- Thank you again. All right. Good evening, everybody. And welcome. After some time off, we are back in
- the historic NatU Hill room. Today is Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. The time is now 504, and we will go
- ahead and get started with our county council meeting. Here in the room,
- We have all seven council members present, so we definitely have a quorum, and we will go ahead and
- get started. So all those that are available, please stand so we can recite our Pledge of Allegiance.
- Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,
- one nation under God,
- Okay, thank you very much. Do we have anybody that would like to make some changes to tonight's agenda?
- Yes, counselor.
- Madam President and Council, I have two changes. Council, the recorder has requested that their request
- for an additional appropriation to be tabled to the next council meeting. I move to table the recorder's
- item 9A to the July 14th council meeting. And the clerk's chief deputy has requested that their additional
- appropriation requests be pulled from the agenda as they will utilize current appropriations. Council,
- I move to table indefinitely the clerk's items 9D, 9E,
- and nine F second. Okay. We got a motion in a second to amend tonight's agenda. Are there any other
- further questions or comments or any changes for our agenda? All right. Seeing none. And because we
- all are in person, um, we can do a voice vote. So all those in favor of amending or approving tonight's
- agenda as amended signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed. Same sign. Okay.
- motion carries. Next up, we will have public comment. So if there is public comment that is here in
- the NETU Hill Room that would like to make comment on items that are not on tonight's agenda, you can
- come up to the lectern here in the room, state your name for the record, and you'll have up to three
- minutes. And if you are participating virtually, please raise your hand via Teams, and we will call
- on you. So it looks like we already have a familiar face here.
- And we'll give you a few minutes again, state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes.
- Hello, my name is Kaden Smith. I would say good evening, but it's not a good evening due to the actions
- or rather lack thereof of the board of commissioners. We were all aware of their absence at both the
- jail working group as well as their declined
- their declining invite at the attempt of a first jail subcommittee meeting that was not able to happen
- because we didn't have quorum. I think it's important to state that when we have all these different
- people that will come to the council and say, this is what I want you to do, or when they sign into
- a letter saying, this is what I want you to do, if the council says no, which is the council's right,
- then none of these people want to state collaboratively. We had the mayor sign onto the letter. She doesn't.
- She didn't have herself or anybody else there. The sheriff was gung-ho, I need this jail. And I think
- the council's all in agreement that we need a jail. But if the council says no to this, it's not that
- we're not saying no to a jail. We're saying yes to something. And that's just a different location.
- And I just struggle that I don't think the sheriff understands that.
- And I'm also concerned with the Board of Commissioners. If they have a weekly meeting on Thursday, then
- I don't understand. I saw Commissioner Maduro posted online that they need two commissioners present
- in the room and able to appoint somebody to this committee if they so choose so, which if that's accurate,
- I just don't know how you consecutively have multiple meetings in a row where two of your three members
- are not physically present in the room.
- I find that very concerning that our publicly elected officials are not at their meetings. However,
- beyond the sad parts, I would like to make a few quick thank yous, believe it or not. First, to Councilor
- Feidl, because she did show up to the subcommittee
- meeting and stepped forward because I think that jail can be a really positive thing and can be something
- that we are really successful at. However, I think there's often a time that you need to step aside
- and if you realize that you can't do the project, I'm looking at the board of commissioners right now,
- then it is time to either respectfully resign because you were elected for a four year term and if you
- can't consecutively
- make meetings or effectively legislate, then it's better to resign at the top of your game. We've all
- seen sports players that will continue their career when it's just going downhill. And while I respect
- and appreciate the service of all of the board of commissioners members, I think it's appropriate to
- know when to step aside. Finally, as counsel, I urge you to just try and work collaboratively. It's
- hard out there, but I think the council is one of the few
- that's in the county that wants to work for the people, and I urge them to do their best when others
- aren't coming to the table. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Is there anybody else that is in the room
- that would like to make a comment on items not on tonight's agenda, or if you are participating virtually? Seeing
- take a point of privilege, Council, just for a few seconds to address the public comment there. And
- the only thing that I will say is, from my understanding, reading the B Square and listening to you,
- Councilor Feidl, there was no quorum because our body of the subcommittee is actually too big, which
- is actually something that we'll be working on this evening. But I think the reason why the commissioners
- could not officially appoint
- a person for them is because they didn't have a meeting and won't have one until next Thursday,
- July 2nd. Is that correct? That's correct. They had previously canceled the meeting before the working
- subgroup had been formed. So their first opportunity to meet and appoint someone is July 2nd. OK. OK.
- Now, I definitely will say it was a little disappointing not to have Quorum. But I just want to be fair.
- Their reason is not so much that they didn't want
- to participate because I believe Commissioner Madeira was in that room, but they just haven't had a
- meeting to appoint anybody. So I just wanted to take a point of privilege there. So next up, since we
- don't have any other public comment, we will move for department updates. And so department updates
- are for items that are not on the agenda. So is there any departments that are present that would like
- to give a 10 minute, no more than 10 minute,
- presentation on items not on the agenda, whether you are here in person or virtually via teams. Okay,
- see none. And the other thing that I will say to just kind of keep this show going because we use all
- of the alphabets for tonight's agenda since we have a jam packed one is
- I can just ask my council colleagues to help us get through this in departments as well as you are presenting
- to as you will keep those briefs so we can keep it moving here. So next up is item number six which
- is the consent agenda items. Council I'll be reading four items. I move to approve the following consent
- agenda items for June the 23rd.
- The Youth Service Bureau's request and fund 9137-0000 Bloomington Afterschool Network to create account
- line 20210 program supplies. B. The Youth Service Bureau's request and fund 9139-0000 Monroe County
- Youth Council to create account line 20210 program supplies. C.
- The highway department's request in fund 1173-0000 motor vehicle highway restricted for a category transfer
- of $40,000 from the supplies category to the services category. And lastly D, the highway department's
- request in fund 1197-0000 stormwater management for a category transfer of $50,000 from the services
- category to the supplies category.
- All right, we got a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion from council on this item?
- And seeing none, don't usually take public comment on consent agenda items. So all those in favor of
- approving consent agenda items as presented signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign.
- Okay, motion carries.
- Next up, we will start with a series of hiring freeze reviews and we will start with the highway department.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the highway department's request to
- be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1176-0000 motor vehicle highway one
- full time mechanic. Second. Okay. We got a motion and a second and we are joined here by Ms. Lisa Ridge. Welcome.
- Good evening. So we had a mechanic that's going to go back to being an equipment operator. He used to
- install water lines, wants to keep up his certification. So he's gonna leave, I believe his last date
- is next Monday. So we wanted to request to fill that position. Thank you. Any questions or comments
- on this item?
- Yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Lisa, for being here. I wanted to just
- ask a question about the fund, I mean, motor vehicle highway, because where you're drawing from and
- that that fund is funded by gas tax receipts in the state, right? Correct. Do you have any feeling right
- now, given that the gas tax has been suspended for two months in the state, what that might be doing
- to your budget for the remainder of the year at this point?
- not at this point. We've worked with AIC actually, and I believe Judy Sharp had forwarded a letter that
- AIC had sent to Governor Braun's office. We did watch the press conference that he said that he would
- make the counties whole and replace those funds that would be lost during that suspension. So we're
- relying that that is going to be the case.
- that we will replenish those funds. We did look at it, and we do have a cash balance. That's why we've
- always kept the cash balance that we have if we have a couple difficult months. Looking at our numbers
- right now, we're still pretty even to what our distributions have been, but it runs a couple months
- behind, of course. So if we need to do a little bit into our cash, then we will. We're just trying to
- maintain and move forward.
- I'm thinking ahead a little. I don't know what August or September is going to look like, but just trying
- to get it out there. I appreciate you looking ahead on it, too. Thank you. Anybody else? Yes, Councillor
- Decker. I just had a quick clarifying question. Is that is a fund that whatever is collected this month
- you see down the road maybe a couple months, a few months? Yeah, the distributions and it's a really
- big calculation if you want to look into how they calculate your
- your monthly distributions and all the different pots of money where gasoline tax and goes in the throughout
- the state. When I reached out to our association when they did the first month of calculations, they
- estimated across the state that the counties would lose about three million. So that was across the
- state of Indiana. So we were averaging that we were looking at, you know, three million divided by the
- 92 counties.
- as an average for the first month. I have not seen the new numbers for the second month because they
- included the other tax into that. Anybody else have any other? Yes, counselor. Yes, to be clear,
- this number, the numbers are sent to us from the state. So there's really little we can do other than
- to contact the state to say,
- you know, help us out with revenue to cover what you have cut. But this is not up to the auditor. She
- just takes the numbers. The highway department takes the numbers. And to be clear, the highway does
- not spin into the red. So they're looking at the numbers, and we can rely that they will have to make
- adjustments, and they will. Anybody else? Oh, yes. Ms. Brown.
- Yes, I had the privilege of speaking with Fred Van Dorp from the Auditor of State, formerly with the
- DLGF. So he walked me through and explained there's about 23 different taxes that make up the motor
- vehicle highway and local road and street distribution. So they're still working to get better numbers,
- as Ms. Ridge said. However, we're going to see the decline in August and September most heavily because
- of that delay.
- What I've been told is that our distribution could be cut in half, essentially. However, I've been told
- the same, that they're already in talks to make counties whole. It's just when that occurs. So we do
- think that the revenue will be replaced. It's just when. Thank you for that. Anybody else on this matter?
- Seeing none, we'll go to public comment.
- If there's public comment on this item, you can raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern
- here in the room. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor
- Feinberg? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes.
- Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have some items from the Youth Services
- Bureau. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the Youth Service Bureau's request
- to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to transfer employees and fund 1114-0166 lit special
- purpose YSB into the following full-time positions, director, deputy director, and program director.
- What did I say? Program coordinator. I'm sorry. I meant program coordinator. Thank you. All right. We
- got a motion and a second and we are joined by the great people of the Youth Services Bureau. Good evening.
- It's time for me to retire. I told you last September I would not come to another budget hearing so
- I got to get out of here quickly.
- I hope to retire by August 21st and have Vanessa Schmidt take over that position. We're asking for that
- to happen as of Monday that you develop a training line item so that I can overlap with her. She needs
- the title of executive director for us to transfer federal grants, lots of federal logins.
- for our licensure. There are just a whole bunch of administrative things that when she has the title,
- she can do that. And so I need to be in a training line item in order to facilitate that to go smoothly
- so we don't have any hiccups with all of that. Then once I'm gone, we are asking to promote Sarah Jamieson
- to the deputy director position and Emily Arthur to the program coordinator position. That would then allow the
- development and training position to remain vacant under the hiring freeze for the remainder of the
- year until the hiring freeze is lifted or unless we felt it was deemed necessary to come back and ask
- to fill that position. One of the things would give us about a 40-day overlap in terms of in time to
- get those things done, the administrative transfers. The most exciting news is that that will
- If these things happen because of the difference in our seniority and longevity of both the Deputy Director
- and Vanessa and I, it would save you $29,000 in salaries, $11,000 in benefits for a total of about $40,000
- between now and end of the year. So it won't cost anything. We can transfer money from the Deputy Director
- position and the empty
- training and development position to cover the line item for me for those 40 days. So what do you think?
- Well, we think that you have done a great job and we applaud your efforts and hopefully your wish comes true.
- by the 21st or else we'll look at you in September. So we thank you so much for that. I'm going to say
- to all of you, don't wait till you're 72 to retire. I waited too long, I think, but I'm ready. Good
- word of advice. I want to thank all of you, too. The council has supported the Youth Services Bureau
- forever. And what you do through us, I think, and other things that you do, the families of Monroe County
- are really supported in their children.
- We were told by the federal people who came to audit us, and it was quite an extensive two-day audit,
- by the way, of every aspect of Youth Services Bureau. They were fascinated at the unified support for
- families and children in this county across agencies, across departments, across government, and they
- have not seen that anywhere, and they really thought that we should be something that they could promote
- federally and nationally, and I said,
- go ahead, tell them, because it's true. We've done that as a county for decades. And I wanna thank you
- for continuing that. Thank you so much. Does anybody have any questions or comments? I see Councilor
- Hawke has her hand up. Yes, we had been receiving an update on the population count, how many from the
- county, how many from other counties, that for some reason perhaps you were,
- involved with other things, but I think it would be very helpful if we could see that, what we're doing.
- Do you know what the population is today? We actually just have one resident today. We just have one
- resident currently. We had a few exits over the weekend, so we actually just have one resident. Okay,
- right now you just have one, but your average is? Yeah, usually about seven to nine kiddos.
- reading what you're saying. I'm not ignoring you. I'm just reading it. Okay. If you could send us an
- update on that, I think that'd be very helpful because we do have to recognize that all the children
- there are not from Monroe County. However, many of them that are placed there from not just Monroe County,
- but other counties, we receive a reimbursement from the state and that
- ends up being quite a bit of operating money for them, which we used to keep that set aside. And that
- was the money that we used to do some major upgrades there at the building. But a couple of years ago
- or so, we pulled that money back and that is now sitting in one of the funds that is the revenue goes
- into the county general fund. So they are helping to support their own
- That is correct, and we should bring in about a million dollars this year. At least. I didn't want to
- get this amount, but I thought it was a little more than a million. It will be a little more. I just
- like to underestimate. And every year a contract is signed with the state saying how much each night
- would be. So I just wanted to make sure that the public understands that, because many times they'll
- say, they believe that we're supporting the other counties, and we are.
- I think we are, but we do get some of that money back. That's correct. Other questions or comments on
- this? All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move to public comment. Raise your hand via Teams or
- you can come forward to the microphone here in the room. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- and simultaneously amend the 2026 salary ordinance to have the account line in order to allow for a
- period of training of the YSB director position. Second. All right. We've got a motion in a second.
- What would you like to add to this one? That just allows you to pay me for the 40 days while
- we're overlapping and in the $40,000 savings that was included in there. And we've seen this happen
- before through other departments. Okay.
- Any other questions or comments on this item? Seems clear. All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to
- public comment. If there's public comment, raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the podium here
- in the room. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Hawk. Yes. Councilor Wilts.
- Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes.
- Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you.
- All right. Next, we will move into our presentations and discussions. I'm going to ask TSD, are you
- able to monitor that's in front of Councilor Haug? Can we get the closed captions turned on that monitor, please?
- In the meantime, I will welcome Jamie Boesler, which. Oh, I see. Yes, OK.
- All right, if you wanna go ahead and come to the table here, she is the Director of Government Affairs
- with the Association of Indiana County Council, which is also known to us as AIC. And she will give
- us an update on the property tax levies and the new locum tax mechanisms for our counties. So welcome.
- Thank you. If you don't mind giving me just a second to make sure I'm hooked up so that I can speak.
- present accordingly to your on your teams.
- be able to present.
- this audio. Should be able to share your screen now.
- can see that a little bit okay I'm happy to share it with you afterwards as well well thank you for
- asking me to join this evening I don't normally come and present live in front of a council so you're
- my first more so usually through our district meetings we've had a lot of virtual meetings recently
- hopefully some of you've been able to participate we've done several recordings I said by this time
- in the process that there's probably
- possibly some people are tired of hearing from me, but I was asked to come and I am happy to be here.
- So thank you for inviting me. My name is Jamie Bolser and I'm the current Director of Government Affairs
- with the Association of Indiana Counties. Just a little bit of a brief background on myself. I come
- most recently from the Department of Local Government and Finance.
- where I was the chief of staff and deputy commissioner. And prior to that, I was a budget director at
- the department. And before that, I spent 10 years as the chief financial officer at two school districts.
- I was a former county assessor and county council president. So I've sat in your seats before and certainly
- respect the work that you guys do and understand some of the challenges that you have in front of you.
- With that,
- This is overall pretty much the same presentation that I provided to our County Council Association
- last week. I don't know if any of you guys were in attendance for that.
- Thank you for joining So I just wanted to start by unpacking a little bit of some of the legislative
- chain Changes that have occurred whether it be within the property tax reform let reform the must overview
- that I'm sure you've heard a lot about And then also present to you the interactive portal which all
- access to that has been released to the county auditors over the weekend and so that should all be active
- currently and
- So with that said, just jumping right in to the some of the Senate and World Act one changes. It phase
- out the Homestead standard deduction and you can see hopefully from this screen that phase out for pay
- 26, which is this year. The standard deduction is 48,000 and you will see that slowly diminish until
- it phases completely out for pay 31.
- which is the 2030 assessment date. What I will say is homestead deductions as a flat amount, which is
- where we are currently, but we're phasing away from, homesteads as a flat amount is more beneficial
- to the lower assessed value. The reason that's the case is because sometimes it can exceed a higher
- percentage of a lower assessed value home.
- the flat amount doesn't however on the other side the flat amount does not keep up with assessed value
- increases and it doesn't fluctuate as that assessed value increases or decreases with that said
- And I want to point out that Senate rule act one from the 2025 session also phases in an increase to
- the homestead supplemental deduction. Again, it's a deduction, which means any time anything's deducted
- or exempted, it shifts that tax base. It shifts that burden around to other property owners.
- This will phase in this year. It's 40% uniquely last year. It was 37 and a half percent. So it did tick
- up a little bit for this tax billing cycle for pay 26. However, you can see it will phase completely
- in and pay 31 to two thirds. So every Homestead eligible and Homestead applied property will be two
- thirds deducted once this completely phases in.
- Again, the benefit by switching to the percent of the AV is it keeps up with those fluctuations as that
- assessed value changes over the time.
- again, those deductions to change. However, you have to be, you have to keep notice that it does have
- a unique disproportionate impact to higher assessed valued homes. And let's just jump right into that
- to show you how that changes. This may be a little bit harder to see, but what you can see at the top,
- the top box, you can see new calculation that's assuming the new statutory changes in effect and showing
- you how it would impact a tax bill.
- The bottom section is that old calculation. You can see the column that says 24 pay 25. We have an assumed
- assessed value at the statewide average AV of 250,000.
- You can see that that standard homestead is applied of $48,000. And then you can see that the 37.5%
- supplemental is applied. So basically, all I'm doing is just taking you down and stepping you through
- that property tax calculation order of operations. And then moving forward to 2018.
- You can see that I've implemented the new 48,000. We've implemented the new 40% supplemental. We also
- did assume a 7% increase in gross assessed value. That's a statewide average. That's why I applied that
- and assumed that.
- And you can see all the way to the right is the 2030 pay 2031. There is a compound assumption of a 5%
- growth factor in that assessed value. However, you can also see where we have phased that homestead
- standard down to zero. And then we have the full implementation of that homestead supplemental.
- deduction. And again, that new top that portion up there, you can see that the overall tax liability
- for this property is 33%.
- of the gross assessed value. However, if you look down, you can see under the old calculation, it would
- have been 52%. So you can kind of see where it's stepping in year over year and the overall thought
- of how it will start to diminish the overall tax burden for homestead properties. And the plus minus
- is a 17% differential from where it would have been as it phases through.
- Taking that forward, all I did here was just show the lower impact, and then the next slide is a higher,
- I'm sorry, a lower assessed value impact, where the next slide then is a higher assessed value. And
- you can see from just the average to the lower side of the assessed value, this is just an assumed AV
- of 100,000.
- It benefits while it still is beneficial from the old calculation to the new calculation. It's not as
- staggering as a middle of the road assessed value. This would have a 1% overall tax burden where the
- other one had a 17% decrease.
- And then moving forward to the higher assessed value of a $600,000 home, you can see it has a higher
- benefit. Again, that's because you're not just applying more of a flat deduction, but you're applying
- the deduction based off of percent of value.
- Senate Enrolled Act 1 also created and phases an increase. This is called the 2% circuit breaker deduction.
- There's a lot of similar words that the state has used. When you're applying a credit or a deduction,
- you can see there's a homestead standard deduction. There's a homestead supplemental deduction. Now,
- there's a 2% circuit breaker deduction. What that means is it's assessed value that's
- captured in that 2% circuit breaker category. That is residential property that's non homestead rentals.
- which I think you have probably quite a few of those here in Monroe County. It would also capture and
- include apartment complexes, agricultural land. There are some rural communities that this impacted
- quite significantly different because of the amount of ag land disproportionate to other property types.
- But you can see that this will phase in. So the homesteads, those are considered a 1% circuit breaker bucket
- right, there'll be two thirds deducted of that liability by pay 31. The two percenters, again, apartments,
- agricultural land, residential non-homesteads, it will phase an up to one third deducted. Again, I will
- also add that any time a deduction or exemption is applied, it shifts that tax burden, right, because
- it changes the overall property tax liability.
- uniquely as we begin talking about credits, that's a dollar for dollar deduction or credit to the tax
- bill. So it's two lenses, right? As a homeowner, it's a dollar for dollar credit off of their tax bill
- when you're talking about credits. However, as a unit of government, it's a dollar for dollar proportionate
- loss as those credits are applied.
- Enrolled Act 1 of the 25 session, and also it was touched in House Enrolled Act 1210 from this past
- year's session, converts deductions to credits. So again, deductions, you can shift that over to the
- other underlying property types. However, credit is a dollar for dollar loss for the, or credit to the
- property owner. However, it's a dollar for dollar proportionate loss to the units of government.
- And you can see here, and I won't go into all of them unless you have credits, but you can see here
- which deductions were converted over to credits and what those end up being is they're considered like
- a circuit breaker now, right? You have the constitutional circuit breaker caps and these are now applied
- as like a separate circuit breaker type.
