to move rather quickly on bond action, suggesting that we need
to take action in June for this to go to bond council in July.
have any thoughts about the timetable in which some of this needs to take place? I know you said that
at the top of your remarks that, as far as you're concerned, we're good to go. Can you elucidate a little
bit more on timeline? Sure. And I don't know who gave you that specific, you know, said you need it
to go by June. But the answer is that we feel pretty certain that we know where the glide path is.
This year Okay, and so we obviously the state legislature will come back again next year and you also
have your Must group that you may or may not want to entertain going forward I firmly believe you should
entertain it and and move forward And so, you know that will come later in my my opinion. That's something
you do a little later
But that will could change landscapes later on in 2029 and kind of set those stages. So I think the
important thing is in the past, I said, we want to go unless a war breaks out. Guess what? Everybody
said, wow, you've said that in a war broke out. Yes, it did.
Now, as things are settling down, the market appears to be very settled down. Matter of fact, I'm going
to Savannah, Georgia, after this meeting, heading down there to go to a national conference with Securities
and Exchange Commission.
And so we're gonna hear nationally the flavor out there. But I think the answer is that Yush, your architect
should be telling you costs are still going up, interest rates are reasonable, we've got a good path
between now and year end, so stalling anything off after that could totally change the picture.
All right. So your first step by all means would be getting the bond documents started by bond Council
Barnes and Thornburg and also then making sure that we've got
And I know Brittany was mentioning earlier here, we'll be looking at, we got a good copy of
the sustainability. We've got good minimum fund target balances, resolutions we're gonna revisit. So
we've got a lot of our homework done for the state for standard and pores. And so it appears to be a
good climate for them also, because we're also working with them on other projects too.
I'm sorry if that was too long of answer, but there is so many things going on in this equation. It's
a simultaneous equation. I think that echoes what we've heard that we, we can go, I don't want to use
too colloquial terms here, but, but council could take action now and that would be more favorable than
waiting because we just don't know what's going to be coming. Correct. I would say yes.
Councilor Henry. Thank you, Greg, for being here and giving us the latest on it. I do have some questions
that maybe all will eventually come together, but I'll just ask what's on my mind as we move through
this. I didn't have the luxury of being in the other meeting there to hear it. So as I look at the estimated
minimum future lit, .93, that leaves us .27 to play with. Presuming all else remains the same in the
county in terms of our use of the lit.
You mentioned must, that committee. What would that variable look like if the committee of four decided
to adopt a policy that moved or basically for lack of better terms keep the certified share kind of
formula the city of Bloomington is looking for? How does that weigh in here as a variable if the must
committee decides to allow a municipality to have more of that lit? Does that make sense?
chewing on my tongue. So I think I understand what you asked. And so let me put it this way. So,
you know, obviously, there's going to be a lot of, you know, where the total 2.9 should be shared out.
And, you know, must if it if you put together, it's supposed to be unanimous. I'm telling some of the
counties, if it's not unanimous, I'd still put my
document in, you know, and so, but I think that will take a year or two to make it through the process.
So, you know, how will it change? I think most counties have said it is very, very obvious we need our
1.2. We're going to have to stay the course on the 1.2. So either there's another sharing of another
increment from someone else or
maybe the cap has to change or something like that. But those are all hypotheticals that would really
get created later in 27, maybe even as long as 28. But they would impact beyond 27, 28. It would impact,
I think, what you put in effect in 28 for 29, which is the current timeline for the new let. All right.
Thank you on that.
We just heard the auditor's office before your presentation talk about some funds that were some lit
that we're looking at economic development lit one of those. We have the look at the table. Do we have
the current number on the current amount in the economic development what's been collected.
The current cash balance as of today, okay, $24,175,882. So there's a presumption of using the debt
service. So I'm looking at the H2 somewhere between 4.9 and 6.1 over five years of that. Stop accumulating
in what year again?
2028 is the last year we'll receive collection. So after 2028, we're now burning something. We're no
longer collecting an edit on 30. And we used a sizable amount of the edit to balance or to manage our
budget this cycle. I guess my question is, Greg, if we're going to keep rating the edit or using the
edit to do the business of the county, is that reflected in this estimate that if we keep using the
edit for other things? Sure.
Let me just back up because I did look at the cash balances too. So the cash balance that she just gave
you is an isolated number at one point in time, okay? On page two, the added is going to bring in in
2026, estimated 12.3 million. So you've gotten some of that very, you know, it's last time I looked,
We got four months, maybe January, February, March and April using my fingers and my toes. So didn't
have to go to the toast. So I have put in then on page two, the budgetary expenses of 4.9. And I believe
even in the jail lit, the note was during our discussion with staff,
there was an additional that I that's why on page one or note one says edit fund and were actual budgeted
expenses to April 30th. Okay, so we took that into account. So I am showing you on this
That you keep a level of expenses and it does grow slightly. I would say it's not exponential growth.
It is as we have projected right here. So at that point in time, in my opinion, the rubber meets the
road here and we've got what we show here to be true without
the calculation or implying or utilizing the 24 million cash balance. So that was going to be something
that as we move forward, we could add to the 135, the cash balance both in audit or jail lit, but that's
not been decided at this point in time.
but would also serve as kind of a further buffer if we didn't use it or if we said, you know, let's
not use 24, let's use 10, okay? That would give us 14 buffer just from that on top of the nine buffer
that's in column 2026. Yeah, thank you for that last question, Madam President. I'll handle it, Mike.
Let's talk about that 135 on page,
was it three? So the, what's interesting about this number, what jumps out at me is, and this has nothing
to do with Greg's analysis, your analysis, this is more about what has been stated in resolutions by
the board of commissioners. So the question is, 135 is a number, it's a large number, but the board
of commissioners in their resolution call for phasing of the project still in a way that
And also a requirement for co-location eventually of whatever we do in terms of their choice of property.
And so, you know, a co-located facility we know is well north of 135 million. This is, I guess, I'm
not privy to the conversations you may have had with commissioners or their legal counsel. I mean, this
only covers a phase one, right?
I mean, it wouldn't be a 200. I don't know that for certain. With working with the staff and yes, legal
counsel, your legal counsel, this was the amount that we felt comfortable and have been utilizing,
I think, for several months now. And so, you know, the project, and again, we have not utilized or shown
additional cash but we feel very comfortable that we can get this part started and do you would you
have to face everybody has to face I'm facing a fairgrounds right now. Yeah it just takes me back full
circle to the point two seven doesn't it because if we had to do another one of these for phase two
in say five to ten years or however and I've got point two seven to work with at that point this this
gets interesting
Go ahead and I do have one and then I got to ask one last question. I'll give it up. But don't forget
growth also. Well, that's the question I've got for you. So what's your assumption of growth in this
document? Okay, it was it was fell down in the footnote. Yeah. So the expenses expenses in both edit
and jail lit were estimated to increase 6% per year. Lit revenue was expected to increase five. What
would the what would the population growth need to be to get that kind of growth in the county?
I have not done that calculation, but I could. Yeah, I think it might be useful because I'm sure you're
great at this stuff, but my concern is, well, you know, what's the county's economic and population
growth to sustain a 20-year amortization table? That would be my last. Yeah. And I think we've had pretty,
I've got the growth in the sustainability. I think we've had at that percent where we've been over the
last several
So, sorry, that was a lot. It's okay. Well, did you have a question of that? Under the notes at one,
and you were saying that you were using the jail lit fund as expenses as a 430. So I'm not sure whether
are you saying justice,
actually already been spent out every month as of 430 or are you looking at what we've budgeted for
the whole year? And the reason why I'm asking this is because we put in that jail medical in their contract
and that was rather large. What was a million and a half? It was a lot of money. So it was meant to
be. We on our discussion when we were having with staff,
we said we put in the budget. Then we were made aware of, so it is a budget annual amount. We were aware
that council had done an additional and one of the funds, I thought it was jail-lit, but I might be
wrong, it might be unadded. So we wanted to include that, okay, rather than lowball the expenses, because
my assumption is when you do an additional,
Sometimes they seem to hang around the next year. So I wanted to make sure we kept. Well, if you're
talking about the medical, it was supposed to have been included when we did our budget. And for some
reason, it didn't get included. So that I believe, if I'm remembering right. So we just did that to
correct that. I saw that in there. But I don't know whether we pay that monthly or we pay it quarterly
or how it's paid. I don't think you're paying out of that.
The expenses listed are the total appropriations allowed for the year as of that date. So that's going
to be anything that is expended and anything that is allowed to be spent that has yet to be spent this
year. So that is all of it. I just want to make sure because we do not have money
in that property tax fund to cover, that's the reason why we moved that over there so that we knew that
that was covered because that jail medical has really grown a great deal over time and I expect it will
continue to grow even more. And so we need to make sure that those are expenses. Remember, it was at
one time, you could only use 20% of it
for operational and then like in that last year or so they said there was no longer a cap of what you
could use for operational. And so I think we need to look long term. We build another jail. Certainly
our operational is going to be a great deal more because you're going to have to have more staff. I
know everybody thinks we're not going to build as big a jail, but then we all know what's going to really happen.
So we have to count on what is it going to cost to operate that because it's got to come out of that.
And of course, it's all going to be under the 1.2. We talk in separate buckets, but it's all part of
the 1.2. If we actually go ahead and take it to the 1.2. And I did look it up. I stand corrected. It's
$2 million in the $4 million budget that you passed in at it.
Okay, the medical is $2 million? Yes, ma'am. I know it was a lot. Old-time self-insurance account $18,001.
That's different. Okay, that's a self-insurance, $2 million. Okay, we talked about the same thing. Now,
when I'm talking for the jail lid, I'm talking about the medical contract for folks inside the jail.
How much is that? I believe the total budget that was accounted for, right? So in the jail lit, we'll
keep our correct fund 1233. It's $1,675,277 in the $2.6 million.
Okay, so a million six for the medical. It is labeled medical services number 34100. I just want to
make sure that we understand that what we're counting as jail-lit is going to be part of the 1.2, but
those operational costs are going to go up a great deal because we're going to have to have more staff
And that medical is just not going to get cheaper. I mean, it just isn't. And I'm not trying to make
it cheaper. I mean, that's something we have to do. So I just want to make sure that we're looking at
that carefully and not planning on spending more. But maybe I guess I thought this was just going to
be a discussion of where this might possibly go. But since we haven't really been given a budget of
what they're going to do, I can't believe it. Is that correct or are you prepared to just go ahead and
do this? Absolutely. Yeah, Councilor Williams. That goes straight to my question, which isn't necessarily
one you have the answer to, but feel free to chime in, everyone else does. But the budget for whatever
we're thinking might be built is what?
Is it 135? Is that been said? Like where did that come from? I'm just, it's not, I'm not trying to be
facetious. I'm literally asking. Council member said? Let me take a crack at it, Bree. Please. All right.
The last estimate that we got, we were sitting in this room.
And the last architectural rendering that we got was a quarter of a billion dollars. That was for a
co-located facility that was both phases together. I have not seen an analysis that shows that $135
million is phase one. And I will say, I know you've asked during a few different times during
conversations that we've had joined earlier this year about like cost estimates for that. And as of
April 28th, we still haven't received it. Okay, so basically, and that's the last thing I remember as
well. We kind of said, okay, we'll take like about half or whatever of that number and assume we're
building half of the project. So we take half of the budget
But let's be real about the more expensive half, be your facility, right? So this is ridiculous.
I'm sorry. I have a hard time. And it's not at all, obviously. I mean, thank you for this, because at
least we know how we will or would. Or affordability. Yeah. But it's just insane, because we don't
know what we're buying and how much it costs. If you go even further and you look at your favorite table
and Mr. Garrett has this report, the amortization table, if you add in debt service to the principal,
we're right back where we started. Yep. Yeah. The interest 223,104,875 dollars.
And Michelle, if you could zoom in for old eyes. I'm not in charge of it. I'm not sure who's putting
it up there, but they're doing a good job. They are doing a good job. Thank you, whoever's in charge
of zooming. So the number I just referenced is that lower right-hand number. The total debt service.
That's right. That's right. So even though we are essentially seeking to purchase a $135 million building,
we're still investing $223 million.
Just like when you buy a house, if you spend, you know, out of $35,000 for a house, it takes you a long
time before you've really gained equity. And that's one of the things, since we really have not even
chosen a spot yet, where this lovely, beautiful big jail's gonna be built, where we are monetarily.
But what I call to your attention, if you scroll up to the top, the first like three years, okay, like
see the first year is 3,375,000,000. That's for what's left of this year. And then after 2027,
it would be 6,750,000. Now, the reason why I want to call that to your attention is,
I was hearing from some of the folks on staff that if we didn't do this and moving forward with whatever
happened with courts, I'm not afraid of ACLU, but some people are shaking, that we would be forced to
move a certain population, which we've always agreed to from the beginning of the agreement,
off to another facility, and that it might be as much as $1 million a year. Well, but if we do this,
it is $6,750,000 while we are determining and putting together a known fact so the public knows where
we're going and what we're spending. And so, yes, it could be more later to build.
just like people's salaries are more as we go along. I get that. It's always more every year to operate
county government. But I wanted to keep that in mind that when somebody says, oh, it might cost us a
million dollars to move some of these folks someplace else, that shouldn't be the deciding moment
figuring out what we're going to do. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it when we've got all the numbers
and so forth together. The other thing I would like to remind people is if it is the right thing to
do, if we get overcrowded to move that, we surely are going to just do the right thing to do anyway,
no matter who has a contract. I mean, if for some reason the folks that are in the facility, if that number
grows by a large amount, that new jail is not going to be ready to move into tomorrow or even next year.
So I just I don't want anybody to feel like you've got somebody putting a fire under you until we all
know what we're doing. Very much agreed. Point taken. Yes, Councillor Iverson. So assuming that
There's a lot of assumptions being built into this. We're going to have to make a pretty serious decision
in the next two months. Are any of the assumptions in this document going to change in the next two
months? No, other than the cash outlay that you may want to put into it, because I've assumed zero.
And you have a cash balance that is growing. So in isolating your question just to that, I don't believe,
as long as no other wars break out and the interest rates change. There's not. Say something positive.
So they settle down and I think they'll be settling down. Okay, excellent. So therefore these numbers
will be relevant for the decisions we need to make in the foreseeable future. Yeah, and I think that
was the point. Come back
get you jump started from where we were before, where we are now with the new legislation. And I think
David asked kind of the question, you know, what's going to happen over the next six months? We should
be status quo here. But beyond that, things are going to start hitting you again. And so, you know,
and what I told you from our standpoint, yes, you need to decide on what your
building the county as a whole. I think the guidance our guidance came from Jeff Cockrell and what he
was trying to work out with the overall plan. And so we wanted to show you this schematic design on
something that I believe is perceived to be able to work. But obviously I'm not the architect. I'm the
numbers guy. We understand that. Yeah.
