All right, welcome everyone, I would like to call tonight's meeting of the Monroe County Council to
order. Today is Tuesday, May the 12th, and I want to note for the record that we have.
Councilmembers, Jen Cross and Trent Deckard are not gonna be present. We do have Councilmember Henry
to my right. We have Councilmember Feidl and we have Councilmember Wilts here as well, including myself.
So we do have quorum. All right, as is our custom, we're gonna begin tonight's meeting with the Pledge
of Allegiance. So please rise as you are able and join us. To the flag of the United States
All right, thank you all very much for that We're going to start tonight by adopting our agenda and
when I look to my council colleagues and ask if anyone wishes to amend this evening's agenda
noting that council member Hawk just arrived. Welcome council member Hawk. Hearing no amendments to
tonight's agenda. All those in favor of this agenda, please. We can do a voice vote, can't we? All those
in favor, please say aye. All those opposed, same sign. The ayes have it unanimously. Next, we are going
to go to public comments.
This is for items that are not on the agenda. There will be a time limit of three minutes per speaker.
Please come forward to the podium here in the NatU Hill Room, or if you were joining us on Teams, please
raise your hand to be recognized. And so if you'd like to, please come forward to raise your hand.
All right, last call.
Seeing none, it's time to move on to department updates. There'll be a time limit of 10 minute
per department. Do we have anyone in the NatU Hill Room that would like to give a departmental update?
Anyone on Teams would like to give a departmental update? Seeing none, we will move on to, we do not
have any consent agenda items, which is,
Interesting, but then that means we'll move up. Hold on one second. We'll move on to the building department
for a hiring freeze review. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the building
department's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1,000 dash zero
three, one, two, county general building, one full-time commercial building inspector. Second. All right,
we have Robert LaRue, building commissioner here. What do we need to know? Good evening, Councillors.
Thanks for having me here tonight. We have, the county has
two commercial building inspectors proposed and a senior commercial building inspector. These folks
are responsible for doing plan review, reviewing and issuing permits, and then performing inspections
on all of the commercial structures which include apartment buildings in the county's
jurisdictional area. So Monroe County and the city of Bloomington. Currently the senior inspector has
stayed and the commercial building inspector has decided to take a different position with a different
governmental agency. And then the second commercial building inspector position has remained vacant.
as requested with the hiring freeze. I want to let you all know this is the single most difficult position
in the department to fill. It has been very problematic to get folks to do this. It is a complicated
job. We have to know about building code, mechanical code, plumbing code, fuel gas code, electric code.
All of those things that go into building and building inspection. And to boot, I ask and we work hard
to know all of those things. So it is a tricky position to fill, but we have to have it.
We're getting towards inspection time for apartments and final inspections to commission and to provide
certificates of occupancy to lots of housing in the jurisdiction. And that is one of the responsibilities
of the commercial building inspector. I'm happy to answer questions about what it is we do.
I'll be working to do inspections, but I really need to fill one of the positions and get them going.
I think I mentioned to you before, takes probably about two years to actually have a fully functioning
independent building inspector, and we need to get started.
I did mention that we have a lot of final inspections coming up here very soon. All right. Thank you,
Mr. Leroux. Any questions from Council? Yes, Councilmember Hawke. Just a comment that this is really
in part not just supporting this department, but also supporting our local builders and all of that
comes together in supporting housing. So I certainly support this. Just a addition and I appreciate
that comment a lot. We are currently
you know, having to kind of restrict people to only certain, so many hours of inspection a day so that
we can get around to everybody in the community and try to make sure that everybody has their needs
met by our department. So that is going to, I mean, that's only gonna get worse. It's only going to
push this project out timeframe-wise, all of these projects out to a longer timeframe.
Thanks. I had two questions. The first is I just want to make sure that I understand you're keeping
one position open. Yes. You have been doing. As requested. With the hiring freeze, I'm not asking to
fill that second position, but I don't know how to function without at least one, and we're already
stretched like a rubber band.
and I see that the position is 35 hours. Are all of the positions in your department 35 hours?
They are, yes. Okay. That's all I have right now, thanks. Any other questions, comments? All right,
go to the public. Any questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, can we please, can we do a roll
call vote on this? Yes. Can we please have, oh, we need to do a roll call, excuse me.
Who's that? Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts?
Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you all very much. And I also want to say thanks for your commitment
to our interlocal agreement. It really helps me plan and understand what's before us. And I know I wasn't
here super late,
couple weeks ago, but I really appreciate your help. Thank you so much. All right, that concludes our
hiring freeze reviews. Let's move on now to council business and we'll start with item number A, the
highway department.
Council I move to approve the highway department and fund 4920 dash 0000 Westside economic development
tip for an additional appropriation of $200,000 in the services category.
And with us today, we have Lisa Ridge, our Highway Director. What do we need to know? Good evening.
So we're just working to get this project closed out. I know we have some outstanding change orders
and stuff that go back and forth between NDOT and the contractor. So we anticipated these costs. So
we were just wanting to do the additional to start the process to try and get it closed out. Council,
do you have any questions about the Vernal Pike connector? I do not. Stumped them.
You stumped them. It's fine with me. All right. Let's go to the public for any questions. Seeing none,
may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hock? Yes. Councillor Wilts?
Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes.
Councilor Iverson yes motion passes unanimous. Thank you. Thank you Next we're moving on to item B emergency
management Council I move to approve the emergency management department's request in fund eight one
eight eight dash nine six to five EMPG salary grant for additional appropriations of fifty five thousand
dollars in the personnel category second
And we are joined by Mr. Justin Baker, our Emergency Management Deputy Director on Teams. Mr. Baker,
when you are available, the floor is yours. Tell us what we need to know. Good evening, counselor. Yes,
this is the annual grant that we get each year that pays back our salary for $55,000. Comes from the
FEMA and it goes out to the state and it's a reimbursement to the county. Thank you Mr. Baker. Council,
do you have any questions for emergency management? This is just a way for us to help support this department
and it pays a certain percentage of their salaries and expenses. Please help. All right.
Any other comments or questions from council? Seeing none, let's go to the public. Do you have any questions
or comments about this emergency management appropriation or grant? Seeing none, may we please have
a roll call vote? Councillor Hogg? Yes. Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes.
Councillor Fiddle? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Thank you, Mr. Baker. Next, item C,
the courts. Council, I move to approve the court's request and fund 4018-0000 court interpreter grant
for an additional appropriation of $20,300 in the services category. Second.
All right, we have Lisa Abram here with the courts. Tell us what's going on. All right, I applied for
and received in an emergency interpreter grant to help offset costs for interpreters for the county.
And I was surprised, but they awarded me $20,300. So for the whole year, I only got 9,000, which I used
that in about two and a half months. And this time they gave me 20,000, which will be spent in about
two months time. So yeah, I have already, I think I calculated this morning about
16,000 in change invoices that have come in. So most of this is already gone, but at least I got it.
Absolutely. This will help immensely. Yes. Council, any questions or comments for the courts? Councilman
Watts. Thank you. Miss you. Yes, this is the last time you have to see me. So, Jama Chandler, my deputy
is going to take over my spot and she's been here a couple of times. She's already familiar with her.
and writing more grants, right? Yes, she has already written a couple herself that she received the
court technology grants twice already. So, and I've showed her how to do this one, so we can keep going.
All right, thank you so much. All right, we've exhausted council questions and comments. Now we'll go
to the public. You have any questions, comments for the clerk? Seeing none, Michelle, may we please
have a roll call vote? Councilor Will? Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
Yes. Councillor Hawk. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. Thank you for all you've done. Next,
we'll go to item D, the Youth Services Bureau. Council, I move to approve the Youth Services Bureau
request and fund 4111-0000 donations hyphen BTCC for an additional appropriation of $7,560 in the services category.
second. All right we are joined here by Melanie Veselaj, YSB prevention coordinator. Tell us what we
need to know. We have some money and we'd like to appropriate it and
To the appropriate line, delta head, we're in the fourth year of this grant, which is the CDC grant
with ICDV, the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The purpose of this grant is to decrease
risk factors and increase protective factors related to intimate partner violence by modifying the social
determinants of health. So we've got a lot of overlap with that in YSP. And then the MC3 summit sponsorships,
we're working on making sure that we have sufficient funding to pull off the MC3 for this year.
Think it's pretty simple, but I'm happy to answer any questions if you'd like that being said counsel
Do you have any questions or comments for the youth services bureau? Yes, that's my will Congratulations
on bringing money in and keeping these programs going they're really important Thank you All right.
I second that Are there any other comments or questions? Let's go to the public. Are there any comments
or questions from the public for the youth services bureau? I
Seeing none, Michelle, could we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Iverson.
Yes. Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Councillor Hock. Yes. Councillor Wills. Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
Thank you. Thank you. That moves us on to item E, aviation.
I move to approve the aviation department's request and fund for eight zero one dash zero zero zero
zero aviation construction fund for an additional appropriation of sixty three thousand three hundred
and fifty three dollars and fifty five cents in the capital category second all right we are joined
by mr. Carlos Laverdy the director of our airport who has joined us on teams welcome mr. Laverdy good evening
Tell us what we know. We would like to replace a truck that was damaged in an auto accident. Our insurance
provider totaled the vehicle, which was acquired with an FAA grant. It was one of the electric trucks
that we had acquired. Insurance wrote us a check for a total of $62,438.34.
we would only have to pay $915.21 for the difference of a replacement vehicle. So the insurance funds
are deposited into the aviation construction fund and we're just asking that the dollars be appropriated
to the equipment line for the purchase. All right. Council, any questions or comments for Mr. Laverty?
And Mr. Laverty, the motion that was read, at least the materials we have do indicate that the funds
will be going into that construction fund as you requested, so. Thank you. We just might want to make
it clear to anyone who's listening, this is not local tax dollars. It's still public dollars, that's
not local tax dollars. Great clarification, thank you. All right, any more questions from council?
Seeing none, let's go to the public. Does anybody in the public have any questions for the airport?
Seeing none, Michelle, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl?
Yes. Councillor Hogg? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
All right, thank you, Mr. Lavergne.
Next, we're moving on to item F, the clerk's office. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible
approval of the clerk's request to be exempt from the overtime transfer freeze and be allowed to complete
an in-house transfer in fund 1215-0062, election fund, election board clerk within the personnel category.
Second. All right.
With us, we've got the whole crew. Welcome, Madam Clerk. Glad you're here. And all those who are joining
us to really put the pressure on council here. Just to be clear, there is no child labor law violation
within the Monroe County government. That's fine. But you're looking at a pre-Harvard law student, so
she might learn something. That's just what I was thinking. Pre-Harvard law, yeah. All right, tell us
what's going on here. What can we do?
This is a request for the in-house transfer to cover some shortfalls so that we can pay our staff who
helped us with preparing for the primary election. All right. Anything else to add? All right. Council,
do you have any questions or comments for the clerk's office?
I don't really have like critical questions or anything. I just would like to know if you wanted to
take the opportunity to talk about the primary in any way. Well, I think let us tag team on that if
you don't mind. So first, I'm very proud that we got
Monroe County through the primary that you asked for, which was a robust primary. We did have better
than expected turnout every day of early voting. Everything got off to a good start on election day
until we found a glitch, but I'm very happy to report that that was less than 20 minutes long, and for
whatever reason, our e-poll books
would not if if you went to scan those of you who have early voted would know if you went to scan your
driver's license it did not show you as being in that polling site we are very very fortunate to have
an incredible e-poll book vendor as well as an incredible it vendor and they got together immediately
and by 6 18
everybody was voting and everything was going smoothly. That did not create any kind of issue. We had
more than 10,000, I don't have the number, more than 10,000.
Voters who voted on election day without problem and the weather cooperated in a better than expected
way than we anticipated I checked with Kylie this morning, and I'll certainly let her add anything We
did not have as many provisionals as I Anticipated we will reconcile provisional ballots on Friday,
but I think the winners were very clear-cut You know who won? You know who lost?
and so I don't have anything other than because of an incredible group of people and of course our poll
workers early in absentee voting we were able to deliver you the primary that you asked for. I'll add
that our staff was able to come together and work together as much as we possibly could with us being
a little bit short staffed in a couple of areas but thankfully we
We're able to just come together. A lot of us were working more hours than what we're used to.
A lot of us, well, I should say all of us were there until 6 PM almost every single day helping in some
way, some form in one of the many different areas that we needed to be. And then I was there some nights
later than the 6 PM helping with training and other items with our training specialist. And just majority,
it was really good
I have a team that is so easily able to just be flexible and say, hey, wherever you need us,
we'll be there. That's member final.
Did you mention something about provisional ballots? Did I hear that? I said we'll be reconciling provisional
ballots. So of course, and I just got this email. I asked Kylie for it this morning. So people who did
not show up with their identification or people who showed up at the wrong polling site. And unfortunately,
those who do not realize that you have to be registered in the county that you live in, there are some
I'm going to venture to guess that they are largely from the Indiana University community.
who were registered in different counties, although I have to say, Kylie does an incredible job of going
over to the university to encourage students to change their voter registration ahead so that we don't
have moments like this. Still, we find people who just were not willing to let go at the time, forgot
that they did not change it, and then it becomes too late to get an absentee by mail or something like that.
If I remember correctly, you said about 60. Yeah, we have 62 provisionals. 14 of those were no ID when
they showed up to vote. Another 14 where they were not registered in this county. 13 were not at the
correct polling location. And an additional 13, I believe, were the ones who went to the wrong polling
location. And then, so can I add something?
So, and then for this 18 minute. We're calling it where their provisional balance. Take it and then
no so actually only one provisional ballot was taken in during that time. It was because that location
didn't fully understand the concept of a form 42 which is a county created form to check in voters who are not
showing up in the poll book, or if there is an issue with the poll book, then we have that form to be
a backup check-in that we then check them in after election day to get their voting record up to date.
All right. Any other comments or questions to my right? Please, Mr. Henry. Thank you, Mr. President.
When we originally budgeted this cycle,
The thought was we would take a look at how the primary went, you know, in terms of spending and where
we spent and where there were adjustments, and then revisit for the fall. I mean, I know you just, you're
still dealing with provisional ballots and the like, but when do you think you would be back before
us to start talking about fall budget? The next meeting, correct? At the next meeting? Not for the fall.
Not the next meeting for the fall.
I asked Kylie if we could get through, I have an annual clerks conference in June. I'd like to sit down
with our budget. And I obviously haven't had a chance to do that in the last seven days. But I mean,
we are coming back to you in two weeks for some additional appropriations, but it is not connected to
the fall money. Just thinking ahead to, you know. I am thinking ahead to, sir. Good, thank you.
All right, any other comments or questions?
Seeing none, let's go to the public. Does the public have any comments or questions for the clerk? Seeing
none, may we please have, we have one public comment. Please come to the mic and state your name for
the record, please.
Good evening council members. My name is Joe Davis and as a clerk for circuit court I was there early
voting every day and I have to say to the job that everyone did the volunteers were amazing who were
working the polls. Kylie had a tight team. Anything that came up they were on top of it.