- And House Enrolled Act 1 of the 25 and House Enrolled Act 1427 also began to touch business personal
- property. It increases the personal property tax exemption from $80,000 to $2 million. That begins for
- 26-Pay 27. And it also changes the 30% minimum valuation floor.
- personal property can now go below the 30% of that value. The thought behind this was 90% of the personal
- property filers are 2 million or below. However, 90% of the total assessed value
- is above two million. So if you think about it in form of small business filing compared to large industrial,
- the state's philosophy when adopting this was we're going to still capture the largest portion of assessed
- value personal property filing. In my hometown, it'd be like your Chryslers or your General Motors,
- right, your industrial. However, the majority of the amount of filers are now going to be
- exempt from having to file. But the majority of that value, they said, will remain. This slide here
- is important because, again, you have to know the order of operations. Property taxes are a large sector
- of your overall revenue stream between property taxes and local income taxes. So, again, by exemptions
- and deductions, that shifts the overall burden of that tax. However, once you get into
- the circuit breakers and everything below that. That's a credit dollar for dollar to the home or to
- the property owner. And it's a proportional loss to all the underlying units. I do want to touch on
- House Enrolled Act 1499 from the 2023 session and then Senate Enrolled Act one from the 2025 session.
- It put a cap on the maximum levy growth quotient. So this wasn't new with Senate Enrolled Act 1. It
- actually started for pay 24. Pay 25 was this way, where it was capped at 4%. Senate Enrolled Act 1 simply
- extended it to pay 26. So it basically allowed local units to increase their maximum levies by 4%.
- However, you can see what it would have otherwise been had that not been capped. Pay 24 would have been
- at 5%, pay 25 at a 5.5%, and pay 26 at 6%. I will say going forward,
- That was not extended. So for pay 27 right now, the way it stands, it was originally estimated to be
- about 5.7. I think it's leaning closer to 6% right now. So that cap is being removed for pay 27.
- I won't spend a whole lot of time on this. However, on these next couple slides, I want you to have
- them for your reference. And there's always just small provisions. And sometimes the smallest wording
- within a bill could have a large impact, right? So House Enrolled Act 1392 allowed more flexibility
- for financial institution tax, or FIT tax, and commercial vehicle excise tax, receive it.
- So basically, you could use it for any legal fund and use. However, this last session, it did extend
- that to excise tax. Well, the difference between excise tax, and your auditor can probably confirm this
- as well, and fit and sieve it, fit and sieve it are minimal in comparison to excise tax. Excise tax
- is a lot larger base of revenue,
- So by right now the state tells you how you are to allocate those funds It says excise you
- have to proportionally place it in your general fund in your debt funds And it does the same for schools.
- It does the same for municipalities Well schools capture a large portion of the state's debt eighty
- six percent
- of the overall state's debt that's paid out of property taxes is assigned to schools. So if schools
- no longer have to receipt that high amount for excise and they can move it to any other legal fund,
- which would be their operations fund, there is another statute that says, well, wait a second, debt
- has to be funded. So it will inflate that debt levy. And what you could see is increase a higher levy
- means a higher tax rate. A higher tax rate means more property taxes due, right? But it also means the
- underlying units of government are going to experience more circuit breaker loss. So I say that to be
- very mindful. We're all tied in this together, right? Every unit impacts another unit because of circuit breaker.
- And the more we're extending some of those circuit breaker credits, the more impact that that could
- have potentially on your guys' budget as well. These next couple slides, what they're basically doing
- is just showing you that. In a real time example, Avon Schools, for example, has all of those bonds.
- And this is just showing you what that impact or that inflation amount could be if they shifted that excise
- away from their debt funds in order to collect more on their debt funds. So that's what those slides
- are. I won't spend much more time there. However, this one, you can see that the debt and referendum
- levies, again, 86, oh, I'm sorry, 88.6%, 88.6%.
- of the 2026 certified levies for debt and referendums came from schools. You can see by the charts that
- counties overall have a very small portion of 2%. So counties by and large by the unit of government
- throughout the state and Monroe County is no different, has very little debt in comparison. Counties
- overall decreased their debt levies 2.6 million
- Cities and towns statewide, and this is based off of debt that's funded by property tax revenue. Okay.
- Cities and towns decreased their debt by 20 or 20% or 39.9 million. However, if you look at the school line,
- schools increased statewide their debt 171.7 million dollars again that's protected from circuit breaker
- loss and you may be asking why why are you sharing this with us Jamie how what does what does it matter
- well it does right because as we're looking at impacts of senate ruled act one or local driven decisions
- these all play an impact to what your
- net revenue collections are. Because if schools are increasing their levies, and in this case, $171.7
- million statewide, those tax rates are increasing. As those tax rates increase, you can't just say,
- hey, Senate Enrolled Act 1 is the underlying cause of some of our additional revenue, but some of just
- the local decisions are as well. And so with that, real quick, let me see if I can
- Maybe stop sharing this will see how quickly I can do this here. And I'm going to bring up. We're going
- to see if I can just share my screen. I just thought I'd go ahead and take a look at Monroe County.
- Can you guys?
- Sharing quite yet, is it? Hang on just a second. Let me try that again.
- If that's showing or not, it's not, is it? All right, one more time. And I'll just read it to you.
- If not, you know what, I'll just read it to you. But we will want to try to get that where we can, just
- because you'll want to see the LIMP model here.
- I'm going to do is just look at yours real quick. I have a spreadsheet that takes a look at the year
- over year growth and just looking at the summary by county, by unit type. So from Monroe County,
- like Jamie, this is great. We're hearing all this statewide, but what about Monroe? Monroe County
- Just looking at certified property tax levies cities and towns within Monroe County Are seeing a reduction
- of 3.1 million in collections, but I always like to see numbers But then I want to see what's inside
- the numbers. Okay, so keep that 3.1 million in your mind and I'll tell you what those numbers mean here
- in a second the county is seeing an increase on property tax collections one of the reasons is
- There's population that is not overlapped by a severe town in Monroe. Those usually have lower property
- tax rates, right? So you're going to lose less circuit breaker in some of those areas and based off
- those rates. So your net levy, again, this is considering circuit breaker. Your net levy increase is
- 1.1 million. Libraries.
- saw a slight decrease. Schools, though, let's take a look at those. Schools saw a $1.5 million increase
- in collection rates. So I thought, okay, well, let's first look at the year-over-year fund detail for
- one school. So I picked one school in your county. And if you take a look at the overall
- by fund level. They have a couple of referendums. They have a debt service line and a pension debt.
- Of those four lines, I thought, well, let's see if additional debt was issued. 3.6 million is being
- increased in debt collection. So if, say, assessed values in a certain area begin to increase, sometimes
- schools will take out additional debt.
- to keep a flatline tax rate, right? So with this, the school is seeing a 3.6 million additional intake
- in revenue for debt fund. Their operations fund is seeing a decrease of 1.6 million. One of the things
- that I'm, so it's a net gain overall of 2 million, right? Just to debt service more so than operations.
- However, my point in this is,
- While Senate Enrolled Act 1 may have had some cause and effect on the school's operations fund because
- of some of those post-circuit breaker levies, so did the increase or the not allowing the tax rate to
- decrease if debt fell off.
- So I'm saying that to say there are some local decisions that drive those circuit breakers to based
- off of what that overall rate is doing so in the case of a dish Certifying additional three million
- dollars in debt levy collection that's going to have an impact on their own operations Tax rate which
- will have a cause and effect as well. Okay, then I said well, okay, let's go ahead and take a look at the
- the cities and towns overall, 3.1 million deficit or reduction in overall collections. And I thought,
- well, okay, let's take a look at that. So if I take a look at, let's say Bloomington, let me pull up
- here just because obviously that's your biggest municipality. Give me just a second here.
- how I said overall cities and towns allowed a lot, a large portion of the debt to fall off. Well, Bloomington
- was no different. So even though they're seeing a decrease in funding, the large portion of that is
- just because debt was falling off. So it doesn't mean necessarily they're losing. Let's see, overall
- Bloomington alone is 3.2 million, right?
- And if I take a look at just the debt funds, let's see here. Depth funds.
- they had one bond decreased by 3.4 million. So that alone is a large portion. If the city of Bloomington
- is saying, hey, we're losing a large portion of that is just their debt naturally falling off, which
- it normally does through an amortization schedule, right? So that's their large part. I think overall
- their non-debt funds saw a minimal decrease of just about 66,000. Let me,
- verify that here, though, so that I don't. Yeah, $65,000 overall. So while their general fund and some of the
- Those decisions are much like what you guys have towards your budget hearings every year, right? You
- have all your maximum levy generated funds and you get to decide, okay, do we need a little bit more
- in our health fund this year? Do we decrease some of our general fund but we stay within the maximum
- levy or however those decisions work? And the cities are no different with those decisions, right? So
- even though they allowed their general fund to decrease 1.9 million, they allowed their NVH
- fund to increase $1.2 million. So that was a local driven decision, right, as to just where to allocate
- some of those levy collections. But overall, year over year, it's in their non-debt funds, they're seeing
- a $65,000 change. And then we'll look at lit here in a second. But let me get back to our PowerPoint.
- And this team's meeting here.
- I'm still in the Teams meeting. It looks like you are. Right. Okay. Well, I'm back in. So let's see.
- Let's just do it this way.
- Okay, now looking at the total certified levies, the overall statewide, you can see schools account
- for 44%. So if you're thinking of the property tax collection pie as a, how you're percentiling that
- out based off of collections, schools are 44%, counties are around 18%, just shy. Cities and towns account
- for about 24%, and then you can see the rest there.
- This is net levies. So again, certified levies are the are what you have control over as a adopting
- unit of government. It is what you are locally deciding and driving. And that's important to take a
- look at those certified levies. What's the local decisions issuing more debt?
- allowing debt to fall off compared to the net levies. The net levies assume the circuit breaker loss
- and all of the credits that are applied post circuit breaker. So you can see here that that does change
- things. Counties went from 17.55 percent of the total certified. They received 18 percent of the total net.
- Going into the lit reform and must overview the current local income tax is set to now expire in twenty
- twenty eight. You can see right now that how those rates are applied. The expenditure rate includes
- certified shares which includes levy freeze and school PTRC economic development.
- which you guys do have, public safety, which includes PSAP, any fire department, volunteer fire department,
- correctional rehab facility, that's also known as just a jail lit, if you guys have a jail lit, EMS,
- judicial and acute care hospital, so that's one bucket. Then you have another bucket, and that bucket
- cannot exceed 2.5%.
- And then the special purpose rate cannot. Well, it's generated by state statute and the expiration date
- of being able to collect that is outside. It's specifically driven in statute. I think you may have.
- I'm almost afraid to go off of this, though, because every time I do, I feel like I have troubles getting
- back. I think you guys do. Yeah.
- This is how the current lit structure looks. It's broken up again by the certified chairs, public safety.
- But you can see as we go into look at the new reform,
- The biggest change between this old makeup and the new is where the tax base is coming from. If you
- think of your net assessed value on property taxes as your tax base, the adjusted gross income is your
- tax base for lit. So right now, the adjusted gross income is being used of the entire county to fund
- every single unit that receives distribution. So what that means is, and I use my home county as an
- example, we are a former co-it county. So what that means is we have a lit council. The lit council
- is comprised of municipalities and the county.
- Your percent of vote is based on your population percentage. The city of Kokomo back in 2010 time frame
- saw a very large annexation. So where the city is now 71% of the overall population of the county. So
- based off of that former break or makeup of how the lit council votes, the city alone of Kokomo has
- over 51% of that vote. They can vote on the lit rate for the entire
- all county residents in Howard County without even considering the non-municipal areas or the municipal
- areas that are not within those boundary lines. So there's a concern there of taxation without
- representation, certainly, right? But then also you have to also understand how these funds are divided
- up. So you get all this lit revenue, right? Each unit gets a proportion of it.
- How that's decided currently is based off property tax levies. So there's the perverse incentive to
- raise that property tax levy to be able to get more lit distribution, right? Just the same, there's
- almost the opposite occurring where it de-centrifies you to decrease your property tax levy. So if you
- were under maximum levy,
- which you guys were, I know last year. But if you're under your maximum levy, it's also going to cost
- you that following year on lit distribution too, because one has an effect on the other. So those are
- some of the reasons that our legislators cited when saying this is why we're needing a little bit of
- reform. And also you're seeing the dollars don't necessarily follow
- that taxpayer. You're seeing areas that are non-municipal where they're subsidizing largely some of
- the municipal areas. Obviously, I don't care if you're municipal or non-municipal, you're all within
- the county. But they wanted to be able to show a little bit and it be locally decided what that subsidy
- is if so permitted. So this is the makeup of the old structure
- And again, I always say, and if you've listened to a presentation of mine, I will never have a lit discussion
- without having a property tax discussion because one influences the other right now, right? There is
- that perverse incentive on that property tax levy for that income. Just looking at the compound growth
- rate from 2022 for property tax levies to 2026, you can see counties grew for the major unit types at
- the lowest rate. So if you're
- growth lowest on the property tax side, what are you doing on the lit side? Hand in hand, right?
- Do you want to talk about what the overall rates are? Statewide, the average, again, the expenditure
- rate cap right now is 2.5%. However, the statewide average is 1.62. So there's plenty of capacity. We
- talk about capacity and who needs capacity.
- Right now there's a ton of capacity already that's existing in the current list structure, right? And
- then I would also say that's the same from the PTR. PTR, the average throughout the state, 58 counties
- have a PTR. While that maximum rate is 1.25%, the average throughout the state is 0.36. Again, that's
- being eliminated as we move forward. This is what the new rate structure will look like.
- it is going to be stacked similar similarly to how property taxes are stacked. So what the General Assembly
- has said is right now the county service rate is going to be 1.2% not to exceed the fire protection
- and EMS not to exceed 0.4 not to exceed 0.2. Those three combined while they total 1.8 those three combined
- cannot exceed 1.7.
- The municipal tax rate, whether it's a small or a large defined municipality, cannot exceed 1.7. From
- what I took a look at, you have two, quote unquote, large municipalities in Monroe and one small. And
- then the total lit rate cannot exceed 2.9. So this is the current makeup, what will begin in 2029.
- This is the new structure then, and how this changes is unique. Right now, the tax base for the entire
- lit is the adjusted gross income for the entire county. Moving forward, the county service rate of 1.2,
- since every taxpayer is a county taxpayer, right, for the county services, you will utilize the adjusted
- gross income of the entire county. Fire protection and EMS, universal service,
- countywide AGI, okay? So it's a larger tax base. Non-municipal, which are your townships, your libraries,
- not to exceed .2, again, it's the adjusted gross income of the entire county. It's that larger tax base.
- It's the larger pool. Larger tax base, you need a smaller rate most of the time to generate the revenue,
- okay? Municipalities that are less than 3,500, the adopting body
- are you the county council? The reason is because it's utilizing the county wide AGI and what they wanted
- to make sure was there was representation for those that would be paying that tax. So the municipalities
- that are less than 3500 is the AGI of the entire county. However, if I'm a large municipality, which
- you have to, they have the choice. The county council can adopt that small municipal rate
- for all the municipalities that are less than 3,500, you've established this rate, then the
- large municipalities have a decision to make. They're going to say, do I want to opt into that rate
- or do I want to opt out of that rate? Well, the higher the rate that's established for that
- small municipality, the more incentive they have to opt into it because it's the larger tax base, right? However,
- the small municipality to ensure that there's not double taxation by the same unit type. If Bloomington
- opts out of the small municipal rate that you establish, their AGI goes with it so that you're not double
- taxing a taxpayer. So you have the large pool. However, it's going to come here because you're going
- to subtract
- that will be the tax base for those small cities and towns then that you would have to adopt. One thing
- I do want to make note of is the county service rate obviously cannot exceed one point two it's going
- to be all of the current pools right now there it's bucketed right public safety PSAP economic development
- The new encompasses it all. It was, I think, an intent to provide some flexibility for the local units
- and to provide more local control for the local units. But the one thing I really want to make note
- of is it does include debt obligations. So right now you have a special purpose tax rate. That is outside
- since it was statutorily assigned. You are one of the 21 that have a statutorily assigned special purpose
- rate, I believe.
- It's outside of the current maximum of 2.9% total. So that's grandfathered previously. You don't have
- to consider that as you're adopting your new rate. That will continue. Because it was established with
- a payoff in particular defined by statute, and it will pay off based off of that statutory language.
- going to go through this. I'm going to leave you guys with this information. However, what I will say
- on fire protection and EMS. That is adopted by the County Council. The why is because it's going to
- touch every single taxpayer.
- all of their adjusted gross income is going to pay for a fire and EMS rate that you would apply. So
- that's why it's in your deciding hands. The things statutorily that you do have to review with allocating,
- so you set the rate and then you allocate the funds that that rate generates. Okay, so if I establish
- a rate and it generates $10 million, then I go in and start allocating that portion of that $10 million
- to those that are able to receive those funds.
- Well, who's able to receive those? Well, it states that if you have a township that performs 50% in
- the prior two years of all fire runs and they have a full-time staff, well, they define full-time staff
- statutorily as the firefighters earning 30,000 or more. I think that was for one particular township
- that's maybe closer to the Indianapolis area. But it also says that you must consider population.
- and you must consider service boundary lines. That's what you do, is you have to consider those, but
- there is no statutorily prescribed procedure when you're allocating those funds. However, if you have
- a fire district, which you do, you must allocate funds. It doesn't say how much, it just says that you
- must allocate funds, okay? So it's a pretty,
- wide open concept of how to generate and allocate those funds that's driven. It's a public safety, public
- safety rate. So there is a lot more flexibility on that. However, you have to use it on fire and EMS.
- Okay. With that said, I will say fire and EMS rate if applied and if applied first,
- erases the concern for all cities and towns throughout the state. Because when they were looking at
- revenue neutrality, they weren't considering the generated revenue from the fire and EMS rate. However,
- the current revenue does consider public safety revenue, because there's a public safety rate, and I
- believe you guys have one. They receive those public safety funds currently. So when they're being compared
- statewide,
- you were including public safety on the current, not including a portion of the public safety, which
- is your fire and EMS rate and the ability to be whole from that. So keep that in mind when you're beginning
- to allocate those funds. And this goes into some of the steps. I will say the
- There's a 12-step statutory, the one rate that says how you're going to provide the allocation. If you
- adopt a small municipality rate, that's the one that you're setting for those cities and towns.
- For you, it's Steinsville. So the rate that you are allocating for Steinsville and then allowing Bloomington
- and Ellitsville to either opt in or opt out of,
- there is a statutorily prescribed process. It's a 12 step that says this is how those allocated funds
- will be dispersed. Okay. The good thing is, is within our lit portal that again, your auditor does have
- access to now that will, you'll be able to play with those figures to see what you would need to generate.
- I did run. I'm just not real sure if I'm going to be able to share my screen or not.
- to take a look at this, but I did run a model on Monroe County just to see what does Monroe County look
- like unique compared to. One of the things I will say, because I believe you are, you are, you are a
- PTR, you generate a PTR rate. When the property tax replacement rate initially went in, statutorily,
- the thought was if I pay you a dollar in income tax, you would provide a dollar of
- property tax relief, right? But as that evolved, as the law changed and tax rates changed and evolved,
- what has occurred is I could be giving you a dollar of my lit, and in some areas, 70 cents of that dollar,
- of every dollar generated, goes to buying down the circuit breaker burden of all the underlying units.
- Well, again, if you think of that pie statewide, that burden is about 18%,
- counties. So 18% of that 70 cents in that example would go to your county by down of the circuit breaker
- and then to obviously the
- the townships and the civil units, the municipalities. So then the 30 cents in that example would go
- down, would buy down that property tax bill. This here will show you where your county rates on that
- as far as that allocation of those PTR funds. I say that to just for you to be mindful when you are
- generating from that lit portal. Since the new structure does not include
- PTR because that's being eliminated. That's something to just be mindful of right if you are receiving
- 50 cents of every dollar That's something to be mindful of as you're allocating those funds Okay, and
- that lip portal will not show that but if you have capacity you can make yourself whole there So with
- that said I also did take a look at the
- Your year over year, because I was curious, and we talked about the year over year on property tax.
- Well, what was your year over year for LITs from 25 to 26? Not include, like PSAP distribution, because
- that goes directly to the county. Your PSAP went from 2.7 million to 2.9 million, so a modest increase.
- Your PTR went from 2.2 million
- to 2.4, modest increase. The jail-lit, 7.4 to 7.9, modest. Then I took a look at your, like, for example,
- Bloomington, if you take a look at their allocated proportion, they're actually growing 2.7 million
- total in lit distribution from year over year. The county on distribution shares, you are, let's see, 100,
- 100,000 increase on the on that too for your public safety certified shares and edits So I just wanted
- to give you that little bit of information. I'd be happy to leave this for you as well must I won't
- spend too much time here, but 12 10 of this last session said that you may have a must meeting Must
- is municipal unit strategic task force and that is you may meet before
- prior to August 1st, October 1st of 2026. The county council statutorily convenes the must. County council,
- there's a representative. Well, who comprises the must, right? One county council representative. It
- uniquely says county council representative compared to the municipal officers that it's the fiscal
- officer of each city and town. So the fiscal officer for those three municipalities.
- are statutorily defined as the person with the voting authority. It's certainly a very unique provision,
- because you're one representative. You could technically say, hey, we're going to go send our auditor.
- Because the DLGF has said most recently, they're viewing that language to say the county council, you
- could send your attorney. They're probably looking at me going, thanks, Jamie, for that.
- But it does, it says county council representative. So it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be.