Anybody else have anything to add? That's a lot of food for thought. So given the crunch time that we
are on, so thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. All right. Have a good evening.
Thank you. A county council member burning up my phone. You can go handle that while it's still daylight.
Thank you.
All right, next up, we're going to go back into item number seven, which is our consent agenda items.
Council, I move to approve the following summary minutes as presented January 13th, 2026 County Council
Executive Session Meeting, May 10th, 2026 County Council Meeting, and the May 24th, 2026 County Council
Meeting. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Are there any questions from council related
to the consent agenda items?
Seeing none, are there public comment on this item? You can come forward to the lectern here in the
room or raise your hand via Teams. And still seeing none, we can do this by voice vote. 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 is item eight, which are the hire and freeze reviews for various
departments. And we'll start with item eight, which is from the courts.
Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the court's request to be exempt from
the hiring freeze and be allowed to make internal transfers and fund 1000-0225 County General Courts
when the court administrator position becomes vacant in July. Second. All right. We got a motion and
a second. We're joined by Judge DeKoff and Ms. Abraham. Welcome.
Thank you. As I announced at the last meeting, I will be retiring, so myself along with the judges have
been trying to figure out how to redo court administration so we don't lose a beat. The thing we came
up with is to move the deputy court administrator up to take over my position since I've already trained
her. That's what her job duties are when I'm not there.
And that one goes from my level is a 25-year level, and she's currently at the 20. So that saves some
there. And then promoting the case management coordinator up to the deputy. And that's a complete wash,
because they're both at the 20-year level. So that would say the same. And then her position that is
then vacant, which is a case management position, not filling at this time with the hiring freeze. They're
trying to muddle through and see if they can keep that status quo until the hiring freeze is done, or
they deem they really
and then they'll be coming back for you. Keeping in mind, I've already lost my front person and we've
refilled that with the part time. So I'm going basically from six full time now to four and a half.
So trying our best to do the hiring freeze, but that's our proposal that we asked. Thank you for that.
Any questions? Yes, Councillor Wilts. I do have a question, but first I just want to say that when I
When I read your agenda requests, I'm just constantly between you and probation, just appreciative of
the way you are approaching it. It feels as though we're all rowing in the same direction. And I just
wanted to say thank you.
The question is what does this case manager do? Her main thing is she's responsible for all the statistics
that we have to send quarterly up to the state. She also has to make sure that we have an even caseload
among the courts, which right now she's on overload because with us losing a court, we have to figure
out how to redistribute all those cases. So that's what she does all the time is trying to figure out
if we need to read readjust anything, do changes.
So that's what her main, but she also is responsible for when we have mental health evaluations that
anybody does, she has to get those scheduled, making sure we get the reports in. So then she backs up
the jury coordinator. So we keep throwing more things and more things at her. So. Okay. And that's the
position you. I keep it vacant. So when she goes to the deputy, she's going to try and take some of
that and then disperse the other duties among the others in the office and fingers crossed that we get
it all covered.
And then I'll go to council. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I know you have a very busy schedule,
so I'm glad you could sneak in at the very last second. I wanted to echo Councillor Wilts's remarks.
The estimated fiscal impact of this is an actual decrease. So it's due to the different steps that people
are on. But still, it's working. And we really appreciate all the work that you put into thinking about
this. All the rules and keep our office running.
Yes, I'd like to separate the question because I want to support moving forward with the court's
administrator and I'd like to postpone making any decision about the deputy court administrator just
for a bit, just to see where we are, because as we've already been, if you had time to listen, I know
everybody's really busy schedule,
We had a lot of information from Jamie Boesler at AIC and it was pretty clear that the message is hold
tight. They've got information coming from what is it, something analytics so that we'll get better
information.
before we start moving forward with spending things. So as you know, I've been saying no to pretty much
every request to get around the hiring freeze, but I think it's essential that they have the
court administrator in place. And so that's what I'll support. And yes, I appreciate the fact
that everybody's trying to watch the numbers, because we have to. I mean, we absolutely have to.
And then, if come July, they look at the new numbers and say, you've got so much money, you'll never
have to worry. Well, you know what I'd do? I'd say, OK, let's give some back to the public who's paying
these taxes. But I know it's probably not going to be something that's going to fly. But I just think
we ought to continue to be really, really cautious. So I'd like to split, and then you folks can just
vote however you want on the second position.
But I'd like to be able to support at least one of them. I will say the reason why we did that is like
when I'm not here, the deputy obviously becomes me basically. So we were trying to look out that if
we bump up the one and then because usually me and the deputy, we're hardly ever gone on the same day.
So we have one there. So we're just afraid that if like I said, if the new court administrator is not
there, we don't have a backup for that person.
was our thinking going that route. So we still have somebody if something does come up, they can jump
in and take over. I'd also like to say that we're in a unique position in that in all the years that
I've been in in this this system in Monroe County, we have never lost a court. We are in the process
of dealing with losing a court. We're doing that in the same year that we're losing Lisa. And that is
a significant loss to our system. For us to we need the position of the
We need her position. We need the deputy position. We're not going to fill. We're not asking to fill
the third position right now. But we are at this time wrangling over there as to what we're going to
do with that caseload and how that is going to look and what we're going to be doing. And we need the
assistance of both the court administrator and the deputy court administrator to do that, especially
going forward as we start looking at our budget to bring to you for 27 and how 27 is going to look.
So I appreciate, and we do appreciate the idea that there is a freeze and we're all trying to look at
saving money. But I would also remind you that in 27, there'll be one less court that you're funding.
So. And from my understanding, if we want to separate the question here, Ms. Turner-King, we would have
to have a second for this.
That was a motion. Well, I was going to ask Councilor Honk if you wanted to make a motion on that, because
technically you have to have a second. Yes. I would like to move that we separate the question. Second.
Okay. All right. So we got a motion and a second. So is there, and so we'll deal with the first part,
which is the Director of Courts Administrative Position. Is there any other further questions or comments
on this, on that one?
Seeing none, we'll move to public. You have to do a voice vote on the separation. Oh, sorry. Okay. So
all those in favor of separating these two signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign.
Aye. Okay. So we have one, two, three. Okay. So we got motion carries, majority. Do we need to change
the motion?
Uh-uh, because majority passed. Councilor Iverson was the name in that. Okay, so since there is no further
questions on this item, I'll move to public comment. If there's public comment on the Director of Courts
Administrator position, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via
Teams. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
Okay this is just to reiterate this is for the court's administrator position only. Correct. Councilor
Feidl. Yes. Councilor Hawk. Yes. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes.
Councilor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
All right, and taking it back to the deputy court administrator, are there any other questions or comments
on this item from council? Seeing none, I'll move to public comment. If there's public comment on this
item, you can raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern here in the room. And seeing
none, may we please have a roll call vote on approving the deputy court administrator position?
Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Decker? Oh sorry. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor
Hawke? No. Councillor Feinstein? No. Motion passes majority five to one.
Thank you very much. Before I leave, can I just say, I want to say thank you again publicly to Lisa
for the work that she has done as our court administrator and the work she did before this. She has
been exemplary. We will miss her. She did train Jemma. We're excited to have Jemma and Shannon now to
help the courts. It helps us help you, but this will probably be the last
I think this is probably gonna be, no, maybe not. I'm here in two weeks for a big grant that I just
got, so. There you are. She'll be missed, and she's gonna miss us, too. I know. I won't be tuning in
to very many county council meetings. See, you're not gonna... But I do tell my office they can call
me anytime. When I get out of the pool, I'll call them back. We're leaving now. Take care of yourself.
Thank you. Congratulations.
All right. Next up is item B from the clerk's office. 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
1215-0062 Election Fund Election Board, one part time voter registration clerk. Second. All right. We
got a motion and a second. We're joined by Clerk Brown and Ms. Ferris. Welcome.
All right, so 2026 total turnout on the 16th day of early voting was 2,848 votes compared to 2022 with
a total of 1,740 votes. That is a 63% increase from last year's 2022 election versus this election.
2026 compared to the largest turnout year of a midterm election in 2018 was 2,295 votes for a total
increase of 24 voters. Today we have ended the day with 90,405 registered voters with a 3.4% turnout
for early voting. That's 3,068 total votes, 220 today for an average of 200 voters a day.
For this role, it is one of our part-time employees. This is the individual who moved from the part-time
to the full-time position to fill that. And then this is just us trying to make sure that we have the
bipartisanship in all of our roles and to ensure that we have a smooth flow for the rest of the election
and for in the fall. All right. Any questions? Yes, Councillor Hawke. Right.
When I was there the other day, and there was a new face there, and if I understood right, said that
she was the part-time replacement. And so I thought that surely she was the Republican replacement because
there was a Democrat setting there, and you have to have. But no, we had in the room, I'm just saying,
we have to be careful about this. In the room, there were two Democrats and no Republican.
That may not sound like a big deal to you, but that's what we have to do. That's why we keep it like
that. Now, I hadn't been there, but just a few minutes when I commented about that, all of a sudden
the room was full of everybody. And I appreciate that, because that just means, yes, we're going to
pay attention. But I wanted to call that to your attention, because it wasn't just me there. There was
somebody with me. So they saw the same thing, and they understood.
So there were only just two of us voting. It's set up so that if there's thousands show up at once,
man, you can still run them right through. But we were the only ones there. It just seems like there
was a lot of staff there during the time we were there. We were the only two voting.
I don't know what you do to get people to get out and vote. It would help a lot if somebody would fill
the ballot, wouldn't it?
I just wanted to say the early voting space we have like slowly progressed the number of people that
have been working We started at the very beginning with only having two poll books two print devices
and two checkouts We are now up to having five check-ins and we are set up for ten if needed to be so
that if we were to have a increase that we needed to bring in more people we could but we're not staffing
all of them at this time and
And then I think the incident that she's talking about with the two D's in the office was in our front
office where we're normally handling voter registrations as they're coming in. I do know that that day
I had a R helping a D in the back office so that did leave two D's in the front office.
I just wanted to thank you as one of your liaisons for bringing this forward. Again, the fiscal impact
on this is flat and that just so helpful as we're making these decisions. So thank you. All right. Seeing
none, we'll move 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.
Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Will? Yes. Councillor
Henry? Yes. Councillor Crosley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feinstein? Yes. Motion passes
unanimous. Thank you.
Next up is item C from the auditor's office. Council, I move to open for discussion possible approval
of the auditor's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund one thousand
dash zero zero zero two county general auditor, a full time assistant property director. Second.
All right. We got a motion and a second and we have the auditor have one table to the other table.
you. This is Stephanie Carter, property director. So we're here today to request to hire one of her
team members, actually her right hand. So we're here today to request to be exempt from the hiring freeze
to hire the assistant property director. So as many of you know,
All positions within the property division are essential to daily operations. These staff members provide
direct assistance to the public and ensure that property deductions are accurate and up to date.
As you know, that's particularly important right now. Always important, but as we go through these changes
with SB1, we have a lot of work that's discarding.
In addition, the division is responsible for the transfer of property records, plat mapping, parcel
maintaining, coordination with economic development initiatives, and other critical functions like the
abstract, tax bill calculation, corrections, certification of net assessments, and the auditor's role
in tax sale, just doing a few of our different duties. So in particular, this position is responsible
for coordination and implementation of the TIF neutralization study.
coordination of an execution of all county tax sales Commissioner certificate sales and assisting with
county abstract and settlement of taxes and correction of taxation errors all positions within The property
division are cross-trained to back up one another but it is a small division of our team that touches
all county properties
real and personal. So it is a big job, and it is definitely a necessary one. And we'll entertain any
questions you have. Thank you. And just for the record, we have Councillor Decker joining us this evening.
Thank you. Any questions or comments for the auditor on this item? Councillor Hawke. Just not particularly
a question, but just a note as a note, very recent.
First I've seen this, and it's something we don't want to have to do. But Indiana University just announced
a reduction in force. And so this, I don't think we should be surprised that we're going to see this.
And this is what we're trying to avoid, is a reduction in force. And that's the reason why we haven't
filled the empty slots, because we don't want to have to tell somebody to go when they're here.
And so I hate being the guy who keeps saying no. But this is why. We just don't want to go to our employees
that we already have and counting on that job to support their household and say, oh, by the way, we're
going to have to cut. So one time we had an auditor telling us we had to cut 5% off of every budget.
understand the budgets and so she was wrong. But we don't want to have to go through a summer like we
did that summer. So the other question I would have is have you met with anybody or discussed further
what I thought we were going to be talking about when we talked about the auditor staff, the fact that we've got
two people setting in another department that should be under the auditor's staff so that when that
one person is freed up a little, they can help out here or there or whatever, could learn some of these
other jobs and be, you know, cross-training. And I think that fell on deaf ears. I mean, sometimes I
think I'm just talking to myself. I don't know why I bother coming to these meetings.
was supposed to be doing payroll. You tell me. I mean, you know what the rules are. You tell me. Past
decisions made by this council and the commissioners that I didn't have any control over put those two
positions under the commissioners. So I can't change job descriptions. That, thankfully, is under your
purview. But you know I'm happy to take my statutory duties and handle them efficiently. Right. And
I am not finding fault with you.
There were errors made in my opinion that we should, and you know this, I've been harping about this
for a long time, that those payroll positions need to be under the direction of our auditor. I had mentioned
this at the last meeting. I thought we were going to get something and it's not included in this.
I mean, I just regret that because I know you need to be full staff. Now, I know we're trying to cut
every place, but I also know if you're following what's going on at the state, that the requirements
of what's going to have to come out of that auditor's office just keeps growing and growing and growing.
And the reason I know that is because our job is growing and growing and growing. There's just not enough
hours in the day to learn all of it.
I know you're going to be going to Auditor's Conference. When is it? Next week? Or when is it?
It's coming up. So you'll be getting more of an update which will really be helping us to make some
of these decisions. But I want to support your office because you've got to have full staff. It's not
just for county. It's all, you know, they have to do the split of the money for the townships and the city
Everything. It is the center of all of the finances is sitting right there on top of the shoulders of
that lady sitting right there. And we have to make sure she has the staff to cover it.
That is very much appreciated. And thankfully, I have an amazing team. But I have to have the staff.