Ms. Brown was over there constantly double checking to make sure everything was going fine. They did
a fantastic job. I know for a fact that on election night some data had to be entered all the way up
until 3.30 in the morning and you know therefore that put those employees for sure into overtime but
it was just a few of the staff so at any rate
Everything went fantastic. I would constantly ask the voters as they came out after voting how it went
for them and they all had nothing but praise for the experience. It was very fast. However, there was
one issue and that many elderly folks who came who had mobility issues, for them it could be
quite challenging to walk all the way through
the whole where you enter to vote in early voting and where you exit so it might be worthwhile to staff
someone in the future who could be sort of like a concierge who has a wheelchair out there ready for
anybody who might need that assistance but overall everything went fantastic and again hats off. Thank
you very much. If I may respond.
First, I want to thank you that that your praise is incredibly generous. I is like a proud parent I
always know that I have the best team this side of heaven and that that is how we make it through so
I appreciate your publicly acknowledging that, you know,
Thank you. That's very, very generous of you. Regarding your concern, you are breaking news to me here
in this room that there were elderly people who everybody that I talked to spoke very highly of the
space, spoke very highly of how quickly things when they were able to get in and out without any issue.
And of course we have wheelchairs
on site should someone need them so unless there's something that my own election supervisor has not
told me you are breaking news that there were complaints regarding elderly voters. Oh there weren't
complaints but one time actually one of the voters who parked close in the handicapped parking area
needed a wheelchair and so I ran up to the front area to let
uh someone know that uh someone needed a wheelchair assistance and actually I got in trouble for that
for being in the shoot so you know that's why I'm gonna I'm gonna pull this back anyway yeah yeah thank
you we're talking about overtime here and yes yes and I'm I'm I'm sure this conversation will continue
on the over
over time deserves to be paid. Thank you. I simply did not want it to be on a televised meeting that
we were not attuned to the needs of our voters. I am aware of an incident where a person had a medical
unexpected a medical emergency that was addressed and I believe that I know to what he is referring
but I simply would never want any voter to think that we were not prepared to receive them receive them
well and have them have a good voting experience which was
all of the feedback that I was given. All right let that be the final word. Sorry. That's all right
it's a good final word to end on. Michelle may we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Iverson. Yes.
Councilor Feidl. Yes. Councilor Hawk. Yes. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Motion passes
unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good evening.
All right, next, let's move on to item G, our waste reduction district. Council, I move to approve the
Monroe County officially, excuse me, I move to approve that Monroe County officially accepts responsibility
for the post closure care on behalf of the waste reduction district of Monroe County, pursuant to Indiana
Administrative Code 329-IAC-39-3.
All right. We have Mr. Tom at glass and with us. Tell us what's going on. Yeah. Thank you. This is become
an annual request for us. We're required to put up financial assurance for the closed Monroe County
landfill in the northeastern part of the county.
there's a required third year post closure monitoring and maintenance period. So in essence, we're required
to demonstrate to the state that the funding is available to complete the monitoring and maintenance
for the remainder of that post closure period. You can see in the documents included in the meeting
packet for this year, the remaining post closure cost estimate, $2,172,977.
That's about $80,400 less than last year's cost estimate. The administrative code provides several different
mechanisms by which the demonstration can be made. We prefer to use the local government financial test
option as that does not require any expense on the part of the district or the county to make
that demonstration. This is something we've done for
12 or 13 years in a row now. The county has graciously made that demonstration on our behalf. The district
does not meet the requirements of a local financial government test option due to our annual revenue
in relation to what the post closure cost estimate is.
To date, we have never had to request any funds from the county as a result of making this demonstration.
We've been able to absorb the monitoring and maintenance costs into our annual budget. We certainly
foresee that to be the case for the foreseeable future as well. Additionally, the district does have
a post closure trust fund.
That as of April 30th at a balance of just over eight hundred and thirty thousand dollars and those
funds obviously would be utilized before we would ever ask the county for any assistance With that I
have Lee Polson here with me who is our landfill director. We'd be happy to answer any questions Great.
Thank you so much for explaining that to us I'm gonna look to councilmember wilts first since yeah,
you have signed this document Yeah
So thank you for being here. I have some questions just for the good of the order. And then I would
like to hear a little bit from Lee about just how things are going as we're winding down on the period,
the 30-year period. But my first question, as you mentioned, a post-closure trust fund, what happens
to that money if you don't spend it by the end of this period?
management is a co-trustee on that fund so they would have to approve the disbursement of any monies
from that fund but it is the district's money and at the end of the post closure period upon approval
from the state those funds would revert back to the district.
So the other question, what is the date of anticipated all done? 2039. Sorry? 2039. OK. It's coming
up faster than you think. The tree planting. I'd like an update on how the trees are. And anything else
you'd like to tell us about what's going on out there? The trees are growing.
They're still pretty small. So we've actually Mary Beth and I have been starting to try to eradicate
some of the invasive species that are growing very quickly around those trees, but that just takes time.
But everything seems to be going just fine. Landfill is doing what the landfill is supposed to do. We've
been able to absorb all the costs that we need to maintain and keep up with it within our normal budget.
And right now everything is in decent good shape. So we're moving forward. So, yep. All right. Does
anybody else have any questions now that Councilmember Wilts asked them all? Right. Let's go to the
public. If you have questions for the Waste Reduction District, please come to the mic or raise your
hand on Teams.
Seeing none, Michelle, can we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl?
Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
Thank you. Thank you, folks. All right, next we'll move on to item H, the Board of Commissioners. Council,
I move to approve the Board of Commissioners request and fund 4-1
One two dash zero zero zero zero donations Sudak for the creation of account line three zero zero one
three professional services and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation of twenty nine thousand
five hundred sixty dollars and ninety four cents in the services category.
All right. Thank you all we have with us Angie pretty commissioners administrator and one of
the commissioners herself in the flesh. All right. So what do we need to know about this Sue
DAC appropriation? Okay, so this is money that's currently remaining in the specific to that and this
is based on
Excuse me, you're going to have to pull the mic here. Thank you. So this is requesting appropriation
of the funds that remain in the fund that is specific to the SUDAC fund, the SUDAC board. And these
funds will allow for the current SUDAC to begin preparing for the
all I think it is, event that's going to be handled and managed by SUDAC. All right. Are there any questions
or comments from council? Please. Councilmember Wilts. This says donations slash SUDAC. I just wanted
to make sure that it was made very clear. These are all donations from private entities.
So these are revenues that have been earned from prior events and then just straight up donations. Could
you tell us about the event? Sure. Each year we have an opioid summit and the summit is largely for
professionals in the field and those who are interested in the subject matter and this year we have
We expect approximately, I think, what, 150, 160 attendees. And we expect to get roughly 30,000 to 50,000
in subsidizing donations. And so think about like a continuing education type of event. But this is
a great opportunity to bring together resources at Indiana University, resources in the community, resources
across the state.
date set for this? Early September. September 1st and 2nd. Yes. The Bloomington Convention Center. And
for the edification of the public, we keep throwing around these acronyms as government. What is SUDAC?
We've said it 100 times. SUDAC is the Substance Use Disorder Advisory Commission. So there you go. Answering
my own questions.
I don't think I need to. All right. Councilmembers, do we have any other comments or questions?
Seeing none, let's go to the public. Do you have any questions or comments for the Board of Commissioners
regarding substance use disorder? Seeing none, Michelle, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor
Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes.
Councilor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Before we
move on to the much anticipated next item, we on the council are going to take a 15 minute break.
I know, I know, because we need to prepare a little bit here. So council, we're looking at five forty
three. Please be back by six o'clock.
All right, welcome back, folks. This is, of course, the Monroe County Council. Thank you for joining
us online. Those of you who are joining us on Teams, we're going to hop right back into our agenda.
And we're going to go to item number I, which is the Board of Commissioners. And this is going to be
a long one. So buckle in. Council.
I moved to open for introduction and the first reading of ordinance twenty twenty six dash seventeen
fixing terms and conditions for the purchase of property as follows. Whereas pursuant to the authority
granted to the Monroe County Council Council excuse me by the General Assembly of the state of Indiana
under I see thirty six dash two dash two dash twenty the council
a conveyance or purchase by a county of land having a value of $1,000 or more must be authorized by
an ordinance of the county fiscal body, fixing the terms and conditions of the transaction. And whereas
the Monroe County Board of Commissioners intend to purchase land from the Logan land development LLC
seller under certain terms,
which are described in the attached and incorporated contract for purchase of real estate marked as
exhibit one. And whereas exhibit one indicates a purchase price of $11,375, the agreement requires council
approval pursuant to IC 36-1-10.5-5 and IC 36-2
Now, therefore, be it ordained and established by the Monroe County Council as follows. Section one,
the Monroe County Council has been provided two appraisals for the property owned by the seller and
shown in exhibit one. Section two, the council wishes from Monroe County to acquire the property owned
by seller and described in exhibit one.
Fiscal body for Monroe County, this ordinance serves as the expression of the council's interest in
purchasing the land as required by IC 36-1-10.5-5. Section three, per IC 36-2-2-20, the council approves
of all the terms and conditions described in the contract for purchase of real estate.
act hereto as exhibit one. The county recognizes that the purchase price does not exceed the average
of two of the appraisals received and accepted by the council. Section four, to the extent council approval
is required, the council approves the execution and deliverance of any and all documents necessary to
approve the contract for purchase of real estate and authorizes
officers of the county to take any and all action necessary to ratify, approve, or finalize the transaction.
Thank you so much, Councillor Feidl. All right. And I think we need a second. All right. So we do have
a whole group of folks before us from the board of commissioners who is going to open up today.
I will start today, but I will note that we have attorney Jeff Cockrell. We have our administrator Angie
Purdy. Commissioner Madeira and myself are here. Commissioner Jones is online. So if you could promote
her, I would appreciate it, TSD. And we're also going to ask the sheriff to offer his commentary as
well. So we do thank you for having this first reading.
to consider the purchase agreement for North Park. And for folks who are new to this or need
more information, we invite you to go to in.gov slash county slash Monroe. And in the department section
on the left-hand side menu of our website, you will find a webpage for the Jail and Justice Center.
So there are a lot of documents there and a timeline as well. So if anybody wants more information,
it's there.
We are definitely grateful and lucky that Mr. Falk of the ACLU Indiana agreed to extend the private
settlement agreement on their lawsuit against the board of commissioners and the sheriff until the end
of May. The county council had resolved to identify a specific site for the jail by April 7th ahead
of the last ACLU deadline of April 15th. That deadline was missed. The second deadline was poised to
pass without a site selected
And a member of county council asked Mr. Falk to agree to another 30 day extension, which brings us
to today's looming deadline for the end of the month. Yes. Mr. Falk has made his expectations clear
to all parties as outlined in the most recent extension. And he made it very clear to our attorneys
last week.
that he will not consider in additional extension. So one of the things that has been brought up a number
of times is the issue of our current facilities and whether they can be renovated. And Mr. Cockrell
wants to offer a few comments on space issues in our current jail facility.
I'm not sure I'm the most adequate person in the room to do this, but I did go through the report that
we have from Mr. Ray. And it has a whole section on deficiencies of the current facility. And this was,
again, produced in 2021. And a lot of those dealt with space inadequacies. So I went through, and I'm
just going to list off the space inadequacies. And I think we've all discussed the difficulty, if not
impossibility, it is to add space to that building.
So inadequate counseling spaces, inadequate housing spaces, inadequate housing for segregation, inadequate
isolation, inadequate processing booking, inadequate programming space, inadequate public lobby,
excuse me, inadequate staff areas, lack of medical interview rooms, lack of medical treatment space,
lack of padded cells, lack of suicide cells,
limited separation of contagious inmates, no segregation of sexes or special needs inmates, and no sick
beds. And I would note that that report had two different columns, a low and a high. And so the total
of all 53, including the ones I mentioned here, the low was $22,122,000. The high was $56,484,000. Again,
2020, 2021 prices.
Of those, the ones I just mentioned were about 90%, 80 to 90% of those expenses. So this was by far
the, what required more space was by far the, cost-wise, the biggest percentage of what that report
indicated. Thank you. Commissioner.
So if the settlement agreement lapses at the end of May without meeting our obligations, a site selected
will then be open to new litigation, both from the ACLU and from individual inmates. This isn't a suggestion,
it's a real threat. A federal judge can order any number of remedies, but let's be clear, this is a
burden borne by all Monroe County taxpayers. This isn't a risk or a cost that the commissioners are
willing to accept when a good solution exists.
If the purchase agreement isn't approved, the private settlement agreement will end and we are subject
to being sued. The court will establish requirements which might be structural mediations, moving inmates
to facilities in other counties, and it may be punitive. These only divert our attention and necessary
funding from what we need to be focused on, building a new jail as soon as possible. To suggest a solution
like transferring inmates to other counties is irresponsible.
The estimated cost of $3 to $11 million in structural remediations, $1 million per year to house at
least 50 inmates in other counties' facilities, $100,000 for a transit van and $1 million per year in
wages for six new guards, and by the way, these are estimates in 2021 dollars, are sunk costs. They
do nothing to move us towards developing a new jail. They also add significant risks to our jail staff.
Our bond council has advised us to complete the bond process by July 2026, but a specific site needs
to be selected before that bond can be initiated. We're already collecting a portion of the local income
tax that aside for this project. The funding is available. It has to be structured into a bond to allay
residents concerns in the words of George HW Bush, read my lips, no new taxes. North park is shovel ready.
With a purchase agreement and a bond, we can break ground early next year and the facility can be operational
by 2030. We've done our due diligence investigating properties across the county. A few years ago, we
brought a petition before the city planning commission and the city council to build the justice center
on Fullerton Pike. Both bodies rejected the petition. We spent nearly a year on that process. We stated
at the time that if Fullerton Pike was rejected by the city, the county would look outside city limits
for this facility.
What does Thompson offer? Yes, it's in the city and yes, the county owns it. But here are the issues
with that property. The City Plan Commission and City Council must approve a change to the planned unit
development or PUD. We can't proceed with that approval. It's a necessary public process that we have
to respect and it can't be shortened or avoided. That fact alone makes any project on Thompson impossible
to complete either by Fox deadline of May 29th, 2026 or the bond council's deadline. In addition, there
are other issues with the Thompson property.
These need to be resolved before we can move forward. Cars features need to be studied and remediated.
There needs to be a large amount of dirt that must be removed. Relocation of high voltage power lines
that Duke estimates 1.5 years to complete. And a road needs to be built from the summit development
onto the Thompson property. Even if everything goes well, we would be years away from breaking ground
on Thompson and at a significant cost. And meanwhile, human
lives and inmates are suffering while we wait. This doesn't include increases in construction costs
also during that time period. The Fullerton Pike property poses concerns. It requires us before May
29th to complete a purchase agreement and to acquire a zoning change again by the City Plan Commission
and City Council. Both are impossible.
The property was only slightly less expensive than North Park to purchase, but it has less buildable
area and will also require additional costs and time to complete stormwater remediation. It's also further
from downtown than North Park, and there isn't a transit route at this site either. The County Council
has only provided approval on two sites to date, Fullerton and North Park. Mr. Falk and the ACLU are
focused on the construction of a new jail, not a full justice center. We intend to get the jail built
as soon as possible.