- a member of, however it certainly could be. However, what we know is once this goes into effect in 2029,
- they can't bind you to the decision of what comes out of must, right? The fiscal officer certainly doesn't
- have the authority to bind the city council into an agreement that they don't even sit on. Same goes
- with, so it's a very non-binding, what they wanted to do is just receive information if you elect to
- have or hold a must meeting.
- If you do, the purpose is to establish a lit distribution related to the overall 2.9 percent. And if
- a unanimous agreement is reached to submit a report to the DLGF, it doesn't say when to submit the report.
- I would assume they'll provide some guidance on that here in the coming weeks of when
- that they want that information. What we are suggesting at AIC, though, is to just use a cautious and
- deliberate approach when holding the must meeting. If you so choose to have that must meeting, and we're
- certainly recommending, we think all dialogue and communication is beneficial.
- They are public meetings, because you should hear from your public, right? It's their tax dollars. And
- you should hear from municipal. You should hear from non-municipal, because if your non-municipal, which
- they are, are subsidizing cities and towns, you may want to say, how much should that subsidy be, especially
- if there's overlapping services? We are receiving additional information, just like the certified and NETS
- property tax levies, we're getting more information weekly. One of the things that we've never received
- before, right now the state could not answer how much debt is backed by lit funds. Nobody can answer
- that. Well, that's pretty important to know before you start allocating 2.9% of your lit rate, right?
- Because if not, it's going to come from your rate. So you want to know what and how much debt
- Whether it's a city, whether it's a town, there could be a township. Your funds, you want to know that
- information. So what we're saying is use a deliberate approach, collect information. I've provided some
- slides here on the information that you should, and I'd be happy to share this slideshow with Bree and
- your attorney to also provide out. And Kim has been a wonderful advocate on your guys' behalf as well.
- So you could say, hey, let's start collecting this data because that will help you drive a data-driven
- decision rather than an emotional decision. So there is some structure here as far as some of those
- key questions that you may want to say, hey, what our overall objective
- entering that could be, because it could be vastly different between your body and another
- body of government. So you may want to define what your overall goal is before you also head into those.
- These slides here will be those key financial and operational data collection points that you may want
- to begin collecting now before you hold a must meeting maybe later in August or early September. With that,
- I do have the lit portal if you'd like to see that now. If not, I did run a model. I'm happy to leave
- that model that I prepared for you just to respect your time and those that are also going after me.
- So if you'd like to see it, I'd be happy to show it. Otherwise, I'm happy to leave the PDF that I created
- from that. So I'll go at your rate. Thank you so much. And it might be helpful for us to pass that.
- information on in the interest of time. I'll entertain because I know a couple of counts or we might
- have some quick questions for you. And I'll actually go first because one of the biggest questions that
- I had about the must task force is for us to potentially like if we decided that we wanted to opt in,
- do you have to have all of the taxing units and bodies
- to be able to participate. So if one decided that they didn't want to do it and they wanted to do their
- own, can this must task force convene? So what it says is the county council may convene, right? The
- county may convene a must. So you can convene a must meeting. You can set the date. You can say this
- is when we're going to convene it. It has to be public. So you have to notify the public, right? And
- provide proper notice.
- However, if there's a certain city or town that says, hey, and I can tell you, I ran the model. Every
- city and town that has the option to opt in or opt out, they have plenty of capacity if you adopt a
- fire and EMS rate, OK? If they say, hey, we really don't need to be there. We're going to adopt our
- own, you can still hold the must. They just wouldn't be present. You would just notate that.
- You wouldn't technically have a unanimous between all the cities and towns at that point. And then your
- small municipality may say, hey, we're kind of at the discretion of this body anyways. However, they
- may certainly want to have input uniquely to answer your question to is specifically says who cannot be.
- included and must. So while it says one county council representative and the fiscal officer from each
- city and town, it does say that they don't want fire district representation there. However, that doesn't
- mean that they can't come and publicly comment, right? The same goes for municipalities. I think you
- guys are a former, you're a former,
- So your schools may not want to have input at that point. Some that are former
- as a former school CFO, I would want some input because they would be losing some of that distribution.
- But you can still hold that. You would just notate that. That's what we're waiting on from the DLGF
- is to say, do they want only the reports from the unanimous or do they even want to know if you held
- one who was an attendance? Okay, thank you. Yes, Councilor Hawke. That's the lowest amount because when
- I'm looking at this, it looks like we would
- we would start out with thinking about what the small muni rate might be for Steinsville, because many
- of us think, I mean, Steinsville really could use some assist, but we could set a rate. Now, if we did
- that, whatever that smallest rate would be, because they're a very small town, they don't need, we certainly
- would not send them as much as we would use for operating. But then does that establish, that's the
- rate that any
- Municipality larger municipality would opt into if they wanted to opt in for bringing in taxes from
- throughout the county, they would use that smaller rate that we established for studies. Is that what
- we would do? So
- It doesn't uniquely say what your order of operations is when you're assigning the individual buckets.
- When I've ran every model, I look at the fire and EMS rate first because it's a public safety rate,
- it's the larger AGI, and it's more of a universal type of service that's being provided. So I look at
- that rate first and then I go to the small municipality rate.
- The reason is if a baby remember I said it's a 12 step distribution process. Well, if your county is
- comprised by 66 or two third percent 66.67%.
- by municipally populated presence. So if your municipalities combined for over two thirds of your total
- county wide population, the county would not receive any of that distribution. However, if you're not
- that way or say Bloomington ops out because they are your larger populace, the county would receive a portion
- of that county-wide or that small municipal rate. That's a part of that 12-step process that's embedded
- in our lit portal that we built. So the reason I think it's probably sometimes easier to Councilwoman
- Hawk's position is you may want to know by adopting that small municipal rate,
- if they're going to opt in or opt out because it's going to have a direct impact on the amount that
- the county would also receive, but also what your smallest municipality would receive. Again, that higher
- adoption of that rate for the small municipal rate incentivizes your larger municipalities to opt into
- it. But with them being so small, one of the things I've said is you may not want to chase a rate
- based off of your smallest populated city or town. So what can you do for them? Like in the model I
- drafted here, it's a very small, the non-municipal rate I think I applied is 0.2%, right? And the model
- I'm giving you fully funds everyone, and it's a decrease to the taxpayers, the non-municipal taxpayers.
- okay and that just shows that that subsidy a part of your goal is to say hey let's lessen that subsidy
- this this would provide that however with steinsville they would be six thousand shy they're the only
- one in red well what you simply can do is just have a interlocal agreement and
- provide them a fund transfer at settlement time, or when you're distributing these lit funds. So it
- may be better to just, and what we're saying is make sure that the State Board of Accounts is acceptable
- of that. So far they have seen as if that is not acceptable.
- permissible. There's certainly much of that now anyways where there's inner funds. If you have interlocal
- agreements, that practice is pretty routine now. That may be an easier way to make sure that they're
- whole than trying to find that perfect rate. Any other questions?
- So can you repeat again the rate, the percentage of municipal population to non-municipal population
- at 60 what percent? Yeah, so based off of the formula, how that formula works is it's saying add up,
- it helps you take all of the population of each city and town and then it's going to put a thumb
- on that scale and say we're gonna take that times 1.5. So they're gonna have a heavier rate of distribution
- on that small municipal rate. So because that's taken times 1.5 and you can't over-distribute the amount
- of revenue that you're collecting, that balance point of when you take that 1.5 is 66.67%. Let me follow
- up with a question then, because we have some variables in our county that are unique.
- municipal jurisdiction that's looking to merge into a township, Ellitsville and Richland Township. Okay,
- I saw that recently. Yeah, so that would increase the population of Ellitsville from 6,800 to about
- 15,190. Okay. Which would, now I'm doing math on a fly here, but that would be slightly under that 60-ish
- percent number to somewhere around 73%, including Bloomington, right?
- um so that's a good point so we're in the night edge right would it increase did you say it was ellisville
- they're combining with or richland yeah so richland township and ellisville okay right which they're
- already above that 3500 so they're already a large municipality okay so so the question is so that's
- one variable on our plate that that's going to be a november vote which would be a month after us
- deciding to do a must committee or not. So, I mean, that sounds like it might be unique for the state.
- I mean, we might be, are there other jurisdictions that are looking at? I've seen a couple. Municipalities
- that are emerging that might tip the tip the scale from that 60. So what was the number again? Two thirds,
- 66.67. Yeah, because we're like 63.1. Once it goes, once it's tipped over that, the county doesn't receive
- any distribution. Well, that's a thing to think about. Yes. Yes, it is. And to be honest with you, you
- could get through
- in a manner of saying, hey, we're going to adopt a 0% small municipal rate, and then just tick up the
- county service rate, and then they can then charge their rate to their residents individually, regardless
- if they're consolidated or not with that township population. So under this model, they have enough
- flexibility if you adopt a fire in EMS, and if you proportionally allocate it,
- on this example is all it is. This is not financial advice. It's just an example I ran for you just
- to show you how it works. But in that case there, if you adopted a zero rate, then you just applied
- maybe that little increment of 0.1 to the county service rate. You could just say, hey, we're gonna
- cut Steinsville a check annually out of that. And then you wouldn't have to worry about that case. I'm
- gonna limit myself to one interesting question.
- I'll pass it back. I'm sure others have questions. All right. Well, in the interest of time, I'll see
- if anybody else has any more questions. I do not have a question, but thank you for taking the time.
- I know you've done this, if we could have made it up to see you. So I appreciate the time you're taking
- to help us come along, because I've heard
- many different versions, but not all of it at once, and wow, this is a lot to take in. It is, which
- is why we are saying it's okay to take a breath and absorb all the information, make sure you have the
- proper document or the proper data, not estimates
- you know, so far out, but the actual, because we do have the certified net levies now, so we know what
- those are, right? So I think that's important to have all of those, to use a data-driven decision, but
- thank you. Thank you very much. You've given the clearest explanation of this. I've seen you do this,
- I think, two times. I feel like I do it in my sleep maybe sometimes. Easily the most
- the clearest I've seen it in the state. I'm sure I'll have a million questions. Just an overarching
- concern I have as our association sitting before us is I worry about all of local government across
- this state doing this, understanding how to do it, doing it well, and not messing something up. Which
- is why we invested
- at AIC, we invested back to all of our members because we know how much, how many decisions are in front
- of you. And so we said, hey,
- You don't have to do that 12 step process. You don't need my Excel workbook to do it. We built this
- interactive portal that does that for you. And we also built in air codes so you can't over allocate.
- So there's as many air checks in it as possible. But I will also tell you, as we have committed to updating
- that as additional source data is coming in,
- So as there's more relevant data in front of us so for example when the Department of Revenue certifies
- the municipal adjusted gross income so right now that's the only outstanding variable but as they release
- that data we're hoping here in the coming months we're going to update our source material in that portal
- as well and we'll continue to do so because your must meeting right now is
- two years in advance of when this even comes into being effective, right? You won't even vote on this
- until 2028. We're going to continue to update that model and the information and any changes that we
- may see throughout the next couple sessions in between so that you have the resources that you need
- to make these crucial decisions because every unit of government is unique and every county is uniquely made to.
- and safe travels back home. Thank you. Jane, are you going to email us what you have there? I really
- regret that didn't go on the screen so everyone at home could see it. I will leave that with Kim. And
- then I will also email Kim my presentation so that you guys can also have that if that works.
- Sound good? That works. Thank you. Thank you.
- Next up, we will have another presentation of the sustainability revenue and spending plan. And we have
- Mr. Greg Garitas from our FSG group here to give us an overview. Hello. Thank you, and good evening.
- I hope you can endure more now. So in light of how we've been going here, I want to give you
- this. Take one and pass it around. Kind of a summary of the 2027 budget considerations, and I'm going
- to focus on these as I go through the sustainability, which it's my understanding you've had it. You've
- had it for a few weeks, and let me explain. The sustainability is 182 pages of data, okay?
- The first 152 is a fund-by-fund analysis. After that, you've got a lot of property tax information,
- you've got a lot of lit information and all kinds of good things. So I keep saying, you know, if you
- take some time and look through it, there's a lot of
- fabulous information, either that or put it under your pillow and by osmosis it might sink in or it
- might give you a crook in the neck. So the summary page here that I put together, I want to go over
- point one. In the original June 11th version of the sustainability, we used 5 percent growth quotient.
- As you heard from Jamie, it's been increased to 5.7. It may even go to six. And so that's important
- to note now. It's our firm belief that you do not go and spend all 5.6, 5.756, because guess what? You
- won't get that, okay? Because remember, what will happen is,
- all the tax rates will go up. Everybody will get their maximum levies. And so we're saying at best we'll
- realize maybe 4%. Okay. And so I'm going to skip down to number three, which is in the sustainability
- to number three said circuit breaker will increase over 1.3 million. It actually is doing that.
- and that's a direct result of the 10% and the $300, the lesser of. So on page 152, if you were showing,
- Kim, if you're playing at home with me, then you will see that, and that shouldn't be too much off,
- because if you remember, I've been tracking that
- various versions of the sustainability. We did an estimate. So on page 152, the estimated circuit breaker
- or the actual circuit breaker for 2026 is going to be $1.5 million, up by $1,316 million. And if you
- look down at the bottom section, you will see $1,312 million was due to the homestead credit. And that
- was pretty much real close on
- to bring your estimate and our estimate that we work together. Okay. But that will continue as you see
- to grow. And that is exclusive of any school impact that Jamie spoke about. Okay. So stay tuned. That
- theater is coming near you soon. Okay. And so when I say
- The 4%, that's what we're initially taking into account. And then you'll see that in the sustainability,
- I'm gonna jump all the way down to number seven. In the growth factors, what we did, Kim, it's on PDF
- page six, we used a 2% salary increase. I'm using about two or 3% at most.
- in all my counties that I'm working in. And so at this point in time, given what we've seen here,
- we have, we are recommending or using 2%. I consider 2% the total increase. If you want to call that
- COLA or if you want to call that the overall increase, whatever, but I'm not compounding 2% onto something else.
- And so I think that's important to know. What we see in the assumptions down here is obviously we see
- growing, inflation will impact some of the various other expenses. One of the things I think council
- really needs to concentrate on and bring is when we move the supplies and stuff over to the added fund,
- The question is going to be, are we going to take a tack where we're going to slowly move that back
- to the general fund? Or the answer is, as you already heard, the theater is leaving you in 2028. The
- edit will no longer be at it. It'll be in your overall rate.
- And remember, in the sustainability, we pinpointed on, I believe, page 182, about 96 basis points. Actually,
- 96, 167. 96 would be the breakeven of the current LITs, okay? So the question is, do we leave that in
- at it as we develop our 27 budget?
- Do we slowly migrate? My point would be if it's in edit and we can right size it before we move it anywhere
- or keep it in there, let's right size those numbers and then find a permanent home, okay? And so that's
- quite significant for you to be aware of and take into account not only maybe in 27, but 20,
- 728 okay keep in mind we go out to 31 in our estimates and keep in mind the county of Monroe has so
- many things going on with you know the obviously the lit rates what those are going to do with what
- expansions are going to do or annexations are going to do we have so many things that we're we're trying
- to accumulate and I did I just got
- all points bulletin that you're losing a court. So those expenses have not been pulled out of here.
- I'm used to counties gaining courts. I think Hendricks is going to get the one you're going to lose
- and we don't want it. So because it's very expensive, another court. So we're estimating maybe 350 to
- 500,000 might be saved from that.
- that has not been taken to account. But that's you'll see the court here. There is a significant amount
- that adds up. I believe I had that pinpointed on page straight before prosecutor. And it takes up over
- two pages with all the different different
- items that are in there, both recorders and all those things. So that has to be kind of figured in.
- Okay. So I heard you ask about the gas tax. What we're estimating when we go to basically when we go
- to the highway fund, page 106, what we are saying at this point in time, it could be
- 15 to 20 percent drop in revenue this year. That's based upon our analysis of the revenue and the overall
- time that's involved. So you can see on the unrestricted fund
- And the restricted fund, we're getting kind of close in cash balance. So I don't matter of fact on the
- restricted fund, we go negative in 27. So the budget of 2.6 million that we produced on page 106 is
- very critical that her your highway engineers
- estimate on that is going to be very, very critical. And then we've got the non restricted at 4.5. So
- we have included a reduction in revenue. Now, what I've heard from the state so far is that, yes, the
- the replacement is being discussed quite heavily. What was obvious, though,
- is they said they may have to wait and see after year end because they would want to replenish it from
- surplus funds, not from an additional appropriation. So therefore, we may have to either to supplement,
- we may have to do, you can do a tax anticipation warrant, usually has to be paid off by 1231.
- But there's also sometimes you can wait until June 30th. So there may be an inter-fund loan that we
- have to make if that becomes the reality of the replenishment.
- I see both restricted and non-restricted. Lisa is going to have challenges in order to move ahead at
- those levels on the 27 budget. And so what she does in 26 will be very, very important. Okay. I would
- like to take you now back kind of through some of I will look back here at the
- planning considerations I put together for you. But I would like to take you through some of the specific
- lit funds. And I think that's kind of kind of important. All number six has been catching everybody
- by surprise. We now have to take the building and the planning and building revenue, move it out of
- the general fund. And yes, you will move out the expenses to
- and you will set up a separate new fund. So you'll see on page 142, we have a non-numbered fund because
- the number hasn't even been put together by the State Board of Accounts. They said, yeah, we're gonna,
- a lot of people misread that statute. It said that it had to be July 1,
- And that was a misread. Some of the provisions are July 1, but the new fund is January 1. So you will
- set up a budget for 2027 based upon those expense revenues and expenses. And on page 142, we took a
- shot at it, read, and you may tell us that we're
- not correct, but that's okay. We took a shot at it on page 142. We put the revenues and we put the expenses.
- So what I was pleasantly surprised is on page 142, we had revenue of 1 million and we had approximately
- 707,000 of expenses. You're actually my first county. I've seen that most of them are behind. In other words,
- The reason this was done is the Builders Association thinks that counties and cities are getting rich
- off of building and planning departments and they're subsidizing general fund. And this by no means
- is showing that, but it also is showing that maybe we have not allocated enough expenses. So keep in
- mind that then when you raise building permit fees,
- after July 1, you get one time after five years. But this is the critical financial element that we've
- got to take into account in 2027. Okay? So that's important to note, too. And so what I'll do is kind
- of take a little bit of time and go through some of the funds. I know it's getting longer in the day,
- but let's go to page 60, which is the edit
- lit fund, and this is the one that, in summary, looks good. As you know, it has a strong cash balance.
- And as you know, in 2026 is finally when we had expenses allocated to it, and that was the, like I said,
- most office supplies training, what I call the 3,000s.
- And the 3000s were put in there along with a contractual highway administration, which meant we had
- a budget of about four, about $5 million allocated there. That's the one I'm saying you need to take
- a real good look at. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, and, and also depending on what we do with capital projects
- that are on your horizon. Okay. Or maybe not on your horizon, but
- that. Um, next fund I'd like to go through is 71 71 is kind of in page 71 is kind of important because
- we have a note there that at this point in time. On 71 we will utilize more than likely the majority of the
- and we see it going negative in 2027. So you're either going to have to significantly cut that budget,
- or as I've noted in the footnote, you will need to increase the rate for 2027. So what page is that
- on? Page 71. Thank you. Sure. So page 71. Now, let me also give you an all points bulletin that if you
- are talking about rearranging any of your LITs
- not in 28, we're not even going there yet. And right now, 427, okay, you have to give notice to your
- underlying taxing districts by August 1 that you may look at it. It's a may look at it, okay?
- It's not a, I'm gonna put this here or that here or that, it's a may look at it. So be aware of that
- because you don't wanna miss that deadline, okay? And this is,
- one of those, you may want to look at it, okay, and kind of go from there. Questions on that? Okay.
- If not, let's go to 139, page 139, which is another lit fund. And on this one, this is the, and I'll
- make sure I do it right this time, it is the summary of the
- PSAP Lit Fund 4933, okay? And so what you'll see here is this one is fine. It's looking good at this
- point in time. Notice that each of them have a footnote which says discontinues in 29, but we assume
- you will have a replacement rate for the revenue. Now we, you know,
- A lot of things are going to take place with adjustments to lit now and when it is enacted in 28 for
- 29 could even be 29 30. A commissioner asked me this morning in Hendricks County what happens if the
- state can't come up with all these areas of income, then you know more than likely it will get pushed back.
- So, you know, there's a lot of things to do between now and there, now and then. The only thing that
- really is most significant is the Muskirt. And that's where I'm working with Hendrix and Hancock, and
- we're going to be facilitating those discussions, and we propose to help you, too, and so something
- you might want to keep in mind as we go forward.
- 142 is the new building. I won't go through that. But 145 is the other lit, and that is the public safety
- lit. That is the Bloomington Fund 151 also. And that looks great, too, as operating balance looks like
- our projections for the 2027 budget.
- is 8.3, which is right at revenue. What we're finding out is a lot of PSAPs have their new contracts
- coming up. They're also having expiration of consoles and consoles are running about 350, 350,000
- per console. So you add that up and that becomes a significant capital outlay. So that may be where
- we want, where we'll need to put some of that surplus
- if needed. So in Hendricks County, we went ahead and renegotiated and accelerated the AT&T, and we're
- saving about a half a million dollars. So that's something to really be aware of when that happens or
- when that's coming up. And those opportunities can help you save taxpayer dollars, which is what I'm
- all about.