I have to have the team to be able to continue to provide the level of service we provide. And we feel
like we provide very good service internally and externally. So we need to maintain that, because we
do touch everything in the county. So as far as employee services and payroll, we've had conversations
multiple times about this.
I'm not opposed to taking that back, but you will not be receiving an agenda request from me to do so.
That wouldn't be appropriate. It's not under me to do so. So that would be something maybe the council
could discuss. And if you choose to change job descriptions, that's totally up to you. I think they
do a fantastic job. I don't think anything's broken, but it is a statutory duty of the auditor that's
recognized, understood, and welcomed in our office. And nor do I think that you should be the one requesting
We're the ones that did this and we're the ones that need to fix it. I'm not saying at all we change
the folks that's actually doing the work. It's just like just rewrite the job description who they report to.
I'm going to get back to the agenda request. Thank you. You're welcome. So I was looking at the fiscal
impact. And I think there's a slight increase on this position. What's in the packet is a little off.
It's OK. But I'm showing something a little north of $92,000 for the
So I'm seeing just a little bit of an increase. Do you have the correct fiscal impact in front of you?
Or is that something that? I'm going to pull it up here in just a second. I was checking the math. I
was doing that too, but I didn't get quite to the FICA or PERF, so I was making assumptions. So the
plan is what we intend to do here is
move another employee, if you grant us permission to do so, into this role. So it's an employee with
more tenure than the previous employee. So there would be a slight impact here, absolutely. And then
we're also, next item, requesting to hire the domino effect here for the position that will actually
be vacant then, given approval. And so then you'll see,
savings there because we intend to hire probably the minimum level more than likely. So give and take
yes. So on the screen the current person position is at a twenty nine point zero one hourly rate. The
new position will be thirty point seventeen and so you'll see a an increase but I'm assuming
There's no, the perf didn't scroll down, hold on. So yeah, with the perf then it is 92, which means
there's going to be an additional impact of 2,597. Okay, all right. And that increase was simply just
explained by you as that someone with
tenure within Monroe County government that is taking on this role. Got it. Okay. Any other questions
or comments for the auditor on this item? Seeing none, we'll move to public comment. If there's public
comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room. Raise your hand via teams.
Like we have a hand raised.
Councillor Jeff McKim, so you can unmute yourself, state your name for the record, and you'll have up
to three minutes. Thank you very much, Council. Jeff McKim. I will not take anywhere near three minutes.
I just wanted to express my support for this request. I think it's really important the basic financial
operations remain full staffed, and anything other than that I think would be a false economy. So please
do support this request.
Thank you. Any other further questions or comments on this item? Public comment. That's what I meant
to say. All right. Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor
Henry? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson?
Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Falk? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right next up also with the
auditor's item, item D. You mean E.
until I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the auditor's request to be exempt from
the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1000-0002 County General Auditor, a full-time economic
development coordinator. Second. Great. Okay. As I began to tell you with the previous item, this is
the position that will now be vacant since you've just given us permission to fill the other vacant position.
So it's really just one request, if you understand what I'm saying. So this position is responsible
for abatements, enterprise zones, taxation overpayments, refunds, coordinating taxation deductions,
transient merchant licensure, and serving as an internal control for legal property transfers. So another
big important job.
within the county. So, just requesting again your permission and happy to entertain questions. Great.
Any questions or comments for this item for the auditor? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move 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.
Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor
Cronin? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feinstein? Yes. Councillor Holland? Yes. Councillor
Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
Next up, item E is also still with the auditor's office. Council, I move to open for discussion and
possible approval of the auditor's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire
and fund 1000-0002 County General Auditor, a full-time property transfer coordinator. Second. Okay,
who would you like to add on this item? Okay, we just received notification from a
dear employee that they will be moving to Michigan. And we actually just today received the date. I
believe her final anticipated date of employment would be on May 12th. So unfortunately for us, but
a great transition for them, they are moving to Michigan to be close to family. And I guess the commute
would be too severe.
Okay. Is there any questions or comments for this item for council? Best of luck to the employee that's
leaving. Thank you. All right. So seeing no questions or comments from council, we'll move to public
comment. You can raise your hand via Teams or you can come forward to the lectern here in the room.
And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
Councillor Crawford? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feinberg? Yes. Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor
Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council. Very much appreciated.
You're welcome. I would say have a good night, but you're just popping back over there. Okay. Thank you.
Next up is item nine, which is council business. And we'll start with item eight from the health department.
Council as a reminder, this item was tabled from the April 14th council meeting. I moved to approve
the health department's request and fund 11 59 dash 0000 health
fund, the creation of account line 36998 COVID immunization expense and account line 4001 equipment
and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation of $123,286.79 in the supplies category.
$123,286 in the services category and $500,000 in the capital category for a total appropriation of
$745,572.79. Second. All right. I was just looking at. Great. Do you see that? So on here.
The total says $746,572.79. And then... I thought you said... Oh, it's off by... No, that's what I'm
saying. It's off by $1,000. It says $746, and then what you read is $745. Sorry. Right. Which one is
the right number? $746. Okay. Council, I amend my motion for a total appropriation of $746,572.79.
have Ms. Kelly here. Welcome. Good evening again. So in September of 2025, the Health Department submitted
an agenda request for the creation of these account lines and category transfers. So this is for funding
that was received from COVID-19 vaccine administrations that were dispersed from the Indiana Department
of Health.
This request was approved at the October 28th meeting. However, the purchase was not completed by the
facilities and fleet department before the end of 2025. So essentially we're coming back to you to try
to circle back around to being able to get these funds appropriated so that we could hopefully move
forward with the purchase of the mobile unit to begin providing those services in the community.
questions for Ms. Kelly on this item from Council. Yes, Council Iverson. Thank you for being here and
thank you for supplying the information from Health First Indiana in our packet today as a reminder
that that's where these dollars are coming from. That these Health First, you know, the stipulations
coming from the state
really do need us to be out and about and providing these services. So so thank you for providing that.
My question to you is what have you heard from like where where would this mobile unit go. What have
you heard from township trustees. What have you heard from other health units in the community.
Yes, so currently we have six trustee and food pantry community locations that are interested in partnering
with us to be able to provide these mobile health outreach services. So I have a list here that we've
been working on collecting this information for where are these partnerships where we could go out and
provide them. So the Benton, Bloomington trustee, Perry, Van Buren,
the community kitchen pantry 279. So those are all current facilities that we're working with where
we could actually have this mobile unit out providing those services. In addition, we did have a community
survey that went out in the fall of 2025 trying to gather information from community members about what's
really, what do they see the importance of the services that we could be providing.
Access to vaccinations kept routinely coming up, communicable disease and infectious disease control,
emergency preparedness. So those types of activities are the ones that would we would really be focusing
on providing with this having this mobile unit. So we would be able to go out and provide those vaccinations.
testing for communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases treatment referrals. And it would be
really nice to also be able to have this that we could deploy if we had a surge with, for example,
tuberculosis. And we needed to go provide testing for hundreds of individuals. It's going to be a lot
easier to have a unit like this, to be able to go to another site rather than trying to
get a few hundred people into the health department, given our limitations there with parking and access.
The organizations that are on your list, did you just, you didn't just pick those like on Google Maps,
like those are actual conversations you're having with community partners that want this service at
their location. Am I understanding that correctly? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yes.
So with that in mind, you mentioned some of the townships, but could I could we assume that you'll be
working with all the townships? Yes. So we've put out it's just a matter of what communications we've
got back thus far. So I have someone that's working on communicating to find facilities and then working.
So they're all kind of in different stages. Councillor Hawke.
Yes, I'm really happy to hear that the plan is to go to the different townships and so forth because
especially Van Buren's got a lovely place for you to go and provide those services. You really don't
need a mobile unit to do that. But I'm glad that you're working with the community. But once again,
for some reason,
I must have misunderstood what Councilmember Iverson was saying. This Health 1159, that's in that frozen
levy fund, right? 1159 is local property taxes. And while this was like sort of a one-time additional
dollars that the state had sent in, and at that time,
They had suggested since we're not going to be providing these extra dollars every year, you might want
to consider doing just for one time that it was not required to do just the one time thing. And it's
sitting there in that frozen levy so that it could literally be used to help shore up that fund for
while we're trying because remember that fund is going to be covered under that one point to
All of that is going to be coming into the 1.2. In other words, we're still going to have property tax,
but that's going to be dwindling. It's not going to grow like it has in the past. And so a half million
dollars could really help us over that extra dollars that we spent this year. We budgeted for spending
this year that's more than we were spending in deficit.
So I don't see anything here that's been budgeted for operational costs of a mobile facility, what the
insurance is going to be, what the gas is going to be, where it's going to be stored, all of those things.
And this is just like opening up a brand new business. If you were going to have a brand new business,
you would have to have
operational costs included. So I can't support this. I don't know how it got in there. I thought we
all had sort of agreed that this was not the time to do this, but maybe we're going forward. I can speak
a little bit to the core services and, you know, those required services. You know, although that that
We had a pretty significant cut to Health First Indiana, but we are still required to be providing all
of those services with those Health First Indiana dollars. Our state funds are essentially covering
to make sure, but so I think that that's, we can't just not provide these Health First Indiana services
because we have to make sure that even those funds were cut, that we're still
meeting those requirements. Some questions have been raised about whether or not we should be treating
public health like a business. And I want to push back a little bit on that because I think if we're
going to be fully focused on building a car surreal building, that's one thing.
But we have to be a little more broader in how we're thinking in providing different services. And so
I also wanted to bring up another point. I think that what wasn't raised is that the folks that are
going to be working on this mobile unit are already on staff. There's no request from you to fill vacant
positions. That's my understanding. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. So we have the staff to provide
the services.
I did gather some information to just about just services in general. We're talking about access to
free public health services. So the Indiana University in Indianapolis recently conducted a study and
this was examining improved service delivery under Health First Indiana. So essentially all of the data
all of the core services that all of the health departments were submitting to
to the state during the initial startup period. So this study revealed that over 14,000 Hoosiers
undiagnosed hypertension high blood pressure were identified and nearly seven thousand Hoosiers were
identified with undiagnosed high cholesterol. So these were all due to free health screenings being
out and available to the community. So this study ended up
with estimated over $700 million in healthcare cost savings due to these preventative health screenings.
So this mobile unit is really going to give us this opportunity to be able to engage with more people
than we can currently engage with in our department and help to be able to contribute to how can we help
find those undiagnosed chronic conditions through free screening and testing interventions and connect
those individuals to care. Yes, counselor vital. So I heard counselor Hawk talk about the operational
expenses. I guess I'm wondering to follow up on that and ask where will the gasoline money come from?
Where will the insurance money come from? What happens if you break down? Where are all those things
coming from?
So we do have funds from our revenue or from what we're getting from like fax care so we do receive
some funding through that which would help cover these ongoing expenses and really the hope is that
we would still continue getting some of that revenue through what we're billing for anyways and this
is just from like our vaccine program and the services that we could bill for if we
are able to get a position for that. Otherwise I think it will just change from year to year. So we
did have we did talk to Ivy Tech last year about being able to store the facility there. My understanding
is that facilities has spoken
to the airport about being able to store the unit there. I did collect information from other health
departments across the state that have a mobile unit who are routinely going out about some of their
ongoing costs. Again, this was last fall, so I don't have all those numbers in the top of my head. That's
why I sent you copies of that old proposal, because some of those figures were in there.
I think it's completely manageable and from the other counties that I've talked to, they've had really
good success. Any other questions or comments from? Yes, Councilor Hawk. Right. I would think it would
be not that difficult to get a quote for the insurance.
I think it's asking too much and I know I have a business head, but you know, I hope we all do. That's
what we're doing here is looking at finding. But any rate, I'm not gonna support it, but I'm sorry that
you didn't have ready for us the answers to those questions because we've asked you before. All right,
anybody else? Yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you, thank you for coming in again.
I was looking at the survey data. I think what I'm trying to understand, there's a strong case to do
it. We've got strong partners in the community. We've got some locations we've scoped. The data you
had, there were 46 respondents that said that out of 310 that they had aged the public health department
in some way. There's percentages here, but I wanted to think about humans. And so 25 of those presented
at the brick and mortar clinic.
out of the 46% of that. 19 at a public event, I guess, where they would have engaged the desk somewhere,
the tent or table. And six at a work or school, I guess, presentation or the health department's there.
But what, I mean, so if the van is out and it goes to a part of the community, there's advertising,
there's hopefully some lead time with community,
Let folks know the van's going to be here for vaccination day. Like how do you envision those numbers
going up? Because if it's like, and I know it's like a survey response. So do you have like a good handle
on the number of people that have used the clinic historically, right? The brick and mortar. And then
what we think that impact is going to be taking the vehicle out to the four corners of the county.
I mean, it's a good idea. I'm just trying to wrap my head around some of this and trying to get to the
obvious, you know,
public health as a business versus what that means moving the vehicle. Can you help me understand that
a little? Sure. So ultimately our goal would be to see some of those numbers increase with engaging
with the community members. I think the challenge here is these answers were coming from when the nursing
services were provided through the Miller Drive Clinic. So I think that that's going to be kind of one
of the challenges of
the data that we're able to capture now and moving forward versus that data that was more, that was
reflective of the IU Health Services. Do you have a ballpark? Like, I mean, because out of 310 respondents,
46 said that they've used the County Health Department for anything. And then there's a split over in-person
or, I mean, do you have a sense of what that could look like?
I mean, definitely it would be nice to be able to increase that to at least 60% engaging with us. Well,
thank you. Thank you for, yeah, I mean, I know it's spitballing, but yeah, thank you for helping. I
think it would be helpful, too, the more that we can get the word out and the services and being able
to have this unit to make ourselves more visible, to be able to show up to more places,
just make that a little bit easier. Thank you. Than having to ask people to come to us at the Seventh
Street location. I was reading the comments and the feedback that was in our packet and there was some
real interesting ones in there as well. Oh boy. So but the one thing that somebody did say that in this
conversation is kind of making me think of
This question is, because this is something that you keep saying in terms of getting the word out, getting
the word out, what do you envision that looks like? What would that entail? What would we need to do,
or what would the health department need to do? The council could support whatever the case is. But
I'm curious to know your thoughts on how do we get the word out about something like this? Because this
is a big investment.