The jail, jail administration offices, sheriff's office, and a few criminal courts are included. Once
we are able to, based on the state legislature, we should proceed with the construction of the remainder
of the justice center. And may I remind you guys, in the election, we just elected a whole swath of
red, red people, red Trump state electors. These people are not going to give us any relief
from criminal laws. They're going to put a more punitive slate of criminal laws before us. So the imperative
to get this project done doesn't just relate to criminalization of homelessness and the cash bail bond
amendment coming before us. We have five new people that stand to be elected in November that Trump
put lots of dark money into the election to get into place in the primaries.
We have to keep that in mind. So once we're able to, we should proceed with the construction of the
remainder of the justice center, co-location reduces security risks and overall costs in the long term.
And folks have raised questions and concerns about transit. We have the time to figure this out. Either
we work with Bloomington Transit or we expand the bus service we already provide
with rural transit shadow service. We can contract with a ride sharing service provider when transit
is not available to ensure that person gets home or to beacon or to whatever location they need to go
to in Monroe County. This would actually be better than what we currently offer at the jail downtown.
And think about it. We hear transit thrown around all the time. Is transit an issue that can be addressed,
an issue that can be managed more important than providing a community standard of care for people housed
in the Monroe County jail? The people who are not going to be at the microphone today are central to
this issue. The people currently housed in the jail and jailers who face increased risk.
If you truly care about creating a jail facility as soon as possible that can provide constitutional
care and meet the level of community care we expect in Monroe County for people that are housed there,
and you understand the potential risks and costs of a lawsuit are enormous and will impact every single
taxpayer of Monroe County, we ask you to support this purchase agreement at the second reading on May 26th.
We did take this time to review things that you've already been presented, and I apologize for that,
but we did so because there's been a lot of misinformation bandied about, and we need to make sure that
we set the record straight for the public. We do believe you understand the issues. Mr. Cockrell, can
you address the appraisal issue, please?
And in accordance with state law, we're required to get two appraisals, and we're not allowed to pay
more than the average of those two appraisals. The document before you, you guys, the appraisals are,
once we received them, were put on file with you guys two, three years ago, and so we're required to
not pay more than that. And we also want to invite Sheriff Marte to come up
and offer whatever comments he wishes to at the time. Before he speaks, I would like to just make a
comment. Yeah, no, I'm gonna finish this. Council Member Hawke. I am. The sheriff has been invited to
the microphone and there will be time for council to react to what has been said. All I am saying, the
comment was made. There will be time. To try to split up this council that's worked together
no matter what the politics, and that comment was inappropriate. Sheriff Marte, the floor is yours.
Let me start by saying that for me, this has never been about politics. Never. When I took over three
years ago, very transparent, I gave a PowerPoint and showed you what I was walking into.
and what was taking place. That was very intentional. Because I said then, and I'm saying now, time
is of the essence. I know for a fact what I said at times bothers certain people when I said we're moving
too slow. And I said it. Some of you might remember I said we're moving too slow. And it was intentional
when I said that. Because as I'm walking into that facility day in, day out,
and I'm looking at people that we're supposed to be taking care of because this city, this county, supposed
to be occurring and giving county. If everybody saw what was going on, they would be embarrassed. Not
everyone sees what goes on in there. Everyone has good ideas that they think they do, but those are opinions.
I'm dealing with facts. The years of experience that I have around me, of people that have done this
for a long time, it's offensive to us that no one has listened to us to a certain degree. We are not
going to make everybody happy. We're just not. We're not. Three years ago, I know for a fact I gave
a PowerPoint presentation. And here we are, three years ago, and here we are.
Ken Falk came to the jail, gave a last tour. I invited the council members and I invited the commissioners.
Some of you came, some of you did not. He was crystal clear what he saw. And what he saw, he's correct
because I've been saying it from day one. We cannot provide the programs that is needed
According to people that want to have. I program so they don't end up in that facility. But yet when
they do. We can provide the programs that we should be able to provide. The medical care. We can't even
keep up. And it's not my fault because I've done everything that we can. My staff has done everything we can.
When I came to you three years ago and I asked for help, then again, in 2024, I asked for help.
If you notice, I kind of stayed away for a few meetings because I just couldn't understand what else
can I say, what else can I do to have this body move on this. Now, North Park.
To me, when I first started, it was Fullerton. Okay. It didn't work out because of the zoning with the
city. Okay. And then, when we understood the challenges of Thompson, and when we, a few of us, went
and spoke to the community in that area, and they were very crystal clear
we move to North Park. So to me, I want to be crystal clear, it's not about North Park. If you could
say tomorrow morning, I have another location that we could move right now, not me right now, that's
the place I want to go to. In other words, I want to go to a place that's the fastest. And North Park
is the place, is the place. And I'm going to say it again, we are not going to please everybody. It's
just not going to happen.
I'm sorry, it's not going to happen. But I can tell you this. Every minute, every day, every hour, there
are people in that facility. But not everybody in this room sees except for me and my staff. And I'm
telling you, it's very difficult. I'm telling you, it's getting worse. It is getting worse.
I can't tell you anymore about the elevator breaking down. I just can't, I really, I don't know what
else to say about that. Now because of the mold, the mold, for me to clean the windows, the bag that
I showed some of you three years ago with the filth in there that some of you didn't wanna touch, those
windows now have to be cleaned professionally, which is gonna cost $30,000.
I can't save money now and do it myself because of the mold. So when people say you could go ahead and
remodel that place, no. I understand it's innocent when they say that. They don't understand the structure
until you're in there, day in and day out. So now, when something else happens, which I don't know when
it's going to happen, when it will happen,
It's gonna be me and my staff to deal with that. No one else in this building. Me and my staff. So yes.
Yes. I stayed away for a few because I didn't want to offend anyone. I did not. But I've never gone
to anyone's backyard and try to tell them how to do their job. I have not done that.
But people have done that to me, to my staff. It is offensive. It is. I wish I could please everybody,
but I cannot. So. You have a tough decision to make, I understand that. Please remember, there are people
in that building still waiting. And I do not want something
just let you happen. And I have to come back here and sit here and explain to you what just happened
because I just don't know. I don't know what's going to happen later. I don't know what's going to happen
tomorrow or next week in that building. This is urgent. This is urgent. Now, if you have questions of
me, I'd be more than happy to answer them. If not, I'll go back and sit down. And we can take questions
as well. Any of us
All right, great. I think this is what we're gonna do moving forward since Council Member Crossley just
arrived to the record. The way that I would recommend that we move forward is that we have a time for
council members to ask questions, then we go to the public and allow them time for public comment, then
they come back to council for a final round of questions. If we choose. And yes, and just I wanna make
sure that we're prioritizing
public comment and that we preserve the right to have a dialogue between Council Commissioners and Sheriff.
All right, Madam President, the floor is yours. Thank you. Duties call, but here we are. Okay, so looking
to and by the way, I was listening via cats. So I heard a lot, but I'll refrain for right now. But I
want to look to my colleagues to see if they have any questions. Yes, Council.
Well first of all I want to have a comment for our sheriff because as you know this council has been
many times bending over backwards to be supportive of our sheriff's department of our deputies of the
jail and the jailers when the commissioners were saying we're not going to let you put lipstick on a
pig this council stepped up and said
we will make sure you get the money. All you have to do is come on, we will make sure you've got the
money that you need to operate. And it seems to me that right now, we have every council member here
who wishes to proceed with building a new jail. So you shouldn't, in my opinion, be concerned that that
won't go forward. Yes, once again, we are reminded that the Sheriff's Department, the courts,
Commissioners at the time the council at the time Had an offer to purchase that was accepted But several
million dollars less to go to Fullerton Pike That was when we had a different mayor and different people
on the council that changed over how many years ago and I am told by the mayor nobody has come to her
to say that
Now, maybe that's changed last week or so, but at the time, nobody came to say, could we move forward
with Fullerton? If we had just grabbed the reins and started moving forward with Fullerton right there,
we would have been, you know, the first would be in, we'd be going. So it takes the commissioners, but
it also takes the council. So at one time, the commissioners and the council both agreed on a location.
That location was Fullerton.
If we could go to Thompson, then we don't have to pay money at all for the ground, but the repairs or
whatever, whatever it take it. I understand that it'd take a while, but any way you go, you're not gonna
have a new jail to go to tomorrow. So we've got to figure out what's not just best for the jail and
how that's gonna operate, but for the community at large and where is the best location that's going
to provide the best services for the entire county
and for the people that we serve there. So I just want you to know, we support you. We do. This council
as a whole has supported moving forward. And so if we don't agree on the same location, I think we need
to find one that we will agree on and that might, that's either Thompson or Fullerton.
Let me say it this way. I've only been here three years. There's some members of the council have been
here before me. This issue did not start when I came here. And I did say three years ago, let's move
on this and let's move quickly. So the matter to me is not what happened with the commissioner's annual
council. And I said that I don't want to be part of a political football here.
I want to be able to get this fixed as soon as possible. And if there's another location short of North
Park that could do it tomorrow, then that's what I prefer. Something that we could move very quickly.
Simple as that. There are certain things that I came to the council that was denied. I'm not bringing
that up. So what I'm saying very crystal clear right now,
I'm not gonna get into that right. This is not the place or time, but I will down the road and make
a crystal clear of what I was denied. However, right now, the issue is, because if you keep going the
same path, and three years ago, when I started, we're still here, some of the council was here before
me. So I don't understand why is it now we're saying, okay,
we all have to agree in the same location. We're not going to agree in the same location. We're just
not. May I also respond briefly? Sure. Thank you so much. I appreciate Sheriff Marte's words. We, as
the Board of Commissioners, have supported the Sheriff's Department's contracts throughout all of this.
And really, let's talk about, rather than pointing fingers, I think it's important to remember that this
facility, especially if we are eventually talking about a co-located facility, requires everybody to
work together. A lot of different elected officials and department heads have to work together. And
that's the only way we're going to be successful moving forward. I also want to remind the council that
when we talk to city planning, we were told that there is a six to nine month window to get
a planning zoning request through. That is their process, much like the county has a process. And even
if that were shortened by five, they're still talking about missing the deadline at the end of May.
So it's, Mr. Falk requires that a site be selected. The other thing is we have,
We have talked through a number of things that are important to us. And no site is perfect.
None of them are. But right now, all of our priorities, all the things we've talked about, oh, proximity
to transit and downtown and this and that, all of these things that we've talked about that are important
to us, we now have that element of time that has become critical because of this pending lawsuit.
And that one element has risen to the top of our priority list. And because time is going to be money
if we don't make that deadline. Thank you. So if I can council members, I want to jump in here because
specifically since time is money. And that was a question that you or something you just post Commissioner
Thomas, I guess, and not trying to play political football this point,
to whomever, but in order for us to get to where we need to go, we kind of have to know where we came
from. And this is to you specifically. I guess since time is money, how has it been that county government
has sat on this for as long as we have and has had the ACLU extend, extend, extend
throughout all this time and nobody has said anything up until the moment when we took the vote October
28th. That's one thing. The other thing that I want to say is, yes, we did hear in city planning back
in February that they were saying approximately. However, I would like to say for the record, though,
we also heard you need to give us what you need in order for us to
to make this work. I've heard that more than one ways, I've talked to more than one city colleagues
and officials, and yet here we are. So I guess, you know, when I hear you say that we all need to work
together, that's fine, that's great. I think that's a common denominator that all of us can say that
that's something that we can
But it's frustrating to sit here and say that to us when, in January, during our public meetings, we
heard all along that North Park was a thing, even though back in October, we voted it down. That was
something that you had mentioned. And the ball's in our court, the ball's in our court, the ball's in
our court. Well, we picked it up, we dribbled, we did what we needed to do, and then we passed it back
to our colleagues who are on the same colleague team. And so what you did with that, I don't know.
But my question that I would like to ask since, and looking around, I know you've been around in county
government, both on council and as a current commissioner is, how did we get to the point where, I guess
I'd just like to know anybody. I don't know if anybody can answer this because public has been asking,
how have we sat on this for so long?
I was not in government at all, only had one child at the time, now I have three and we're still sitting
where we sat way back when. So can you explain to us and the public for that matter, how did this extension,
how does extensions keep getting granted and why didn't we do anything in the first place? I can answer
part of that question and I'm gonna ask Mr. Cockrell to also address it
because he's been here as well. I will say that the first settlement agreements related to caps on the
number of people in the facility at any given time. And I was not privy to that as a member of council
at that time. Now, there are a lot of things that have happened
between 2009 and today. But I will disagree with the assessment that we suddenly appeared last year
with a purchase agreement. This has been an ongoing discussion interrupted by COVID. It's not what I
said. That's not what I said. Okay. That's what I heard. Yeah. Okay. Because I heard, why is it suddenly
now we have to do something? It's not sudden. There isn't a rush here. But what's happened is
We have done the due diligence of working through properties, engineering reports, geotechnical, all
that good stuff, identifying, working through all of that, pros and cons of each one, meeting with neighbors,
Broadview, Vernal Pike, and at North Park especially.
but we've looked at way more properties than that. Fullerton, we didn't have to, there's only one neighbor
and that conversation was had. And those conversations were helpful and enlightening and it helped us
determine the kinds of things we need to focus on. But no property is perfect. Now we did community
study, we did the report
with Ray, the Ray report. Then there was COVID. And I will also say that it depended on which sheriff
was in charge of that jail as well. How much did they bring to us as commissioners for remediation and
remodeling, et cetera.
The fault lies everywhere. But between the Great Recession and COVID, I've consistently heard that it's
too much money. And it is a lot of money. It makes my eyes water to think about how much money this
is. And that's a huge commitment. And I get this is a big decision, probably the biggest you'll make
as a council member. It's huge. I respect the gravity of that decision.
But we, right now, are thinking about time. And Mr. Cockrell, did you want to add anything? I guess
I can maybe add a little bit. I would just start that Bill Sager handled the litigations back in 2008
and 2009. So I wasn't really a whole privy to that. But look through our geo bonds that we have issued
in the last 15, 20 years, you'll see
double bunking certain cell blocks as part of that. I mean, it's not like it was nothing was happening.
I mean, things had been happening. We double bunked our things we had. We built in the mental health
area, whatever we call it, whatever it's called now. So there were things doing that were being done.
I think the other thing I would say is really the ACLU started being a little bit more skeptical of
us in 2019, which is what triggered
the study, the Kenray study and the accompanying community assessment study. So, you know, that's when
this all started from a ramp up from kind of the ACLU's perspective as in 2019. I remember being in
a conversation with Mr. Falk who says, I think you've been using our agreed order as a crutch and I
don't think your facility is adequate. Maybe it is. Why don't you have a study done and show it? And
so we've seen the study, we know what it says.
That's really when it started ramping up from the ACLU's perspective, in my opinion. Just for the record,
I want to also say in terms of a rush, I guess what I mean by that is October 28, we sat here close
to midnight. We voted it down.
We also kept hearing, again, as I said before, you said the ball is in our court, and so we did it.
And then we answered the five questions. I guess it seems to be that if we really were truly on the
same playing field, that after that moment, we could have all sat down and we could have had
that conversation. And that's why members of the public feels that this is just a big rush. I understand
that Falk is upset with us.