- Yes, Marty, did you have one point? I heard Chief Decoff mentioned that the city might have their own
- central dispatch. So and I would think through interlocal agreements or whatever we would determine,
- there may already be something in law that says who gets the equipment that is there. So I think that's
- something we have to take a real hard look at to
- before we start replacing equipment or see who's going to end up with equipment, because I think all
- that's being moved. Makes total sense. Just to throw that in as to make sure we all have something else
- to worry about. And so then the final one is don't forget about the ARPA fund. I'm sure you know that
- we have six months now to spend it. It must leave the county coffers by 1231, OK?
- And the last thing you want to do is have an IOU to the federal government because they're calling on
- them really quick. So that's important. So again, 167 was our estimated lit impact, page 167 of .96.
- So I know I went through it kind of quickly.
- And, you know, but I'm trying to, you know, stay on course here. And so I'd love to take any questions
- we ask Bree and Molly if there was any written in questions beforehand and come in and there wasn't.
- And, but if you, Peter, I'm sure you've got some great questions. Well, let's look at council. Who has
- the lead off question for FSG?
- Remember, there's not too many things I don't know about your, I know a lot about your finances and
- exactly where you're at. Let me break the ice. Could we go to page 133? That is self-insurance. That's
- something that I'm particularly worried about at our upcoming long-term finance meeting. We're going
- to be talking about this and I think it's worth looking at what you all did. Again, that's page 133.
- Yeah, and I think, keep in mind, this is our self-insurance fund where we bring in and we bring out,
- we take in and pay out. And I think, Bree, I don't recall, what were we going to be using for 2027 per
- employee? Michelle, is it 16,000? For 2027, right now we're budgeting 18. We're asking everyone to do 18.
- but I have spoken with Angie Purdy and she believes that number will be lower. And the 26 number was
- 16, five, 16, five. Okay. And so what we did is I think we did use the percentage increase of about
- 10% to factor in. So that percentage would be a little different, but not too far off. And so I do like
- the fact that if you can keep about
- three million, three and a half, which this kind of shows, that would be an excellent level. And this
- is our only reserve fund, right, for self-insurance. Okay, I'm still a firm believer that we can have
- a separate fund and we can have it separately set aside. We just can't call it rainy day, but it's implied
- within here.
- It's just really interesting to see that the numbers just go up, the ending balance just year after
- year just goes up and up and up, and I think that's exactly what's gonna happen. So, all right,
- thank you. Any other questions from council? You stumped them. Well, maybe they've heard too many numbers,
- but go ahead, Kate, did you have something? Yeah, please. I have a lot of questions, and I'm kind of,
- I've kind of hit a point where I'm a little overwhelmed, I have to admit. So I reserve the right to
- ask questions of our auditor who will ask you if she doesn't know. Yeah, or I'm literally this is like,
- I don't know, I don't want to look like an idiot, but my brain is kind of exploding right now.
- You know, I would always offer that we could do an hour teams meeting for anyone with specific questions
- with the auditor's office. And, you know, because, yeah, you had so much before me and then there's
- so much in here. And that's why I tried to give you this summary thing to kind of say heads up.
- Here's where we're going. Yeah, but I'd be more than happy to do a Sub meeting like that or something
- the you know, trap travel and things like we can do it very efficiently I think over teams if you want
- that might be something that we I Might have an alternative suggestion We have an LTF meeting on June
- 30th if we could maybe have mr. Garitas appear virtually for LTF and then any questions at all
- could be posed at that LTF meeting on the 30th. What time is that meeting? 1 30. Okay, I will need to
- check with my staff. I do know July 1. Yeah, I'll need it because staff controls my schedule.
- But if you know, I could take an hour or something after that meeting you're thinking or before. I was
- thinking during the meeting. Okay, it's a pretty full agenda. Okay.
- So let's work it out with your calendar. Perfect. Yes. Thank you. Thanks again for all the good stuff
- here. I guess the question I've got tonight kind of goes back to the previous presentation. We've made
- assumptions in these presentations about the annexation
- of the county by the city of Lewington that seems to be resolved in courts now. So that's a variable
- that we can set aside. But then we did talk tonight about another variable, which is this merger of
- Richland Township and Ellitsville, if that prevails at the ballot box. That is 15,000-ish citizens that
- come off our roles in the county. I guess, because the projection here, we're assuming we have that
- population. I've heard in other
- You bodies I'm on on behalf of the council, like the plan commission, members of plan commission are
- already starting to ask questions about the cost of policing that township if we're no longer required
- to, if that's a municipality. And so do you have a, and I know this is on, you know, I'm not expecting it.
- answer here, but we have this depressor that might be hitting us, not a small number of people that
- will be in a municipality instead of the county where that revenue will shift. I mean, do you have any
- initial thoughts about that and what that could look like for these counties or these townships that
- are merging? No, not off the top of my head at this point in time, but you would hope that there will be
- some cost savings to the county. Do I believe it will move the dial? Probably not. Okay. Will it slow
- the pace? Possibly. Okay. And so I think that's where it will come down. Something like having one less
- court can be very significant. And that's probably more important than the shift that you're
- bringing but the cost of service from a from a public safety standpoint you would think would decrease
- but there's also other factors that increase it and kind of offset. I'll just follow up briefly say
- yeah it's really granular right because for every road we're not paving or plowing the cost is going
- up on the inflation is going up on it anyway so it's similar to you know the number of deputies we would
- need for that jurisdiction to police or
- any number of things. So I appreciate that comment, that however marginal it might be, we're going to
- see the inflation at the other end. It would be nice to know. It's probably pocket change, I guess,
- but there you go. Thank you. I'd just rather be back on that concern. It's also what we are budgeting
- in our storm water, because if we
- now receive revenue, stormwater revenue, for the people of Richland Township. And there's several projects
- in that area that one might look at. However, we will no longer be receiving those funds if this merger
- goes through. And so our budgeting process, while it's not a part of the frozen levy or anything,
- it's a fee, but we will be receiving less.
- if this merger goes through. So I think that's something else we have to keep an eye on. But my question
- before that was, I heard you say something about, if I understood it correctly, so much to learn tonight,
- considering no more than like a 2% increase in personnel costs. Now, that would include numbers of people.
- Whatever that 2% would be, would be if you've
- hire more people that will get into that 2% if you, for whatever reason, or are you also counting benefits
- if the insurance cost goes up? Is that a part of that too? Explain to me what you meant by 2%. Okay,
- 2% payroll increase in general on all employees is what we assumed.
- Okay, and did you take in consideration also that 2% would that be for grant funds or?
- No, I didn't on that because most of the grant funds Marty you're not in counselor Hawk is not within
- this document and so no those would have to stand on their own with the grant Okay, but generally that's
- where we came out. Obviously. Yes, we assume Perf and those would go up but that's not part of the 2%
- and again, I mean we've cautioned immensely
- hiring new people as we go forward just is tough. And keep in mind, that all has to be made up then
- when you get to the lit reckoning in 28, 29. So I just, unless it's needed, my answer is, let's not
- do it. And the other thing I wanted to,
- make sure, and maybe it was in the document someplace and I missed it, was recognizing that we put the
- jail medical contract, a big portion of it over into that jail lit fund, and was that like 1.5 million
- or something like that? Yeah, you and I have talked about that before, and it's probably on page 69
- if we go there.
- and I think you're right for some reason I do remember at that level but we could find out exactly and
- I think it's let's see 60. The question I'm asking is are you anticipating that we try to put that back
- into general
- Because that would be way difficult. No, I did not assume that. I wanted it to be in the jail lit because
- I wanted to make sure there was always a home for that contract dollar amount. So that's why you moved
- it over there. But it is simply because we budgeted so high for all the others that we had to put that
- someplace. I did not move it to the general fund.
- It's on page 70. Oh, 70? Yep. 70 is not the jail lit. That's what I'm looking at that I got on the screen.
- Oh, correctional facility lit. Sorry. I was thinking the, yeah, I was on the other. So it's 1.6 million,
- 1675. And that is the one where if we have the summary
- Let's go to the summary on that. So four million out of the eight million in revenue, the summaries
- on page 68, that still can stay there and we have kept it there. Okay, for future periods until you're
- lit changes. And we actually grew it at over 10%.
- because medical costs, I'm hearing from all the different hospitals, which we talked to directly, and
- it's going up significantly. I just have, I wanna go back to edit really quickly. If memory serves,
- I believe you were accounting for an increase in the edit budget, is that correct? So I,
- In 2027, we show, Kim, I'm on page 60. I showed that the edit increase would go to, I believe, 6.8,
- but let me, the grand total was, yeah, going from 5 million to 6.8, and part of that was,
- the principal, we started putting in principle and interest on the debt, future debt of the future project.
- And we employed that within here for 2027. So, and it was a small payment, small, it was 1.6 million.
- That's the bulk of what increased in that. And for 27. So- That's only half a year, right? That was
- only for six months?
- probably even less than a half a year, that was because the full payment was going to be around 5.8.
- So it was probably a partial payment or quarterly payment. Remember, when you do a new facility, you
- basically do your interest only, and that would be interest only. So during that period of time until
- you occupy the building. Remember, I went over that in the different finances.
- We've got it all right here. Be careful. Like I said, there's a tremendous amount. I'm going to do this
- because we really need to wrap up. I'll take the final two. I'll go back to the auditor and Councilor
- Wilts and then Councilor Iverson, and then we'll move on to the next agenda item. I'll be really quick
- just to finish my thought. I just want and I know we're all very much aware of this, but we'll have
- to work with the commission to update the plan if we do plan to utilize the edit fund.
- And you mean the commissioners. Yeah. Okay. Um, so I had a question. I had several from just looking
- at the document itself before my brain exploded this evening. And just on the very, um, front page where
- you had comments and recommendations, um, you indicated if there are two things first, well, I'm going
- backwards.
- for me is future interest revenue to the county should be considered for the 2027 budget. What do you
- mean? Well, if you go to the revenues specifically in the general fund, and I should have probably what
- it should have noted this, but on page 10, Kim, we're you are depended on 6.3 million of interest income.
- in building what we've built in 2027, okay? The 26, we use the same number that's in the 26 budget of
- 6.3. You've had as high as 8.8 and 7 million, but what I see is the vulnerability of 6 million right
- there, okay?
- Will the 6 million go to zero? No. Well, you know, you and we've all talked and I brought this up several
- times that the interest rate should be decreasing at the Fed level. It didn't occur as fast as one we're
- thinking. And so we have still projected on page 10 a decrease from 6.3 to 4 million.
- this typical county and every county, they're holding on and if they see their cash balances building
- in any recent year and they say, well, the projection in the sustainability was it would go down. Well,
- yes, yet most of the time it is made up from two elements. Number one, your supplemental lit
- of 1.7, that is also on page 10, and your interest income. So supplemental lit in 28 and 29 will be
- gone. We included a small amount, half of it, in 27, but your interest income will also likely fall
- off in the future. And that is because of interest rates, not
- volume of cash at this point in time. I'm down quite a bit as we've spent our money. So yeah, yeah,
- exactly. The last question is on policy and recommendation number four on page five. You recommend that
- we create or update our target fund balance resolution
- And as I'm going through the different summaries for the different funds, is it your recommendation
- that we use a target fund or a minimum balance? I still believe it's a target fund balance, you know,
- and that's a target. And, you know, I believe, didn't our resolution have both a target and minimum?
- one year it did and then we revert it to one. So I'd have to look at. Okay. I would like to have a,
- you know, a minimum when we got into it with, uh, the highway department, she said, I wouldn't want
- it at that low of minimum. I would, you know, want to target this level on an annual basis. And the
- whole point is not to have a fine wine.
- review it each and every year, especially that's a standard and poor standard operating procedure. Okay,
- it's reviewed every year and we set, you know, we set a target that we would, and we explained that
- that target is something that we're trying to not go below in these funds, but in the rainy day fund,
- we're gonna try and target X amount and keep it at that, okay?
- So I hope that answers your question. It's a fine line between the two. It does. And let me just make
- a quick point. As liaisons on this day, as they're about to go out and meet with the different departments
- to review the budgets that they're going to submit, that's going to be a helpful tool. In looking at
- the resolution, we do have a minimum cash balance. So minimum, not target. Right. So will one revert
- to target?
- Okay, thank you very much. Yes, thank you. I'll yield the rest of my time back. Behind you would appreciate
- that. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Next up on the agenda is our last presentation that we have
- are the good folks that are helping us with our superior Travis great committee. We have citizen members
- Um, Julie Robertson and our new member, um, Katie Hopkins, and they will be able to go over, um,
- some things. Um, this is, like I said, uh, Katie's first time. However, two years have gone by really,
- really fast and Ms. Robertson, this is it. So we appreciate your service with us. It was fun times,
- especially last year, but this year was even better.
- Um, and then again, I want to mention that we have council members, uh, Decker, vital and myself that
- are the appointed ones to the committee. This past year we had, or recently we actually moved up, um,
- the Sophia Travis grant committee applications, uh, that actually seemed to work well for everybody,
- especially because we weren't bumping up against, um, budget
- deadlines and budget timelines, I should say. And so we were able to do that. And this year we have
- 43 applicants and that totaled over $303,000 worth of ask. However, our little money that we had to
- allocate this year was 190,000. So I'll give it back to you all to kick it off. And if you all want
- to say anything about your experiences,
- before we dive deep into our award recipients. Sure. So I'm Julie Robertson. This is my second year
- with the Sophia Travis Grant Committee, my last year, my last meeting. And like Ms. Crossley said, these
- two years flew by fast. This was a great experience for me. It's right up my alley with what I do and
- my passion is with
- with the community and raising money to help others. And I really appreciated the opportunity to serve
- on this commission. And I'm Katie Hopkins. And yeah, this is my first round at this. These were very
- difficult to look through. There's so many great proposals and ideas. And we are just so lucky to live
- in a community where people care so much. And I feel very fortunate to be
- working with y'all and figuring out how to allocate that the best way possible. So we're getting ready
- to give you a lot of numbers. You've had a lot of numbers tonight, but these are going to be numbers
- that are going to be good for your ears and not bad for your ears. Moving forward. Again, I'm Julie
- Robertson, and this is my fellow citizen committee member.
- Kay Hopkins, and we are here on behalf of the committee to present the 2026 Sophia Travis Community
- Services Grant Award recommendations to the council. After much thought and discussion, we recommend
- the following applicants receive these totals for their projects. And with this house, for residential
- food, this is for food for their residents while they're there receiving treatment in their facilities,
- $5,300. Artisan,
- Artist Adjutant. This is what's called Rovers Kickoff Shows. It's a series of events which deliver all
- ages live music performances. And we recommend $2,100. The Auxiliary to the Boys and Girls Club. This
- is for the Cresmont Special Snack Program. It's a Friday meal that's sufficient enough for them to take
- food home on the weekends. And we recommend $2,000.
- Big Brothers, Big Sisters. This is what's called the Big and Little Adventure Connection Print and App
- Tools to update the Big and Little Adventure Book, which is a guided mentoring workbook for the participants.
- We recommend $4,900. Blooming Arts. This is a scholarship fund for young actors in the Once Upon a Mattress
- production. We recommend $2,800. The Cooperative Living Group.
- digital outreach that includes a website redesign and a social media campaign, we recommend $1,000.
- Boys and Girls Club of Bloomington. This is for their summer field trips program at the club to support
- kids receiving scholarships for their field trips. And that's $8,600. Cancer Support Community, food
- and transportation assistance for cancer patients, we recommend $4,020. CASA.
- Project Stop It Now. It's an initiative to implement community-wide child sexual abuse prevention training.
- We recommend $2,500. Catholic Charities for Affordable Therapy, we recommend $3,400. Center for Sustainable
- Living for Environmental Remediation and Safety Improvements for the Community Greenhouse, we recommend
- $3,140. Chamber of Commerce.
- for our career crews at the Career Exploration Event for Students, we recommend $2,200. CJAM, Expanding
- Volunteer-Led Eviction Mediation Services, we recommend $2,340. Community Culture Inc. for Bob's Garden
- to Establish Infrastructure Within the Garden, $3,420. Community Kitchen, Food for All, this is essential
- food funding, we recommend $9,240.
- Courage to Change Sober Living. Welcome Home Kits, which helps for supplies for new residents and drug
- testing for their participants. $2,660. El Centro Comuno Latino. Rent and utility assistance for Latino
- community members. We recommend $5,000. First Christian Church.
- Welcome table breakfast and a Sunday meal program, we recommend $5,600. First Presbyterian
- Church, Bloomington Severe Winter Emergency Shelter Services, $10,060. Girls Rock Bloomington, this
- is a summer camp for youth ages eight to 14 years of age, we recommend $4,900. Harmony School, for Harmony
- School performance tech upgrade in their gym, we recommend $2,200.
- We have Healing Hands for the Nourishing Neighbors Produce Project. They were going to be purchasing
- fresh veggies and fruits for their food pantry. We recommend 3,800. Hoosier Trails Council, Growing
- Scouting in Monroe County by establishing a new Cub Scout Pack in Monroe County in October of 2026.
- We're recommending 2,600. Hoosiers Feeding the Hungry. This is a Monroe County 4-H livestock sale,
- Project for Meat Processing for Local Hunger Relief, 11,400. Limestone Media, a project called Climate
- Change. What's the atmosphere like here? It is media coverage of environmental impacts caused by Monroe
- County, and we are recommending 980. Lotus Blossoms Artist, goodness.
- Residency and World Bazaar will cover the artist fees We're recommending two thousand two hundred and
- fifty middle way house This is for decreasing transportation barriers for survivors of violence by providing
- bus tickets gas cards and rideshare credits one thousand five hundred a middle way house collaborative
- CPR trainings cost of the CPR B town instructor materials and certification fees That's five thousand
- one hundred and twenty
- Sports cupboard, MHC education programming. This is for the purchase of supplies for free kitchen programs.
- And we're recommending 5,500. My sister's closet, providing a secure resource for women. This is for
- their security system. And their new building, 2,080. And then New Hope for families, the New Hope family
- shelter summer camp. This is to help with full daycare through the summer. That's 7,400.
- New Leaf New Life, Stability and Motion, Rent Assistance for Sober Living and Transportation, 5,860.
- Next we have PALS. They have a program called Stable Futures After School, which is a workforce and
- skill development program, recommending 5,100. Pantry 279 is for nutritional food for food insecure
- families, 13,000. Pathways,
- My First Library, providing books to children in the Compass Program, 2,400. Pathways to Cross-Cultural
- Understanding, Bridging Borders, a visual dialogue on global youth perspectives. This will provide global
- perspectives and connections to educate youth, 2,460. Reimagining Opera for Kids, the 2026-27 season
- of Reimagining Opera for Kids,
- This will help with production costs, $1,300. Sobremesa, increasing locally grown nutritious food by
- purchasing food preservation equipment, $6,400. Stone Belt, CPR first aid training for Stone Belt staff,
- $5,240. Suzy's Place, this is for internship opportunities and will be used for providing an intern stipend.
- 4,100. Tandem. Tandem essentials such as rent, utilities, and other necessities. 11,090. And Wonderlab.
- This is for social service visits, and we are recommending 3,040. Thank you very much for that.
- Council, I move to approve resolution 2026-24, adopting the committee's 2026 Sophia Travis
- award recommendations as presented for a total award distribution of $190,000. Second. All right, we
- got a motion and a second. I will look to council members to see if anybody has any questions. Yes,
- Councilor Henry. Thank you, and thank you for the presentation.
- So I can understand administratively how things went this year. So we moved the period up, right, for
- applications. Do we let previous applicants know, like is there like a notice that goes out to, okay,
- I'm just curious. That's not an accusation, just scratching the chair. And is the count of total recipients
- down this year or compared, so do we know the numbers year over year, like how down we are?
- We had 42-3 last year, and that's what we've got this year. So we had several that didn't apply this
- year, but we had several new ones this year. So our numbers are almost identical with regards
- to applications. Thank you. And usually, to answer your question, there is an extensive staff reach
- out to everybody, and then we have a huge kickoff.
- where we do a presentation and staff does a presentation of how we'll do it. We've been doing this for
- the past few years, and it's usually pretty full in here. And then if anybody has any questions, they
- can ask it, or they can go back and watch the recordings. Thank you. And we do a lot of social media
- with regards to Facebook. We put all of our stuff on Facebook, and we also put it on our website so
- that people can get the information
- from Facebook or the website. Welcome. Any other questions? Yes, Councilor Decker. First, I want to
- thank our two citizen appointees on here for your leadership and for doing this wild thing with us that
- actually is a very rewarding but wild thing that we do. And the cool thing, and I said this in our committee
- meeting, but the cool thing is the numbers that you see there reflect
- coming together and hitting an average within the guidelines and kind of what they think we should do
- with these dollars. And it truly works out. It's one of the wildest things of all that with all this
- input we get from the folks applying, doing this partnership to all this, we get these numbers. These
- numbers come together and it actually represents probably one of the largest community participatory
- things from this many organizations in such a seamless way. And it's one of the best pieces of service
- we get to do on this council. And it's made better by input from two individuals that we would otherwise
- not get. And so as this moves forward, my hope is that recommendations should have passed the spot in.
- I don't hear shoes flying at anyone yet. That if it passes, that this is honored in the county for what
- that is and the
- the work of all that many people in the process. It was my pleasure to serve again in addition to serving
- with Julie again and then welcoming Katie, but I also think it's really good to have other people besides
- just us that make
- and the county have the community involved in. It's just been a delight to hear perspectives that we
- might not have thought of ourselves. So I really appreciate that. And again, just thank you to all that
- participated. Thank you for your patience to applicants as we are working through this. And yeah,
- and again, thank you.