It seems like a lot of people would benefit from it and people like the idea of this. But I'm just I'm
curious to know if we don't get the word out. That's a lot that is invested in something that's really
not living to to its potential. So I think we would really need to have a structured campaign
plan communications plan. So in the
old proposal there are some ideas about different strategies of communicating this message but essentially
what are those can we work with the different universities how can we work with the city how can we
work with our local community organizations so
above and beyond just messaging through social media. So I have contacted employee resources. Is there
a way that we could look at mailers? Are there radio advertisements? What are the different methods
of being able to communicate this and use that more than just our website and social media?
But I'll ask, is there anybody on your staff that could help assist with this as well? Yes. So our Director
of Public Health Preparedness handles our external communications and all of our messaging. So this
person could be working on that and is really excellent at doing that work and very creative. Okay.
Thank you. Yes.
The question I wondered about hours of operation for people utilize that it seems like we need to work
around their working hours. I don't know strategy for that. Yes. And so in one of our one of one of
the expectations for our state funding is that we do offer hours outside of our normal business hours
for access to these services. So this would be going and
providing services for a half day on a Saturday once a month, having some evening hours once a month
at a certain location. And of course, you have to adjust employee schedules around that. And we have
been working on that and looking at different ways to make some flexibility there for providing that.
But essentially, it would be set days, times, locations. But outside of those normal hours, again, to
also help just
capture those who can't stop by because they're working Monday through Friday. So how long will this
program last? The services you mean through the mobile clinics? Well, as long as I'm here and have the
opportunity.
I appreciate very much some of your comments here. And I think last time this was before us, one of
the reference points I made is that whenever they started the Bookmobile, it probably was alien-like
for people, but then became a regular feature. I mean, I look out my back window over at Country View
Apartments right there. The green thing out there, that's the Bookmobile. It's now recognizable. But
that's taken, I would say, since 60s, 70s.
I think I remember that. But anyway, if this were working right, ideally that would be the kind of thing
that somebody would see either in Trustee Barrow's parking lot or they'd see it down at the Smithville
ballpark or wherever the township thinks that you could go there. If it were working right, it would
look like that.
I think that a lot of the comments that I'm seeing here kind of reflect a sentiment we hear on health
matters generally. People don't have time to figure all these things out. They don't have the convenience,
particularly if you're dealing with a health issue, they don't have the convenience to figure that out.
Health is kind of a tortured process anyway. And I think that between this, Health Net, IU Health,
what's offered by IU Health, not offered by IU Health, and our second hospital, Monroe Hospital, along
with a whole lot of other folks, I think that that information about all of this, almost in a directional
way, almost has to hit not only social media, but a almost like leaflet campaign that somehow we're
gonna get out. Somehow we elected officials managed to get our mail pieces and door pieces at doors,
don't always get basic services and maybe we help you with that. I don't know. But I think that that
has to hit. And then the third thing is for all those students across that gate or even on the west
side of this county at Ivy Tech, this is a tremendous opportunity to assist us
in a project on helping to figure out how to get the word out, because these things just literally become
community mysteries that only add to the haves and have nots. And I do think, Lori, I agree with you
immensely on something. Everything being downtown within a stone's throw of this courthouse is not always
reaching people where they're at. How, I don't know, presumptuous of us that we would think that it would.
It's hard to sometimes get downtown for folks. Sometimes it's easier for others. But I think that things
that start meeting them where they're at truly make absolute sense because, you know, one thing you
do realize when you run for office in this county and you start delivering yard signs border to border,
it's a massive
County with a lot of people doing a lot of cool things in different ways. I think somehow our services
have to penetrate that, not just when people are putting out yard signs, but when it matters when we're
serving. For me, I could see this going that route. Is there additional information that we will need
on this? Yeah, 100 percent, but good Lord, look at the survey responses.
These are well thought out survey responses which you don't often see. I say that as a teacher reading
online course questionnaire answers. These are really well thought out and people are consistently saying
they don't know everything we do or they're surprised that we do or they really need it but would like
to know this. They want good calls back and they want good reliable information. I think that somehow
there's a lot of food for thought here.
And so I hope some of my comments kind of add to that, but we got to meet people where they're at in
their roughest time. And I think that hearing about the roughest time right there. And so I can add
just a little bit because you made me kind of think of some previous conversations with Indiana University
that just ongoing conversations, they've known
you know, how much we've wanted these services. They have programs that are really focused on, you know,
student engagements. We've had a lot of conversations about how can we work with them. They're data
collecting experts, right, research experts. How can we create, how can we work together so we can collect
data so that they can help us demonstrate our outcomes and maybe where we need to make improvements.
how can we engage our students? I love nothing more than when we have the opportunity to work with students.
We haven't had an intern or an extern for a few months and it's kind of sad. It's so, it's so
It's such a great experience when you're able to bring students into the department, show them all of
the services that we are providing, see them learn, grow, and develop. And so I think that that would
be a really important aspect of this too, being able to how can we work and also bring our students
into this and work with the university to be able to collect data so that we can actually demonstrate
the outcomes from having these services.
Do you see this actually being an appointment driven model or just drive up and park and be there certain
hours or both? Both. Councilor Wilts? A couple of just tiny questions. Did you mention in the list of
places you might go? Not in this most recent list, but it was we've
talked with the schools before about working with their nursing programs and their students and being
able to coordinate for health fairs. So I see that your target audiences, you have a list of like five
there. And I'm wondering, you know, if trying to reach
unhoused or the older population and some of these other hard to access. I'm going to guess and maybe
you can correct me that the survey did not go to these populations. So really there's a bit of a disconnect
there that you know it is what it is. But I would think that it would be
useful to try to get more information from the target audience specifically, and whether it's direct
or maybe going through agencies or organizations who are interfacing with those populations. However
you get at it, I think obviously doing a community survey is fantastic, but I find
in my day job that when you do that, it's often not exactly the information that the target population
would give you. Just a thought. Absolutely. There's definitely ways that we wish and that we know now
this year of how we can, and this was a very short time period, so we had, did we have paper forms in
the office for people walked, when they walked in, sure, but you know, really,
you're exactly right, it would be about getting it out to those community organizations and really being
able to capture all that information, maybe having listening sessions in various formats to be able
to capture the information. It could be something that McKeck could help with, because I know you've
been involved with them, or an IU class as well.
Thank you. Thank you for walking us through that. That triggers a question. You purchased the van and
then we do the data collection to figure out the demand? I just want to capture that.
I think so I think that we work off of the community partnerships that we've already started working
on and engaging and we're always going to be adapting and evolving and changing direction with what
our community needs are and what we're finding. You know our community health assessments done every
three three years for example. So that'll be coming up in twenty twenty seven. But this is a this is
a survey that's a little bit different but I think it's
In public health, you're always going to be changing and kind of going down a different direction. I
get that part against the core services, and I don't want to belabor this, but when I look at the survey
results, I'd say high propensity for vaccination, infectious disease prevention, STI testing. I remember
when the health officer was here, she talked about the capacity of the van to have
I guess a chair with stirrups and a bed. She had some thoughts about other equipment in the vehicle
that isn't captured in the survey, but then isn't captured from maybe the target population either.
I might just be deep into this at this point, but I'm just trying to understand what the van does against
what the data says, against what the demand is. Does that make sense? It does, but our focus would be on
service-wise would be testing, screenings, vaccinations, referrals. Thanks for that. Thank you. It looks
like the auditor had her hand up. Would you like to look at the 4B for this fund?
Based on the budget that was approved during the budget sessions, we are slated to end this fund at
the end of this year with $467,446. That is if all of our estimated revenue and the budgeted amount
is fully expended as it was when the budget was approved. We appropriated for this when we did it. We
made the appropriation, didn't we? Yes. Okay. Thanks. That's good. Thank you.
Yes, I think what we looked at was this is one of the funds that we're going to have to add more money
into from that frozen levy because this fund has been spent down too far and we moved some of the money
around to cover what we need to cover in general and we've got to take from general and put it back
into these other funds. Am I stating that correctly?
You are this is a fund that has had reversions and just based on that trend We were able to reduce the
levy a little bit Right, but but aren't you? We were told that we can count on when we do budgets for
this coming year That we will have to put more money in there than we did this year Which means if you
do more for there, you've got to do less for general
I mean, I'm just saying that's what we did. And so if we didn't do this mobile unit, that would leave
enough cash in the balance when you do the 4B to help them get through next year a little bit. It would
just help us get through this budget time. But you know what? We've talked this thing to death. I'm
ready to vote. Councilor Iverson? I agree. So when you do get this vehicle, would you let us know so
we can go out with your staff? I would absolutely love to put you to work. Thanks.
All right, so I will go to public comment. So public comment, if you have something to say on this item,
you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none,
maybe please have a roll call. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes.
Councillor Hawke? No. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Dick? Yes. Motion passes
majority six to one. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Next up is item B from the highway
department.
Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the Highway Department's request to
be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1176-00001 part-time maintenance laborer.
Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. And it looks like Ms. Ridge, oh, okay, so she is there.
I wasn't sure if she was
or made it to presenter yet. But since you have, you can go ahead and get started. Hello. Good evening.
So we have a full-time employee that is going to stop working full-time. So we are requesting to move
this employee to a part-time position that is open. We have it in our approved budget for a part-time
line and we would not be filling the full-time position at this time. He's a great employee. He actually
retired from the county after 30 plus years of service, came back to us in this full-time labor position,
maintenance, and we'd like to bring him back just as a part-time hourly, no more than 28 hours a week,
and then not fill the full-time position, which should be a cost savings overall.
just can't stay away. Exactly. Any questions or comments on this item from council? All right.
Seeing none, we'll take 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. And seeing none, maybe please
have a roll call vote. Councillor Iverson? Yes.
Councillor Hawke. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor
Crossley. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Next up item C. Council, I move to approve the highway
department's request and fund 1112-0530 economic development lit highway to de-appropriate $1 million
in the services category.
All right, we got a motion in the second, Ms. Ridge. This is just basically some housekeeping work.
We had included this in our paperwork, I think, last month, and we all just overlooked at getting on
the agenda to de-appropriate it. We've already moved the funds and created the line in the CCMG account
for tracking purposes. So just to de-appropriate it.
Any questions or comments from council on this item? Seeing none, we'll move to public comment. You
can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via Teams. Seeing none, may we please
have a roll call vote? Councillor Fein. Yes. Councillor Hawk. Yes. Councillor Wilk.
Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
Thank you. A couple of items from the auditor's office again, starting with item D. Council, I move
to approve the auditor's request and fund 4922-0000 Fullerton Pike Economic Development slash TIFF.
the creation of account line 32751, interest other debt, and account line 32776, principal other debt,
and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation of $300,001 in the services category. Second.
All right, we got a motion and a second, Ms. Gregor. Or Ms. Woodruff. Whichever one.
We received word from FSG that the county's redevelopment commission pledged 50% of the Fullerton Pike
area TIF to the 2023 county bridge payments. So in order to make these payments, we're requesting the
appropriation in that fund just to carry out their wishes. Thank you. Any questions or comments on this
item from council? Yes, council I understand. How many years is that bond payment? Is that a 20 year?
I can get that for you.
No hurry. You can email is fine. I believe it is but we'll get it to you. Email is fine. Any other questions
or comments on this item? Seeing none, we'll move to public comment. You can raise your hand via Teams
or come forward to the lectern in the room. And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor
Hock? Yes. Councillor Wilts?
Henry. Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Fiddle.
Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Great. Next up item E.
Council I move to approve the auditor's request and fund 1000 dash zero zero zero two county general
auditor the creation of account line three three zero zero one timber sales distributions and Simultaneously
appropriate an additional appropriation of twenty five thousand seven hundred and nineteen dollars in
this services category Okay, we got a motion in a second
We received $51,437.97 from the Department of Natural Resources. This is 15% of the net proceeds from
timber sales in the county. Statute says that we are required to distribute
50 percent of this to certain fire districts. And so we have the Beam Blossom Township Fire District,
the Bloomington Fire District and Ellisville and then Monroe Fire Protection District. All four of those
are expected to get equal payment amounts. Statute does also say that
We are capped at $1,000 per unit unless the commissioners approve otherwise. I believe they have intention
to approve, give that approval at a meeting later this month or early next month. Questions or comments
from council on this item? Yes, councilor. This message is for Ms. Turner King. Do we need to make our
motion conditional then on a commissioner action or is the motion
find the way it is. I think it's safe to make it conditional. Okay. All right. Council, I do amend my
motion to make it conditional on Monroe County Board of Commissioners action. Okay. Seconded.
Thank you. Okay.
received $51,000. So my question is, what happened? Where's that going to go? That money was deposited
into County General. Okay, so it's just County General, it's like
this is something that the dollar amount is what the commissioners have said that they, we believe this
is what they want? I did receive confirmation from the administrator that they do intend to approve
that. Again, that wasn't directly from the commissioners. That's just from their administrator. I mean,
they might possibly say we'll distribute all of it to the
However, I'm going to support that. Oh, I mean, but you're just going by what they're straighter said, not.
Correct, and I don't believe the statute would automatically distribute that. The statute's very clear
and it says that we're required to give 50%, but then also puts that cap at $1,000 unless the commissioners
allow for the 50%. I mean, so it is up to the commissioners. Correct. Got it. Yes, Councilor Wilts.
I apologize if you've told me this, but I'm learning that I didn't read everything that was in the pack.
Do you know where this timber harvest took place? That is information I did not receive. I know that
it was a while back that we communicated via email about this and then it kind of wandered through the
county getting figures.
There's just, you know, limited state forested areas within Monroe County. I believe Morgan County also
got this money. So I would assume it's the Morgan Monroe State Forestry, but that is a pure assumption
based on conversation that I had with that county.
I would have to assume as well, because I don't think Yellowwood has even harvested anything. Sorry.
Councilor Decker. One question I had, I'm struggling institutionally to just to remember us dealing
with this in the last few years, but I may be really wrong on that. Do you all remember much?
Whenever I looked at the ledger, I believe it was 22 or 23 that was the last time we received these
kind of funds. And we did distribute the full 50% at that time. Well, I just, I think for the own public
good on our end, just kind of acknowledging that a lot of us get fired up one way or the other. I did
not mean to say it that way, but about
There's I've heard from constituents both sides who does it when they do it, why they're doing it. And
so just the I'm struggling to remember us talking about it. And I'm just wondering if this is just indicative
of the larger numbers that have come through. But that's me misremembering. Yes, Councillor Hock. Right.
It would be lovely if we found out that the commissioners are going to use the other half of the money.
for the parks department and perhaps they could plant some trees with that and then make everybody feel
really good. That's all feel really good about it. This is my funding environmentalist down there.
All right. Seeing no other questions or comments from council on this item.