But I just, it's frustrating and it kind of ticks me off that we are sitting here having to deal with
things when folks back in 2021 kept going around and saying they were the last ones to be on board with
this and now here we are. That's the part that is frustrating to me. But I digress and I'll go on. Yes,
Councilor Iverson.
I have a statement and then a question. The statement is something that I think has brought up in one
of the commissioner's remarks is that this is indeed the first reading of this ordinance. The second
reading of this ordinance will be on the 26th of this month. And so we wanted to make sure that we're
speaking that into the minutes. So I'm glad that when we can have a more robust conversation about that
should we need to.
My question to the commissioners is, in terms of costs associated with the bonding of this, we were
given two options for what this facility could be. It could be courts and a jail with corrections, or
it could also include sheriffs. So do we have any more clarity about which option the commissioners
are leaning towards at this very moment? Do you want to address it?
I have it. OK, please. So the intention to make the most sense was to option B, which was having the
jail administration, sheriff administration, and this particular estimate is based on having three courtrooms
also built out. And so for justice.
Simplify it total cost based on Sheriff Sheriff mystery jail jail administration three courtrooms is
one hundred and fifty seven million eight hundred and sixteen thousand seven hundred and two dollars
Did you say one hundred and fifty seven million or twenty seven million fifty one five seven
includes all costs that includes the soft costs before we had the 127 that did not include soft costs.
The, the, the idea for having some of the courtrooms there is to help for the security of the sheriff's
department. So that criminal
And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make sure that all cases can be heard where the
inmates are rather than moving them back and forth and keeping the courts all downtown now they're going
to be options. When we finally get to that point- they're going to be options- a million read a million
dollars for redesign because we're splitting the
there would have been before relating to the size of the jail, whether the sheriff's department is there
or not, et cetera. But it would have to include, we think, at least two courtrooms. So there'll be options
like how many courtrooms and how large the facility is in terms of the bed count, et cetera. So it's
not a flat number. It is a number that
You all will have to talk through that. We'll talk through with you, of course. But we don't have specific
numbers yet. I mean, that's the thing. We haven't asked them to go to bid or anything. That's the issue.
So what happens is you already know what our bonding capacity is. You guys attach that to your resolution.
Nobody wants to bond at 170 million, which would be using up all of our cash. But we can, in fact, I
believe comfortably bond at 135 million. And then we are sitting on about 70 million in reserves in
these particular funds. So the other thing to keep in mind is when we bond, we get the bond for
Whatever amount we think that we are going to want to have and the tax rate is already in place. We
are already collecting those dollars. To pay the debt and I think I need to clarify something.
We don't have $70 million in cash reserves in these funds, right? I mean, we don't have that, right?
That is a number. That's just not true. What your report indicated was that there was $135 million bonding
capacity, and then there were two areas where it says cash available for project. You added all those
up, it got to $170 million. And that was at that point in time. We are collecting still, and we're not
spending it all. So it's a little bit higher now, but it's certainly not 70, right? My mistake. And
that's based on your resolution.
I understand it. And in terms of getting to the place where we have a schematic design and we're getting
into those architectural studies, I think is the intent that the building corporation is going to be
the vehicle in which that's going to be completed in? Or is it going to be like last time where we're
having a bunch of meetings on this floor and we're going to be discussing all of those? I guess a building
corporation should not be involved with those kind of architectural decisions. That should be
the funders and the commissioners, right? I think you guys are the ones who should play a role. The
building corporation should function as the, and I think we've, I've explained this before, is their
primary function is to be able to gather enough financing in order to fund a project without coming
into butting heads with the constitutional debt limitation. It's something that the state legislature
came up with a long time ago and it's widely used.
So the building corporation's function is not to make these kind of decisions. I think that is the sheriff
clearly and his team clearly have a role to play in a lot of how particularly the jail and the sheriff's
office is designed. And I think the council and the commissioners play a role for a lot of the other
areas. And much of this has been done. They have worked with the transition team and DLZ
so much of this has basically been designed however now they have to figure out how to cut this building
in half so that it can be co-located in the future or not even but either way the building has to be
cut and that there's a fee for that and that's included in those soft costs and I and I will note that
you know we spent
about four million on design to begin with. And so there is an additional cost because we're only doing
a portion of the project. And that is something that we're not willing to spend the next approximately
million dollars to finish a new design.
until we get the purchase agreement done. Well, they won't do it because we can't. Yeah, we don't have
the property. We have to have the property for them to finish the design. I have no more questions.
I'm gonna go to Council Member Wilts and then I'll circle back to Council Member Henry. I just had a
follow-up from some things I just heard, which is about the desire to have courtrooms on site
and who is at the table making decisions because while my immediate thought is, oh, that makes sense
that you would tack courtrooms on to make it convenient for everyone, every single person that I've
talked to who works in the courts, judges and defenders, prosecutors, I've talked to
many people none of them want that and they've all actually said that would be that there's no way they
can see using that and and where's the disconnect and have you had them provide input and and that can
be something that once we initiate the bond and we get through to the point of design if that's a bid
option you want we can talk about that but the question is
the inconvenience of people who have to get in a car and go from one job site to another job site,
if they're, for example, a judge, they would have to go to do court or they could do it online, but
they would have to, they're inconvenienced and there's time involved and there's transportation involved,
so they may charge mileage, et cetera.
That's one side of the balance sheet. The other side of the balance sheet is having the jailers having
to maintain a part of the jail as operational here and also having the jailers moving people every day.
And I think that's a discussion we all need to have, but that's a discussion that needs to happen this
year, but it doesn't have to happen now, but it is out there as an option.
I agree that it seems like a very undeveloped concept, just based on all the things that I've discovered
in my conversations, but I also think that we're here to talk about a bigger issue, so let's. Council
Member Henry. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, commissioners, for being here and walking
through some of this.
Some questions I want to ask, but I kind of need to follow up on what I've just heard up here too, before
I get into it. And first I want to address the sheriff in saying that I don't question any of the seriousness
of what you've presented, the operational expertise your team brings to that building, the operating
environment you've been in. But I think for me, it's always been the question of the jail, which is
where you are, and where we get into these conversations that kind of grow off of them. The idea of
co-location, the idea of all these other
activities that are not really part of the lawsuit. It's always been about the jail and trying to get
back to what that care is. And so I want to honor that. I know I can tell from the frustration that
you have there. And to the extent that I've contributed to that, I want to honor that and apologize
from this seat anyway if I've contributed to that agita on your staff in any way. But I got to pick
up on this.
I don't think the answer is for us to approve a bond and hand over the purchase agreement and all of
the activities that move forward without establishing a different set of ground rules because we just
heard it. Councilor Iverson asked, well, who's the entity that's making architectural decisions? And
you rightly asked, is it the building corp, which doesn't make sense because that's a fiscal activity.
I think the community understands that we just built a convention center with a capital improvement
board that met very publicly and walked through requirements and dismissed requirements and explained
the artwork even and what was in that space.
And that's, I think, our public understanding of how one goes about building a multi-million dollar
project. That has definitely not been how this has gone up to this point. So when we have a comment
that says, oh, well, we'll work on it, or we're gonna get to it, where are those requirements gathered,
adjudicated, dismissed, or kept? Many of the public have asked for things that have been taken off the
table. This council has asked for things through the CJRC, and the JFAC activities were taken off the
table. And there was never an explanation as to why
Kind of similarly, we went through a process from January until now, where we were meeting behind closed
doors, the council had suggested properties in the city of which have never been made public, but we
went through a process in some way. But I think I would need at least a guarantee that says, I mean,
that's the question, how would you answer that to say, how can we do it differently so that we don't
relive the same process where we agree to a purchase agreement and then a few months from now, once
the design comes back and it's considerably more expensive,
for whatever reasons or maybe that we end up right back reliving last fall? I mean, how are we gonna
do this differently to make sure the public and this body is very aware of the requirements we're keeping
and the requirements we're getting rid of? I project manager, right? And I would say that in this instance,
we have one of the largest projects I've ever been involved with.
even though it's been cut in half, essentially. And I've been involved in quite a few in my time in
county government. And the process is, and as it should be, because initiating the bond is one thing,
and I know that July date is in there from our bond council. It's not something we made up. And I think
between July and December, and I know you have budget hearings in between there, but we have to talk through
we're going to have to talk through what amount we're bonding for. And if we're talking about what amount
we're bonding for, we're talking about what's included and what's not, and what our hopes are. If you
talk to those same judges, prosecutor, public defender, clerk, clerk's employees, you're going to hear
that they want co-location. That's what you hear. We can't do it thanks to the legislature.
And, but that's the bonding process. And Jeff, can you correct me if I'm wrong on any of that or add
anything if you need to? I think I might add a little bit. I think the bonding process would kick off
in July, but until the bond is finalized, which would likely be in November-ish, I don't remember the
time off my head, the amount of the bond isn't set, right? And so part of the,
Part of your question is, it got out of control. I guess I have a little different perception, but that's
fine, right? It did increase, and I don't think anybody doubts that. But the question is, how does the
council and their role is to set the budget? And so the budget gets set when, in this case, when the
bond is approved, but we can't
designed to the approval without having some idea of what the budget, you anticipate the budget to be.
Does that make sense? It does, except I would go as far as to say the budget needs to be more granular
at this point, based on trusting but verifying information that's been presented in this room up to
this point. I appreciate that walkthrough, but it gets away from what I asked, which is when someone
brings a requirement, like whether or not an office needs to be co-located or not,
It's the decision about that before the presentation of the product by the LZ to us to say, well, here's
the design.
It's the gray space. That's what I'm after. Mr. Thomas, I read the Herald Times archive way too much.
And back in 2008, when you first ran for office, you were as ardent as Counselor Wilts when it came
to alternatives for diversion programs. And you have chased some of those stride centers, for example.
I mean, there's been a history here. And so I guess for me, it's hard to sit across from you after your
17 years of August service, where you fought for these things early days, and now we're at a point where those
things aren't in this facility and I don't know why they're off the checklist okay and so it's so it's
not even about relitigating that I just want to know how we decide when something is proposed why it
gets jettisoned or why we're keeping it and how to do that publicly okay so to answer both your questions
I would say that one of the things I would like to see us do is to combine our opioid settlement fund
dollars from the opioid lawsuit settlements with the cities. And put those things together and come
up with a mental health substance use disorder facility inpatient outpatient whatever we can do. And
maybe Thompson's the site or you we can decide to sell Thompson all of those things are things that
we all need to work together on. The other thing I will say is that
We don't have granular information about what the design looks like at this moment. We had it, but we
don't have it with the courts sort of lopped off the side of it. So we don't have that. But we don't
want to, and they won't do it, pursue that granular design work, which he said will take about a month
to readjust things. You have to readjust HVAC and plumbing and all kinds of things.
until this purchase agreement is done. And at that moment, yes, we all need to work together to figure
out what, you know, when you put out that bid, again, you put out a range of items. And it may be that
three of you want to see what it will cost to add another cord. And, you know, I might say, well, what
about this? And we put all of those things in that bid package as a range of options.
right? Two courts, one court, one in-house court, whatever it might be. Those are things that we will
be talking about. I don't think there's anything that our office would be involved in in terms of the
jail or jail administration side. Certainly, that's not our purview. So there are some issues of granularity that
are not in our... There are issues of granularity that are not things that we are masters of and that
we know enough about to be involved in. But you can clearly say, what about the size? What about this?
What about that? Et cetera. So I think there are a number of issues that would have to be resolved.
We'd have to...
We'd have to have a range of items to go out for bid. Mr. Cockrell, maybe you want to add something?
I would just say, in some ways, it's a chicken or an egg thing, right? As somebody who's worked on this,
if you gave me a budget, then I could say, we could do this, this, or this, right? And we could work
with our design team, and we could say, here are your choices, right?
what do you want in it? And then we get to tell you, well, this is what each of these components costs.
I mean, I guess from my perspective, what are people comfortable with? How do they wanna proceed forward?
Do they wanna go with the, we wanna know, I mean, I think we've said with that $157 million, which is
scary to me, I'll be honest, number that we've got three courtrooms, we've got the jail administration,
we've got the sheriffs
the sheriff's office and we've got the jail, well, at some point in time, I think we would need to know
what each of those components cost. So we can trim that number down if necessary. I appreciate it, Jeff.
So this wasn't really where I wanted to go, Madam President. I can't do project management 101 at 6
o'clock on a Tuesday.
you know, we build everything from a birdhouse to a battleship with an idea that there's a manager and
there's milestones and timelines and all that's very public and transparent. And it's something we still
need to work on because I'm talking right past the tables here. I mean, I really don't know how to get
at that this evening. Let me get to the question of the council, which is really the fiduciary piece
of this. And it was mentioned earlier because there was an article in the Herald Times asking about
this. So I want to start off by saying that I'm going to ask some questions about valuation. And it's not about
cases and divorces. It's about how we got an appraisal on a property that's been presented in the purchase
agreement, and I need to understand how we got here. So I'm going to ask some stuff about this. And
the point of that is to help the public understand where the $5 million number came from on a property
that is no longer going to be generating any economic benefit or part of it to the community. So that's
where we need to ask what we're being asked to purchase here.
We had, and I appreciate that we've mentioned tonight, there were two appraisals. Those were offered
to council. It's part of the resolution that we accept or at least entertain those or look at those.
Those appraisals started, I believe, in 2024, late 24, and they were presented to the county in March
and April of 25. I think that's the way I understand it from the sheet. One was March and one was April.
Does that last year does that sound right to Jeff you're telling me but it sounds like to me honestly
because I think when the council approved the original purchase
ordinance for North Park, I believe they approved it in October of 2024. So those appraisals would have
occurred prior to that time. Okay, so we got appraisals that are a year and a half or so stale, or at
least understanding that. There's a really big thing that happened in that timeline between the two
appraisals of the property, and this was the adviceo and the first appraisal group's assessment, and
where we are now. And it happened in April of 25 when the plan commission in this room
change the PUD for some of the properties with Mr. Crider to figure out how to simplify. I think that
was the way it was put in the room, to simplify the PUD for the purpose of doing something with the
balance of the property. In that room, I asked him, he was standing right there, I was sitting about
here in plan commission, I asked him, first of all, is this something you want to do? And it seemed like that
was affirmative and I also asked him, you know who initiated the question which I never got an answer
on if that was a council or county driven question to change the PD or if it was his desire to change
the PD based on the fact that the county was interested in purchasing that property again that's neither
here nor there tonight what's important is the timeline.
Because the appraisal was done at a time when both the appraisals had said that the the valuation was
based on commercial multifamily mixed-use that was advisee Oh the first Appraisal group said commercial
or mixed-use and so when they were appraising the property at eleven point seven five or whatever it
was looking at comps of a of what like Property in the county would generate that economic benefit,
right? It wasn't a governmental use of the property
So we made it a governmental use by rezoning to create a government center at the PUD, instead of a
lifestyle center where one would go out and buy mall type things, which was the original vision under
the comp plan. And that's where I'm having a hard time with understanding the current value. And that's
why I said what I said in the paper. So my first question on this is, and maybe for the public to understand
this a little bit better, what we're really talking about is the land out there,
isn't just dry land that has a price tag on it. There's future potential value in that property because
your county government has invested TIF bonds in that to build out infrastructure, had done a planned
urban development around it, thinking that someday the North Park property would generate a whole bunch
of tax revenue income or property for the county as a major exit point off an interstate. Now, when
we put a jail on that, that doesn't detract anybody. No one's going to do that.