- All right, next up, we will have, we'll open it up to public comment. So if there's public comment on
- any of the award recipient suggestions or recommendations, I should say, you can come forward to the
- lectern here in the room. You'll have up to three minutes. Or if you are on Teams, you can raise your
- hand via Teams. I don't see either or.
- Okay, so we will conclude public comment and then we will go ahead and have a roll call vote. Councilor
- Deckard? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
- Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. Thank you very much.
- All right. Could you give me a copy of the list? Thank you. All right. I sure appreciate that.
- Thank you. We will move on to item number nine, which is council business. As a reminder, item A was
- tabled to our July 14th meeting. And so next up, we will go to item B, which is from courts. Council,
- I move to approve the court's request and fund 1213-0000
- GAL slash CASA for additional appropriations of $11,286 in the services category. Second. All right,
- we got a motion and a second. We have Ms. Chandler here. Welcome. Thank you so much. Our CASA program's
- been awarded additional funds. One is for their pass-through grant that they get every year, and this
- is the third round of money they've received. And the second one is to fund an attorney through a pilot
- project to help best represent children on their caseload. I believe
- These funds have already been received by the auditor. Great. Questions or comments from council on
- this item? Congratulations. Thank you. And we'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment
- on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via Teams. And
- seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote?
- Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Murray?
- Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you and thank you
- for your patience.
- All right, next up is item C from the sheriff's office. Council, I move to approve the sheriff's request
- in Fund 1000-0005 County General Sheriff for an additional appropriation of $30,000 in the services
- category. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. We are joined by the sheriff and the jail
- commander. Welcome. Good evening, Council. Before I officially get started, I want to say thank you to the
- to Lisa and her team, reference to strong we had, they have done a phenomenal job. So our deputies could
- get through the county and provide service as well. So I know she's not here, but her team has done
- a tremendous, a very good job for us. So the reason why we're here, we are officially requesting funds
- necessary to acquire outside counsel. As you know, litigation for the ACLU is certain to take place
- reference the county jail. So as the council has already recognized with respect to his own needs, we
- are also would like to consult with litigation counsel. We are following your lead and are requesting
- an additional appropriation of 3,000, I'm sorry, not 3,000, 30,000 for that same purpose. To the point.
- Sounds good. All right, any questions? Yes, Councilor Iverson. It's my understanding that the county's
- insurance covers litigation costs. Is this for costs that go above and beyond those? Well, as I mentioned
- before, the council went ahead and appropriated themselves $30,000 in anticipation of this actual lawsuit.
- So all I'm doing is the exact same thing, because I can tell you at the present time right now, it's
- moving forward.
- And I'm already being approached with our counsel. And to be quite honest with you, when I took over
- three and a half years ago, I was the one named as the defendant. And no one else has been. So at this
- point, it's coming very fast for me. So what I wanted to do is to be fair and be treated the same way
- as the counsel treated themselves. So that's the reason why I'm asking for that amount at the present time.
- If I may, Councilor Iverson, we're in conversation with our insurance company. So it is to be determined
- what the insurance company provides. Because we just switched providers. Is that correct? And sometimes
- they don't provide counsel for injunctive relief cases. When they provide counsel is a question. We've
- posed a lot of questions to our insurance company. We just don't have those answers.
- Councilmember Iris, can I add to that just a little bit? Yes, please. Yeah, sorry. Tomorrow, Ken Falk
- will be at the correction center in the morning interviewing potential clients. And the issue that we've
- incurred already is that, like the sheriff said, we're already getting approached with different varying
- aspects of this litigation. And we were previously the only party named, and we are the only party guaranteed
- to be named in the new case, which essentially picks up tomorrow.
- So we're moving at a very fast pace that we don't have the luxury to wait. And again, to be fair to
- the council, that's one reason why I said it. Taking your lead, following your lead, that's the reason
- why we're coming to you right now, because it was moving at us really quick. I wasn't aware. Thank you
- for sharing that. I thought I saw Councilor Hawks' hand, and then I'll go. Go ahead. You may be asking
- my question. Well, then I'll go to Council Henry.
- I thought the reason that the council was considering having separate legal representation was a couple
- things. One of which is we're not officially named in the lawsuit, so it might be that the insurance
- would not cover us. However, the insurance, as I understand it, would cover you.
- What are we going to do, running around with three and four different attorneys, all of us fighting
- with one another? This is making a lot of sense to me. And I also wonder, is this in any way tied to
- the lawsuit with the state? It's not. And I need to look again. Is this asking in the sheriff's department,
- or is this to be
- going into the jail fund? Where? It's a, it's a request into the sheriff's fund. Okay. Which is not
- the same thing. So in April 28th of this year, when the county council agreed to appropriate themselves
- $30,000, what I'm, what I'm remembering, it also included the potential future education involving ACLU.
- And all I'm asking is the exact same thing, but it's not a potential. I'm already involved. I am the
- only one at this present time, uh, named as a defendant. So, uh, that's the reason why, um, I'm asking
- for the 30,000 as the county and I repeated myself, um, appropriate and for themselves. Now I'm not
- here to really, to debate where it's coming from. That's up to the county council. But what I'm saying
- to you, this is realistic right now is that, uh,
- where I am the main person as of 3 years and a half ago that was the defendant. Once again,
- I don't know, maybe I didn't make myself clear. I was asking if any portion of this $80 has been spent
- so far or planned to be spent having to do with the debate with the Attorney General.
- And I've already stated no. You did state no, sorry. I said no, I did. I did, I did. Councilor Henry.
- Thank you, and thank you Sheriff and Jail Commander for being here. So I think the questions are the
- line of inquiry I'm hearing is just about the nature of our two departments, right? That the County
- Council, not a named litigant, you know, we're not
- yet or potentially. I don't see it as apples and oranges. It's more like different kinds of apples we're
- talking about. But I think Councillor Hawkins raised a good point. How many legal actions have you been
- involved with since being sheriff? And how do you pursue legal counsel for each of those? For example,
- there's the FFRF, I think, that's looked into the sheriff's office. How do you go about legal counsel
- for these other instances? Here again, I'm going to make my point
- crystal clear, I'm not here to discuss anything else but that I am named or will be named very quickly
- here from the ACLU reference to civil rights of the people in that facility right now. So I'm being
- very, very pointed on this. And I'm only asking what is fair, what the county council appropriate of
- themselves, who have not been named as a defendant at all. But I could tell you from day one,
- I have. So very specifically, I'm asking to be fair and treat it the same as a county council. So I
- just have to ask you respectfully. So you've been in office for almost four years. You've had interactions
- with the legal system seeking representation for yourself and other instances. The county pays for those
- services in one way, one coffer or another. And if we're talking about, you know, what fund funds what
- and that's
- That's the question, right? I mean, it's not off the table because we have paid for legal services for
- the county sheriff's department before. It's not saying yes or no to your question. I'm just trying
- to understand when you've purchased the services of legal counsel or had legal representation in other
- cases that have been brought to, or you've needed to seek counsel from an attorney, what other ways
- has that been paid for? How have you gone about that? Because I'm just trying to square it up. We want
- to be very even. If there's a consistent pattern, sure, that makes sense. And it makes sense for the
- next time, the next time, the next time.
- Yeah, I think that's a fair question. And I think there's an easy answer. We're looking for litigation
- counsel. We have counsel for the FFRF or something like that stuff comes up. We have in-house counsel.
- That is not litigation counsel. For other things that involve our insurance, we have our counsel through
- our insurance company for different things. This is specifically for litigation of the ACLU agreement.
- I think the frustration in my voice, the discussion that the county counsel had, that did not come up.
- But still be it, he answered your question. I'll take that answer, thank you. All right, anybody else
- have any other questions or comments on this item? Councilor Williams. So typically we ask departments
- to look at their balances and determine if they have an alternative way
- of paying for what they need and wait until they can't pay for something out of what's already been
- appropriated. It seems like we're not creating a new line. There's already a line for this.
- Is that correct? Well, the difference is the line that you're referring to is
- in-house council. This litigation- The line says litigation as the first word in its title. I mean-
- The council that we have right now does not specialize in litigation. It does not. But you can still
- use money from that line to pay for legal services. But then it takes away from the actual services
- that we provide now that we have to go to that council for services. But again,
- I, in my mind, I really thought this, this wouldn't be an issue that we had long conversations because
- the county council didn't discuss that as far as we didn't have any way of, of doing it without
- an appropriation. I don't even know if we used it. I have no idea. I'm not saying that, but we don't,
- we didn't have a line. And I'm just saying, you already have a line for this and you have money.
- for these purposes, I'm just, I guess, unsure as to why you need an extra appropriation before a lawsuit
- has been started. Because already we've been approached, references lawsuit. However, the line you're
- referring to is in-house council services. This year is totally different.
- an actual person, an attorney, that specializes in litigations. Very different. Can I ask a clarifying
- question that might help? Is the line that our counselor member wills referring to the line that pays
- for your legal counsel that is statutory? Yes. And do you have a contract with that individual? Yes.
- And in that scope of the contract, would litigation counsel for this matter be covered? No. Got it.
- Was the appropriate, and I'm asking them for, just if I can. Was the amount appropriated in this line
- for 2026 specific and limited to the cost of that contract? I believe it is. I think it's limited to
- the special deputy or the legal deputy costs that is available to the sheriff by statute.
- Statutorily, he can hire a legal deputy. I think that line covers the contract for that only. Okay.
- That makes sense. So this is a line in general fund in the contractual. No, it's not contractual. This
- is what it's called is litigation, settlement and mediation. That's the name of that line. Okay. Okay.
- So that makes a lot more sense to me. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying. And then my, you know,
- back to kind of the original part is it's in the, it's in the thirties here. So it's services and you
- have other, do you have other money in the services where you could do an in-house transfer to cover
- these expenses until we figure out what's happening. And she's looking at me and she's saying, I'm,
- I'm looking at the budget right now as of today and they have one line.
- that was appropriated with 125,000 and it has 50% left, but it's for their general communication services,
- which is what they use for their, I believe it's the radios and that kind of thing. So that is also
- a contract amount that has already been obligated. Okay. And we wouldn't have come here if we had an
- opportunity to move that before. And we try to do that for you guys each time.
- And that's why I have to ask, because I'm your liaison, and I didn't know, and I didn't hear about it.
- So I have these questions, and we're having the discussion now. One thing, and please understand that
- this is not, it's moving so fast. It's moving so fast that, you're right, for me to get to you so quickly,
- it's not, tomorrow we have an attorney coming to our facility.
- That's terrifying, I get it. And all I'm saying to you is, and in my brain, maybe I'm being too simple,
- it's too simple for me, is that what I'm asking is something I thought was reasonable because you appropriate
- it to yourselves. And believe me, I am not gonna sit in front of you after something that I could actually
- take care of myself because from day one, I always said, I've got to move fast. So if I could do it
- on my own,
- Council member, I would. Thank you. Council member Hawke. Just a suggestion, maybe what they need is
- a new line within the services, then they can move it up and down within that as they choose. We don't
- need to do an additional appropriation. As you said, we don't do that in the middle
- you know, before we get closer to the end of the year when they still have money in the fund. They don't
- have you don't they don't have any other money in that category. That's not specifically headed out
- to some particular contract or service. That's what I was hearing from this show. But I see another
- hand. Thank you. I appreciate the candor. I think it's we need it. It's this
- job we've been elected to up here to meet the fiscal control and ask these questions in a public way.
- You have an attorney in mind? You have somebody, if this moves forward, do you have somebody you've
- got lined up to hire tomorrow? Or do you have someone identified? I'm having a difficult time to understand
- everything that we're really discussing with you right now. I don't know if the council asked themselves
- the same question.
- You're in a hurry, Sheriff. I'm just asking if you got somebody in line. I'm trying to understand what
- difference would it make for what I'm asking for. Well, then let me follow up with why I'm asking. So
- if you have somebody in mind, you can consult with them as soon as possible. One of the conditions by
- which your office has not been able to participate in working groups to find a solution to the jail
- is consulting with counsel. So my interest would be saying, well, if we can get you an attorney to talk
- to, and if that would
- free up your office to come to sit with us to try to solve the solution or get to a solution. I mean,
- I think that's an incentive for us to vote on that. So that's my question then. I mean, if you've got
- somebody in mind, that's great. I don't need to know their name. But if this has been a condition by
- which your office has not been able to participate in public conversations about the future of the jail,
- I want to know if we can move forward on that. Well, as certain things that you stated, I think you
- mentioned subcommittee. Yeah.
- We're getting off track here, some way. Well, no, because you've said in correspondence in the county
- that one of the conditions by which your office can't participate in that subcommittee is you need to
- consult with litigation counsel. This is an opportunity to bring them on for you. My question now is,
- if we move forward with appropriation and you can go get the attorney tomorrow morning, are there any
- other barriers for your office participating in that work group? I'm going to repeat myself that I'm
- asking the counsel for
- additional appropriation. This is not the time at this point for me to discuss the subcommittee. If
- you'd like, I'd be more than happy to come back and discuss that, but not this evening. That's fair.
- I'll hold you to your office's email about that, but thank you, Madam President. I'll move on. Okay.
- Thank you. I lost it.
- The only thing I will say is when we were discussing way back when, back in April, I got a lot of questions
- about do we have somebody in mind. So I guess I understand where y'all are coming from, but we don't
- have anybody right now. That conversation has been ceased until we can figure stuff out and then we'll
- bring that back. But I think as a clarifying into all the things,
- maybe and I understand that y'all are super duper busy but I think maybe what would have helped is if
- the liaisons were like worked with because I'm not certain if it sounds like I'm looking at faces right
- now that maybe liaisons weren't consulted which is that's kind of why I was the little puzzle with my
- faces because in the packet it says council or liaisons were notified so I think
- A lot of clarifying questions with this, with respect to what you're asking, might have been helpful
- to have that, in the interest of time and an email of some sort. Again, not disputing anything, I just
- wanted to point that out there. Any other further questions or comments? Oh, yes, Councilwoman Huck.
- All right, I still, coming back to, and of course that'll depend on whether or not, you know,
- the group wants to move forward with this in any way. But if they do, then we need a line item from
- which they have to pay it out of. And it matters not if the other items in that category has already
- been spoken for. They can still pay it. The cash is in there. They can pay it and then reduce from other
- lines within that category.
- or come back and ask for a transfer, they can transfer on their own if it stays in the same category.
- They can move that, they can do that tomorrow if it stays in the same category. It just leaves them
- less money to do something else in that category. And if they determine that down the way, they've done
- what they can to save whatever the money is, they can come back and ask for a transfer. They cannot
- transfer on their own
- from one category to the next. So I think you were right on your first thought, Council Member Wilson,
- that to move this off into the center. But maybe the group would rather just say no. I mean,
- I don't know. They did not contact me. I guess they didn't think they needed my help. Well, I can speak
- to that, I guess. I think I've done a
- a pretty good job for the office in trying to communicate with our liaisons. Just about anything that
- comes up, I try to bring to them. As to this issue, we talked about it as a group, and the sheriff's
- belief was it was pretty straightforward. We didn't think there would be a lot of communication needed
- for something that has already been appropriated. Commissioner Henry said that everybody essentially,
- in that April 28th meeting, that everybody would likely need their own counsel.
- for obvious reasons, and I think that's fair. Council Member Feidl said it was almost hypocritical to
- approve that $30,000 based on how you guys are having to move through this budget season, which is almost
- impossible. So kudos for that, actually. And Council Member Crossley said that it would likely cost
- more down the road. We're trying to get a start. We're trying to begin this session here. And honestly,
- It's happening faster than we can even deal with right now. And that was part of, I guess, the lack
- of communication, maybe. But we thought it was pretty straightforward. So our apologies. Thank you for
- that. And thank you for the information, Sheriff, tonight in this discussion. I appreciate council's
- council, council members questions here. And I'm going to throw something out and
- maybe I'm the only one that can throw this out, and maybe for that reason, we put what I throw out in
- the trash can. But given some of the discussion here tonight, I wonder, A, council's not moved forward
- on their council requests that we discussed in that meeting in April. B, in-house council, there's a
- lot of council
- in-house counsel has indicated that we have dangling issues out with our insurance provider about what
- happens doesn't happen. I thought I have and I'll throw it out if it's nothing everybody just sit and
- stare at me it'll be just like home and then just move on with whatever anything else you will not offend
- me. If we were to make both of our bodies on parity until we get meaning strike
- our past action, which we apparently haven't moved on and wait for response from in-house counsel. So
- we could maybe move into some sort of concerted effort towards legal counsel. Would that make this situation
- a little bit more survivable for now? And if that is not clear or a thing that even sounds remotely,
- basically to say,
- this body and that body until we get better answers on what insurance is going to cover is going to
- hold off on just counsel that's not from in-house legal. So I'll throw that idea out. So essentially
- what you're saying is able until we figure out. And legally, since we we authorize, which the sheriff
- has brought up and others have brought up, we
- gave ourselves, the council, the ability to get outside council. If we were to remove that,
- hold on theirs, and then get responses from insurance on what does this look like, what does it not
- look like, then we might be able to move forward in some sort of concerted effort that they get this
- and we might need that and ring the bell at three o'clock on Thursdays or whatever other requirements
- would come out.
- I float that to bring things back to parity. One of the concerns I had at the time, and I think I probably
- said it, is I worried about us going off in any piecemeal fashion towards outside council, particularly
- when we don't know. But there were a lot of pressures in that situation, and we don't have to relitigate
- that, not to use that term, but I wonder if that wouldn't bring a little bit of equality to the difficulties
- we find ourselves in.
- If I understand correctly, go ahead. Sorry. Sorry, Sheriff, to jump in. I think what insurance has basically
- said is you have to get sued for us to make a decision, because we don't know what that lawsuit is.
- We don't know what it looks like. So before we decide or commit to a position here, we're going to have
- to see the suit. And I think, and I'm not speaking for the sheriff, but I think there's legal questions
- that they're going to have before the suit is filed.
- And so, I mean, you could wait for insurance counsel to say, okay, now you're sued, but I mean, I don't
- know when the suit's coming. They don't know when the suit's coming. But the questions are here now.
- On the head, because we're experiencing right now. It's not if, it's happening to us right now. And
- to echo what she, if you take offense to this, I do apologize. It was not intentional not to go through
- our liaison. It's just the timing was like so fast. It really was. And again, I will not be sitting
- here in front of you if it wasn't urgent because they're coming at us. And what she explained is happening.
- So I don't we don't have the luxury to wait like you're you're suggesting. And when this comes forward,
- your if you guys get named are going to be facing different issues than what we are going to be facing,
- obviously. Uh, and hopefully you don't get named, but we are accustomed to being named in these types
- of things because no matter what the sheriff gets named, if it's in the jail, no matter what the jail
- commander gets named, it's part of it. Uh, and we've been in process with our insurance for different
- things. We've been in process with our in-house legal counsel. So it's, it's something that we're a
- little bit more acclimated with, but this litigation aspect is something that I've, I've never encountered
- before from the ACLU.
- other than this agreement we've been working under. So this is uncharted territory in some regards,
- and that's why we need a specialized counsel. And King has her hand up and then I'll go to Councilor
- Wilts next. And I think it's important to note that Mr. Falk is going to their office tomorrow. I mean,
- as a former public defender, if my client was going to talk to basically the prosecutor in this instance,
- which is Mr. Falk, I wouldn't want him to do it alone.
- I would want attorneys there. And that's where we are right now. That's where we are right now. Where's
- the county attorney? They don't specialize that. They're not litigation attorneys. And ultimately I
- think county attorneys will be conflicted out. Okay. All right. I'm going to Councilor Wilts and then
- I'll go to Councilor Fido. I have three questions that came in my head since I started the last one.
- The one I was going to well
- really, I just want to make sure I'm understanding what we're deciding. And it sounds like to me that
- y'all need to take action. And I think the point's well taken that the reason that I remember saying
- yes to $30,000, which I was iffy on, but the reason I said yes was because we, prior to getting sued,
- it wasn't really about
- I figured that's going to be a bigger production. But we wanted to be able to ask somebody some questions.
- And so I totally respect that need. But to Councillor Hawke's point, you can pay for that out of your
- current, even if they are obligated to something else. I mean, if you, and this is really, I'm trying to
- just make it clear that you don't have to come to us, but you just need to let us know if that makes
- sense. So you've got another line for the communication something radios. You could take that, what
- you have left in that, and you could put it toward something else in that same category, which would
- be this line, the legislation settlement and mediation.
- And you're with in your rights to transfer because it's in the same category. And you could do that
- like this. And I think that was counselor Hawks point. And we actually encourage that for something
- that you need right away as long as you're letting us know. Because what that means is you're going
- to be short in that other line. Right. It's going to come time for however you've got that set up quarterly
- payment or whatever monthly payment and you're going to run out by however much you borrowed. So at
- that point.
- You're like, hey, remember when I told you I had to borrow this to do this other thing? Well,
- now I need that. And we'll be like, oh, yeah, right. That's what we've typically asked departments to
- do. And that was sort of the beginning of my. So what I'm choosing between, and I think we have to figure
- out, is do we want to say, hey, just go back and use your own funds for this and keep track and let
- us know, or which
- The parity thing, I think, is a good point. I mean, you came in here with that as your kind of basis.
- Hey, you know, we just want to make sure you're being fair to everybody. It does sort of look bad to
- not. I get that. Yeah, I mean, we weren't able to, but we, you know. I hear you. Everything moves so
- fast for us, for us to come back and ask you,
- It's very, very difficult. And again, I didn't really anticipate that we'll be having this conversation,
- because to be fair, you appropriated yourselves $300,000, $30,000, and you haven't been even named.