We'll move 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. I need to remind you there needs to be a vote. That's right. Yes, because
you made your motion or unconditional. So before we move to public comment, I totally forgot about that.
All those in favor of what Councilor Iverson presented as amended signify by saying aye. Aye. All those
opposed, same sign.
That was the amendment for the conditional. All right. So we'll go to public comment next. Again, seeing
if there is any in the room or on Teams. Oh, we got a hand raise. So you will unmute yourself, state
your name for the record. And TSD, please make sure we have the timer up. You'll have up to three minutes.
Hello, can you hear me? Yes. This is Kelly Whitmer. I'm the director of Monroe County Parks and Recreation.
And we do have a park space available for additional trees. So I just wanted to make sure you knew that.
And we'd be more than happy to plan. I love it. That's all. I'm done. Thank you. Trees to go around.
All right.
Are there any other public comments on this item? Thank you for the trees. All right. Seeing none, may
we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes.
Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawke? Yes. Motion
passes unanimous.
Thank you. All right, next up is item F, which is from council office. Council, I move to open for discussion
and possible approval and fund 1000-0061 County General Council, a request for an additional appropriation
of $30,000 in the services category. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second, and I will go
ahead and take a comment at this.
I wanted to bring this to the council's attention just considering all the moving pieces that we have
in front of us with respect to a potential purchase of North Park and we all got the memo what back
in a couple of weeks ago on April 10th.
basically laying out the conditions of should council not do certain things that we could potentially
get into further litigation. I wanted to bring this to the council's attention. Nothing crazy or weird
happened that was behind the scenes or any of that. This was me asking the auditor to go ahead to
put this out here for a discussion. So I know there was a mass email that went out to the county in
relation to this, and I just want to say, checked with the auditor's office to make sure that we didn't
do anything that was weird, and would apologize if we did, but it seems like, according to the email,
we did not. Okay, so thank you, appreciate that. According to the statute,
It does state that we can, should we choose to do so, have our own legal representation. I do know for
a fact that other elected bodies in this particular county have had that as an option to them because
we also are an elected body. That is just something that I wanted to bring to the attention of my colleagues
to say, should we feel like we get to this point
where further litigation might ensue, that we would have this as a placeholder for us to do what we
might need to do should we get to that level. I hope that we don't. I really hope that we don't.
But again, as council president, I'm thinking of all things considering, and I just wanted to bring
this to the attention of the council for a discussion, again, should we have to go down this route.
So I'm willing to open it up for any other further questions or comments on this. I'm gonna start over
here and then I'm gonna work my way back. So Councilor Wills. So if I'm understanding what you're saying
correctly, the intent is that this money would not be spent though there was a compelling, like a lawsuit,
or are we thinking that
money might be used in advance to get a consultation from outside counsel or some other. What's the
use case? Well, I mean, that's open for a discussion, but my idea is because we have that stipulation
that was put into the extension agreement, should we not
It seems like counsel could also be applied to this lawsuit should litigation go further. And so my
idea is to see why and protect ourselves from anything. Again, this is not to say anything bad about,
you know, I know we have Ms. Turner King that is our assigned attorney, not to say anything at all.
So I also want to debunk that as well.
But what I'm just saying is, this is just our way of saying, should we get to this level? Again, I really
hope to the higher powers that be, we don't. But should we? Maybe that's something that we could enact.
But if we need to have a consultation or anything like that, again, that's up to this body to have that
conversation. Let others go first.
Yes, I think when you go to the meeting coming up in a few weeks, for those of you who are able to go
to that meeting, you're going to find out that this is the way a majority of the counties will handle
their legal representation. They do it by contract. Certainly, you're not going to find very many counties
that have four full-time attorneys working in a legal department.
So, and as a reminder, we did have our own county attorney that worked in our office that was, we handled
it with a salary because we have the authority. We don't have to go ask somebody else. That's our choice
to put an additional person in the council budget and put it in the salary ordinance. We don't have
to have permission for that.
But if we wish to do it in the form of a contract, you'll just find that in many, many, many counties
that's how they handle it. So it's nothing unusual. It really is not. It just may seem unusual to us
because we've handled it differently for too long. That brings another question to mind because what
I'm hearing is unusual in that we're
we're not eschewing our current council. We're getting extra. So it's not that we're switching from
one model to another. We're keeping what we have and adding on. And the adding on is, and then I guess
that kind of goes back to the first question, which is I get that we need to discuss, but the adding
on is because
whatever an external council brings, we've decided that's important that it's an external perspective,
if I'm understanding the arguments. So, okay, that's just, I just wanted to make sure I was understanding.
Madam President, and when you look at what we're allowed to do, it's written in the language, you know,
it's legal language that we're allowed to do this.
But what I'd like to say, it's a lot like we have our financial person, but then we hire some expert
advice when we need it from somebody else. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with what we've got.
It means it's just something added to and able to answer questions that we have that might be different
than what others might have.
I want to make two points, at least at this point in the conversation. The first point is, I really
like this conversation so far. If you had gone back to our previous meeting, it sure seemed a lot different.
And I'm glad to hear that at this point, this council seems to be in agreement that there is nothing
wrong with the current legal representation that we are receiving. And I just want to be really clear
with that, that this is not
an attempt to replace the legal advice we're getting. All right. That is absolutely correct. And I feel
like it has been twisted in a way that just totally dismantling what we have. And that is not the case,
which is quite frustrating that this is all twisted up into he say she say
Yes, because all I'm trying to do is bring to you all, we got a situation that is coming down the pike
really, really soon. And it is really important to us. And we need to look at what we potentially could
possibly do. So if and when that time comes where we have to act on something right away, we have already
done what we need to do. And we can go instead of waiting.
should we get to again, should we get to that point? OK, that leads me to my second point. I have not
received any assurances from the board of commissioners that this action would go through. If anybody
has received something from the board of commissioners saying that they're willing to work with us on
this, I would love to hear it. But I don't think that that's coming, and I'm really concerned
that any claims that go forward would be subject to their approval. Any contract that goes forward would
be subject to their approval. So I do have some concern along those lines. And is there more to add
from the bench?
service contract would have to be approved by the commissioners but in the event that the commissioners
would deny that contract there is a process that council could engage in since this is a statutory right
that would allow it's a it's a process that allows the contract to be approved despite commissioner
rejection.
That's what was sent to us yesterday by Mr. Schilling from Legal, which again, all we're trying to do
is enact on our constitutional right to legal representation. Yes, Councilor Decker. Thank you. Thank
you very much. I appreciate the way that President Crosley has described this.
but I have no questions for anyone. I have comments, if that's appropriate at this time. This one has
been something that's kind of, to be honest, I have struggled mightily with, and I'm just gonna make
comments on it. I'll try to be really quick here, but I got things that I wanna say. The description
that I've heard this evening, to be very honest, is not a description that I have heard out in the parking
lots of this county about this issue.
And I'll just be blunt about that. And sometimes when we come to a decision where folks start to come
together, I think people may come to those decisions for different reasons, which is legitimate when
you're elected by different people or at different times. But I think some of those conversations reflect
different thoughts on that. Every counselor's got a right to have those thoughts. But I think maybe
people come to different argumentation on that.
And I won't repeat all that argumentation because people need to offer that on their own. I'm not going
to be their spokesperson. But one thing on this generally is where I struggle with this is I get the
need to prepare for day two of day one not going well or if you're following this jail discussion, day
depending on who you ask, day 432 or 4,432, I get that. I get it completely. But ultimately, I still
come down to some simple math on two different sides of this. Councilor Iverson kind of mentioned before
the math on this contract, the steps it needs to go through to get passage adoption.
with our partners in the commissioner's office. What I kind of come down to is the math just on the
overall issue. And I'm going to start saying this a lot more because I think that we've got to, this
has to get to the focus. We have an issue that I believe I'm hearing everyone agrees is a constitutional
care issue. And that issue needs the focus of counselors and commissioners around majorities
around solutions. And in both bodies, I mean, the public can count the number of people up here. In
both bodies, that means four here agreeing around something, ideally seven agreeing on something, but
I haven't seen anything controversial in here to get much higher than a six. But it means a majority
doing something, and it means when the commissioners are in here doing their meeting, two out of three
And I think ideally for them, they'd say three, but it means them moving around a majority towards the
overall solution. And that would be location, that would be cost, and that would be, to me personally,
how you engage the public on all that, because I don't think people follow very much other than what
sort of is their niche like kind of buy in here or anger here. And I think that there's public that doesn't,
kind of know that. To me, in my honest, humble opinion, that is the math I would rather spend the next
few weeks on, trying to conquer rather than a prelude to legal representation that may send different
signals than what I'm hearing and that we don't necessarily want. And I worry
mightily that entering two tough negotiation discussions among the 13 others that will emerge tomorrow
when another storm hits or somebody needs this and we've not done it or somebody's not rung the bell
at the right time, I worry that we just give ourselves maybe the wrong work. I also say that we've had
a lot of action from our city colleagues, but really all that
with respect to everyone doesn't change the fact that it still comes down to four in one chamber and
two in another, ideally unanimous in both, but we know that's hard, moving towards a solution that starts
to move us towards constitutional care. And that's kind of the rub of it on it. We as a body seem to
get in trouble when our answer, which has multiple meanings for multiple people,
turns into an answer that's universal for all. I think it's hard to maintain that majority around something
under that kind of vein. Council Henry. Madam President, and thank you for bringing forward the discussion.
I think we're in a storm. I don't think it's on its way. I think we're already in it. When we have an
agreement that has added stipulations that
the council's choices. And that's new language that has not existed in the 17 years of that agreement.
It needs evaluation. And as I said at the comment that we had at the last meeting, you know, at the
conclusion of our last meeting, I do think that we have a timeline that's counting down that eventually
there will be a purchase agreement presumably passed by two or three votes on the commissioner's side
that will be in this room.
That's a calendar, those are dates, that is happening, right? And there's a timeline that is clicking
and ticking on that. What we have, I think in this conversation is something interesting since the idea
was proposed that we consider outside council to help us navigate conditions that might be in that agreement
and the implication it means for our statutory right to make fiscal decisions as a county is a,
a discussion from the council or the county attorney that is, you know, it's hard to navigate. You know,
if we have a contract, then there's a claim, and if it's rejected, you know, what happens then? What
happens then? And we end up running out of clock where we don't actually get to talk to some other attorney
before the deadline, if you will, on the agreement. So those are realities. Like, those clocks are all
ticking. And to Councillor Hawks' point, you know, there's another way to go, which was
never before the commissioners, which is we actually bring back the council into county council's employment
as a matter of a HR practice in defining the job description. I wasn't here when the council decided
to move away from having its own in-house attorney that was budgeted for as a salary. As I understand
it, some of that was more unconditional about the individual and not
and then the opportunity that arrived from the board of commissioners at that time to offer an attorney
from the pool that could support the council's work and review law and the like. But the question is
really in protecting our county legal department for me. And this is how I look at it. An attorney has
to serve one master and can't serve two. And so when we have a schism or a disagreement between two
bodies that are borrowing from one set of lawyers that
are employed by one elected body, not the other, it puts them all in a hard spot. You know,
at what point, if we do find ourselves in a place where we're being deposed in a court, you know, who
is guiding us on that, right? Who's guiding the council's statutory, or protecting the council's statutory
role in this decision-making process? And not just councils, by the way, the taxpayers of Monroe County.
who's protecting that interest if there's a disagreement between two bodies and we're borrowing from
the same law department. I want to protect our county attorneys in this respect. I think the opportunity
to go explore this idea as a contract idea is not new. We would not be the first county in Indiana to
have a contracted attorney to the body. But we have to face some real realities here. And as much as
I would like to work on the meta problem, the reality is we have a
It's an agreement that has a time clock on it. And we have to address that in the conditions that were
placed before us and the votes that will be coming to us. And we would have as much information as we
can to make the best possible informed decision for the community. Thank you. Yes, Councilor Woods.
Maybe I'm beating a dead horse. Maybe this isn't as relevant
as I initially am thinking. But it sounds like to me that we're talking about two different things.
One is obtaining outside counsel to review something that has been given to us or, you know, the
to us or to review the conditions under which we are asked to sign said purchase agreement. And then
what I thought I heard as also a possibility is that this is really to have in case we make, you know,
we are sued, you know, as a result of decision or, you know,
the ACL he makes. And those seem like two very different things to me. So I guess before I would want
to vote on this, I would really like to understand what the intent is. And maybe it's different for
different people. Maybe that's what I'm hearing. To Councillor Decker's point, we all come at things
from different
So if it's different for different people, then the next step would be, I just want to kind of play
through what would happen. And I guess this, if we appropriate, it's just, it hangs there until then
we have a contract
And when we have a contract that has to be done via the commissioners. And that starts that process
that's been referred to that is like they might say no. And then if they did, we would appeal back.
And it seemed complicated. And that seems like it would take a bit of time. So if we were waiting to be
to use this. I guess my ultimate question, I've had like three in the course of this, but my ultimate
question then would be wouldn't the whole county have outside counsel at that point? I mean I think
I've heard from our county legal that that is a likely scenario. What would likely happen is we would
submit it to our insurance company and each entity or body would risk
potentially receive outside counsel. What I will say is what I anticipate from an ACLU lawsuit is injunctive
relief and not damages, but I mean they could ask for damages. Insurance has been, I'm gonna say inconsistent
on whether they will provide outside counsel for injunctive relief. We have outs, they've been inconsistent.
We also have a new insurance company. So I don't know their stance on if they would provide counsel
for injunctive relief. But typically what would happen is we would submit this to the insurance company,
and if they will provide outside counsel, they would. And if they don't, each entity would have to obtain
counsel. Would they be providing if they decided yes? Is it reasonable to expect they would provide
outside counsel
separately for each yes I'll go to counselor vital and then I'll turn back around so I guess I think
I understand but not totally they're still ambiguity to me in some ways and I don't know I have the
questions formulated to ask that but I do want to ask about the thirty thousand dollars is that
the max, or are we talking about 30,000 now and maybe some later, or what are we talking about here?
The 30,000 was just simply a placeholder to get the appropriation. I think obviously we would probably
be looking at a lot more, potentially. But again, that's just a placeholder for the appropriation should
we need to act. That's where that came from.
If I had to decide at this moment, I think it's really hard for me to think about appropriating more
money since we've been on the budget less, less, less with every department that we've talked to this
past budget year. And I just think it's almost hypocritical for us to think that we're going to go into
litigation based on that fact.
