- Okay, all right, good evening, everybody. I will go ahead and call our meeting to order. Today is Tuesday,
- July 28th, 2026, and the time is 5.01, and we are going to start the Monroe County Council meeting.
- Literally here, all of us are here in the room, so yay, go team.
- And we got a lot to cover on our agenda, so we will go ahead and get started. But first, before we do
- all of that, all those that are able to stand, please stand for the reciting of our Pledge of Allegiance.
- Thank you. Next up is the item number three, which is the adoption of tonight's agenda. Does anybody
- wish to make any amendments to it? Yes, Councilor Iverson. Madam President, I have two amendments. First,
- we have a request from the commissioner's office to table items 8J and 8K. I move that we table item
- 8J, a de-appropriation and cable franchise.
- and item 8K, a fund to fund transfer to the August 11th council meeting. Second. Okay, we got a motion
- and a second on that. Any discussion on that? Great. Yes, Councilor Iverson. Do we need to, do you want
- me to do my others or? Well, we had a motion in a second, so we can vote on that. Okay.
- run down the whole gamut of all the other changes. Okay, so all those in favor of tabling those items
- from the Commissioner's office to the August 11th meeting, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. Okay, motion carries. All right. Yes, Councilor Iverson. My last change, Council, would be
- to add item 9C, a brief discussion pertaining to notice related to the adjustment of the special purpose tax.
- Second. We got a motion and a second. And then did I see somebody else? Yes. Councillor Decker. Madam
- President, I move to amend the agenda to add item 90, a discussion regarding LATCF funding in consideration
- of the streets to stability program. Second. Okay. So we have a motion and a second to add the items
- 9C, the special purpose
- tax change information and then to add items 9D to discuss the LATCF. Okay, so that's cool. All right,
- any other changes to tonight's agenda? Any other discussions on this?
- All right, and seeing none, all those in favor of amending the agenda as presented again, signify by
- saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay, motion carries.
- Next up is item four, and this is to hear from our public. So these are for items that are not on tonight's
- agenda. And so if you are here in the Net and Hill room, which there are a lot of people here and we'd
- like to see that, you can go ahead and sign in with the sign in sheet. You'll have up to three minutes.
- The monitors will let you know your three minute time frame.
- and of course you'll need to state your name for the record. And then if you are virtually via Teams
- and you would like to make public comment on tonight's, for items not on tonight's agenda, you can raise
- your hand via Teams. So while we look via Teams first, we'll go ahead and here, and I know this space.
- So just state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. Ari Bennett, I'm Operations
- Director with Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County.
- This message is for the council, but also all Monroe County officials who may be present or listening
- today. Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County and Osage Place neighborhood homeowners continue to experience
- challenges with encampments in the Thompson property that is just north of Osage Place. We believe that
- there may be a plan to help the people in the encampments find better housing options, and we would
- appreciate hearing about the status of a plan.
- We recognize that this is a difficult situation to navigate. We do not agree with the policy of the
- state law that criminalizes homelessness. It is cruel and counterproductive. Yet we are sympathetic
- to our homeowners, volunteers, and staff who feel fear and discomfort in certain interactions. I'm going
- to share some common situations that our homeowners, our employees, and our volunteers experience just
- to give that lived experience.
- People who are going to our homeowners' front porches to use hose bibs to obtain water. People scouting
- for food and water from construction site hospitality. Groups of dogs roaming the neighborhood, sometimes
- exhibiting aggressive behaviors, including growling, barking, and running towards children.
- property on Thompson Street or the Thompson property using Bernard Drive. Um and that is a stub street
- that ends at the Thompson property. Habitat has not been able to stabilize the soil in this area, and
- we've gotten notices of violation from the city of Bloomington utilities for erosion and runoff when
- it rains. Car break ins
- and tools, general concern and discomfort about safety, especially for children, general noise, including
- frequent yelling and screaming coming from the encampment areas. Our neighbors are unsure whether there
- are crimes being committed when that happens and whether they should be reporting them.
- And we have had habitat partner families who have refused lot offers to move into Osage place because
- of concern for safety of their families.