- Well, no one's been named yet. And or approached. And we have.
- So I'm struggling here to really make sense of this, that I'm being told how to do this when that has
- been budgeted already. And what I'm hearing you saying is go ahead and use that and come back when you
- need to and ask. I don't have the luxury of time to be doing that every single time. And all I'm asking
- is to be fair to me.
- what you did to yourself. I'm just being very plain, very specific. And the council has not been approached
- yet to need an attorney. I have, we have, right now. I guess to kind of hear, Councilor Wilton, please
- correct me if I'm not explaining what your point is.
- What it sounds like, what she was saying and Councilman Huck was saying is, if you already have, like
- you can literally, like you could do an in-house transfer today. Is that what you're saying? So you
- already have it there. However, if you take it from another line item and you do this appropriate, like
- you do that, you let your liaisons know that that's the transfer that you're gonna do. And then if you
- come up short in that particular area for something else,
- you can come back to council for whatever you've used in that short timeframe. Am I? Yeah, you can come
- back in November and be like, we need our last payment for the radio lease or whatever, you know, and
- never having come to us before, as long as you let us know, you know. Cause I think to be fair though,
- like I know it keeps going back and forth and I get what you're saying. But in terms of council, I think,
- The idea was we don't have any kind of line or anything like that. So I think that was one of the biggest
- things as why, I'll say it for myself, as why that was a thing that took place. I think maybe, I'll
- speak for myself, if we had something there, we could transfer, you know, if we had a line item dedicated
- to something like that, we could. And maybe that was something that we could do.
- But I mean, in the interest of time, when you're saying that you have to move quickly, this is one way
- that I would think what they're saying is that you can move quickly. You just do the transfer, do it.
- And then if there's something else that you need in the time frame, you could come back. Nobody's disputing
- who's coming at you, who's doing that at all. I think that's what it sounds like folks are trying to say.
- Well, I mean, these are lines that we zero out every year. I mean, these are things that we have to
- pay out throughout there, and you guys understand how that works. For this, this is not something that
- we could have prepared for. We didn't know that we were going to come to this. None of us did, obviously.
- But this is not something that we can work through our budget, or we feel this is not something we can
- work through our budget, and then at the end of the year,
- come back and say, hey, can we have X amount of dollars? Because it's going to start flipping. What
- if we need more money for our council? Are we going to pull then? We're trying to get ahead of this
- so that we can still maintain our budget throughout the end of the year and still handle this ACL thing
- and still handle all the things that come at us every day. So that's kind of what it is. And I get that.
- I guess I'm just trying to look out for some of the things nobody's disputed in anything and what you're
- like, well,
- We're just trying to figure out like the best way and action. And I know you're saying, well, we did
- it and you did it too. And to Councilor Wilts's point, I understand where you're coming from with that.
- I think we're just trying to grab our heads as to like how to move forward from here. I think that's
- what it sounds like. Right. Councilor Feidl. So I'm thinking about tomorrow. You mentioned tomorrow,
- right? So who's representing you tomorrow? Me. Okay. So you're going to be the council. Yeah. Not a
- good idea for us.
- If you get this money tonight, would you be able to call somebody else in? That is not the point. I
- just want to know. Well, this is just tomorrow. I mean, it starts tomorrow, and then they are going
- to have follow-up, and then they are going to start meeting. But a question like that, think about that.
- Why would you ask me a question like that? Would I have someone to? I am coming to you for assistance.
- I am coming to you for help. But I thought you also wanted somebody to represent you tomorrow. I mean,
- I thought that I heard
- Well, the point we made with tomorrow was that's how fast it's moving. It doesn't necessarily, either
- he's coming to meet with potential clients tomorrow. That's what that is. Councillor Huck. You know,
- I know that somebody else is probably working on your budgets and you're just went, but take the line.
- Just say thank you.
- We'll put a line in place. You want me to say thank you? That's what I heard you say to me. You can
- transfer the very day it gets on there. You can do it. We don't have to do it. You're ready to go tomorrow.
- Isn't that what you want? I think maybe you either don't understand that what we're trying to do is
- give you immediate opportunity to do what you need to do. But we have to create a line.
- for you to do it out of. We thought there was a line that you sing that low, so we'll create a new line.
- And you can use that money tomorrow. There's still money in those categories. And then if you run out
- or need more money in there, then you can come and we can do transfer from other portions of your budget
- over into there. It really works. So you'll approve this
- You're lying. Do you say it wouldn't work? Absolutely not. I know you wouldn't. But you'll prove this
- very issue later on. You just won't do it now. I'm not going to say what's going to happen two months,
- five months, because none of us knows what's going to happen. But that's what you're asking them to
- come back and do. Right now, you need something to say you're protected right now. And all you need
- is a line to put money into that line, right?
- We need your help in being appropriated for $30,000. You could do that within that category. You don't
- need us to do it. I do not. I do not. When you run out of money for what? I mean, the commissioners
- do it all the time. I do not need to be told to be thankful. Well, I think we all have a lot to be thankful
- for in this. Not in this situation. Let's work together. That took a very offensive turn there.
- Move on to Councilor Decker. Thank you very much. Again, I'm going to come at this in the spirit of
- problem solving and my recommendation on this is that at least let me speak for myself. I'm going to
- vote for this request and I've heard lots of great discussions. I think sometimes the discussions we
- get into maybe gets into the technical and the merits of the technical and I think that's
- awesome towards the taxpayers benefit. But ultimately, if I were a psychic, and sometimes in elected
- office, you gotta be a bit of one to predict the future and try to figure out your direction.
- But I would say, either way, if the sheriff goes throughout that counselors are recommending,
- either way, does that now or we vote for this motion, at some point this year, if I were predicting,
- there will be a vote on $30,000. And what I don't want to lose in this back and forth conversation,
- which is good for us, I don't want to lose that spirit going into other conversations that need to happen
- not about $30,000 there. I think that this energy could be well supplied into more fruitful things to
- get us out of our present dilemma, which sucks and we got to do. So for me, I'm going to not only
- vote yes on this preparation. I'm going to call the question so we can just record it. And then the
- sheriff's got advice if it fails. All right. Um, we'll go to public comment before we do that. Um, and
- so if there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise
- your hand via teams. Seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
- Councilor Fiddle. Yes. Councilor Hawk. No. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. All they can
- do. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Crossley. Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes six to one.
- Thank you very much. Okay. Next up is
- Well, item D is tabled. E and F are two. So now we will move on to item G. Council, I move to approve
- the Waste Reduction District's request and fund 1215 cumulative capital for an additional appropriation
- of $45,199 in the capital category. Second.
- All right, we have a motion and a second, and we are joined by Mr. Iglesias. Welcome. Good evening.
- Hello. Good evening. Yes, thank you. As you can see from the information in your packet, obviously we've
- had a very interesting spring weather-wise, and a few months ago, having to do some repairs on our roof,
- and the contractor advised us that in all likelihood, that is the original roof to a building that was
- built in 1996, and it's time to replace it.
- It is an asphalt shingle roof, so getting 30 years out of it is, I think, pretty impressive. But it
- has been recommended to be replaced. You can see that in information we did seek out quotes from three
- local roofing contractors in discussions with our board. It was decided that going with a metal roof
- was the best option for the district to move forward.
- The amount requested is based on the quote included in the packet, which is the lowest quote we received
- for a metal roof. Honestly, off the top of my head, I don't recall if the shingle quote listed in there
- was the lowest shingle quote we received, but you can see we are looking at about a $10,000 or $11,000
- difference between the shingle roof and the metal roof, which we believe will be more than made up for in the
- savings and maintenance costs and the lifespan of the roof. Thank you very much. We'll look to council
- for any questions or comments. Councilor Wilks. I just want to express that as a member of the board
- that we did discuss this and I can't really say it any better than Tom did but he perfectly represents
- our discussions.
- the executive committee and justification for going with the the metal roof. I was saying this to Mr.
- McGlass and just about half a week ago but that building is really out out punches its way in all that
- happens in there not only with the district but with
- our extension friends that are around there in the community room, which gets a lot of attention and
- just the visibility is huge. And so it's always, I'm always appreciative that something on the south
- side or heading towards the south side of the county is doing something big and it's not all just downtown.
- Thank you. Anybody else? Any questions? All right. I will move on to public comment and
- If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise
- your hand via Teams. And seeing none. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Fiddle? Yes. Councillor Wilts?
- Yes. Councillor Henry?
- Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay,
- thank you. All right, next up is item H. Council, I move to approve the Waste Reduction District's request
- and fund 8210, general operating, for an additional appropriation of $69,000 in the capital category.
- Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Again. All right, this one's a little bit bigger.
- But as you can imagine, for the services that we provide, we rely on a large fleet of roll-off boxes
- for the recyclables and the waste that we collect at our facilities. And unfortunately, we have a very
- aging inventory of those boxes that have not been properly maintained, I guess, over the years, to put
- it bluntly. And we are in
- The contractor that performs the repairs for us, you know, we are in immediate need of replacing I believe
- the nine boxes identified in this appropriation request. And you'll see in a few months we'll be budgeting
- to replace additional boxes in the coming years.
- Our operations director, Joey Long, has developed a plan moving forward to better monitor the boxes
- and inspect them more regularly and track the maintenance on them and work on a replacement schedule
- so that we don't find ourselves in this situation again moving forward.
- I believe we have about 62 boxes in our inventory. Over the coming years, we will probably be looking
- at replacing 15 to 20 of those boxes in total. This is the first step of that. Unfortunately, we do
- not have adequate funds in our capital category.
- to purchase this, but I think you can see the information provided in the packet. You know, we do have
- adequate unappropriated funds in the bank to cover this purchase, and so we are making the request.
- Are these the big things we all throw our stuff in? Yes. Okay. That was a very nice description on paper,
- but I'm like, wait a minute, I've spent a lot of time on these, so thank you.
- At some point in time, I would like to know what you might expect down the line out of lip funds, which
- I know you don't receive now, but I know that your revenue is going to change. So I haven't been watching
- your meetings, but that's part of what I would like to have a separate conversation about.
- No further questions or comments. We will move forward to public comment. There's public comment on
- this item. You can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via Teams.
- Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes.
- Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Henry?
- Councillor Decker. Yes. Passes unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening. All right.
- Next up, I don't see the treasurer here, but there is item I for the treasurer. Her chief deputy is
- here. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay. So we'll make Council Iverson make that motion.
- I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the treasurer's request to be exempt from the
- hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1000-0003 County General Treasurer, one full-time collections
- deputy. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. We are joined by the chief deputy. I'm so sorry
- about that. Welcome. All right, so Kathy couldn't be here. She's in the hospital with her brother. Can
- you pull the mic closer and down? There you go.
- So my full-time employee, one of my four, is retiring and we need to fill the position. What else do
- I need to say? All right. That was pretty simple. Okay. Questions or comments from council on this item?
- Councilor Hawk. Yes. I had quite a long conversation with a treasurer and understand that
- They have such a small group to do their job and it's hard if you lose one fourth of your workforce
- and they need it. We need the treasurer's office to work smoothly with the auditor's office and we all
- know how important the collections are because it seems that we don't know how to quit spending. We
- just want you to bring us the money so we can spend it. So anyway, I appreciate the fact that this department
- reached out to their liaison. We discussed this at length. Yes, Councilor Decker. First, best to Kathy
- with everything going on. Thank you for being here and thank you for being patient. But also, I don't
- want to ever to get lost in the busyness of this meeting, thanks to a 25-year employee who really devoted
- time. That's a serious commitment to this county. It is. It's gonna be a big loss for knowledge.
- Other further questions or comments on this item will go to public comment. Raise your hand via Teams,
- or you can come forward to the podium in the room. Excuse me. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll
- call vote. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hock? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes.
- Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes.
- Motion passes unanimous. All right, next up is item J. Council, I move to approve the treasurer's request
- and fund 1000-0003 County General Treasurer to create account line 16800 transitional temporary training
- position and simultaneously amend the 2026 salary ordinance to add the account line in order to allow
- for a period of training on the collections deputy position. Second. All right, what would you like?
- We will not be needing that.
- As she is retiring Friday, we don't have a crossover time that we thought we would, so we will not be
- needing any additional appropriation. Okay. So you don't need that account line at all? No. Okay. No,
- we do not. Council, I move to remove my motion. Okay. So then that is all from the treasurer's office.
- Thank you very much. All right. Thank you so much. Have a good evening. All right. Next up is item K
- from the public defender's office.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the public defender's request to be
- exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire in fund 1000 dash zero two seven one county general
- public defender one part time hourly position. Second. All right. We got a motion and a second. We're
- joined by Mr. Hunt and Heather stuff. We're welcome. Hello. Good evening. Um, this council person and
- members of the council, the, um, we have a part time
- person, is that close enough? That does a number of things and that person is leaving to go to law school.
- In addition to working in what I'll call our outer office, answering the phone, doing the mail, that
- type of thing, this job has kind of evolved into
- we call a discovery person, and that is to say, oh, some number of years back, if we would get a police
- report or material from the prosecutor's office, it could be like this or it could be this or 50 pages.
- Now, with all the electronic things, we get video cameras, we get all the things the police
- badge recordings, which are unbelievable. And they send those all to this person who then distributes
- those to the attorneys. So we need that job and we're asking that we be allowed, the money is already
- there from last budget and we're asking to be allowed to hire. All right. All right. Thank you for that.
- Any questions or comments from council on this item?
- I was just curious how long you've had this one part-time person position about. I think we've had this
- position about three years. Okay. And usually we hire them for about a year and then they go on and
- go to graduate school or law school or something. Thank you. All right. So seeing none, we'll move to
- public comment.
- If there is public comment, please raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern. And seeing
- none, may we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Hawk? No. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry?
- Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson?
- Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes, majority six to one. Next up, item L. Council, I will mercifully
- be combining items L and M into one motion. I move to approve the public defender's request and fund
- 8117-0000 Title IV-E grants to create account lines that are outlined on the agenda, approve additional
- appropriations of $64,349 in the personnel category,
- and simultaneously amend the 2026 salary ordinance to add account lines 13038 system navigator and 13039
- system navigator at 40 hours, Comet D, non-exempt. Second. We've got a motion in a second. What would
- you like to add to this item? Yes, I will let, well, basically, we believe that we have the money
- already for this year for these two positions. I will let Ms. Stufel explain how we got here. So the
- Title IV-E grant, I believe we got starting in 2022, and it basically gives us the remaining 60% of
- all of our cost expenses on CHINS cases and TPR cases. It covers the
- remaining 60% that we aren't reimbursed from our state reimbursement, but only for those cases. So we,
- I believe have about $84,000 in there, 80 some thousand that we've received since the inception of this
- grant. And we would like to get some of those funds appropriated to help the rest of the year cover
- those two system navigators
- since the system navigator grant is now gone. We have the money, we just need permission to spend it.
- All right. Yes, Councilor Williams. I'm just asking about the future of these positions ahead of
- budget preparation, what should we expect to see? Okay, sure. Um, this, this grant, I know we're in
- for a number of years, three or four years, and it's gradually being phased out by the state. Um, the
- county has then picked it up. Uh, and I think county is now paying 60% and the state is still doing
- the 40%. That is, that is gone. That's why we're using this money. So yes,
- and budget time, we will have to come out back and ask for appropriation for the two positions. So it'd
- be 40% above what the county is paying right now on each position. In the 2027 budget. 2027, right.
- And I did include that on the 144s. You're using money,
- that you get back from the state to fund this part, but for 2027, are you looking at that same funding
- source or maybe general fund or? Well, I'm asking for them to be fully funded instead of 60%, 100% in
- county general, yes. Okay, that's what I thought, thank you. And this other, the four, is it the 4E?
- That fund is,
- We can use it for anything, but it's directed towards juveniles. And that's what these system navigators
- work in. So we've talked to the people in Indianapolis and they say that's permissible to use that money.
- One thing, not on this, because it sounds like you've done all the money wizardry that we always do
- to manage this day to day and then start heading towards the next thing.
- For next year, if we were to do that fully fund, is there a portion of that? That would be 40% talk
- about that. Our state reimbursement covers. They reimburse us 40% of all expenses for public defense.
- So toilet paper even is reimbursed at 40%. That's I always like to ask about that so that doesn't get
- lost in the shuffle. This is a unique.
- county agency that is not unlike any other. And if there's a legislature, remember the legislature that's
- eavesdropping on any of this meeting after we had that first half talking about our future and difficulties
- with money. This model for the state's involvement in all things judiciary might not be too far off
- on what they should look at, but that's something we always have to keep in mind that the fact that
- literally that toilet paper
- it gets that reimbursement rate and that has to factor into that decision-making. Yes, Councillor Hock.
- Yes, I do remember when this was brought to us as a new service and we asked specifically what are you
- going to do because there's no guarantee it was going to go on and we continued to tell everybody when
- you lose a grant
- that you lose the position. Now I understand I'm the only person that's going to vote against continuing
- to grow grant employees. Folks, you saw what happened with our budget this past year. We were millions
- spending more than what was coming in.
- Well, I would say this, we keep arresting more people, prosecuting more people, so they're afraid you
- have to defend them. I get it. And especially I appreciate the fact that this is tied to juveniles.
- Right. And I believe from everything I see and read that we're having more and more problems in the
- juvenile section of people who need public defense.
- So this is a tough one to try to figure out, but it looks like you've got it figured out for at least
- one year. Is that right? And then when we do budgets for 2027, we'll have to look at this as we would
- any. So I would just support it for getting us through this year. Are there any other questions or comments?
- Seeing none, I'll go ahead and go to public comment. If there's public comment, you can come forward
- to the lectern here in the room and raise your hand via Teams. Seeing none, maybe please have a roll
- call vote. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor Crossley?
- Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes.
- yes now but don't count on it for next year's budget. Motion passes unanimously. Next up is item in.
- Council I move to approve the public defender's request and fund 8117-0000 title IVE grant to deappropriate
- $35,000 in the services category. All right we got a motion and a second. This is some of that
- for e-money that we moved to special services in case we needed it. We haven't needed it this year and
- so we're putting it back to fund the rest of these two people for the rest of this year. Any questions
- or comments on this item? Seeing none, I'll go to public comment. Come forward to the lectern here in the room.
- or raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Decker?
- Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor
- Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Thank you very much. We appreciate
- it. Thank you. Thank you.
- Great. Next up, we have a statement. Wait, we're going to chat lab. No, the salary ordinance portion.
- We combine that. We combine those together. We combine those. So, all right. Item O. Council.
- Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund 9122-0000 JDAI coordination to
- create account lines as outlined on the agenda and to simultaneously approve additional appropriations
- of $3,200 in the supplies category and $2,250 in the services category for a total appropriation of
- $5,450. Second. All right. And we are joined by the one and the only Ms. Linder.
- welcome thank you good evening I'm Linda Brady chief probation officer so this is an annual appropriation
- for the juvenile detention alternatives initiative grant that we received this grant from the Department
- of Correction and the Indiana Department of Correction requires that we have three separate grants so
- for these different purposes they require one for coordination and implementation and
- one for data analysis, and one for programming. So this is the first of the three appropriation requests.
- This is for the coordination and implementation grant, and it funds JDAI activities such as professional
- development materials, travel training, and meals for committee and work group meetings. Any questions?
- All right, any questions she asks? So looking to council to see if anybody has any.
- No, it's a pleasure to appropriate money like this. Nice. Right. Sorry, my brain is gone. So public
- comment time, yes. If there's public comment, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or
- raise your hand via Teams. Can we please have a roll call vote?
- Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Fiddle has stepped away. Councillor Hawke.
- Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Decker. Yes. Passes unanimous 6-0. Next
- up item P.
- Council, I move to approve the Probation Department's request and fund 9123-0000 JDAI programming to
- create account lines as outlined on the agenda and to simultaneously approve additional appropriations
- of $21,400 in the supplies category and $39,400 in the services category for a total appropriation of
- $60,800. Second.
- All right, we got a motion and a resounding second. What would you like to add? OK, to add to that,
- I forgot to mention that the total of all the grants is 80,000 this grant year, which is a 5,000 increase
- over last grant year. And it's pretty surprising to be able to get an increase because the state actually
- cut the JDAI budget line in the state budget. So to get an increase, that was quite a surprise and a
- tribute to, I think, our
- excellent JDAI program. And I want to also give a shout out to Christine McAfee, our wonderful JDAI
- coordinator. She does so much community work to get these programs up and going and with the community
- partners. So the programming, that is the most of the grant. The grant is mostly to do contracts with
- local programming and to work with youth and families.
- and we do it through MOUs, memorandums of understanding that Molly is now diligently working on 10 of
- them for next week. So for such things as Monroe County Childhood Conditions Summit, People and Animals
- Learning Services, PALS, work on the parent project, Parent Teen Solutions, Truancy Termination Program
- with Youth Services Bureau, Teen Intervene,
- in the warehouse youth mentoring program. That's just to name some of the programs. And again, Christine
- works really hard with the community partners to figure out what the needs are to try to fill some gaps
- with this funding. It's not a ton of money, but it's enough so that parents and families don't have
- to pay anything for these services. And it's open to community members. You don't have to be justice
- involved. You don't have to be involved in the chin system.
- It's really for anybody. So it's excellent opportunities for our community. Thank you for that
- and congratulations. I know last year, either last year or this year, we were hearing that the MC3 was
- having some funding issues. So this gives me great joy to see that they have something that hopefully
- they will be able to continue. So that's really good. And I know my oldest had participated. Yes, yeah.