I was going to ask a very similar question to Councillor Faital as to whether or not one of the questions
I would want to ask should we move forward is, is the $30,000 placeholder intended to retain council
or is it intended to eventually hire council? And I think that needs to be answered as well. Are we
going to be using our salary ordinance to hire an individual who is going to work
who's going to be working in the council office, or are we using funds to simply use a local law firm
for a short period of time or a medium period of time to conduct our business? And I think that needs
to be explored as well. Correct. Which, again, it is just simply just a placeholder. This is for us
to say, if we want to go into a contract,
That is something that we can do. And then we can figure out after the fact, should we explore and go
further how much this would cost? I guess at the end of the day, what I'm just trying to do is just
have the conversation. And if we wanted, initially coming in, I was saying, in the event that this goes
further, because I'll just rip the bandaid off with a lot of this right now.
We obviously, majority of us, at least maybe, I don't know, I'll speak for myself. I don't necessarily
agree with how we are moving down this train in terms of North Park, North Park, North Park.
That's it. And so what I'm also thinking is, what do we do? Because if anybody's read their email today
in the commissioner's packet, their purchase agreement is on the agenda this Thursday.
And then in looking at our agenda requests that we've gotten, they're wanting this to come back around
to council on May 12th. And I remind everybody the memo that we got, April 10th says, should you not
do this by May 29th? This is what we're looking at. So I guess in my mind, what I was thinking is coming
in here, should we
get down to this point where there is a no vote again like we did back in October, again, this time
frame around, and should this go further, ideally, again, what I'd like to do in a perfect world is
sit down with our colleagues in the city, sit down with the commissioners, sit down with everybody to
figure out what are we doing here and next steps as we are working through this.
That's what they wanted to do last week, but should we not go down this route, all I'm saying is, I'd
rather be a little bit more proactive in this. Now, hey, come time around, like if the powers that be
and the skies open up and everything is sunshine and gravy, if we don't go down this route, then this
is mute, this is not necessary. But that's what I was just looking for for this. That's all. Councilor Henry.
I really appreciate you bringing that clarity and it strikes me that You're the one in these meetings,
you know, you're the one if you're the one saying this is your comfort and you're concerned about Path
and whether or not your view and sensibly our view is properly voiced and and is also brought to the vendor to
I mean, however it is that you're operating those meetings as council president, and if you're telling
this body you need that representation, I think that's a pretty clear-cut statement. I'm not in all
those meetings, and if you're signaling that that's the concern, I don't know why we would deny the
council president an opportunity to seek out council to allay that concern. So, I hear you. As a point
of information, though, or maybe, are we taking public comment on this tonight,
I would allow it. You would allow public comment tonight? Okay. I just want to make sure, obviously,
this is an interesting topic, but thank you for the clarity you offer. I'm supporting you as I've heard
it. Yeah. Any other? Yes, Councillor Haug. I would just like to say that when you're in need of something,
it's much better to plan for it and have it ready than to say, oh, now I need it and I didn't get it ready.
So I'll support this. If we don't need it, it's just going to sit there and it'll just stay in the cash.
It doesn't like we're throwing that money away. And we're talking about a gigantic major decision. This
is not the kind of decision we'll be making every year. It's the biggest one that we've made since I've
been on the council, and that was before some of you children were born. So I'm just saying this is
a big deal.
And we seem to have a difference of opinion of how we should move forward or not. But it certainly would
not hurt when somebody has to go into these meetings to think they could reach out and say, what if?
Help me out with this. We're not attorneys here. We're not seven attorneys sitting here. Councillor Wilks.
So we were to say, yes, let's appropriate $30,000. Then do you, I assume we would have to vote on whether
or not we wanted a contract. That wouldn't happen until May 12th, correct? Is that our next meeting?
And at that point, we would submit something, I'm just reading from the email that we received. We would
submit a copy of the contract to the auditor and make a request to the commissioners for review. And
then also, so the county attorney would get them, get the documentation.
Then it says within 20 days of request filing, the county commissioners in the county review the proposed
contract and notify the council of the results of the review. So that puts it at June. So the idea of
contracting
Council prior to the deadline that's given to us for making the decision we need to make doesn't seem
viable. I mean, yes, they don't have to wait 20 days. But if the motivation behind this is disagreement
with that body, it does seem likely. I'm sorry. I think the 20 days that you're referring to comes into
play if the commissioners rejected the contract.
originally what would happen just like any other department is you would submit the contract
to a commissioners meeting and they would consider it at their next meeting and then if it's rejected
that's the process that you're describing. That's not what the email says but I will defer. You have
the same email I do.
I do have the same email that you do. When you look at number three on that email. That's the process
for if the commissioners reject the contract. So for example, the clerk is having a contract on this
commissioners meeting for advertising radio ads of the election. She didn't have to go through the 20
day process. She's submitting it to the commissioners for consideration.
If they reject it that then then that's the process. But the standard operation procedure is fill out
a commissioner's request and then they review then they consider the contract. Within that contract
you need to know who you want to hire. Right. And it has to be a contract contract. Right. That contract
is still reviewed by county legal.
just to make sure it has all of our standard clauses such as indemnification, independent contractor,
workers' comp, and all of that is governed by county code. Which is why we would start looking now.
Should we do that? The earliest the commissioners could hear this would be their meeting on the 14th
if they're meeting. Depending on the outcome of our vote, we may want to pursue this.
The problem for some folks might be, I don't know if I share that with everybody, but we vote, and then
there's an outcome of that vote, one outcome puts us on this path. I'm sorry, is there an interruption?
One path, we may require some additional help, another path we don't, and I hope that folks aren't feeling
biased or pressured on one way or another to vote on a purchase agreement
full understanding of what we're talking about, but either way on the other side of that vote are two
places we go. One may require the legwork we're talking about right now to prepare outcomes. I mean,
the calendar is what it is. I mean, we should have talked about this a year and a half ago when some
of us had thought we should have been bringing our own council in at that point, but we are. I mean,
I agree with you.
that we've got to move and we've got some big decisions coming up that we need help with. I'm looking
at the calendar and even if we moved forward today with a contract, we would still be beyond the point
in which we're most likely going to be hearing a purchase agreement. The other thing that I want to
make a point is if that's the case where the calendar is working against us here, we do have
legal representation sitting right here.
From where I'm sitting is doing a fantastic job. If I may, I think the commissioners could actually
consider a contract on May 7th. I checked. I don't think they've canceled that May 7th meeting.
So I mean, if you had a contract ready by May 7th, they could approve it. But I think that contract's
going to have to outline who you're meeting with, a price.
And then I think there are two differing thoughts here on when you would consult. The May 7th meeting
is still on the calendar for the commissioners. That's helpful. Thank you. So the urgency is the concern
for my fellow council member. We could just put the job description out and hire the position again,
couldn't we? Couldn't we advertise and just hire the position and go directly that route?
up for it and hired. $90,000. And this in, I just want to say this in is where the mud of this has been
all week. I'm hearing multiple different things. And sometimes I'm hearing some individuals using multiple
arguments in one setting. Is it about preparing for life after us not doing the math right on four
and two in both chambers. Is it about preparing for life after that? Is it about preparing so that the
council president or the leadership or whoever goes into a meeting has an attorney that's not from county
legal there? Is it about returning to the olden day of us having our own council? I'm hearing all of
this and I'm kind of looking at it and what is
worrying me a little bit more. And granted, it's not me anymore in those meetings. But I also had a
lot of meetings over the years where a county legal drove me up one wall and the commissioners down
the other. And then they'd alternate the next time. And I'm sure I did the same to them. But I just,
when I look at this, what is this about? And Councilor Hawke, to kind of speak to some of the things
you discussed earlier today,
When a department really wants something, the arguments always really sound good about spending extra
money because you have to prepare ahead and you can't do this. I kind of hear this argument here on
this that we would not necessarily permit another county department to do on extra funding. And I'm
not negating all the causes that folks come to this at, but I still believe that the pressure of the
system is about
Fixing a look finding a location in looking that realistically both bodies have got to agree to that
to do it and then under certain conditions so do our municipal counterparts Right, and if there's a
different different location that starts factoring other things in it would fall under that jurisdiction
But I don't think anyone's talking about any of that, but it really comes down to just that and
One thing, having been deposed or whatever, those council situations do start to work out at those points
and it is a miserable process, but it also is when people can't reach to an agreement on something.
So I just, I'm hearing like multiple things on this and I am struggling to get what it's really about
and I don't like anything that's,
vague with what it's about, because I don't want that to become Trent Deckard's vote yes on this opened
the sea gate of hell for three different options. I think the public's looking to us for less of that.
I also will just say this. A constituent said this to me at a door. If you all go down that route, is
this going to be another one body suing another? And I said, well, it would. And then I was like, I
don't know.
I honestly don't know. And I don't even know if the legal mechanisms for that are possible to even do
that, but I think it's about figuring out what is this, where do we go to get it, to get to the agreement.
And maybe I'm wrong on that, but I just, that's kind of a perennial thought here. So the only thing
I'll say is I think
It's okay to have, you know, other different types of conversations of what this could look like, because
initially, again, as I came in thinking, my brain is to think about what would happen if, again, we
get to the end of May and we didn't agree, commissioners approved,
Council denied again, and then we're back at square one. But the idea that I heard earlier is,
should we, you know, could we potentially go into these conversations saying, you know, like, to just
seek advice. Obviously, that would cost money for us to seek advice. I'm not, again, not saying that
we don't have great representation. I'm not saying that at all, and I hope Ms. Turner-King does not,
hear me say that and I hope anybody else is listening here in the room or online or whenever you go
back and watch it. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm just saying simply is it is just us seeking
outside advice of what we should do should we get to next level mayhem because again as I'm being honest
I've not heard anything
that would suggest that we could potentially agree on the train to North Park right now. I don't.
But again, I'm willing to work with our city counterparts, but again, it is
Today, April 28th, we got, again, as I said, we have a meeting. They have a meeting on the 30th. This
is coming to them. We have a meeting on the 12th that is coming to us. That is all of the moving pieces
before the time bomb clicks at zero. Again, it's just if we prepare and we, again, find that we're
and Councilor Everson's words sometimes, if we sing kumbaya and we're all being together on this and
we are one, then we don't have to go down this route. I wish to God that we don't have to go down this
route. But should we do, that is my intent of just trying to prepare ourselves for what is coming because
I don't want to get into the mindset of, uh-oh, May 29th comes around, this is stuck now, now we have to do
If we want to go down the route of trying to seek out legal counsel, now we are at that point. Yeah,
that's a good segue. That's where we would go. That's the only thing that I'm saying. It is tiresome.
I have spent so much time on a lot of this. That was my mission.
doing this all over again to really try to see this project through. I think we all are extremely frustrated
with all of this. I think commissioners would agree on saying that, too. But that's all I'm just asking,
which is why I just simply wanted to have a discussion. It's out there. We don't do it. We don't do
it. But it will be what it will be after that point. That's all I'm saying. Yes, Councilor Feidl.
What happens if we don't do this then? How would that play out? Tell me the whole other scenario, right?
If we don't do what? If we don't have this placeholder and we get sued, how does that play out? Is it
too late to get counsel at the end of when we have to have this all done by May 29th? No, I don't think
so by any means. But again, it's just taking that proactive step, right? It's just when you're in the
thick of something,
in an emergency setting, the idea is, oh crap, not to have an afterthought of, should we have put a
tarp on the thing before it started raining, and boom, it's raining. That's the thing, is just trying
to be proactive. Should we get to this point? Because there's going to be a lot of other things that
I would assume that would be coming to us. One more question. So let's say this money is a placeholder.
Where does it go if it isn't used? Where does the money go if it doesn't need to be used? It reverts
back. Oh, it will revert back? I hadn't heard that yet. If you don't spend it, I mean, it'll just hang
out in our account line. And then at the end of the year, if you don't spend it, it just reverts back.
It's kind of like what happened with Sophia Travis, and we tried to spend the money, and then it reversed
that. I just want to make sure this particular placeholder was the same.
I just said that I was going to open up for public comment. Um, so, cause I know we still have a few
more items on the agenda. So I'll open it up for public comment. If you have public comment on this
item, um, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room, or you can raise your hand via teams
and, um, you can state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. Good evening.
My name is April Wilson. I live in Bloomington and I'm a Monroe County resident. Although I work at
the Monroe County Prosecutor's Office, I wish to be clear that these statements are made in my personal
capacity. The county is currently under a hiring freeze. The justice building is being regularly tested
for mold, and it is now two weeks after Ken Falk's deadline for clear movement on the jail. And any
coordinated plans in the jail have proved elusive.
It is in this context that this Council is now evaluating or asking for $30,000 to get an extra attorney.
I recognize that this process has been difficult or high. I would like to share with you a phrase, though,
that I frequently come back to as an attorney and in my personal capacity. Sometimes you can be right
or sometimes you can be married.
You can either continue to focus on relitigating offenses or you can start solving the problem. Appropriating
this money is not a step toward solving the problem. Solving this problem means starting to have joint
public meetings rather than speaking about it through resolutions or on social media.
It means sitting across from each other and talking about the budget and design, rather than solely
expressing frustration that you don't know what the answer to that question is. It means spending the
time you spent tonight on whether or not you're going to get an extra attorney on figuring out how to
move forward. Please deny this appropriation and start working to solve this problem. Someone said tonight
they are trying to protect themselves, and I appreciate that. What I'm asking is that you start doing
the same for those in the Justice Building, which is what brought us here. Thank you.
Thank you. My name is Jeff Richardson. First, Council President Crosley, thank you for being at the
City Council meeting the other night. That was really important. And having Julie Thomas and Jody Madera
call in was also helpful. It was the first time in years that I actually heard
city and county talking to each other. And so that was a positive thing. Some of this, Jennifer, you've,
President Crosley, you've heard. I think this whole debacle is the case study and failed leadership.
I mean, 16 years. Some are counting as 17 years and still going. So I just want to acknowledge that.
And Trent, you mentioned people having a hard time figuring what's going on.
just harking back to what our friend just said here, is that there seems to be no acknowledgement of
that. I mean, we're talking, we're moving pieces around on the chessboard or on the Titanic,
the deck chairs. But the problem is, is that we dropped the ball. And suggestions that somehow ACLU
is taking away our local control. We've ceded our local control. We've given it away. And it almost
screams out for, like another situation,
we have with the conventions that are not to bring up another topic, but do we need someone who can
actually govern? Do we need a third body that can come in, an entity, and say, we'll do this for you
because you folks can't do it? So one of the things that was actually the catalyst by President Crossley
going to the city council is Isaac Azari, the president of the city council, said,
Let's get together. Let's roll up our sleeves and not talk about what's going to happen at the next
meeting. Even tonight, as it was to happen at the City Council, I said the same thing to my friends
there, is we always think in the terms of the next meeting, what do we need to do? But my question is,
what do we do between meetings? What are we doing now, right now, like tomorrow, during the weekend?