And that's the challenge I'm having with the amount. So imagine a layer cake, first layer is the out
of the box yellow cake of, you know, that's North Park. Put on the chocolate layer of the PUD and then
the toppings, the fondant, the frosting, that's your TIFBOT. And when we start ripping that out through
our process, it devalues that slice of cake. We lose some layers there. It's just the value is tied
to the economic potential of that property.
So where I'm trying to get to, and helping me understand this, based on the actions of the county to
change the development plan out there, is have we ever looked in the appraisal of it as a government
property? What's its value otherwise? Is it time to take a look at that? So I'll take a look at that.
And I know, by the way, that case that you referred to in the
newspaper article intimately because I teach it. So I'm happy to talk about that. I don't think the
newspaper article reflected that case fairly or talked about the fact that that case actually rejected
the $6,000 valuation nor did it mention that the property sold, 84 acres of that property sold to Bloomington
Hospital in 2006 for $150,000. And so clearly the Bloomington Hospital is comparable to a jail site.
And that was not a particular commercial value either but your question you know was should the properties
commercial value be relevant to government. So I think that is factually true the fact that it is commercially.
is true is a description of appraisal methodology. I think but the framing of that question or the premise
is incorrect. Appraisals generally assess fair market value based on highest and best use, not the buyer's
intended subjective use. A government just doesn't get to purchase land at a discounted jail price because
it gets to build a public facility there. So if the property's market value reflects commercial or mixed
use development potential, then that's relevant to what a willing seller could command in the market.
I don't think there's a basis for the claim that a government use necessarily should be valued differently.
And certainly, we haven't ever made that claim. Well, OK. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the cases
used in divorce law or family law. I'm not really concerned with that. Here's where I'm at, Commissioner
Madera, on it. The highest and best use, according to the two appraisals, was commercial mixed use.
removing elements of the PUD that would have encouraged that development and said, now it's governmental
use and a conservation easement. And by Mr. Kreider's own words would not be used for density,
but in fact, park space. Using TIF bonds to build a road in, I don't want to lose everybody in the room,
but it's important to say, is to say originally the road was for the purpose of building commercial
things on it. And so now we have a TIF bond that funded a road that will go to a park, a jail, and
And that value of the bond is now a question here, too. So what I'm trying to get at is, I appreciate
the highest and best value use appraisal concept. I'm not denying that. But what can be built there
today is very different than what was appraised in 2013. At the end of the day, we're stuck in the same
position as any buyer would be, and we're stuck paying the same price. So if a buyer wanted to go in
there, we're
Stuck paying the same price as a Meyer would want to pay and so we don't get a discount there's no discounted
price that the government gets essentially when they go into property right we've removed value through
the PD if that's not the same value anymore we've removed I mean this is a cannot hear in a second this
is the question is that that.
the county's actions have taken value from that property. It's interesting to say, well, if it did go
on the market and we did build a commercial or residential properties there, that's where the valuation
is. The only other comp I can think of in the past two years would be the county taking into inventory
the 400 acres of Huntington Farm, which was valued much lower and is on state routes, but it will not
generate revenue. When I say, have we looked at other government-use properties in the county,
Yeah, the valuation of that particular property is very different. It was a question worth raising.
I'm concerned that we don't have an up-to-date understanding of the value of that property, but I've
taken up a lot of time. I'll turn it over. I'll just say one more thing. On the 150,000 per acre in
2006 for Bloomington Hospital, that's a 46% increase if we're
that this this acreage at two hundred nineteen thousand in twenty twenty four by any major Bloomington
property values have appreciated far more than forty six percent so let's by all means get another appraisal
and we'll see how much this property has appreciated today I'm no expert on it though I know counselor
hogg sold a few things in her life I mean that could happen there could be another round of appraisal
price goes up it's not gonna go down the other thing is is that there's nothing
on this property now, and I do want to answer the question that was posed because we get thrown questions
and then, oh, don't worry about that. Mr. Crider contracted with a developer and came up with a proposal
for his revised PUD. The other thing I will say is that sometimes you put a Bloomington hospital or a
A whole criminal, which our hope is in the future justice center on a site and it drives development
as well. So there's two sides to that coin. Um, I'm going to move on. Um, and I'll go to counselor Irison
and then I'll pop back to counselor wills.
Section 3.3 of the contract identifies that the phase one environmental is no longer valid. How long
is that going to take to conduct a phase one environmental on this property? Not very long. We set the
period for review longer than I think twice as long as we anticipate it would take to get the phase
one reevaluated. Okay, great. And are there other evaluations we need to do on this property?
Pending approval of the purchase agreement, all that stuff. That's the important one. I think we were
ready to close on it, clearly, last October until we weren't. So I think we had everything up to date.
At that point, our phase one would have still been good. And so I think this is just the one thing we
need to make sure we get redone. And that's exactly why I asked it. In the intervening five months,
has anything dramatically or good? OK.
I think that our conversation about how we're doing this and the process, the issue that originally
is baffling. Anyway, I think it's an area that we need to work on. That said, I would really like to
hear from the public, and I do not have any more questions right now.
I just got a couple more and then we can move on. Since we keep invoking the city and now and we want
to work with them. The question that I have is because the noon edition that y'all did on Friday was
very enlightening and there were some questions that had brought or had
been brought up. And again, members of the public have asked this question, and I continue to say no,
say. And so I'll ask again for everybody, what is the transit plan? I know literally on my way here,
I was here, and we have that. Or we can figure out that plan. But I guess we got to move from concepts
of the plan into actual plan plans.
And so I've heard Commissioner Thomas like There's this notion of like uber lift. So I guess How do
we work with the city on that? What happens if the city says no and what is this contract plan? Regarding
uber lift. Okay so first and foremost we can work with the city of Bloomington which can if it chooses
decide to expand the boundaries of Bloomington Transit. And again, with commercial development and housing
and other things being added to that area, I imagine that that would happen. But we also have rural
transit shadow service, which is the urbanized area, not the rural areas, which is served by USDA money.
But this is the money that you all have allocated.
our money we purchased buses not knowing how much it turned out we needed them and You've paid for this
in the past to provide that bus service including Ellisville, which has not contributed any money We've
paid for it as the county This year fortunately in dot decided to pay for it, which has been awesome,
and I hope they do it again next year so we can add a route we can add a
to what we're already doing, right? The Uber Lyft is mainly for when transit isn't running. We don't
offer it now as though magically everybody lives within two blocks of the jail, they do not. And what
I've learned from working with BT and their micro transit system is that it's contractually possible
to establish a per ride contract with Uber and Lyft for
those times when transit is not running. So a Sunday afternoon, if somebody is released, for example,
that they would have that option at no cost to that person. But we take that cost in. And right now,
I can't say what it's going to be when the jail opens, because we never know. But right now, I think
that cost is about $20 a ride.
I think it was $20 a ride, but that would get them anywhere in Monroe County for that money So that's
sort of that backup backup plan, right? we I Know that we are we are concerned about transit. We're
concerned about distance. Although this is closer than Fullerton to downtown Fullerton Pike site that
we've looked at and I will say that
You know, much like when we first talked about Fullerton, there was nothing there. There wasn't even
a road there. There was an exit, but no roadway. And now, look, there's a roadway. And what will come
next? So you will see that other development will follow. And that will bring transit. It'll bring more
activity. And if it doesn't, we will figure that out. That is a small problem compared to we need a new jail.
And we figured out transit before, and we can do it again. And I think we should work with the city
first and foremost on a route. But we know how much it costs, because you all have agreed to the 13
line extension for this year. And that was pricey. And I imagine that that would be a similar price point
In a few years, I don't know. But but I would imagine that that that would be a similar price point.
But we've worked with the city, Bloomington Transit before it can be done. So all of this is we're not
building a rocket ship. So it's not. All that complicated, but we do have we are taking it into consideration
and we are concerned about it. And I can leave that at that.
I think also we can come up with creative solutions and contract with our local service providers and
win-win solutions where we help to fund them perhaps in paying for transportation. And that way we get
people directly who need the services directly where they need to go instead of in a warm handoff, instead
of relying on middlemen and transit. So I think that is actually what I would prefer to see.
No, I know we're not building a rocket ship. However, we are asking taxpayers to help us fund this.
I understand that's like the little potatoes, like the transportation route is like the small ideas.
But again, I keep hearing concepts of a plan. And if you're asking the fiscal body to do something that
will have consequences for decades plus to come, I feel like we got to have a little bit
more of an idea of a plan. That's what I'm saying. And transportation actually factors into this entire
thing, because as it stands right now, there's no dang gone transportation that's back there. So we
have to look at all different things. Again, I know as mentioned before in meetings before, council
needs to stay in the lane or whatever the case is. Well, I am. That's what we're trying to do here,
because we're all trying to figure out
how to pay for all of this. That's what I'm saying. So if we have, do we have any other? So, whatever,
okay. I just wanted to make a comment, and it'll be very brief. So in our April 20th, 2025 Planning
Commission meeting, the only abstention on the change to the PUD came from the surveyor, Mr.
Andrei Randolph, who brought up these concerns about transit in April of 2025.
This is where I have a challenge where we can speculate in public about plans, but then those speculations
have to become a thing. Yeah, so, so that's that's. I'll just trust what I've heard in the room today
is movement movement or ideas that could move forward. But, you know, that was 13 months ago.
I'll go to Councilor Hawke and then I will, one second, I will go to Councilor Hawke and then after
Councilor Hawke, I do want to be respectful of public time since they are here in person and virtually.
So briefly, Commissioner Thomas, if you want to wrap it up and then I'll go to Councilor Hawke. I just
want to say that I would not institute a bus service now to North Park.
to talk about a plan for transit is part of a timeline. You know what it costs for the county and the
city to share a bus line. It's the 13 line. So you know that cost. You know what we're paying for rural
transit services, for the shadow service that we're doing in the urbanized area. So all of those things
are part of it.
There's no bus at Fullerton. There's no bus that runs to Thompson right now. But we would certainly,
we know it's important. But we know it's important, and we would make sure that there was. And if you
want to see a plan for that, I would say I would like to see a purchase agreement first, because a plan
can be made for any property, right?
I feel like we researched all these properties. We did our due diligence. We did our homework. We shared
everything publicly with the council. Then the council said, no, let's do it all again. And we did it
all again. We did it all again. We reviewed our homework that we'd already done. And to say that not
having a bus going to a farm field right now is,
somehow detrimental to what can be done, I would say we can do it. And if you understand and you do
understand the fiscal costs of bus services, you do know it. I know it. Let's work on that next. And
I also want to work on mental health and substance use disorder treatment. So a lot to work on.
That was something that Kate Wilson actually talked about. All right, I'm going to go. I really want
to move to public comment now. So that's what I'm all about. OK, I just wanted to make sure and I've
done is have to listen to it. Sure, I want to hear what they have to say. I do want to rebut a little
bit about that transit because you know there's 1.2 that we you know when we start operating with income tax.
We got 1.2 for county operations, we got 0.4 for fire or EMS, and we've got a 0.2 at the bottom that
we could use for transit or for the library or for townships. Transit would love to see us do the whole
0.2 to them, but does that mean we don't help the library already? And we can't even do
the whole 0.2, we may have to cut it to 0.1 because we can only have 1.7 as a total. I'm not hearing
that from anybody. Maybe they don't know. Maybe they think the sky is going to open up and drop money
for transit. But I just think we need to know that. But please, let's listen to these good folks who
take the time in their evening to talk with us.
I know they may all think that we're crazy and that's okay because we probably are. So we will go on
to public comment. There is a public comment sheet at the lectern here and then at you hope room. If
you are making a public comment again please since we got a lot keep it to three minutes once three
minutes is up all of the monitors around here will have a timer tst please make sure we have that
I'll do two in the NETU Hill room and then I'll alternate between here and Teams. So if you have a hand
raised via Teams, we'll call on you as well. I already see one that's already raised and like lightning
round. Here we go. So again, if you want to make public comment, go ahead and start lining up so this
can go on. And we already have our first one here. Again, state your name for the record and you'll
have up to three minutes.
Thank you. My name is Cheryl Langdon. I'm a Monroe County taxpayer. I live on Vernal Pike. I was there
at the meeting that was held with the commissioners and they explained us. We were absolutely against
it. We have one neighbor who would have ended up having her house literally sitting in the middle of
this at when they were proposing that. And it was a Ellisville Bloomington Chamber of Commerce backroom deal.
didn't include us, and I spent my time, my money, and canvassed not just on the outside of Bloomington
city limits, but on the other side, because they would be affected as well. So I covered both people
that are just county and city taxpayers. We weren't happy with that. We weren't happy with how it was
just kind of snuck in.
I understand that they're using the ACLU to bully us, to hold us hostage, to quickly find this. And
I understand that we wanna make sure that the welfare of inmates are taken care of, but the welfare
of citizens, the taxpayers who are paying the bills is number one. No, it's Sandra Betts, buts there,
because we are paying the bills. And having that jail word,
they were going to propose to do it, this Hail Mary at the last minute, would have brought a light pollution,
noise pollution, traffic to neighborhoods right next to a park where kids play. So I think it's a lot
more than just the money and all of that. It's what that land is getting used for. So that was important
about the value, how the zoning is done. We're literally a neighborhood of residents.
So I wanted to point out that I feel that it's terrible that the ACLU is allowed to bully taxpayers
to quickly make a decision. And that was it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next up here in the night, you over.
Good evening, counselors. My name is Susan Easton. I'm a resident of the Stony Brook neighborhood which
I think you're aware of is adjacent to the proposed North Park site. First of all, I want to thank you
in advance for your past support of voting against
North Park as the new jail site and ask you for your continued fiscal diligence in that area and continue
voting against it. I want to enter into the public record tonight an email that I sent to all of the
county commissioners and this council group in early April. Dear Monroe County Board of Commissioners,
Monroe County Council,
We are writing to urge both parties to unify behind the Thompson PUD as the most viable fiscally responsible
and humane site for the new Monroe County jail. Well, we understand the commissioner's concerns regarding
the unreasonable delay clause in the recent March 26th resolution. And we know there's been other resolutions
besides the March 26th one.
We believe the Thompson PUD offers the only path that reconciles the Council's $118 million to $135
million budget with the modern constitutional care requirements that our community deserves. The Thompson
PUD is the superior choice for three primary reasons. First, fiscal stability.
Unlike the North Park proposal, which requires now greater than $11 million land purchase and significant
new utility extensions, the Thompson site is already in county hands.