- Yeah, a while ago back in the summit. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions or comments
- for Ms. Brady on this item? Refreshing part of the evening. We need it. So we'll move on to public comment.
- If there is public comment, you can raise your hand via Teams or you can come forward to the lectern
- here in the room.
- Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor
- Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Deckard? Yes. Councillor Crossley?
- Yes. Motion passes unanimous, 7-0. Okay, and last up on the probation department is item Q.
- Council, I move to approve the probation department's request and fund ninety one seventy five dash
- zero zero zero zero JD AI data analysis grant to create new account lines as outlined on the agenda
- and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of thirteen thousand seven hundred fifty dollars
- in the services category. All right. We got a motion in a second. Would you like that? Just that this
- funds our data analysis
- services from Impact Solutions, also Indiana University research partners who are working with our clientele
- to evaluate their impressions of the services that they receive from the probation department, and then
- also request case management licenses. That's our case management database. So kind of techie, more tech
- things and analysis and more data. That's something Christine talks a lot about is trying to make data
- informed decisions with JDAI. So that's where this money is put towards. That's it. Thank you very much
- for that. All right. Any questions or comments for Ms. Brady on her final item? Seeing none.
- We'll go to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can raise your hand via Teams
- or come forward to the lectern here in the room. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote.
- Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor
- Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes unanimous 7-0.
- All right, we appreciate it. Thank you very much. Have a good night. Thank you for your patience.
- All right, next up is item R from the health department. Council, I move to approve the health department's
- request and fund 8104-9626 Public Health Emergency Preparedness Grant for a category transfer of $1,998.91
- from the services category to the supplies category. All right, we got a motion and a second.
- and we are joined here by Ms. Lori Kelly. Welcome. Good evening. This grant cycle is winding down, so
- we've just been looking at some ways that we can move some of the funds around to be able to use down
- the remaining balances. We did recently our
- Public Health Preparedness Director came to me with some ideas about ways that we could use some of
- our funds for supplies. So that's really the purpose of this request. We'll be able to allow us to purchase
- prescription bottles that we can have on stock when needed and sunscreen, educational materials that
- we're planning for a health fair coming up July 19th. All right. Any questions or comments for Ms. Kelly
- on this item?
- We'll move to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern
- here in the room or raise your hand via team. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor
- Hawke. Yes. Councillor Wilks. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Crossley.
- Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor Feidl. Yes.
- Motion passes unanimous 7-0. Thank you. Next up is item S. Council, I will be combining items S and
- T into one motion.
- I move to approve the health department's request and fund 8111-9624 crisis coag supplemental workforce
- grant for a category transfer of $27,126 from the services category to the personnel category
- and simultaneously create new account lines as outlined on the agenda and amend the 2026 salary ordinance
- to add account line 10176 public health nurse 35 hours Pat C.
- Non exempt. What would you like to add to this item?
- much so this is just moving this position out of the Health First Indiana funds into those remaining
- grant funds that we're working to continue spending down. Currently that fund is supporting our public
- health nurse school liaison position and we are looking at moving our other nurse position that covers
- communicable disease into this same fund next year to just continue working these funds down.
- I know I have seen this a hundred times but I have no idea what it stands for what is crisis coag is
- that short for something? Yes cooperative agreement I believe so it's back like COVID when there were
- different funding sources. Thank you. You're welcome.
- me did we do something similar with the different position like this on the 20s like at our May 26 meeting
- we recently came for approval to hire the public health nurse school liaison position which is funded
- by these dollars right now okay okay and so is this covered through
- next year or yes so we anticipate that we'll still be using these funds next year. Part of the reason
- for this change is it does allow flexibility because we don't have those restrictions on
- only being able to serve Indiana residents who can prove that they're lawfully here. So that's really
- kind of one of the reasons we were working with a candidate who we thought we were going to move forward
- with. And really, when you have a new nurse coming into these positions, there's so much that they're
- already taking on learning to kind of add that additional piece. It's just kind of a challenge. And
- if we have options to reduce one thing from their plate, that's really kind of what I just
- wanted to be able to do for them. Okay and I guess the only other question is because Indiana has a
- whiplash of doing all the things and I know of course we've kind of over the past year have gone back
- and forth with moving things in and out. Is there any indication that once this grant is over with next
- year do you think you will be awarded this again to continue these initiatives? Not for the
- intended original purpose, because this was really to increase workforce capacity during COVID and some
- of those response periods. So it was more related to preparedness. So no, we don't anticipate this,
- these same dollars, preceding them in the future. Okay. Yes, Councilor Iverson. When you were, we keep
- talking about nurses and when you were here last time, we talked about just
- how competitive the field is because there's not enough nurses in the field. Can you give us a quick
- update on vacancies in your department? Sure. So we have reposted with the updated changes to the health
- services director. So we're getting interest in applicants for that position. We have received
- an enormous amount of applications for the clinical assistant, which we were really expecting because
- that's the most interest that we were getting before we actually even received approval for that. So
- we're working on setting up interviews now. There's someone in the office who's doing our pre-screening
- and getting those scheduled. I did happen to notice recently that the public health nurse position
- Um, I'm not really sure what happened, but had been removed from the County website. So for some period
- of time, that job was not posted. Um, so that's now been corrected. And so we'll be looking to move
- forward and trying to recruit for those positions. Thank you. Yes. Ms. Turner King. I have, um, maybe
- a clarifying question. Is the school liaison position currently vacant? Yes.
- And what is the grant term? We just spin them down. So it ended. So we have approval from the Indiana
- Department of Health to continue using these funds as needed for department activities. Is that permission
- anyway? Time limit? My concern is if you if we move a vacant position into a grant,
- are we at risk losing the grant funding? Because as long as it's vacant, we're not spending the funds.
- So is the permission to use the funds in any way time limited? No. Any other questions or comments from
- council for Miss Kelly?
- Seeing none, we'll move to public comment. If there's public comment, you can come here in the room,
- or comment here in the room, or you can raise your hand via Teams. Seeing none, may we please have a
- roll call vote? Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Councilor Hawke? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
- Councillor Iverson. Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right. Next up is item U. Council, I'll be combining
- items U and V into one motion. I move to approve the health department's request and fund 1161-9625,
- local public health services, a deappropriation of $54,367.40 in the personnel category and
- In fund 1161-9626, local public health services, a deappropriation of $19,727.60 in the personnel category.
- Second. All right. We got a motion and a second. Ms. Kelly. I think this is basically just for housekeeping.
- So since we're moving the position to the 8111, this is just deappropriating where it's currently
- appropriated now.
- Any questions or comments for Ms. Kelly? None? We'll have a comment. If there's public comment, raise
- your hand via Teams or come here in the NETU Hill Room. Seeing none, may we please have a roll call
- vote? Councilor Deckard? Yes.
- Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor
- Henry? Yes. Motion passes unanimous 6-0. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Next up we are getting
- down to the end of the alphabet. So we are going to item W from the legal department.
- Council, I move to approve resolution 2026-23A, a tax abatement request for Cientia LLC. Second.
- All right. We got a motion and a second. We are joined here by Mr. Cockrell. Welcome.
- Yes, and I thank you, Clark Leiner with the Bloomington Economic Development Commission and Mr. McDaniel,
- who is a principal at the business. This is step one in a process. If approved tonight, we will notice
- your July 14th meeting for a public hearing. That is needed to declare an economic revitalization area
- and proceed with the tax abatement. I will note that
- I think in the packet it has both a real property and a personal property tax abatement. I think, as
- you probably heard earlier today, there's a higher limit. And we went ahead and we had done that check
- to see if it would qualify. And we believe that all their personal property is under $2 million. So
- they would not have any personal property taxes on the equipment. So really, we're just asking for a
- real estate tax abatement.
- At this point, I think the total value of the tax abatement over 10 years for the real estate portion
- is about $82,000, so you're looking at an average of $8,000 a year in abated taxes. They are planning
- on hiring 30 people, and those 30 people will make a, I think it's $2.2 million, so just over $70,000
- a person per employee
- for the higher. Really there's a minimum amount of actual real estate investment, which is why that
- annual amount is low and just as a, I think also as described earlier today, we're really leaning more
- on income tax as funding things as opposed to real estate taxes. So we're kind of shifting and this
- is kind of something that we're gonna highlight as we,
- as we move forward. This did go to the Economic Development Commission on June 9th. They recommended
- approval of this tax abatement moving forward. And so with that, I will turn it over to the, unless
- you have questions for me, I will turn it over to the business. Hi, I am Doug McDaniel. I am the president
- and managing member of Scantia LLC and also the managing member of Interchange Investments LLC that
- is the owner of the property.
- And I really appreciate your consideration of our request tonight for this ERA. And I also admire your
- stamina. So thank you very much. We hire a lot of really highly educated, high tech folks here in Monroe
- County. We do software engineering, systems integration, cyber security, and we're focused on counter
- UAS and AI and computer vision integration into force protection systems for the Department of Defense.
- We work a lot with NSWC crane. In fact, a handful of our employees are former, including myself, former
- crane employees. So we're very honored and privileged to be able to do things that help keep our war
- fighters safer. I know Congress
- Councillor Fiddle has heard some of this before, so I apologize for repeating what I said, but we do
- a lot of sensor integration to help our war fighters have a better situational awareness when they're
- in harm's way. I'd like to share something with you real quickly that is a recent
- memorandum that was for the Chief Technology Officer to the Chief of Staff of the Army, Dr. Rex Miller,
- and this was on 3 June of this year. It says, in part, Schiantia LLC participated with the Integrated
- Sensor Architecture System, integrating the ISA API
- V1.1 into the operation jailbreak validation environment. During the event, Scantia LLC demonstrated
- validated documentation, heartbeat connectivity, data streaming, and asset control through a representational
- State transfer-based interface informed by protocol buffer schemas. ISA met the intent of operation
- jailbreak. That is just an example of what we do. Basically, that is so that
- The Army will be able to integrate sensors from disparate vendors and not have to worry about their
- proprietary interfaces. It's as if you were jailbreaking your phone to use a different carrier. We're
- not helping anybody get out of jail, actually. We currently have 39 employees. Our average salary is
- just a little north of $105,000 a year.
- But 90% of our employees are in Indiana, 74% of those are here in Monroe County. The average longevity
- of our folks is right at five and a half years. And we've got quite a few young folks as well. We started
- the company in 2010. 33% of our employees have graduate degrees and we have three PhDs on staff.
- One of the things that we have to do is try to keep our rates low because, as one of our government
- customers told me one time, you know the government wants to hire Albert Einstein but wants to pay him
- like a fast food worker. So it's very competitive for us, but we're fairly unique because there aren't
- a lot of high tech companies providing these kinds of services to crane and to the government in this area.
- But in addition to the salaries that we pay, competitive salaries that we pay, we also pay 90% of the
- health insurance premiums for our employees. We do a Safe Harbor 401K plan with a 4.5% matching, company
- matching. We do profit sharing when we can, and we've done that for the last several years. And then
- last year, it was a little over 9% of the W-2.
- wages for our employees. I hope we can continue doing that as well. We do annual Christmas bonuses.
- We provide short-term and long-term disability insurance that this company paid for. We do 11 paid federal
- holidays, continuing education reimbursement, and seven of our employees are members of the LLC. So
- we're trying to hire and retain the best and brightest here, and we've worked some with
- IU, the school, some of our cybersecurity folks obviously coming from there. We've worked some with
- that P school up north. About a half of our employees are actually from Rose-Holman, as you might have
- noticed. Thank you again for considering our request. Are there any questions you have of me that I
- might answer?
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. I don't have any questions. I just have two points. Number one, I apologize
- for mispronouncing the name of your company. That's perfectly fine. I'll tell you real quickly. The
- story is we wanted to name nobody could pronounce. Nobody knew what it was, what it meant. Nobody could
- spell and it proved none of us took marketing in school. So I think we hit a home run. I think it sounds
- like you're doing just fine. And I'm
- The things I really like about these tax abatements is the growth that these abatements allow you to
- have in terms of employees. And one of the things that a lot of us are really concerned about is making
- sure that other people know what a great place this is to live and what a great place it is to work.
- So we appreciate you joining us in our endeavor. Absolutely. Thank you so much. The construction costs
- are more than I expected.
- but we are doubling the size, our capacity, and we've run out of space where we are now, so. I believe
- it. That's exactly why we're wanting to do this. Yes, Councilor Feidl. So I appreciate being in the
- first meeting, and I am appreciative of all the things you've related here, but I don't remember ever
- hearing what your average seniority is of the workers you have. Do you know, like, the long-term service
- of people that have worked with you?
- As I said, the average for the folks that are currently in our company is five and a half years. Oh,
- five. I'm sorry. I missed that. No, no, no. That's fine. But we have probably five who have been with
- us at least 10 years. Two of us, of course, are original co-founders. So we have been there for 16,
- coming on 16 years now. I am super impressed with the health insurance portion that you pay for them.
- That is really good.
- We have to, I mean, it's a competitive market for the talent. And one of the, I've read in the past
- that typically with high tech, especially software engineering type companies, that the average longevity
- is closer to two years. And so we really want to hire folks, bring them up and teach them because working
- for the government is different in a lot of respects. Supporting the systems that we support takes a lot of
- corporate knowledge, if you will, and a lot of experience. And so we really only hire people that we
- want to keep for as long as they want to stay with us, and we want that to be a long time. Excellent.
- Chancellor Henry. Thank you. And Mr. Cockerill, I just had a question. So just so I'm clear on our process
- tonight, our vote tonight is to move it forward to public notice, and we're going to talk about this
- again. Correct.
- I would just preface by saying I'll be abstaining from this vote tonight. I just want to make sure that
- any conflict of interest I may have is understood before proceeding with my vote. So that's just explaining
- my abstention as to why I'm abstaining. It gives me a side eye in a minute. So there you go. Thanks.
- Thank you. No side eyes from here. Okay. Councillor Wilks. Yeah. I'm not in your field. And so my question
- comes from that perspective.
- Are there any environmental regulations that apply to your business and your productions that we would
- be interested in? No, we do almost exclusively software engineering and cyber security stuff. So we
- have a lab, but it's all computers, servers. We have some of the sensors.
- that we integrate in our facility, but there's no environmental concerns whatsoever. You do use AI though,
- right? Pardon? You do use AI? Did I hear you say that?
- other vendors' algorithms to do what they call computer vision. So a big part of what we do is video,
- as you might imagine, with persistent surveillance. So what we're trying to do is get the computers
- to actually see and let the operators know when they need to pay attention to something instead of just
- giving us the data. And that's a field that will continue to evolve and grow for, I think,
- as far as we can tell. Thank you, I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes,
- Councilor Decker. And this expansion's out on Bernal, we're near Bernal, right? Yeah, we're just a little
- bit south of Bernal Pike on Loesch Road, which is the first road back towards Bloomington from where
- the new Y is, up there. One thing is, just as a comment, that area is
- really ideal for these things and a lot of foresight and thought went into that when people were saying
- that's out in the woods there but now we we see these things kind of coming together it's like there
- you go there you had a plan and the west side is doing this it was nice to to see that i'm excited to
- see this move forward thank you councillor dekert we really enjoy being because we're
- Kind of out in the woods, but we're only, you know, a couple of minutes from from third and and curry
- and and restaurants and nice places to eat and all that. So, yeah, we're we're very, very happy to be
- there. We hope to stay there as long as I'm around anyway. At least overall, that is just a real good
- narrative that we need to hear in this county that those things on the west side, sometimes they get
- out of sight, out of mind, and they shouldn't be.
- Yes, Councilor Hawk is back. Hello. I'm from the West Side. We love you over there. So hope that you
- stay there and continue to create jobs and prosperity for the people. Thank you very much, Councilor
- Hawk. We certainly intend to do that to the best of our ability. All right. Seeing no other further
- questions or comments.
- for these gentlemen. We'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment, you can come forward
- to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via Teams. And seeing none, may we please have a
- roll call vote? Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
- Yes. Councilor Henry? Sorry.
- Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Motion passes 7-0. There's a reason I don't do this
- bit. Nope, sorry. 6-0-1, abstention. Thank you very much. Next up is item six. Council, I move to approve
- resolution 2026-22, the 2025 tax abatement compliance findings. Second. All right.
- side I miss Turner King because you're out next just kidding well since mr. Cockrell is still here I'm
- going to let him talk about the compliance reports that's great I'll just tell you the you have in the
- packet all the compliance forms those compliance forms represent just under 1900 employees and just
- on just just under 117 million dollars in wages and
- all those abatements that we're looking at today have been issued during the COVID era and later, right?
- So everything's 2020 and beyond. I will also say that those numbers also don't include, I think anything
- with the GE site, which as you know, last year we approved a big abatement and it was last fall and
- clearly they had not had enough time to get something done by the end of the year. So more exciting
- things to come.
- I will say that we had a meeting with the Economic Development Commission. The Economic Development
- Commission made a recommendation, and it's really two parts. One is for Proveli LLC, Phoenix, and Lazarus.
- Phoenix and Lazarus, one's the personal property, one's the real property, much like the presentation
- earlier tonight. That's just how some accounting systems work. GLC Bloomington, LLC.
- Baxter now Simtra, they recommended approval and that they met their statement of benefits. And I will
- say that with one caveat. Provelli, two or three years ago, indicated they were having trouble finding
- people who would work for them and
- getting that workflow. So they made a conscious decision, and we discussed it at that time, to kind
- of have a little bit more investment in the equipment, but pay their operators more. So even though
- their employment count is lower than expected, the wages they are paying is higher than they expected
- to pay at that higher number of headcounts. So people are making more. They are just having
- a few less people working there. So for instance, they were supposed to have 78, they're at 62, but
- those 78 employees were supposed to make 2.8 million and the 62 are making 3.1 million. So that was
- an offset and we discussed that with the EDC and I think a little bit with the County Council a couple
- years ago. But they also recommended that
- while not in compliance, that you guys go ahead and approve Oliver wineries because it is due to factors
- beyond their control. And we had a very long discussion with the people at Oliver Winery. The market
- there at their end has suffered in the last few years, but they are gaining ground and they are seeing
- their market share grow. And the one thing I remember is that there are
- Mr. President, Schultz of the Economic Development Commission indicated that there are some products
- we just can't offer in Indiana that other places can. I think THC infused booze and things like that,
- which Indiana just can't do, but they're gaining market share. And so the EDC heard enough information
- from them that they still recommend that you approve that abatement because they think that they are
- in good shape to progress and meet those goals in the next few years.
- Thank you very much for that. Any questions or comments from council? Yes, Councilor Decker. I just,
- I can't control my microphone, let alone my mouth. I just want to say, well, Mr. Grinders here, and
- the stamina by which he is here this evening on his end, we, the BEDC had a tremendous
- state of the economy, Bloomington economy, am I saying that right? Yeah, state of the regional Bloomington
- economy. Regional Bloomington economy. And it was tremendous. And it was awesome. The folks that came
- in, some of us got to go to this and to listen in. And we hear the wisdom of researchers. We hear the
- wisdom of regional influences and job makers and clearly, clearly friends, job making of every diverse kind.
- is the order of the day for the community. And I know I often beat this path a few times, but the communities
- had times in our history where jobs were going the other way. And that is a creepy proposition we don't
- want to have happen. And so all that's to say is that when I look at these things and how we do it and
- how we balance and where we're bringing in this, this or other supporting folks,
- It's always towards that goal, for at least me, that you're doing everything you can to check that box,
- that you have done things to diversify our job. So I just appreciate that. And I think it's important
- that we kind of keep that focus as we continue on this route. Thank you for your kind words. Anybody
- else have any questions or comments?
- Seeing none, we will move on to public comment. If there is public comment on this item, raise your
- hand via Teams or you can come forward here in the room if you're still here. And seeing no one wanting
- to come here in the room or raising your hand even though they think, and raising your hand in Teams
- land, maybe please have a roll call.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Council, I move to approve resolution 2026-25, creation of the Collaborative Jail Project Subcommittee.
- Second. All right. I'm looking at Ms. Turner-King again. So I'm going to share my screen. What I drafted
- was a resolution to, in essence, codify
- what came out of the June 11th meeting with County Council and City Council. So you are, we are requesting
- that you ratify. Oh, I'm sure no one can see that. Okay, we're asking, I'm asking or requesting council
- consider to ratify the actions that were taken. And so the whereas clauses just summarize that
- On May 26th, the council rejected the North Park purchase agreement. On June 11th, there was a joint
- meeting with Monroe County elected officials and city of Bloomington elected officials and that a working
- group. I think we're now calling the collaborative justice project group, so I will have to change the names.
- was formed. One indicates that the committee was created under Home Rule. Two identifies the membership,
- which is a representative of the commissioners, the mayor, a county council member, a Bloomington-Calman
- council member, a judge, sheriff, prosecutor, or designee, and the representative of the public defender's office.
- Section three outlines the duties as stated on June 11th, which was to help facilitate the identification
- of a possible location for construction of a new correctional center, justice center, and to identify
- the procedural steps necessary with the idea that the committee would evaluate three to four properties
- and recommend one back to the larger group that convened on the 11th. It indicates that we will strive
- to meet weekly and as long as we have quorum.
- And that the recommendation back to the larger committee will tentatively be honored before July 13th,
- which is just a month before after the first meeting. And then it indicates that the committee is subject
- to open door. I think that codifies what happened on the 11th. What I will say is that after the 11th,
- I spoke to the city attorney, Larry Allen, and we're in agreement that
- This committee can't be jointly owned by both entities. So in reviewing the meeting, what we think happened
- is that the county council formed a committee and that the city motioned to participate on that committee.