What's the plan? So that concerns me, is what is
the plan, what's the timeline, and what's the desired outcome. And I fear sometimes where some of my
older friends might remember this, but the old Pogo cartoon that said we've met the enemy and the enemy
is us. And I feel in many ways there has to be an acknowledgement that we've had some difficulties in
making decisions, and now we've got to do the hard work. So I have no position, incidentally.
on North Park versus Thompson or Fullerton, if that comes back up. I have no position whether you hire
this attorney or not, but I feel just back to several of you said this, the public, I was having, you
folks were saying you have a hard time figuring things out and I'm trying to follow this. I'm very concerned
about this. I had a hard time following what's going on. So I feel if nothing else, please provide some
clarity of what is the desired outcome
What's the end game? And what are you doing in between meetings? And can we frame this in a way that
collectively, let's figure this out rather than having someone like Ken Falk, for example, be the fall
guy. We can do this. We've got great people on both councils, on the mayor, the commissioner. We're
such a blessed city to have the people we have as elected officials. I am confident that we can figure this out.
and I pray that we do so. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go before I go back to the room here, I'm
going to go to teams. So someone by the screen name of Janet, you can unmute yourself, state your name
for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
name Janet can you are you able to unmute yourself? DSD can we help this individual out? I'm gonna I'm gonna
Go back to that individual. I see another person's hand raised via Teams. So I'll let this person screen
name Eric Spoonmore. You can go ahead and speak and then we'll come back to Janet to see if they are
able to unmute. So state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. Hi, good evening,
Council. Eric Spoonmore. Been watching the meeting all night.
planning to comment on this item, but I think it's been a really productive and good discussion. And
I just kind of wanted to weigh in from my prior experience as a Monroe County Council member and also
president of the Council not too long ago. You know, I was there at that time when the decision was made to
relinquish the attorney that worked for the Council. And I can tell you, you know, I have a lot of very
wonderful memories of my time working on Council and a lot of things that I'm really proud of that were
accomplished. One of my greatest regrets is that we made that decision to relinquish our own legal Council.
And there were colleagues that I had that
at the time had advised me to think differently about that. And looking back, I wish I would have listened.
I look at this request here as kind of more of an insurance policy than anything. This is the biggest
project in the history of Monroe County. And if we're in an adversarial kind of situation, which it
looks like we are, we've got seven unanimous
County council members who have decided to not go to North Park and we have a majority of the commissioners
who. Seemingly want to do that. I think it's inevitable that there's going to be some conflict here
and you know, I really appreciate what I heard from some council members tonight. This is nothing about
county legal. This is to protect them. There is an inherent conflict there. I think and in the private
sector, an attorney would have to admit that conflict.
when they're representing one client yet beholden to another client. And so to me, this just seems like
an insurance policy. Get your ducks in a row because when you get involved in these kinds of situations,
this is gonna impact the community for decades. You wanna be represented and you wanna know that your
best interests are being represented. And I think that's what the community elected you all to do as a check.
and balance in county government. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna go and I'll pop back to Janet online.
State your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. Hi, my name is Kaden Smith. I'm
a resident of the county. Good evening. I appreciate you all on these very long meetings.
But I think it's important that the council votes.
no on this. I think the county and the state were at a time where we're trying to be financially responsible
as the council is the fiscal body. I think approving additional funds for ourselves while we're telling
other departments to continuously cut back is very hypocritical of ourselves. I support many of the
words that Councilor Feidl said. And I also raise the point that this additional $30,000 is
quite arbitrarily and I respect the idea of a placeholder but I'm concerned about the fiscal impact
if we don't exactly know what we're voting on when it could be
a lot more or it could be a lot less. And then finally, I'll also state that the $30,000 still doesn't
solve the problem that we have a constitutional key requirement and that while we're here having a healthy
conversation about whether we should or should not approve the money, there's still people sitting in
a jail like two blocks from here that don't have that constitutional right
Being protected right now and we need to discuss further places rather than Continue then trying to
hire an attorney when the council already has a legal Attorney that's sitting across the room from me
so I would encourage the council's vote now on this Resolution or amendment
Thank you. All right. I'm going to go back to Teams and is Janet able to unmute? TSD, are you able to
help this individual? Okay.
Oh, can you hear me now? Yes, yes, we can hear you again. State your name for the record and you'll
have up to three minutes. My name is Janet Johnson and I live in the county and I just want to say that
I agree that you need the representation. I think Mr Spoonford Spoonmore did a very good job of reiterating
some of the points that were brought up earlier as far as conflict of interest with the county attorneys
like you. I have no doubt they're doing a good job.
and are perfectly capable, but I think there's a conflict of interest there that needs to be exposed
and it needs to be covered. You need to have your own representation. I agree with the other people
who spoke on the fact that we just need to work together and get this done. I mean, it's obscene that
it's gone on so long, but it just needs to get fixed. People need to sit down and
no matter what the decision is, nobody's gonna love it. If somebody is really happy, that means too
many other people are unhappy. So there just needs to be true negotiation and a good spirit to get that
done. And I'd like to see everybody come to the table and get a resolution quickly. But I believe that
you need to protect yourself because I think you should stand strong that what they wanna do is not
the best choice. That's really all I have, thank you.
Please go ahead and state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. My name is Leigh
Kroon-Tayfer.
I know, and as other people have spoken, we really need to come together and talk. But many years ago
now, the commissioners took the ball and ran and told us, the taxpayers, to stay in our lane. Well,
and I just want to say that I applaud each of you for protecting the taxpayer from
a bad idea. And we've said this many times and many ways to get the commissioners to come to the table
and start a real, true negotiation. And if it takes outside counsel to do that, that's unfortunate,
but it needs to be done. It needs to be done. Thank you. All right. Last call for public comment before
we move on.
Raise your hand via Teams. Great. Seeing no other further comment on, or public comment rather, I'll
take final comment and then we can wrap up. So did I see a hand here? Council Hock, did you have something?
Right, I'm just wondering if we're going to vote on this this evening and before it's morning.
Well, I think the idea is there was a discussion, so somebody would have to make a motion. I'm sorry,
it was on the mic. I can make a motion, Madam President. Council, I move to approve the additional
appropriation of $30,000 for contractual legal services and to authorize the Council President to identify
and solicit proposals from qualified outside Council
and to bring a recommended engagement, including scope and terms, back to council for approval with
any contract to be executed in accordance with applicable Indiana law. Okay. All right. We got a motion
and a second. Is there any other final comment from council on this item? I have a lot. Could we read
that motion again? Yep. Let's catch it on transcript. I'll leave the Pittsburghese at home.
I move to approve the additional appropriation of $30,000 for contractual legal services and to authorize
the Council President to identify and solicit proposals from qualified outside Council and to bring
a recommended engagement, including scope and terms, back to Council for approval with any contract
to be executed in accordance with applicable Indiana law.
a lawyer to interpret what you said? It's three clauses. No, just the last part. All right. Well,
I mean, we just got to do it in accordance with law. Isn't that a given? I don't know. OK. It'd be like
he's saying he's made a motion to approve this and to have the president bring the information back
to us, and then we can vote on it then. And boom, we're done. Let's not make such a big deal out of this.
Any other further questions or comments? We may not even need it. Yeah, to that point, I know we're
all out of place, but to that point, Madam President, to defend the motion, that we're not spending
it. We're just putting it there so she can go forth and look. And she asked, and I'm going to take her
word that she needs it. And I'm just going to stand by what I said earlier. The varied reasons, it does
not require a linear conversation. And all of us have different conclusions. But the council president asked,
This is a way for her to move forward to go solicit and figure it out and bring it back to us. So a
question about how the president will select an organization and have the scope and the other qualifiers
that were in that clause that I don't remember off the top of my head, can that email or does that have
to be done in a council meeting? Because we would have to vote on that
It's that organization, right? You would have to approve the contract in a council meeting. But if you
are delegating, you know, the initial conversations to get the terms of the contract and contract
negotiations to one person, then that doesn't have to occur in a council meeting. The end result of
those conversations would have to be approved in council. So the council president would be negotiating
the full contract with
term by themselves? I think that was Mr. Henry's motion, but I hear him saying no, so I'm not exactly
sure. No, I'm saying that's the intent here is to empower the council president, that we have a precedent
in the other body to empower the commission president to go forth and do. I'm simply trying to answer
her request and go forth and do. Bring it back. And you're not authorized to spend a nickel until you
bring it back. So bring it back. Let us know what the proposal is. And just to follow up, that would
be brought back on the
Our meeting of the 12th, correct? She does all that work by the 12th. I mean, if it takes longer, it
takes longer. I appreciate all the questions. I mean, it's very static here, but the truth is that,
you know, Council President asked, there's a timeline. Preparedness is a good idea. Go forth and do
is all I'm saying here. Any other questions or comments?
Again, it's just gathering information and bringing it back. Much like other conversations that I've
had, it's gathering information and bringing it back. That's it. Yes, Councillor Wilts. First, I want
to thank you, Councillor Crossley, for bringing this to us so that we can have the discussion.
It's important that we kind of think through our options. And I do trust that you can do many things
at once. I've seen you do it. So I am going to trust that you can go and find outside council and put
something together for us to consider. I would add, please don't
that to the exclusion of trying to work on the bigger picture. I don't think you will, but I feel like
in public comment on something, I need to just say the reason I'm going to support you is because I
know that it's not to the exclusion of doing these other bigger picture things and having the conversations
with our city colleagues and the commissioners and those who
We'll listen. So I just wanted to say that. Thanks. Any other questions or comments? The only thing
else that I would say is, and I thank the public commenter for a couple of public commenters tonight,
is I'm not going out to seek, oh, well, this person needs to be on our side because all of this is going
to happen.
No, absolutely not. I think at the end of the day, like one of the public commenters made when I went
to last week's city council meeting is the fact that we have folks that really want to sit down and
talk with us. And I understand the deadline that we are on. I've been on council since December of 21.
And we're still working towards a solution like folks party in like it was 2008. But here we are.
Yes, I understand that we could do these things and we're not thinking about people in that building.
We think about folks in that building every single day. Wouldn't be in there fighting as hard as we
are for those types of things. So yes, I am doing that. I do that publicly and go into other things,
whether we have
a lot of things that are happening. I want to be able to have those conversations with commissioners,
with city council, with the mayor, all of us here to sit down and figure out what we can be doing. But
in the event that things go sideways, this is my way of trying to say, hey, council, I'm just bringing
this back to you all. And it could be that I bring it back to you all and it doesn't work.
And it is what it is, and that's fine. I've worked at it. I'm a mom. I multitask. I do all the things.
That's what the good book says. I can do all things. So that's all I'm trying to do. I'm not trying
to take power or ownership of any of this. This is just something I've been working my ass off for.
Excuse me. And I'm just trying to do
what we can for taxpayers, because we have had the conversations. We've had the CJRC meetings. We've
had the JFEX. We've had all of those things. But yet, we are still having this conversation right now.
And so I would hope that my colleagues would trust me enough to know that I'm not going to go in a room
and do something weird, and I come back in that whole different ball game. All I'm just saying is, I
just want to go gather, and then that's it.
I'll say to that. So without that being said, can we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Iverson?
Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Decker? No. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry?
Councillor Crossley. Yes. Motion passes majority six to one. Yeah, I appreciate that. All right. Next
up is item G from the legal department. Council I move to approve resolution 2026 dash 15 approving
the renewal of the inner local cooperation agreement between the city of Bloomington Monroe County regarding
building code authority.
We got a motion and a second, Ms. Turner-King. So this resolution is council's approval on the proposed
interlocal
building code authority. What I will note is that there are a few changes from previous years. Otherwise,
it's the same as it has been since 1995. The changes include that previously the interlocal was for
a period of two years. It's been extended to five years. However, it contains a clause that either party
may terminate by providing written notice so long as the other party has been notified by July 1st and
then termination would be effective the following year.
It agrees to honor the city's fee waiver. However, the city must provide a fee waiver document and identify
the respective projects for which the fee waiver is applicable. And in regards to stop orders, the county
will issue stop orders upon the request of city planning, but they must identify the code or ordinance
violation for which the stop order is being requested. These changes basically are codifying the practices
that have been in place.
Yes, Councillor Hawke. The only thing I noticed on that is it sounded like it was extending it much
longer than normal and it won't be the same people at all involved. I mean, because it's taking it out
so long. So I don't know why we would do that because in the meantime, we're going to be a whole different
financial structure. But, you know, you folks do whatever.
I think it's very strange, and are you advising us that it is proper and appropriate that we, given
the financial changes that we will see during that time, that we would do an interlocal agreement that
locks us into something?
Well, although the interlocal is for a longer duration and period of time, it's five years instead of
two, there is that clause that allows either party to terminate with the proper notice. So I mean, it
doesn't lock you in without an exit plan. Well, I understand that it just, I mean, by that time you
have different commissioners, you could have different mayor. It just seems to me we should just leave
it at the two years. Why would we?
You know, it's sort of like you're trying to rule from the grave is the way we used to put it when you
tried to do contracts that was beyond your time being there. I just thought I'd say that sounded problematic,
but maybe everything's cool. Do we have other contracts that go five years? I don't know. I mean. Or more.
have to look at some of our inter locals. I'm not sure how long the I think animal management is a year.
Um, so I can't think of any inter local off the top of my head that goes in this duration, but I will
note that all of the changes that were in essence proposed were proposed by the county, um, county building
and city was an agreement. Do you have any concerns about committing us?
to this type of agreement for this? I don't because of the clause that allows you to terminate.
Thank you. Yes, go ahead. One of the things that we were told by AIC, the list of things that we needed
to look at was what kind of interlocal agreements that we might have moving into this time period of
it using more of the income tax stop rate and that's when you have time to review that and I know this
is a busy time for everybody but it is in the list of things that we are supposed to look at was the
inner local agreement so I just find it curious indeed I don't know whose idea it was to take it to
five years was it the city was it the commissioners I do not know but I would
I just think it's curious that we're doing this at a time of so much information that we're waiting
to get. And as Jamie Boesler said, we should know more come July, August, something like that. But maybe
this is all fine. I don't mean to be throwing whatever.