Using our local income tax and economic development income tax reserves to fund the cleanup of the debris
pile is a far more efficient use of taxpayer dollars than the $50 million budget gap currently stalling
the North Park plan. Secondly, accessibility and social justice. The North Park site is essentially
a suburban island.
disconnected from public transport, as we heard earlier here this evening, and legal services. The Thompson
PUD is located on a Bloomington transit route in the Beeline power line trail. This ensures that families,
public defenders, and those reentering society are not further marginalized by a lack of transportation.
a key factor in reducing recidivism and helping improve future public safety. And thirdly, concurrent
progress versus sequential delay. Concerns regarding the Duke energy power line should not be a deal
breaker for us. Given the 40 acre footprint of the Thompson site, construction and site grading can
begin on the uninstructed portions of the land while utility relocation happens simultaneously.
Engineering 101 for some of us. And that is your time. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next up, we
will go to I'll go to the two individuals on team, and then I'll kick it back to here and the NatU Hill
room. So again, the screen name Richard Garza, if you are able to unmute
Again, state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. Hello everybody. Can you
guys hear me? Yes. Wonderful. My name is Richard Garza and I worked in the justice center last summer
and I am here to implore the council to approve this purchase agreement. It is
incredibly irresponsible and not caring to deny this. Enough is enough. It's been almost 20 years. There
are people who are working in harsh conditions. There are people who have to live there in harsh conditions.
And if it was not for this lawsuit and the ACLU and the Constitution, I imagine the county would do nothing
to improve the situation of those who have to work there for their careers or those who are there as
incarcerated individuals. Again, I implore you to do the caring thing, stop delaying, stop kicking the
can down the road, approve the purchase agreement. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Thank you.
Next up is Peyton Prospell.
Again, you should be able to unmute state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
Okay, first I want to thank you for the opportunity to share a comment today. My name is being possible.
and I'm a staff member at New Leaf New Life. I am the READ2ME program coordinator and I facilitate the
reentry class at the Monroe County Jail with help from volunteers. READ2ME is a program where incarcerated
individuals are able to connect with their children through reading. I interact with many different
people and READ2ME becomes a staple for many when it comes to staying connected with their family and
looking forward to their reentry.
When working closely with incarcerated individuals, I see how eager people are to discuss resources
and coordination with their reentry. I also see how reentry planning is already a struggle for many.
They deal with different types of discouragement, whether that be due to the uncertainty about when
they'll be released, where they're going to go, and how they're going to get there. It takes a community
to help someone to support someone with their reentry.
By having a jail built in North Park, it complicates their access and can lead to more discouragement
for them to have a successful re-entry. It also makes it harder for them to be able to access community
resources to support them during their release. I stand with New Leaf New Life in the stance of being
opposed to the building of the North Park jail. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
Next up, we'll go to two here in the NetUHO room. Again, if there's other people that have their hand
or would like to make public comment on Teams, go ahead and raise your hand. My name is Heather Bland.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm representing New Leaf New Life and work closely with
individuals impacted by incarceration, substance use, mental health challenges, and reentry into our
community.
We stand opposed to the new jail at North Park because we believe we're being asked to invest millions
of dollars into a system that addresses the symptom rather than the root causes of incarceration. One
of the biggest concerns of North Park location is lack of access to resources. When people are incarcerated
far away from treatment providers, social services, transportation routes, attorneys, family support
and community programs, it becomes even harder for them to successfully reintegrate into society.
Isolation does not improve outcomes connection does We already know that many people entering our jail
system are struggling with untreated mental health conditions substance use disorders poverty homelessness
and trauma Expanding a jail without equally expanding meaningful treatment and prevention services risk
continuing a cycle that's failed people for way too long
Imagine what would happen if even a portion of the funding for this project were directed toward solutions
that actually reduce incarceration in the first place. We could invest in addiction treatment, mental
health care, supportive housing, transportation assistance, workforce development, crisis responsive
teams, and reentry services. These are the kind of investments that create safer communities long term.
As someone who works directly with people returning from incarceration, I can tell you that stability
and support are what reduce reduce recidivism, not building a bigger, larger, newer facility. A jail
should never come before the primary response to unmet social and behavioral health needs. If we truly
want to improve public safety, we must prioritize rehabilitation, treatment and prevention over the
expansion of incarceration.
I asked the council to carefully consider whether this project reflects the future we want for our community.
We have an opportunity to invest in people instead of investing primarily in confinement. I hope we
choose solutions that strengthen lives, strengthen families, and strengthen our community as a whole.
Thank you for your time.
Good evening, Council. Eric Spoonmore. I've been here before to talk to you about what I thought some
of the human consequences were for putting a jail at North Park. Now, tonight, I want to talk about
some of the numbers behind that. And I know Commissioner Thomas mentioned she didn't have specific numbers,
but I do have specific numbers that I want to present to you all because I know you all care about numbers.
So the proposed purchase price is approximately $11.3 million for 52 acres.
or about $219,000 per acre. The figure deserves serious scrutiny before the county council commits taxpayer
dollars to this purchase. When we look at other Indiana counties who have recently moved forward with
jail or justice center projects, the comparison is striking. Allen County, which faced a similar ACLU
case, purchased approximately 140 acres for its new jail site for $6.3 million or about $45,000 per acre.
That property also included the largest existing building on it. Marion County in Indianapolis acquired
approximately 140 acres for its community justice campus for $4.2 million or about $30,000 per acre.
Vigo County, which also faced a similar ACLU case, moved forward with land for its jail project
at approximately $900,000 for around 22 acres or roughly $41,000 per acre. So the question for taxpayers
is straightforward.
Why were Allen County, Marion County, and Vigo County able to acquire land for jail or justice center
projects at roughly $30,000 to $45,000 per acre, while Monroe County is being asked to pay approximately
$219,000 per acre? That's about five to seven times more expensive per acre than those comparable Indiana
jail land purchases. For families in Monroe County, the median household income is approximately $66,000.
That's what an entire household lives on for a year.
Under this proposal, the county would spend the equivalent of more than three years of median household
income for each acre of dirt. And that's exactly why this decision deserves more scrutiny. At a time
when residents are struggling, residents and workers are struggling with housing costs, taxes, childcare,
utilities, and everyday affordability, it's difficult to justify paying a land price that appears
dramatically higher than what other Indiana counties paid for comparable jail projects.
And I understand that Monroe County has unique challenges, but the common refrain that Monroe County
is unique cannot become the default explanation for why everything here always seems to cost more for
our people. At some point, local leaders have to push back on that pattern and demand clear justification.
Every unnecessary dollar spent on land is a dollar that cannot go toward public safety, mental health
services, substance use treatment, staffing, infrastructure, housing or economic development.
So given the scale of this project, I respectfully urge the council to take the time needed to ensure
taxpayers are not being asked to absorb an unavoidable cost. Please insist on stronger justification
before approving this purchase and make sure Monroe County is not once again accepting a cost that other
communities somehow manage to avoid. Thank you. Thank you.
Next up, I only see one hand on Teams. So screen name Nicole, you should be able to unmute, state your
name for the record, and you'll have up to three minutes.
Nicole Myers and I just am wanting to ask the council again to vote no on North Park. I don't know a
lot about how local government works, but I'm actually surprised that you guys can be asked to vote
again on the same thing when it seemed like it was decided back in October. So I just hope that you'll
vote no again today. I feel like we've heard from some folks that live near the North Park site and
that don't want the jail built there. I live in Broadview near the Thompson property. I really don't
think we need a big giant justice complex anywhere, but I still feel like the Thompson site is a better
choice than North Park. Building a jail out there on a big four lane highway is just dangerous and just
seems like a terrible idea. And also just the idea that in general Bloomington's been working toward
more density, which is just good for the community in lots of ways. I feel like it's brawling. Just
this complex is just the opposite of what we've been moving towards in so many ways. So just asking
that that you vote no on this and that we can look at something different. Thank you. Thank you. Are
there any other members on members of the public on teams that would like to speak again? Raise your hand.
We'll go ahead and move back to, oh, sorry. Before we move back here, we just got a hand that popped
up. So Robert Freeman Day, again, state your name for the record. You'll have up to three minutes, but
you'll also need to unmute first. Hello, this is Robert Freeman Day.
just wanted to put out that if we're looking to communicate and work with folks that are, you know,
community support areas like New Leaf New Life or the city of Bloomington itself, I think that we need
to listen to the input of them. And so I'm just kind of putting it back to, you know, if they're expressing
a little bit of concern and
a put opposition to the North Park. I think that the council should be definitely considering that.
That's really all I had to say. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. All right, now we'll move
Good evening council, I thank you for the opportunity to speak and also for wanting to involve the public.
I have five points that I'd like to make so I'm going to try and make this quickly. First, I want to
begin by responding to some of Commissioner Medea's comments.
regarding what the state legislature could do with these potential new Republican Trump candidates.
I think it's inappropriate to try and state what a legislator and a lawmaker's gonna do when they haven't
even won a general election. Because running on a platform and actually doing something in office are
two different things, and I think it's important that we recognize that.
And then secondly to Commissioner Modillo when she said it's irresponsible if we do something, I believe
that this is one of the least fiscally responsible things that council could do. So I would just respectfully
disagree with that claim completely. And to my second point, I now like to respond to some of Commissioner
Thomas's comments. I'd first like to make a quote of Commissioner Thomas regarding the transit. Quote,
we have time to figure this out.
end quote. Why should we vote on something when we can figure it out later? I would like I feel like
as a human, I want to know exactly what I'm going to vote on before I'm going to do it. When I
Thank many council members that asked about the transit. And I wasn't able to get any response. And
regarding at one point when Commissioner Thomas brought up the idea of this being a farmland bus route,
logically, if we were to do this North Park, which I am no way stating we should, we wouldn't have a
bus route that would go solely from downtown, see the bus transit center to North Park and then come
back. That makes sense to absolutely nobody.
I will say on my way here I was going from 10th Street to the courthouse. I was late to the meeting
because I couldn't get a bus that got me there on time. Logically we would not have a bus route with
a single location and furthermore
while we can get a bus route out there. We have bus route 13. It is just not logical. And then I would
also like to thank and further restate a point that Councilor Henry made when Commissioner Thomas has
been in county government virtually the entire time that this lawsuit has been done. I still don't know
what has been done.
to say that, oh, we had COVID and we had these other problems. The lawsuits still remain during COVID,
and we didn't do anything. I'm going to have to speed it up here. I'm running out of time. Thirdly,
I would just like to say that this location just sucks. And I would also like to add that government
is about collaboration. I heard many commissioners say this. But then why are we going to vote on the
exact same thing twice? I haven't seen any differences.
Fourthly, very quickly, I would like to thank Councilor Wilts' thoughts about co-location, and that
if the people that work there don't want it, why are we doing it? And then fifth, very quickly, in regards
to the city and Commissioner Thomas' thoughts there, we have a new mayor, and five out of the nine city
council members were new after the 2023 elections. So that's a new thought. You can hear more from me
later. Thank you, Council.
You did well, thank you. Can you please state your name for the record? Oh yes, Kayden Smith, sorry.
Okay. Thank you. Next up here in the room, again, state your name for the record and you'll have up
to three minutes.
Okay, sorry. Okay, hi. Good evening, my name is Jessica Groves. I have three points to make. I'm a mom
and a resident. You've seen my kids running around and crying. I live in the neighborhood right next
to that area, the proposed area. First of all, I wanna say I'm not opposing the jail. I wanna thank
the charity for being a compassionate person and caring about the inmates. I care about that too, but
I have a family. Our neighborhood, have you driven to our neighborhoods?
There's kids running around, we have block parties, we have Easter egg hunts, we walk at night. I don't
even lock my car. We live in this safe neighborhood. You should see how many kids we have. Only in our
cul-de-sac we have like 30 kids, and we're always playing outside. We save so much money to buy our
house. We put in a pool this year, and now doing this is gonna affect my property value.
you know, I'm not gonna be able to sell my house if I ever wanna sell my house. That's our
biggest investment. So I feel like, and my third point is $200 million, like someone making $60,000
a year will have to work 4,000 years or 3,000 years to make that money. And we're just talking about
like, oh, we'll see, I don't know. I know this is,
Honestly, it's heartbreaking. I worked for a school. Sometimes we don't even have paper. We don't have
pencils. And we're just talking about $200 million just like that. We'll see, we'll figure it out. Honestly,
it's so sad. As a resident, as a taxpayer, it's so sad. I thought about this house, our neighbors, being
my forever home. But if this happened, I know my family, some of our neighbors were just moving.
We're gonna find another community. We'll probably move to Fitchers somewhere else, but we're not staying
here. That's it, thank you. Thank you. Don't see any hands raised via Teams, so while we wait for more
hands to light up on our Teams screen, I'll keep going back here to the Nattie Hill room. So please.
I have a special request. I'm not able to see the countdown of the three minutes. Is there any way that
Jeff McKinnon always was so kind to turn his computer around? And if it helps Mr. Davis? But I'm addressing
all of you council members. I don't want to turn my head like this. Do you want me to give you like
a 30 second warning?
Tell me when you want me to tell you your time's almost up. One minute and then 30 seconds. One minute
and 30 seconds. Yeah, thank you. Good evening. My name is Joe Davis and thank you council members for
hearing my comments. First off, I want to say I strongly encourage you to not
move forward on the purchase of the North Park property. It doesn't make any sense at all. As any independent
candidate for county clerk for the circuit court and also while campaigning during the primary,
I had many, many, many conversations with individuals who do not wish for the justice campus to be
to leave the downtown area. As a matter of fact, that translated into 2,545 or 49 votes for me. Many
of those people felt this strongly. This is my constituency already established. It makes no sense.
There's a sunk cost fallacy. We should not throw more money, bad money, at this project,
this architectural design that came from a sprawl state, an architectural firm that devalues the cost
of the land because
They come from Arizona or the Southwest where land is dirt cheap. OK, it makes no sense. We have the
possibility of developing something, keeping the jail, the justice center still downtown. The ideal
spot would have been where the expansion of the convention center is happening right now. And if you
ask me, that frame would be a great start to a new jail. But right next door,
or close by is the Hopewell area where the former hospital site was. The least buildable site right
now for those homes is the one where the actual hospital was on top of the hill.
This is a very logical place for the Justice Campus to be built. There's already a parking garage. It
is shovel ready. There is no need to put in a water treatment plant. It's already hooked up to the sewer.
All the infrastructure is in place. The city of Bloomington is responsible primarily for the individuals
who are being housed in the jail. They offend in the city of Bloomington. It's not the county people
who are doing it. It's the people in the city. So the city should pony up. There could be a land swap.
which could take place and then the county could use that property to build a multi-story jail.
This could be the jail on the bottom, the courts on the second level with ramps to be able to get the
individuals up just in case their elevators would break. There could be community justice above.
Above that, even there could be an exercise yard where those inmates could look out over the city of
Bloomington and be inspired to get their act together and get out of there. So please do not
Go forward with this. We have the opportunity to find something in town that is going to serve us better
Thank you very much for considering these comments Again, please do not move forward on this purchase.
Thank you. Thank you Still seeing no hands raised via teams will still keep coming back again and
If folks want to make public comment in their own teams, again, raise your hand. Good evening. My name
is Seth Mutchler. I'm a resident of Monroe County.
I know many, and I think I know all of you, you know that I like my prepared remarks, but I'm just trying
to try to speak from the heart today. I know I have said to you before that I do not envy all of you.