- So in speaking to Mr. Allen, I think we're in agreement that
- You can ratify this as is and as indicated on June 11th, or if you wish to make changes to the composition
- or any other, you can add clarifying duties, anything of that nature, you would have the ability to
- do so tonight. I think one thing that was not discussed on the 11th, which might be beneficial is in
- speaking with Mr. Allen, is if there was some indication of meeting procedures, do you want to limit
- you know, the meetings to an hour. Do you want to allow public comment? Things of that nature? Um, because
- I think any guidance would be appreciated by the committee. I think, um, I appreciate that. Um, and
- given the circumstances from last week, uh, we had members of city council, county council members from
- a participant from the public defender's office, Mr. Hunt, and then Ms. Wilson from the prosecutor's
- office. And I do believe that there were members of the public that were there as well. And it's a shame
- that, you know, people took some time out of their day trying to do things in good faith and didn't
- have quorum for, you know, folks letting us know at the last minute that they wouldn't be participating.
- Um, so that in itself was a little frustrating. Um, but I think in order for this group to do what we
- need to do or do what they need to do to bring back to the larger body, I would propose and listening
- to council colleagues, uh, to make a comment about that, to condense that number of people so that we
- don't have quorum and not saying that people can't participate. I'm not saying that, you know, people
- can't do that at all.
- making some of those members that are participant ex-officios so that that doesn't involve or that doesn't
- hurt our quorum. So just making sure I say that so people don't go, oh, you're kicking me off, nope.
- Just basically saying, you know, you can be an ex-officio. Obviously it makes sense for the Board of
- Judges and the Sheriff's Office to not be on that list at all since they both have sent notices
- explain in their different reasons why they are not participating. Yeah I even remember when we and
- I appreciate the spirit by which the designees were created for this and
- But I also appreciate how people have weighed in on what they want to do for their office, and that's
- fine. Everybody does that. But I specifically remember saying in the creation of that resolution that
- you couldn't have what sometimes happens in some bodies where you get kind of like a don't show veto,
- and then it can't move. And I'm not saying that anybody had that, but I think that that kind of quorum
- issue defied the spirit of it. So I almost would say,
- in that resolution that for bodies that have opted out by their own public preference that it says next
- to it. So board of judges ex officio by public publicly indicated preference. Just so we memorialize
- this a little bit. And if it and we could even add a line there until that would publicly change.
- And I think, and I know that I'm probably speaking in language that's not helpful, but I'm trying to
- think about problem solving tonight, because again, I come down to what do we gotta do to make it easier
- on Councilor Feidl and those others sitting there so that they come back with the healthiest, most stamina,
- not hair pulling kind of thing so we can keep moving here.
- Councillor Iverson and then I'll go back this way two points and as I'm looking at this is we have done
- this before with the Justice Fiscal Advisory Commission and hearing particularly what Ms. Molly Turner
- King said that it is the legal guidance from both the city of Bloomington and Monroe County that this
- is a Monroe County topic this is owned by
- organization and that other entities have pulled themselves out. It makes sense to me to have membership
- look a lot like the Sophia Travis committee or the or the JFAC where you have three council members.
- It's not a quorum. And so I think that that's a model that we've been using quite a bit that might make
- sense in this situation. And then everyone else is invited.
- We had something similar for JVAC. The last thing that I'll, the second recommendation that I'll make
- is for JVAC, we had a sunset clause that said we are no longer gonna meet at this date. And I think
- that one of the fears with another committee is that this is going to be a never ending debate society,
- that this is gonna go on and on and on and on. And I think if we allow for a sunset clause,
- and we can make the date whatever we want, that would give reassurance that we're date-oriented, that
- we're not going to let this go on for years and years and years and years, because that's what happened
- with JREC. Well, and to that point, though, we did say at the 11th meeting, and I know you weren't here,
- that we wanted them to come back within the next month.
- They have a deadline for their assignments. So we definitely have that because I think there was a deadline
- of three months and we were like, no, absolutely not. We can't do that. Perfect. Great. I see you have
- a hand Councilor Hawke, but I'm going to go down to I think Councilor Wilton, then I'll pop back around
- to Councilor Hawke next. Okay. I remember when we formed the committee and like literally that evening,
- I'm like, oh man, we should not have put
- that many people who might not come. What is the, what's the minimum number for a committee like this?
- Like could we make it, could we make everybody ex officio and then like just have this council and the
- other council each send somebody and ask for participation and consensus? I don't think there's
- an actual like minimum but I mean if you make it a two-person committee and one person can come then
- you're gonna have quorum issues so I mean I think if you go too small you could possibly have quorum
- issues and if you go too big you potentially have quorum issues. Okay so what about it needs to be does
- it need to be an odd number in that case?
- refer an odd number because then there won't be a tie vote. But I mean, ultimately, I mean, it's my
- recommendation is you at least have the commissioner of the mayor and each member of the council. So
- there's a minimum of four there. I think that makes sense. And I will say if if we've already confirmed
- of those for a quorum for a meeting tomorrow. Excellent.
- The number should be odd in the event of a vote. I'm so over votes. I swear. I mean, the purpose of
- this was consensus and recommendation and information. And if there's, I mean, they're going to come
- back in and buy a date and tell us what they came up with. I don't know. I'm going to go Councilor Hawke
- and then I'll circle back to Councilor Decker. Yes. In watching this meeting, I saw that the motion was
- that the location they were to be considering was in the city and the city limits and I don't see that
- in this document. I think it should be because that was a part of the motion. I mean that if we're gonna
- go by what the motion. I if you got two tires that are leaking on a car you got a patch two tires or
- replace it to me the issue
- on this committee, it's a quorum issue. It didn't even get a chance to begin its debate, and I'm sure
- all the people on there had lots of things they wanted to contribute. I want to point out that when
- the bell struck, the ones that were there were neatly up at the desk, had their notes ready to go, and
- they were ready to do it, but they never got to have that meeting. So we have a quorum problem. I'm
- worried that in this discussion,
- we're getting into lots of different hypotheticals to start fixing other problems and we're going to
- get a monster resolution. To me, I stand by my original motion. I'm prepared to offer it in a second
- on we have two public bodies who have indicated that they for now are opting out of this. We have a
- third that's not made a decision. I want them to make a positive on that. But I think for now, I think
- we've got the two,
- We remove that from quorum with language that indicates their ex officio until they would make some
- other declaration and then get them back to the table. But they're always welcome to come to that table.
- But I just think we need to do that. So Liz and others can have a productive discussion. And I think
- we need to be careful to overly instruct their discussion because then it starts turning into other
- things. And I think if things are naturally how they're going, they're going to start
- doing the things that have been before the public and in that debate. Am I making any sense? I don't
- know what your recommendation is for who counts for quorum. Can we pull that resolution up? I'm going
- to probably have to walk over to the screen. I've been editing it based on comments. Oh, you have? Maybe
- show it and I'll tell you if it's right. Can I get up and walk over?
- Phil Donahue used to do this. Sorry. We really have to say because the motion said in the city and we
- don't do that. You've got nothing in the city, Molly and city mom.
- I think Jerry Springer is the better reference. Okay. What I've been adding based on the conversation
- is I changed the membership to indicate the four.
- the mayor, county council member, and a common council member, and then representatives of the following
- departments are invited to serve on this working subcommittee as ex officio members, and then it says
- the sheriff, the judges, the prosecutor's office, and the public defenders. So I, on my motion, I want
- this to be a little bit different. I just want it to be sheriff and judges as ex officio. The other
- two, prosecutors, public defenders, they go right back up to that. The representative appointed members,
- they were there, they were doing the
- people's work. And then I'll let you do that. And then I'm sorry, are you making a motion? I'm going
- to once this is all right. And then down here. Previously, we had the Monroe County prosecutor and or
- her designee, which we
- aware that that Miss Wilson is going to be the destiny and then down here we're sorry sorry you're fine
- I'm complicated and then down here under be after judges and
- I just think we need to solidify what they've said. And I would put a comma judges comma. Is based on.
- and does not limit their participation. I would move that language into that resolution.
- So the sentence reads, the designation is that ex-official members is based on communication from the
- identified entities and does not limit their future participation on the working subcommittee should
- they elect to do so. Beautiful. Absolutely. So moved. So moved. What about the city? And then to Councilor
- Hawke's point, I changed, shall evaluate three to four properties and I add it within city limits.
- I changed the name because we had been calling it the Collaborative Justice Project, but when I drafted
- this resolution, I had called it the Joint Jail Project, and so we've changed the name. There are so
- many puns, and then I was just like, no. What is the name of it now? The Collaborative Justice Project
- Working Subcommittee. That's what was on the notice.
- make sure because tomorrow they have their meeting what we are doing tonight do we have a if this meeting
- were to recess and then they go into their meeting just now like this would if we vote on this and it's
- it's approved
- We're not screwing people over for a quorum tomorrow. What will happen is the notice has already been
- published for tomorrow's meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, I'll acknowledge that the composition
- has changed and that any future notice will reflect the new composition of the committee, but it does
- not impact tomorrow's. Okay. Okay. Council Hall. It was rather difficult trying to follow this online,
- but my question at the time was,
- This committee is to do one thing only, and that is to weigh in on where they think the location is
- to be. Not what's going to go on in the jail or whatever other services or anything. It is just the
- location. That's it. Otherwise, you're going to be stretching it out for the next three years. We can
- consider all kinds of things.
- location, location, location.
- to Councilor Hawks point, I changed that sentence to say the collaborative justice project
- working subcommittee shall evaluate three to four properties within city limits and recommend one location
- to the larger group of elected officials. The collaborative justice project working subcommittees focus
- shall be on location only at this time. Location of the jail. That assumed? Yes. Location of the jail.
- I'm gonna say
- of the correctional center slash, really just the jail. Here's, I said correctional center slash justice
- center. Not that I think it's this body's decision on whether to build a justice center, what is being
- built. But in part that goes into the location is how many acres do you need
- depending on what you build. So I don't want to limit it to, or I wouldn't recommend limiting it to
- just a correctional center because if the justice center is built in phases, that is going to have to
- be considered when a location is identified. I would just say jail, but. The only thing I'm concerned
- about. We'll put in here whatever you wish.
- They know exactly what they need to do by way of this. So if nobody else has any other excuse me, it
- was my voice. Other things to worry or to add to what Mr. King and what's a counselor decade and others
- have suggested I'm looking for a motion. And for clarity, you do not you're electing to not add meeting
- procedures, correct?
- one procedure that I think comes to mind, and I think we did this with maybe pack. It would be helpful
- to indicate that the committee should elect a chair and then that chair would be responsible for an
- agenda, because right now I'm not sure who is creating the agenda or or how to proceed. I created the
- agenda for the next meeting.
- I do not want to do that. So I think you can do the chair and then honestly since it's a committee that
- we are doing because councillor Feidl is the person I'm just looking at her go and tag your eight. So
- what you're saying then is that the county council representative will be the chair of the meeting.
- I mean, I think it makes it simple and clean. If we're already saying that, you know, both city and
- county attorneys have talked and said, this is kind of really something that is our responsibility,
- then I think we just designate it to her. And then of course, Councilor Feidl would be able to work
- with staff going forward to do the agenda. Yep. So now we know who the agenda person would be. How did
- we leave her?
- And that's kind of what we're saying now is this is something that we are owning word allowing everybody
- to be a you know folks to be a part of it but I think it sounds like that is something that can do or
- we just say that you I'm fine with doing it as long as I think the committee goes
- I was just going to add to that. I think it's important that we support those members, particularly trust
- counselor final in doing what she needs to do what she's done her entire career which is negotiate with
- lots of different parties and try to figure out how you get to goal and I think we trust her in that
- process with lots of latitude to get towards the goal that was a kind of an amazing discussion that
- we had a couple weeks to do two weeks back and I think the spirit of that will come out in this highlighted the
- added language. So now C has been added that says the county council member shall serve as the chair
- of the working subcommittee and be responsible for creation of the agenda. So yeah. I think we already
- have two motions on the table that accomplish what we need to do. We vote on two or just vote on one.
- Can we combine them? I accept. I'll second Councillor Deckard's motion.
- We have a motion and a, oh, did I see Ms. Turner-King's hand? Yeah, I think there's confusion about
- what the motion is. So perhaps it would be best to withdraw the motions and then make a motion to accept
- the resolution as amended. Perfect. Go for it. Perfect. I'm gonna withdraw the previous motion. Council,
- I recommend that we adopt the resolution as amended before us on the screen available to the public.
- Second. All right. We got a motion and a second to adopt the changes to the resolution as identified
- on the screen here. Is there any final questions or comments from council on this item? All right. Seeing
- none, we will move on to public comment. If there is public comment on this item, you could come forward
- to the lectern here in the room.
- You'll have up to three minutes or you can raise your hand via Teams. Okay. Seeing none, we will move
- to a roll call vote. Who seconded the- Thank you. Councilor Iverson. Iverson. Ugly when I'm angry. Okay.
- For the record, Councilor Hock left the meeting.
- Councillor Wilts. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Deckard. Yes. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor
- Iverson. Yes. Councillor Fiddle. Yes. Motion passes unanimous 6-0. Okay. One more, actually two more.
- Two more. Item Z.
- Council I move to approve resolution twenty twenty six dash twenty six amendments to the Sophia Travis
- Community Services grant agreement template. All right we got a motion and a second. Ms. Turner King.
- So I'm not going to display the resolution instead I'm going to display the template. What I will say
- is the Sophia Sophia Travis grant committee did meet
- on a date that escapes my memory, but they were there. And we went over the changes proposed to the
- template agreement. And so if the council approves this, I will execute all the agreements for the agencies
- and have them on the agenda for the commissioners to approve on July 2nd. So I don't think we, well,
- I haven't, I don't know about in the past,
- I don't know that you've seen the template agreement of the contract. Ms. Turner-King, I believe we
- met on the 17th of June. Thank you. So on the 17th of June, the committee went over these changes. And
- so the big changes are
- There's an indication that agencies must spend all of the funds by the end of 2026 to be eligible for
- next year's grant cycle. We amended what an agency could request a modification for. In the past, an
- agency could say, I would like to request a modification to either do a different project or I need
- more time. So now we've limited to you can only request more time.
- And we've outlined the process for which you can request more time. So an agency would have to request
- more time by February 1st. They would be granted an extension so that they would have to expend the
- funds no later than May 31st. And then it outlines that that request will just be forwarded
- to the commissioners because it's a pre-established date of May 31st.
- We changed the report requirement so that, so in the past there wasn't really a reporting structure
- required. Agencies just had to give a report with receipts, and so this year we're asking agencies to
- submit a PDF format not to exceed, or a report in a PDF format not to exceed 500 words, and the report
- should give a brief background of the grant, the general description of the project, and more importantly,
- like, what happened?
- The committee gives out these funds, and we don't really get to hear about the success of the projects
- until the kickoff of next year if the agency replies again. So this kind of gives the committee and
- the council some results data. We've added language that agencies will have to retain records, and this
- is really in case there's an audit or something of that nature.
- We've added language that says agencies must sign their agreement by October 30th of 2026. This is to
- eliminate the Miss Shell and myself constantly bugging agencies to come in and sign their agreement
- so that we don't carry funds over until the next year and have to appropriate and do all of that. So
- it says if you don't sign your agreement by October 30th, you will forfeit your funds.
- We added suspension and debarment language, which is required. And I think those are the major changes.
- So this is the agreement that the committee approved for use. And then the resolution says, this is
- the agreement that will be used for this year and forevermore until you tell me to change it. Any questions?
- Yes, Councilor Wilts.
- I have a question that seems ridiculous, but I need to know. Why is it required that they submit a PDF?
- Is there a reason that it has to be a PDF? It is easier for us to be able to share that information,
- because especially with the committee members and that kind of thing, or with the public, a PDF
- is shareable, whereas if it's like in Word or somebody uses Notebook or something like that, not everybody
- is compatible with that. PDF is compatible across all, is my understanding. It's also very difficult
- to get into an accessible format. And starting next April, that will be a requirement. Be careful.
- We haven't forget about accessibility because it was supposed to happen this year and got switched.
- I have nightmares about all of this right now. Okay. Any other further questions, comments on this item?
- Appreciate the work. Has everybody already done PDFs in the past? So we've not had any issues with that. Okay.
- We have had some people that couldn't submit stuff, so they bring it in and then we scan it. So if they
- can't do a PDF, we have them either bring it in physically, we scan it, or they mail it in to us and
- then we scan it in. And if we do that, like thinking about accessibility, things that I do in my other
- place, is that
- when we do things like that, we are accepting an inaccessible document. And that goes into a lot of
- issues with that, which again, I would hope that we would have some kind of guidance from TSD going
- forward with this, hopefully. I don't know that. Yeah. We can talk. Let's have a little talk. Yeah.
- Okay. All right.
- Seeing no other further questions, comments or concerns from council, I'll look to public comment. If
- there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the electing here in the room or raise
- your hand via Teams. Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor
- Henry? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes.
- Yes. Motion passes unanimous six zero. All right. Next up is so if I can procedurally what will happen
- is I will prepare all these documents and have them ready for agencies to come in and sign on Friday.
- Oh, OK. All right. Yay. OK. All right. Thank you for that update, Mr. McCain. OK. Next up is item eight eight.
- Thank you, Council. I moved to approve the Council Office's request and fund 1000-0061 County General
- Counsel for an additional appropriation of $47,123 in the services category. Second. We got a motion
- and a second, Michelle. Yes, this is an additional appropriation for our Sophia Travis grant line.
- As Molly explained earlier, we had some agencies wait and wait and wait to sign their agreements at
- the end of the year. And so some of that bled over into 2026. So we couldn't do checks until 2026. And
- so those amounts came out of our current fund. We also had to do an in-house transfer
- to a bill that was being submitted. And so this amount, 47,123, brings the Sophia Travis grant line
- back up to the 190. A $190,000. Okay. Questions or comments from Council on this item?
- to public comment, raise your hand via Teams or you can make comment here in the room. Seeing none,
- maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor Crossley?
- Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wills? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
- All right, thank you for that. Last and not certainly least,
- as council liaison updates and comments ask that we keep this brief since this has been a really long
- meeting. Um, so I'm going to look down to my left and see if we have any comments or updates from council.
- I think the only thing that's on my list that we really haven't touched on in any capacity tonight is
- the, excuse me, the direct to housing event that occurred in this community for two days on June 8th
- and 9th. I was just so impressed with the Clutch Consulting Group that came and did that. I'm very interested
- and I'm asked for more information about what they use to be successful in those 20 communities that
- they talked about. They focused on
- I think, let's see, I remember for sure that both days of that event, but I am just so excited to think
- that we could have a four-part plan that they talked about and capitalize on some of the successes where
- they've had 60% reduction in homelessness. So excited about that. Yes, of course. Thank you.
- I also appreciated that very much, and in the last couple weeks have been in some follow-up conversations
- from that, trying to figure out solutions. Again, a lot like what we were talking about with our gel
- subcommittee, that is a collaboration between a lot of different folks going there. As we enter pair
- season, as we enter the fourth, which is a beautiful time in this,
- It seems like it's going to be a hot time all of a sudden. I do want to say that my own hearts, my own
- heart and thoughts go out to all the folks that have been affected by the storm and just uncertainty
- with all that. And just thanks to all our highway workers, our first responders, all the folks that
- make all that sensible when it's not sensible. And again, I know there'll be more to figure out from that.
- of big things. Thank you. I'll just add to Councillor Decker's comments that I did go to Steinsville
- to visit the Red Cross last weekend on the tornado that occurred in the northern part of the county,
- the third that hit that corner of the county in five years.
- Again, Red Cross, United Way, our co-ads feed people. About 25 folks eating pizzas donated from Domino's
- in Ellitsville. And the call out for things like rakes and shovels and totes, like the plastic tubs
- to hold people's belongings is still there. And that will be there for weeks. The stuff goes on for
- weeks and months on end. So for folks that want to get involved, just contact our EMA or the United
- Way on how to participate with that. It's really important.
- It just seems to be our new normal. We seem to have, it's about 18 months and three tornadoes now at
- this point, which is remarkable and I think our new normal. The only other thing I had to share with
- folks is that while I was on my way back from Steinsville, it dawned on me that the Indiana Limestone
- Symposium was going on. I stopped by there. It was their 30th anniversary of people carving chunks of our
- County into things. And Steve, who did the work on repairing the piece, Memorial on the Square was the
- field director there, and Steve Turney, right? And it was neat. It was neat to see that. So that's it.
- Did they tell you what the frog is going to be? It's going to be a tombstone. Yeah. Yeah, for a family.
- That was really cool. Yeah. There's a giant toad that was being carved, among other things. But yeah,
- that was cool. Anyway, that's it. Interesting. OK.
- Yeah, again, much kudos to staff that has helped with all of the cleanup and June's not over and usually
- every year we get a really big June storm, knock on wood, hopefully it doesn't happen. But yeah, so
- that being said, I thank everybody for that, thank staff for their due diligence. Oh, and one last thing is
- Just major thank you to the City of Bloomington Community and Family Resources Department for putting
- on the annual Juneteenth celebration. What a beautiful day it was and I think I saw lots of people here,
- there in a different capacity but nonetheless that's actually something that I look forward to celebrating
- because our history is American history. So with that being said, thank you all so much for
- robust conversation tonight and we are adjourned. Thank you.