Pretty much unheard of in reading the whereas clauses in the building interlocal I would note that it
the third whereas is whereas in 1996 the city and county entered into a five year interlocal. So in
the 90s it was also a five year interlocal. I don't know when the shift became to have a two year it
might have just been during the extension process. But for this interlocal the five year period does
not seem to be abnormal.
If we thought that perhaps it would be in our interest to only do a two year, could we make that change
here now and approve it or does it need to be taken back? I think I would recommend taking it back and getting
rewritten because I know that Mr. Schilling, the city and the building department have had
ongoing conversations and so I wouldn't want to make that change without I mean I wasn't involved in
those conversations so there might have been some in depth discussion as why they wanted to do a five
year change and so I know the commissioners are considering this on Thursday and then I don't know if
the City Council has approved it yet but instead of making a unilateral change I would like to have
those parties discuss it.
What I'll say is it is also retroactive, so it looks like our current building code agreement is going
to expire. But I mean, since this one is going to be retroactive to the data expiration, I don't think
it would be problematic to go back to them and say, would you consider a two year? Why didn't we do
a two year? Any other further questions or comments on this item?
Yes. There's clearly a question about the five and there's clearly not an ability to get agreement on
that five. I lost mine. And Councillor Hogg's not here. Does this have to happen right now? It seems
like of all the buses that are careening towards this building, this one's not the one that I had on
my mind when I walked in here, Councillor. What do you think? I mean, other than the fact that our current
interlocal is going to expire, I don't ‑‑
Under an interlocal, I guess they could tip it. Each party would have the right to be like, we're not
under an interlocal. We don't have to operate under what has been our procedure for some time. Do I
anticipate that happening? No. The last thing we need right now is anything that looks like we're not
doing some of the things we regularly do well together, that that needs to stop. So if we had to buy
billboards for that, I would be OK with an additional appropriation. But I take that under account.
You know, the, yeah, sometimes the creating things that are coming towards us aren't necessarily always.
Other further questions or comments? Okay. Seeing none, I'll take public comment on this item. If you
have public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your
hand via Teams.
And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor Crossley?
Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke has left the meeting. Councillor Wilts?
Councillor Henry. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Item H. Council, I move to approve resolution 2026-16,
establishing meal allowance for absentee board members. Second. All right, we got motion and second,
Ms. Turner-King.
So statutorily there are some election workers whose compensation is established by the council and
some established by the commissioners. The council is in charge of establishing compensation for absentee
board members. However the compensation that was established by resolution I think it was in 2024 did
not contemplate absentee board members receiving a meal allowance in the same way that
Precinct election workers who work day of election receive a meal allowance. It came to our attention
that there are some absentee board members who work election day, and the practice has always been that
they've been getting a meal allowance. And so this resolution is just codifying the practice that has
been taking place for quite some time. Any questions or comments on this item from council?
Um, we will take public comment. Um, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your
hand via teams. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor
Iverson. Yes. Councillor Feidl. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Decker.
Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
Thank you. Next up is item 10 presentations discussions from the Auditor's Office. And that's me. I'm
going to look to the Auditor's Office, Ms. Gregory and Ms. Woodruff for your presentation on the ARPA project.
So hopefully this spreadsheet looks familiar. This is the ARPA update we've been sending out pretty
regularly since we started the ARPA programs. On your screen you should see a bunch of gray cells that
have a zero dollar unexpended balance. These are completed projects. And as we scroll down, we will
see some green cells that are current open projects.
We have received notification that at least two of these projects are scheduled to come in under budget,
which means that we need to figure out how those dollars are going to be re-obligated, re-obligate them
and then spend those dollars before the end of this year. We are against the time clock with these because
we are legally required to spend them before the end of the year. Or if we don't spend these dollars,
we would have to be returned.
turning those to the federal. Those two projects that are expected to come in under budget are highlighted
in red. That's the septic project and the jail locks project. Right now, we are just looking for some
questions that you may have about what we need to research before we come together with the commissioners
in a joint session to figure out how we're going to proceed with these projects.
The auditor's recommendation is to keep any obligation changes within the green cells. So within line
44 to 54, if you're looking at the Excel spreadsheet, that is going to be the simplest process
for re-obligating and reporting. We do know that this will be heavily tracked and monitored during our
single audit. And so we want to do things as easy and clean as we possibly can.
We have received some additional requests for funding and those were emailed. Right now I believe the
list includes jail plumbing. There's a county parks request that would fall under the drainage project
for the airport. There's a second parks request for some paving that is needed as a result of the turf
project that is ongoing.
We have a fire district request for some additional funding. And then we also have Beacon. It looks
like I received a request to research that a little bit. Thank you. And so if I understand you correctly,
what's highlighted in green, what you're saying is ideally the best way is to keep this, like if we
wanted to take some of the money and put it towards anything, ideally we
would do it within this category instead of popping back up here. We would keep it within those open
projects. Got it, yeah. OK. OK. Any questions or comments on these items from council? Yes,
Council Iverson. It seems to me that some of these green line items were already done or the fire district
ambulances, that really seems to me like we
You tackled that a long time ago. They have roughly $5,000 unexpended, and they do have a request for
some additional funding. Okay, so do you want to explain further? Sure. So my understanding is what
you provided and they're very grateful for is we provided ambulance, right, but we did not provide
everything to outfit the ambulance, all the supplies and things necessary. So there's other expenses
that they've incurred, and this could go toward that cause, which obviously would aid the community.
So we're bringing it forward to you as was requested by the fire district. Okay. So in all of the green
sections, folks are working toward expending all of these. They're just in process. Yes.
And if you notice to the very far right column, it has an expected end date for each project to show
that they are on track for the most part. Yes, Councilor Williams. So right now, the fire.
Fire Protection District is planning to have spent $5,100 more by October. Is that? Yeah, and whenever
I talk to Lori, she mentioned that she has spent those dollars. They just haven't requested the reimbursement
from us yet. I think that's in the works of what's happening.
So it would be adding a view. We would be adding on to that project if we were to move things around
in response to their request. So that's one of the options. And then the other thing that we might be
adding on to would be the Karst Fields project.
I'm just trying to highlight the ones that we haven't have options for so far. And then you had mentioned
that would be paving. Would the stormwater one be the airport or would it also? Yes, so we would try
the first project for the parks that would be for the water runoff. They've already spent that money.
It would be a correction in our ledger.
for last year, an expense that incurred, that was out of the parks fund. So we would move that expense
from the parks fund into that airport drainage account. And by doing that, we would utilize the ARPA
dollars and free up the expended dollars from the parks fund. Which then they could use to pay. Yes.
That is a lie. Can you point me to the correct cell that shows how many dollars we think we're going
to have left over giving back to the federal government as of December 31st? That's a loaded question.
So the unexpended dollars are here. Line 55, J55, those are the unexpended dollars as of right now.
do not expect that that will be the unexpended dollars at the end of this year. Let me ask a better
question. I'm sorry. That was a loaded question. Do you expect that number will be zero at the end of
this year? I would like it to be zero. That's our goal. That's why we're coming to you now. We came
to you last year and we keep bringing this up so we can have a plan to re obligate the funding. Obviously
there's a lot of need and anything that goes back
to the government is not staying in our community. I completely agree. The money needs to stay here.
Let me try and ask my question. I'm just not good at asking questions tonight. The sum of the green
lines, I didn't do that math, I'm sorry. Is that more or less than the unexpended total? I'm sorry,
which column for the sum?
I'm so sorry. All right, so the unexpended cells, that's column J. Yeah, what is that sum that you have
highlighted? The 2.13. Okay, great. Excellent. Okay. Is there a question? Yeah, exactly. Is there a
question? Yeah. Sorry. My fear was that if you added up all of those cells that you were just highlighted, the total
would be either more than or less than that bottom number. This bottom number is a sum function. Excellent.
For those numbers. Yes, Councillor Decker. Would it help on this? Because I can tell we're kind of...
And it's not just us on this. It's us and the commissioners. It would help if we offered
to our counterparts, a date in you all for your comfort, a date certain to just finalize it's this or
not. Yes, that would be fantastic. And we did lay out in the cells over here the plan of what we would
need from both bodies combined and then each body individually. You have a date certain that you
like because we're like my students, we work well with, well, we don't always work well with deadlines,
but we might try on this. Do you have one you want? Like June 15th or something? No, is that too late?
Okay, all right. I would say by mid to late May, we would need some definite answers as to how to proceed.
Just curious about that.
Yeah, go ahead and then I'll go to Councillor Feidl. This is helpful, thank you. I know that you've
emailed it to us. I assume you're going to talk or have talked with the commissioners, same topic? The
same information has been provided to both bodies. The plan is to go to their meeting. I don't believe
we can make it this week, but next week. Okay.
get to that date so if you're able to talk with them next week and then maybe we let them know that
we are ready to at least you know have a vote because I guess the question is do we need to meet with
them in public to have a conversation or
have a conversation and then they have a conversation. We've always done it jointly. Together. Yes.
So that you guys could say, you know, hey, we need to deappropriate this, appropriate,
you know, deappropriate that. I mean, we've always held a joint ARPA meeting, so. But if council wanted
to make a recommendation, we could try that avenue.
not going to be talking with them until first week of May. And I'm just saying you just said you needed
it fairly quickly. So wait till after that to then like let's schedule a group meeting. And then oh
we decided so now we have to appropriate. Oh wait we have to put notice out for that. You know it's
a lot of time going. So maybe we could
actually advertise maybe we could might say let's pull it out like you know how we used to do super
big appropriation the appropriation amounts can we do that so that we're ready to roll in three weeks
or whenever however long it takes what big number you gonna choose million dollars I'm sorry so
We can't appropriate or advertise by categories anymore, so we would need to know what exact line you
guys would like advertised. It's not a request. Yeah, DLGF has changed the way we can do that, so now
we can't just do a blanket amount. Couldn't you just advertise all of them and just do it that way,
just in case? All the green ones? Yeah. So if we did it that way.
We can have those lines open if we choose to put those things in. Did all the green ones or all of them?
Well, I think ideally they were saying all the green ones because that would be the easy, more palatable
way in doing this since the ones in gray are done technically.
So what I'm hearing is we can do additional appropriation and the appropriation for all of the green.
We'll just say for a million dollars. We won't hit that. We won't use it. But it will be a flat amount
that we have plenty of wiggle room. I don't have anything now. Okay. Do we vote on this? Okay. All right.
Any other questions or comments from council on this item?
We direct staff to work on setting up a joint meeting with the committee sometime after their next meeting.
Just as soon as possible? Yeah, after they present. So not a week from Thursday is when I think they're
going to talk to them, right? This coming Thursday?
I'm so sorry. I have an obligation on Thursday. I can't be at that meeting right now. I was saying a
week from this Thursday is when you you're going to. So if you could start now because you know how
we are to set up something for after a week from Thursday Thursday the 7th is that what you're saying.
Yes. OK. So after the 7th OK. Oh busy.
Unless you guys have any further questions that you want us to research between now and that joint meeting,
I think that's all we have. That would be appreciated. Thank you. Anybody else got anything? Okay. Can
I ask a question? Yes. Since this is going to be a joint meeting, are we looking at an evening time
or during the daytime? I think evening probably would be best.
considering folks work during the day. And usually that's been what we've done before. Yeah. Okay. I
just want to make sure you do it at seven a.m. Well, thank you all for that. Lastly, can I can I have
one other question? Yes. What if we did a
maybe a joint meeting like before the May 12th or during the May 12th meeting. I will not be available.
That is a very busy day personally for me. So I won't be available. But don't let one person stop the
show. So that's just one out of seven. So I will not be available.
Yeah, I think that's completely fine. You're going to be able to make it. Yeah, yeah. But not before.
But not before. Yeah, let me. The 12th is a really bad day. But no, no, no. But again, like I got some
things that outside of here that I've been pushing off for way too long with a lot of other things.
And so it's all kind of piling up on the 12th. So but again, that's just me. Like if I'm not.
available, I'm totally fine with, so if it works for a majority of people, I think we could just send
it out and if it works for a majority of people, then it works and I just won't be here. I was just
trying to feel everyone out, see, yeah. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Next up, we have the council
liaison updates and comments. But first and foremost, we have a women's commission.
Councilor Feidl has some scheduling conflicts with the Women's Commission meeting and will need to step
down. So if there is anybody here that would like to be the new liaison to the Women's Commission, speak
now or forever hold your peace. Usually Thursdays. Thursday at 5.30. Is it second Thursday?
I thought it was the third. Councillor Deckard has volunteered himself to the Tribune. All right. Well,
thank you so much. All right. So next up, we've had a long meeting this evening, but we will go to Councillor
updates and comments. So I will look down to my left here because I already see the paper color.
coming out, so you go for it. Okay, so I've done several meetings and activities and I'll focus on them
and go along after that. So I went to the BEDC board meeting where they sort of did lessons learned
on the Skyforge project. They worked on which they didn't get to do because
came a readiness issue. So there's infrastructure problems and all kinds of other things that made the
company decide to locate elsewhere instead of out at the airport. So that was disappointing. So there's
been two downtown Bloomington meetings. They have 27 conventions scheduled for 27, 2020. And then the
current convention center will now be closed January of 2027.
through July of 2027 for renovations. Then there is a survey on the public art for the new convention
center. I don't know if people got that, but I can read to you the string that performs the execution
of that to make a link. It's HTTPS colon front slash front slash FORM dot TY dot
p e r f or excuse me dot p e f o r dot com front slash t o front slash v l r l excuse me k l k i know
it's confusing and then plus sign and k
So I'm sure you can get that if you go on to the current convention website. That's really what I would
do. But that's how I got it, was using that one. But I know it exists. And so there's a survey. There's
four different public art projects that have been submitted. And so people can choose which one they
like the best by May 1st. And I think if you have trouble finding it, I think I would just call the
convention center themselves.
Somebody there will know how to do that. So somebody announced that Merth is doubling in size downtown
with the addition of Ellie Mays space. The elect connect event with the chamber I thought was really
good on the 21st for the candidate forum there.
Just personally, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed my first ever glamping weekend with my grandson's
wedding this past weekend in Irwin, Tennessee. That's all I got. Congratulations. Yeah, let's see. I
am exhausted, and so are you. So I will just say that I appreciate everyone's hard work.
at it. We'll also pass tonight. Thank you. I'm also passing tonight. Thank you. It's graduation time,
so congratulations to all the graduates that will be graduating.
Yeah, Townie Summer is upon us by the time we convene for our next meeting. So with that being said,
we are adjourned. Thank you.