You have hard jobs. You have to make hard decisions. And even on the easiest day, your job is hard.
And I know this is not an easy day. There are a lot of factors here. I know that your job is to take
many different constituencies, many different
influences, many different things, juggle them all and make the best choice you can. I also know that
we elected you to do that and to do the hard thing and to make the right choice. I know that it has
been said many times that if we don't do this, that we're gonna get sued. And that might happen. I can't
say it won't. I can't say it will, I can't say it won't. But it might happen. But that doesn't mean
we make mistakes out of fear and that doesn't mean we
We do the wrong thing, even if we think we might be doing it for the right reason. We step up and we
say, I'm going to do the right thing. And we all know North Park is just not the right place for a jail.
We could talk about big picture. I've had many conversations with all of you. I could go for more than
three minutes, three hours about all of the reasons about criminal legal system and all of this. But
the decision at hand is North Park. And we just know it. You all voted last year.
no on North Park, the city council has said no on North Park, the community says no, so everything else
set aside, we just know that we can't make this choice, we can't say yes to no North Park in order to
save ourselves because we're just setting ourselves up for decades of hurt and for decades of the wrong
decision and I feel that we will as a community regret it and so I'm just gonna ask you, I'm gonna
I'm going to thank you in advance for making the hard choice for even when your backs are up against
the wall, looking out for your constituents. And I hope that will end up in a Novo North Park. Thank
you again for all the work that you do and for your public service. Thank you. OK, like we have a hand
raised via team, so screen name Kathleen, you can state your name for the record and you'll have up
to three minutes.
Hi, can you all hear me? Yes. My name is Kathleen Paquette. I'm a longtime Bloomington and Monroe County
resident. I just really wanted to second everything that Seth Mutchler just said. And I think I also
just really want to make it very clear, especially to the public, that we have all talked at length
and heard a lot about all of the reasons that North Park is a bad location.
And what we're talking about now, like back in October, you all voted against North Park as mostly based
on concerns with the cost and the location. And if we're talking about phasing this project now, we're
talking about a higher cost. So what you all voted against in October was the cost and the location.
And now we're looking at the same location at a higher cost. So to me,
The choice here seems obvious, but I also really want to, like Seth said, I know that you all have such
difficult jobs and this is a really hard thing and the threat of a lawsuit is really scary. But yeah,
I also just really want to second that we shouldn't make these decisions out of fear of what might happen
in a way that's going to deeply, deeply affect our community for decades to come.
And I would really like to see more finances invested in things that actually make our community better
rather than a larger jail. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and work. Thank you. Next up, we'll
come to back to the lectern here in the room.
Yes, my name is Jeff Richardson. I have no position on what site you select, ultimately. I just want
to just clarify, as I did last time when I briefly spoke to you, ACLU is not the enemy. They are not
the Antichrist. They did not cause this to happen. And President Crossley, I'm glad you, although it's
well known, I'm glad you asked for that repetition. How did we get here?
Some of you may remember Marty here from my generation, Jamie Murphy, who was a big presence back in
the 60s and 70s, and she talked about againers. I'm against this, I'm against that, I'm against this.
We have a lot of people against certain things over the past 17 years, and only recently now is it some
clarity around what we're for. But that's how we got there, a lot of againers, and we've gotta somehow
turn that around. I was encouraged,
by the photo that went around with you, President Crosley, Isak Azari, President of City Council, Julie
Thomas, of course, we all know, and Mayor Thompson. And I sent it around to many, many people and I
said, hope abounds. And so I'm curious to know, this is a question for you folks, what happened?
What is happening between meetings? What is the plan? We know what a lot of people are against, and
I appreciate that, and I've been against a number of things, but I also feel, in my life, I've tried
to also come up with a solution, like a plan, or at least a pathway to a plan. So my plea, once again,
is what is happening between meetings? What is the plan? What is the plan for the plan? And how can
we best move forward?
with the commissioners, working with the mayor, working with the city council to get this done. Again,
bears repeating, I think what I'm gonna, my plea again is we can do this and I hope that you folks come
up with a plan sooner rather than later and thank you for your hard work and I would echo what the young
man just said earlier. This is what we hire you to do. These are complex, multi-layer problems but that's
why you're elected and I wish you
all the best moving forward. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next up in the room, again, sign your name,
state your, sign your name, state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
My name is Christian Easton, and my wife was up here earlier. She's very well prepared. I'm not. I wasn't
going to say anything. But I've sat here and listened to a lot of rhetoric, just things that are going
on. It doesn't sound like there's been a really good plan for years. That's just my opinion. I started
out in law enforcement in 1970 after I got home from the Army. I can remember the old building down
on South Walnut Street. It had been down there since the turn of the century. They were still using
it. We maintained it.
It was cleaned up every day. We took care of the building. Right next door was a jail. They took care
of that building forever. We built the new one. Myself and another officer moved everything out of our
police department into the new place for Bloomington Police Department, which used to be down on the
bottom floor. I can't believe that, and Sheriff, you took that place over. I saw what it looked like.
There's no reason for that. It was not your fault, but that needed better maintenance.
I think that rather than spending money on a whole lot of other things like buying property all over
the county and still looking for another piece of property to buy, we ought to fix the jail or at least
build one and take care of it and spend the money, try to spend the money on maintenance and the future
because these buildings ought to last a lot longer than that building lasted. I can't remember the exact
date that they built that.
but it's less than 50 years old, and I'm a little older than that now, and I'm still gonna make it for
a while longer, and I'm taking care of it, okay? So I'm asking you all to do the same thing. If you
own property somewhere already, this is my argument to begin with, why are you still shopping for property?
You got property. You had an opportunity to already make a decision to build on that property.
down to crunch time now, you should have already got started on that. OK, so I'm for the sheriff having
the best facility he can have. The people need to have the best facility they can for the people that
are in there. They're not all bad. I served as a minister in that place for as a police officer that
I would go in and do Sunday night services there, prisons and stuff. I've had a lot of good people,
a lot of good people.
I met some really bad people. They need all of the courts and all the things that need to be in that
facility, need to be there and not taking everybody on a tour all over your community. Because these
guys are at a greater risk when they hit the Sally port and are transferring criminals in and out. And
that's where the accidents happen. That's where the attacks happen. And if we could just keep this design
that was here in Bloomington,
was a great design. And they touched it very much before they built it. They just needed better. They
just need a little better maintenance. So that's my that's my take on it. That's my recommendation.
Thank you. Thank you. Great. Still again, raise your hand via teams. I'm going to go back to the room
here. So again, if you're on teams, please raise your hand.
My name is Stacey Dosky and I am here to thank you for the support that you've given us in rejecting
the North Park site. I am begging you to please continue to hold fast to that decision and to support
the community. I feel that it is an injustice, one, that you're having to go through this again with
the public and have another vote and all of this to have commissioners tell you that
we have to do this. I don't understand how something can be done back door or whatever under the carpet
all of a sudden it's going to be pushed through without the public being involved in that. That's not
my understanding the way government works. I will say regarding the jail I feel for the
Inmates there the employees who work there. They should not have to work in those types of conditions
Back to what Chris was saying take the money invest in what you have Do maintenance we can't just buy
things. Let it go. We have to continue to invest invest in the positions and the properties what we
have spend the money wisely the way most people would and
I don't just buy a house and get rid of it when I need needs a new roof and go do something else. Remediate
the mold. Do those types of things. Spend the money the best. We don't have a community that has a lot
of money. We just don't. Where are you going to get all this from? You're going to put it out forever
and ever? I mean, I want to know, honestly.
Who's getting a kick back here? Why does this keep coming up? The same people are getting offered, oh,
it's their property, and then they're getting offered to do all these different things. I don't understand.
I don't understand how this keeps coming around and what the problem is. Again, we need to address this.
We need to address the jail. It needs to be taken care of. Use the money to maintain it. Do not, I beg you.
go to the North Park site. It is not the best use of our finances, of our money, anything for the community.
That site, like Councilman Henry was saying, we could get all kinds of revenue. We could make money
from that location. It is a prime location for all sorts of different types of activities that will
be bringing in
money to our community, bringing in services, all sorts of different things. So think outside of the
box, find a different way instead of just buying more property to start something else that what you're
not going to maintain it because you don't have any more money anyway. So like 10 years later, we're
going to be in the same position means ridiculous. It's just insane. There's no way that we can't utilize
the land that's there to add more.
Clean up what we have. I guarantee you, it's not just disposable. Clean it up and use it. Thank you
for listening to me. And I appreciate the support that you have given us. And I apologize that you're
having to revisit this again. Thank you. Anybody else here in the net? Oh, hello again.
Sign in your name, state your name for the record, and you'll have up to three minutes. My name is James
Hovias. And if you could speak into the microphone so it can pick it up in team's land. My name is James
Hovias, and I just walked in. I've been to a few of these meetings in the past as this thing's kind
of rolled on over the years. And I think I'm probably going to echo what other people have said about
fiscal responsibility, transparency.
You guys specifically are looking at this site that is overvalued. You're going to pay too much for
it. Former Superfund site, as an adjacent property owner with a well, I would have to test my water
before I could drink it, but you're going to build a facility here? You find issues with all the other
properties. Oh, there's dirt piled up here. We can't surmount that. Oh, no, this one's got some other issue.
just a litany of issues with North Park, right? From the lack of infrastructure, from bus lines. And
from my point of view, I see you guys looking at these problems in the future, no support, no infrastructure,
you're gonna solve those problems with more taxpayer money. Again, you guys bought the Thompson property
specifically for a jail. How about we follow through on that, right?
How about we treat government the way we treat private enterprise? You know, I built bridges and roads
in the state for 27 years. And if I sucked at my job, as much as I see some of you guys suck at yours,
I wouldn't have a job. Right. So how about that person who decided to pile up all the debris on the
Thompson site rather than prep it for the jail that we knew we were going to need? How about that person
gets their walking papers and clean it up and build it where it goes, where it's supposed to go?
That's it. Thank you. Very much. All right. Next up in the room.
Good evening. Thank you, Council. My name is Andy Klein. I'm a property owner in Stony Brook, also a
public school teacher and have financial responsibilities as a public school teacher for the school
system that I serve. And I would challenge you listening to this this evening and listening
to the conversations over a year ago at the Ellisville Fire Station. I know Councilman Hawk was there.
Commissioner Thomas was there that
The challenge for you to work together with the commissioners, I think you need to take a step back
because it bothers me when I heard Commissioner Thomas talk about, we got to come up with ideas, we
got to figure out ways to cut this, but you have no dollar amount that you're talking about in setting
a bond. And I know a little bit about bond and bond counsel with my job. So when you issue a bond, correct
me if I'm wrong, counsel, you have three years to spend that money, correct? Five. Five?
Okay, I am limited to three. But I would charge you to make sure you know what you are bonding and what
you are spending your money on. Because as the taxpayers are going to be dealing with this, you're also
dealing with the impact of Senate Bill one. And I'll allude to the fact of the other Commissioner, I
apologize, I don't recall your name, you know, impacts of the elections coming up
in November, what may or may not happen, Senate Bill 1 is still there. And with the homestead credits
and the impacts of those, the $300 that we're all getting back, I didn't see $300 on my property tax
that I paid just the other day, but that's going to have an impact as well. So I would ask you to consider
those things as you are going through this. I'd also ask you to have a further discussion with
the commissioners about, they talked about design, bid, build,
Why don't you do build, occupy, transfer, that model. And I have a corporation who's building a $100
million school up the road under build, occupy, transfer. And if it comes in over cost, it's not the
school that's paying for the extra cost. It's the person who said they would build it for $100 million.
And I would ask you to think about those things as well. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Thank you.
Are there any other members of the public who have yet to make public comment on this item? Again, you
can come forward to the lectern here in the room and then, or rather you can raise your hand via Teams.
All right, last call via Teams. Seeing none and last call in the room.
Sorry, I just saw a hand go up. Okay. Screen name, Matt Jacobs, state your name for the record and you
all have up to three minutes. And then you also need to unmute. Sorry. Maybe. Yes, we can hear you now.
Okay, cool. Again,
I think you all heard most of the comments are going to be echoed. Here we are, you know, almost 20
years into this. And the $219,000 an acre. I don't know, has there been any kind of a study done about
maybe moving the
back to the original courthouse and expanding the jail where it's at and renovating that to see what
that cost is. And then, you know, understand there's still potentially a transportation issue to get
prisoners across the street, but there's several options for that. I mean, we just, we're building the
skyway right now for the convention center.
I'm sure that could be an option. Just down the road from there, there was industrial commercial property
that with utilities ready to hook onto it at $75,000 an acre.
believe is the old Westinghouse site. I just, after obviously just, as we all know, pay property taxes
that have went up a lot. I still just don't understand how it's even feasible to think about $219,000
an anchor for an old quarry hole. To me, that's just insane. And then,
I think as I look at attendance here, I think there's maybe some council members that are not there
this evening, but I just think it's important that as elected officials that everybody stays transparent
and stays, you know, when you're making the laws, you're still not above them. And then also, I do want
to thank the sheriff
He is a very compassionate person. This mess should have already been handled before he was ever elected.
And it's really unfortunate that he's having to deal with it and all of our law enforcement. I know
just a few weeks ago was a crazy weekend. But that's really all I have is just, if it was your money
and your bank account, would you spend $219,000 an acre?
You know, I know we got to get these inmates some better facilities, but I think there's a lot of buildings
around where things can be moved around. And that don't come with that kind of a price tag. And that's
all I got. Thanks. All right. Thank you very much. Looks like we got another hand raised via Teams.
Curtis Cummins, you should be able to unmute state
officially say your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. Yes, good evening. My name
is Curtis Cummings and I'm a Monroe County resident. I also work professionally in public service and
human systems. I'm in and out of the jail on a weekly basis. I'm also in and out of the courtrooms on
a weekly basis. So I really understand that the county's facing a
obviously real pressure regarding the jail situation and the ACLU concerns. But I wanna begin
by acknowledging that the constitutional jail conditions do matter. Staff safety matters, the dignity
and safety of incarcerated individuals matter. Monroe County does have a responsibility to act, but
I believe that tonight's discussion is bigger than simply a jail decision. This is a long-term land
use and economic development decision that will shape Monroe County for decades.
My concern is not whether the county needs to address the jail. My concern is whether North Park is
just too strategically important to become only a jail. North Park may represent one of the county's
most valuable future development corridors for retail, restaurants, mixed-use development, jobs, long-term
tax-based growth. As I've heard council members talk earlier, the jail is a permanent land-use decision.
Once it's built there, the county loses flexibility for generations.
And I worry that we may be unintentionally conflating two separate ideas, the urgency to act and the
urgency to permanently commit North Park. They're just not necessarily the same thing. I hope that the
county carefully considers the opportunity cost of placing a non-revenue generating government facility
on land that may otherwise strengthen Monroe County's long-term economic future.
And I also hope that we continue investing in broader solutions alongside construction discussions,
including diversion, mental health, and just adding more mental health resources and addiction treatment,
reentry support, and upstream strategies that we can use to help with more prevention.
At the end of the day, urgency just should inform decision-making. It should not replace strategic planning.