- Many of these incidents are reported to law enforcement, either by the homeowners who are experiencing
- them or sometimes when Habitat does directly, either by calling 911 or calling the city of Bloomington's
- non-emergency line. Without a solution to find better housing situation, these incidents will continue.
- We appreciate your attention and we would appreciate any information that you can share with us.
- Thank you.
- Good evening. I'm gonna start off by acknowledging that Julie Thomas is online and I would thank her
- for that and also sort of by thanking her for responding to my email. But my comments tonight are about
- my continued concern for the lack of a jail and the recent actions and some lack of love by the board
- of commissioners. So first I wanna talk about a somewhat sensitive topic.
- that being Commissioner Jones we don't know where you are I'll state for the record I live in district
- one and on all of these jail votes I'm not being represented at all and thus I'm thankful that Julie
- Thomas does you know respond to my emails but it's very concerning I recognize your health concern but
- when you told Dave on
- October 3rd that you'd attend at least three monthly meetings and you haven't done that. I just don't
- know how that's right to your constituents when you don't show up to meetings and I sympathize with
- your diagnosis. My grandfather has cancer for the third time and it's almost 80 but I just don't think
- it's responsible when my tax dollars are continually going to you but you're not representing me most
- of the time. I will credit the attendance
- that you have there, but I just don't think it's fair to your constituents that I haven't been hardly
- represented at all, but yet my tax dollars have gone to you. And secondly, I'll go on to some of my
- continued comments from
- about Commissioner Thomas, I did respond to email, but I just think if you have been in county government
- since 2008, it's now 2026, that is the time of a legal adult, and if you haven't been able to solve
- the problem, especially when we know that the ACLU has gotten more concerned about us after COVID, I
- just think you should resign. You said on May 29th, after the council voted no a second time, you would
- not speak public
- publicly about it. You then privately make a design on June 3rd that you then later present to the city
- council last week. I just don't understand how that's collaborative at all. And then the one time that
- you say you host these public forums, but the one time you did was June 25th at the Rotary Club. That
- was not a public event and that I was not at. And the only example you gave in your email was about
- the fire district when if the jail is the, I would argue the most concerning issue.
- in this last year, I don't know why you haven't had any public forums. Well, actually, I know the reason
- you haven't had any public forums is we would show up in... I just don't think the general public wants
- this. I mean, I'm happy to know that you're now considering the other sites because I don't think North
- Park is it, but I'm just really concerned. I just think we need to move the power lines now.
- At this point, I don't think we can't really do anything with the Thompson site because of that. So
- I just think whether that starts with the commissioners or the council, we should start with that. Whether
- we do housing or a jail or anything with the Thompson site because those power lines are super limiting.
- Thank you. Can you please state your name for the record? Oh, Kayden Smith. Thank you. OK.
- Thank you. Is there anybody that is online via Teams that would like to make public comment? You can
- raise your hand. See anybody there? And Lynn, last call for anybody here for public comment? All right.
- Seeing none, we appreciate those for public comment for tonight.
- Next up is item five, which are department updates. And so these are for items that are not also on
- the agenda. Each department will have up to 10 minutes to give your update to us and ask that you use
- your time wisely. So is there anybody here that would like to make an update on items not on the agenda
- or via Teams that
- Good evening, Council colleagues. So I would like to come before you regarding our 144 letter. So as
- required by law, the Auditor's Office has presented the 2027 form 144s, a budget estimate of proposed
- salaries and wages to the Board of Commissioners. So our role in this process is to provide a recommendation
- to the Monroe County Council for consideration prior to setting the salaries and budget for 2027.
- We appreciate the council's commitment to ensure that all Monroe County employees are paid equitably
- and adequately, reflecting the current local employment market and the local cost of living. We also
- understand the fiscal pressures that county government faces. The state budget agency issued a growth
- quotient, a six-year increase in non-farm income of 6%. While not all county employee wages are derived
- from property tax revenue,
- The GQ represented represents an increase in tax revenue for the county. We recommend a salary increase
- of six percent from Monroe County employees. The consumer price index or CPI increased five percent
- in the Midwest from May twenty twenty five to May twenty twenty six which demonstrates the impact of
- inflation on employees paychecks. In some we recommend that the council provide an increase for all
- employees except those who have statutorily mandated salaries of six percent.