Fast actions necessary, but permanent decisions still deserve caution. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Another hand raised via Teams and I don't see it anymore. So I'll give it a couple of more seconds to
see if that other hand will pop up.
And while we do that, I'll go back to here and see if there's any final comment from members of the
public who have not made comment yet. See. Oh, the hand came back. OK, so screen name Sherry again,
state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
Sherry, you'll need to unmute. Okay. Hello, my name is Sherry Morris. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear
you. Please proceed. I really am no expert in buildings by any stretch. I do work for the county and
I simply have a couple of thoughts to share. To be honest, every time I drive by a field that is unbuilt,
near downtown Bloomington, it dawns on me that this could be a potential location, not to start from
ground Greenfield to build an entirely new facility, but I can definitely understand the need for additional
structures that would provide mental health and addiction support and
You know, I heard padded cells, you know, different additional structures and facilities that are needed
in the current facility that could be additive as opposed to starting and replacing what we have.
I say, why don't we use the money, keep what we have and build, you know,
Maybe it's Hopewell, maybe it's reconfiguring the Curry Building, maybe it's the old Johnson Hardware
Building, the old health center, the fields around the trades district. I don't know where, but there
are options. And then we can build what we need to add the services that are required. And I also appreciated
two things, how Mr. Spoonmore did a comparative analysis and we were woefully
out of line with other communities financially with building structures. And I also appreciated the
sheriff's comment that where it is isn't important. We just need the facilities, but I don't know why
we need to start rebuild everything we have to add these extra facilities. Can't we keep what we have
improve where we need and build additional or acquire and reconfigure existing buildings
to provide those extra services in downtown Bloomington. That's all. Thank you. Okay, um, see if we
don't have any other further comment from the public. I want to say thank you all very much for
Um, making your comment here and coming in the room here and also, um, making public comment virtually.
So you appreciate that. Um, I'm going to go back for a final comment from council. So just kind of look
down the dais and see if there is any comments, um, from council based upon what we've heard.
Anybody have a public comment or comment? Yes, Councilor. I want to hear you talk first. Well, I think
these good people are here and they want a decision. And we know how we're going to vote, whether it's
tonight or two weeks from now. And it seems to me that they deserve an answer.
They thought they had the answer last year. And then, you know, now we're having to do it again. And
if we don't get it, and here's the way it works, folks. If we don't all agree tonight, then we will
be required to do it in two weeks from now. Then it won't take all of us. It just takes a majority.
So it takes four votes if we do it.
in two weeks from now. But if we do it tonight and one or two do not agree, well, it won't hurt anything.
We just go ahead and meet again two weeks from now. So not vote at all is, it's just not correct. We
should just go ahead and vote. People will know where we stand. You like voting? No, vote no.
We'll just vote again two weeks from now. But my concern is that folks and people at home are getting
tired of hearing about the jail. I know my daughter's getting tired of hearing about the jail. We've
been talking about it for years. So I think since we've already decided we're going to build a jail
someplace, and many of us no longer want to
build it at North Park. Let's just vote and be done. Anybody else want to vote tonight? Does anybody
have any other comments before? Councillor Henry, did you? Yeah, I think we've said a lot of words.
So I agree with Councillor Hawk that I don't know what more we can add in commentary.
We tend to get in that mode around here where we say it all over again. But I'll go ahead and make the
motion to call the question on whether or not to adopt the purchase agreement or ordinance 26, 2026-17.
I'll call the question on whether or not to adopt the ordinance.
I don't know what the motion is, so I'm. I thought we had any clarification. Councilmember Sir Henry,
can you repeat the motion? It's calling the question, so I move to vote on the adoption of ordinance
2026-17. Move to approve, let's go with that. Second. Okay, we got, excuse me, we have a motion and
a second. Is there any other further questions or questions or comments from council?
that a no vote, it says we're not in favor. I think that if you wouldn't mind, Molly, Mr., you did a
really nice job of explaining the implications of voting up and down vis-a-vis the wording of the motion,
which is I think what gave some of us pause. If you wouldn't mind explaining that again, that would
be helpful for I think everyone to be on the same page.
So pursuant to Indiana code, in order for the ordinance to pass tonight on the same day that it's introduced,
it requires unanimous consent. Tonight is an introduction first reading. It doesn't require a vote,
but a vote has been called for. If there's not a vote tonight, then the vote will occur on May 26. And
that vote would either, if it passed, it would pass by majority. It would not have to be unanimous that night.
I think Council has two options. They can move forward with the vote tonight or consider whether to
table it to the 26th. The motion at hand is a motion to approve the ordinance. That is the motion. Unless
I misunderstood Council Member Henry's motion, I believe the motion on the table is a motion to approve.
Is that correct?
Yes. Okay. Whether or not it gets approved is a different story, but the motion is to approve the ordinance,
right? No vote would signal not approving the ordinance. A no vote would be to not approve the ordinance.
That is not the same as a denial or to deny the ordinance. A failed motion to approve is not the same
as a denial. Does that make sense to everyone? I'm getting some concerned looks.
It makes sense to those of us who've heard it before. So it might bear repeating in a, I don't know,
I'm sorry. This is the same that would happen. So to be clear. And restate the motion. Councillor,
one second. So just to make sure I understand.
This is the same as what we've done back in October. This is the same thing that happened with the additional
appropriation. A failed motion to approve is not the same as a denial. Right. And so last year when
we voted unanimously no, we had to come back around and vote around or say it again just to make sure
that was all clear. OK. So should that happen, we would have to vote again no.
Just making it clear should the motion on the table? Fail that is a failed motion to approve and so
that is not the same as a denial as I have an amendment like to motion to deny ordinance twenty twenty
six dash one seven. That would that would that would solve that would answer the question right? Would
end it tonight. Is that your interpretation?
I'm hardly hearing you, sorry. Ms. Turner-King, is that an interpretation of the motion to deny, then
we're done? If the new motion is to deny the passage of the ordinance, when you say then we're done,
do you mean that we're not gonna have a second reading? Before I answer, I need to understand the context
of this question. Let's try again. My intention is to take a vote on the ordinance to either accept
We accept the ordinance or we deny it this evening. There will not be a second reading because we will
have killed the ordinance on that vote. The word denial seems to do that. Yes, if a motion to deny the
ordinance would not require a second reading on the 26th. My amendment still stands. And I didn't hear
your amendment. Motion is to amend amending the motion.
to deny ordinance 2026-17. Mr. Iverson was my second, but it seems like he doesn't agree. I do not consent.
Mm-mm. Okay, may I second it then? Okay, I second. If that's what you want. Okay. So we have a motion
and a second to deny. On amending. Yes, Councillor Iverson.
And I wanted to clarify why I wasn't wanting to second that. And the reason is because we have an empty
chair next to us. We need to have all seven members weigh on this very important issue. And it is not
appropriate to be making this decision when we have an empty chair. Point of information. We may have
two empty chairs next to us. Point of information, Madam President. Yes. What was the vote on the last
time we considered the North Park Purchase Agreement?
So not 6-0. Were we not missing a member that evening? I believe Michelle is looking up that information
in the minutes. There's no requirement that you have everybody in. My question is for Ms. Molly Turner-King.
On a motion to deny, if there is a less than unanimous vote
Is the outcome the same? Does it need a simple majority? For the motion to deny to pass, it would be
a majority vote. What happens in a tie? If the motion, if the vote on a motion to deny is three, three,
it neither passes nor is neither passes nor fails. So it moved to a second reading.
So technically, this is an amendment to deny, right? And so is a motion to deny the ordinance. And well,
he also talked about or he made an amendment to his motion. So nevermind, nevermind. I just answered
my own question. Okay. Can we restate what we're potentially voting on here, please? I'm sorry.
So Councilor Henry had made an amendment to deny the ordinance. Originally, it was to approve it, but
when we approve it, because it's first reading, that would require a unanimous consent. If it did not
have unanimous consent, then see you in two weeks on the 26th for a second reading where majority passes.
In this particular case, correct me if I'm wrong, Ms. Turner-King,
because we are denying ordinance, not necessarily approving it, that kills this ordinance for tonight
and there is no second reading. Did I understand that? It passes majority. Passes majority. If your
motion to deny passes majority, it would then kill in essence the ordinance and there would not be a
second reading.
If the motion ties, it neither passes nor fails, and there would be a second reading. Go ahead. The
motion to deny the motion to deny fails. We still haven't approved.
I concur with Councillor Iverson. You know, I think
I'm sorry, I think that it's important that we have all seven counselors here. We're not gonna have
seven next meeting either. What, are you skipping? Yes, we're not going to be here seven. Oh, Poopyloo.
Yeah, and this, I'm not going into my personal life up here, but I had something that was already planned
and I had not decided to be here, but I guess if duty calls, then I'll
just like I did tonight, leave what I do personally and come back here, because that's what I get paid
the big bucks to do. But again, I feel like folks know what they want, or they already know what they
need to do. Do we need to push this off for another couple of weeks, or do you want to go ahead and
do it now?
the topic of the question, and that's the vote. My motion's on the floor, Madam President. So we'll
take the vote or we don't. I mean, the motion's on the floor. I'll call the question. OK. So we have
called the question. So now we. The amendment is his amendment to deny. Correct.
Are we voting on an amendment to his motion? There was an amendment to the motion. There was a second.
There has not been a vote on the amendment. So you want to take a vote on the amendment first? That's
usually what we do. So let's vote on the amendment. Let's read the amendment.
To clarify, what you're voting on is a motion. Counselor Henry made a motion to approve ordinance 202617.
That's the number. It was seconded. And then there was subsequently a motion to amend that motion to
change the language to a motion to deny ordinance 202617. So this is not a vote on that
underlying motion this is just a vote on the amendment to that motion then do we go back to the first
motion if the amendment passes then you would vote on that now motion which is to be a motion to deny
if the amendment fails we go back to the approval question correct
Right, I mean, yes. So do we want to do that? We've got a motion in a second. Madam President, seeing
as this has caused some confusion to go with the more assertive posture this evening and maybe not go
for it, I'll withdraw the motion. I'll withdraw my amendment. So that would take us back to the original
motion of just voting up or down, but it means... Second reading. It doesn't deny it. It means it goes
to second reading, is that correct?
Withdrawing your emotion means that the emotion then is a motion to approve ordinance 2026-17. Voting
yes approves the motion. If it's not unanimous, then it would go to a second reading. Voting no is,
and if that fails, then it's a failed motion to approve, which is not the same as a motion to deny.
So Madam President, I withdraw.
so we can return to the original question. So we have the or it's withdrawn and now it's the overall
original one where he said to vote to approve. All we have to do is just. So I'm going to ask for a
roll call. OK, so to reiterate, yeah, so to reiterate. The motion to deny. Has been withdrawn.
We are going back to the original motion where it's the motion to adopt ordinance 2026-17. So this is
to approve the ordinance of the purchase of the property. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Wills.
We'll come back. Councillor Hawke. No. Did she answer? No. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Crossley. No.
Councillor Henry. No. Councillor Feidl.
You're approving. You're approving the purchase. No. Councillor Wilts. Can we need to count? Pardon?
Count right now. It is four no's, one yes. Not going to pass. So no. No.
one to five with a second reading required. All right. So thank you all for that. And this comes back
again for a second reading on the 20th.
Okay, so I'm going to jump back into the. The agenda, because that was a lot. Alright, so. Presentations
discussions, boards and commissions. As we wrap up tonight, Council please.
Council Henry had some scheduling conflicts with emergency management in the MPO meetings, and he also
would need to step down. So is there anybody that- Can I ask that the audience please be quiet? I cannot
hear Councilor Crossley. Thank you. Is there anybody that would like to take Council Member Henry's
appointments? When are the meeting dates and times?
I think it's like the third Tuesday of the month. It matters when they are. I understand. I didn't prepare
that. And then the MPO meets every other month. There's a quarterly. It's quarterly. I can look it up
while we're meeting.
We do have a little time before the next meetings of these bodies. Do they meet monthly? The MAC is
not monthly. Say that again. No, neither one of them are monthly. Oh, then can we wait till next time?
Let me get the date and times here. Can we wait till next time? Madam President, I think we can wait
till next time. They're not meeting between now and then. And I can always ask for a proxy to attend
until I figure it out. So ideally, what will happen next is if anybody wants to take it, we got two
more weeks to figure it out. Sounds great. All right.
next up update on legal counsel I'm gonna I ain't got it so we're just gonna move on with that one the
review of our colon numbers Michelle is that something you want to do now or should we I can just do
it really quick it won't it won't take that long okay
This is the time of year that we always go through the Midwest Consumer Price Index, which is the CPI.
We always use the December of the prior year, so this 2026. So we always use the December 2025 CPI.
And for 2025, it is 2.7%.
I went through, did a breakdown, did all the calculations. A flat rate of the 2.7% COLA would be 90
cents on the hour. So that's where you stand with that information. This history, it was in the packet
for your review. It shows what you've done. I can go back further, but this,
particular spreadsheet takes you back to 2021 with all the history. So I just want to let you guys know
this is where you're at. We, you know, Councilor Crossley has yet to do the the 2027 budget president
letter. I know that there was a push for last year.
to do the 3% COLA, even though we probably technically couldn't handle it budget-wise, but we did manage
to get it on there. So, you've said many times, several times since then that there probably wouldn't
be a COLA, but I just wanted to get you that information out there to you. In the year that I do it.
Yep. Councillor Henry and then Iverson. Thank you, Madam President. Councillor Iverson, in your very
statue-wear around here, did this come up at FSG in your long-term finances? It did not. We talked about
this a little bit, but it's in the sustainability report that we are going to have them come and present
sometime next month? In June, yes. Yeah, in June.
don't have it in front of me, but there was a recommendation in that sustainability report, and it was
2%? It was a 2%. OK. And we're showing a 2.7 is what CPI is? Yes. So there's your answer. Thank you.
Appreciate it. Let's see. I did get confirmation. He is coming to the June 23rd meeting. So we'll have
an update with the sustainability to the entire council at that meeting.
I was going to raise the same exact topic, so it's been addressed. Anybody else? Seeing none. Yeah,
don't have the letter for as Michelle said, lots of things have come about that has pushed that back
for me. And I will have that for my colleagues at the 26th meeting.
All right, next up we will move on to council liaison updates and comments before we adjourn So I will
look down to my left here and start with miss vital So I attended the last fair board meeting and I
want to remind folks This month and next month that the fair coming up is June 27th through July 5th
of this year So it's a Saturday through the following Sunday if you want
Vendor space, you can email mcfcommercialbooths at gmail.com. So it's mcf, Monroe County Fair,
commercialbooths, B-O-O-T-H-S at gmail.com, if you want fair. And then I was involved in an airport
master plan meeting. I don't have my thoughts collected on, so I'll talk about that next time.
Councilor Williams? Councilor Emerson? No comments. Councilor Henry? Not this evening, thank you, Madam
President. All right, well, yeah, that was interesting. Okay, so I don't have anything either. End of
the school year is upon us for MCCSE, and I'm sure RBB, but I am a mom of MCCSE folks, so hats off to
those that made it another year.
And again, I just want to say thank you to the public comments that stuck around and gave comments.
So with that being said, we are adjourned. Thank you.