- We asked the council to ensure relevant salaries for employees who hold similar positions at the city
- of Bloomington and Monroe County are equitable. And we recommend that the council continue to work towards
- pay equity and ensure all full-time county employees earn a living wage. We're proud every day of Monroe
- County employees and the work they do for our community. As our colleagues on the county council know,
- ensuring adequate pay and keeping up with the cost of living will have an impact on our ability to retain
- an excellent workforce. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions or comments for
- Commissioner Madera on a presentation. Yes, Councilor Hawke. Yes. Have have you or your staff reviewed
- our projected revenue for all funds, not just the frozen property tax levy funds, because that we have
- employees throughout all the different funds. And so I think it's.
- I hate to say irresponsible, but there it is. If you haven't studied the finances, then I think it's
- disrespectful to the council to suggest 6%. I think last year that was the suggested 8%. And we're sitting
- here knowing that when our financial advisor came to us and first of all said 2% and then during that
- meeting, he got an update that made the 2% not even possible.
- So I think we ought to have stronger reliance on the financial expert. And I just would like for the
- county commissioners to also rely on a financial expert as we do. And I'm not expecting you to know,
- but you pay people to know. So I just would hate for the people, the employees of this
- the county to think, well, commissioners want to give us six or eight or whatever, and then we have
- to say there's not enough money for that. And so I just would like for us to be better colleagues, better
- working partners in all that we do for county government, including its employees. Thank you. Yes, Councilor Wilks.
- I've been on this council for a number of years now and every year we receive the same letter with a
- recommended cost of living increase for employees. And I remember when I first started, it seemed like
- a more reasonable percentage and one more in line with what we could do. 3% was the norm being recommended
- and it increased a lot.
- And while I don't find it disrespectful, I know it's part of the process. I do feel obligated to point
- out that we do have a lot of other things to take into consideration besides the factors that you listed.
- And as I feel compelled to say every year, no one wants more to give a hearty raise to our employees
- than we do. I think we
- would all vote in favor of extraordinary raise because we know how hard things are out there,
- so to speak. But I do want to acknowledge that Councilor Hawk is absolutely correct on the facts and
- it's gonna be really difficult to even come close, I think, this year.
- Councilor Henry and then Iverson. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Commissioner Madera, for reading
- into our record, the letter we received. I echo the sentiments of my two colleagues on the left and
- right here. That's literal, not been both, I guess, right? Anyway, it's interesting. I've been doing
- a bit of a deep dive on these constitutional and statutory roles we hold.
- You know, and I wonder about this letter if it's some sort of leftover from 100 years ago that when
- the commissioners used to decide all of it on your side of the table and there was no such thing as
- a council. You know, how we have a letter suggesting a salary increase but it's on us to go find it.
- It's an interesting parlor game we're doing here. But where I want to take it in the 21st century anyway
- is where I think Councilor Woltz was going with the idea of total compensation.
- Look at things like the self-insurance in the county and the escalating costs and our inability really
- to really ratchet that down the past few cycles. It's really incumbent on the commissioner's office
- to understand the budget for the whole 12 months of what that insurance increase is. It is the total
- compensation of our employees in the county. And so that's something we absolutely have to hold of as
- our tax base changes. The MLGQ, yeah, for this year, it's interestingly generous, but we know that there's
- a lot of changes coming in tax code.
- One of which, of course, is what we do with the funds we currently have, like the edit, that we need
- to put to work and fully expend to make sure we're able to offer that total compensation to our employees.
- So I hope that when we get into budget time, you know, we are having a lot of communication about the
- many ways we can put the edits to work to add to, if we can't do a robust COLA, how we are adding to
- the total compensation of our employees.
- Lastly, I'd add to that pile things like telework, which is a little disjointed. I understand that there
- are some county employees that are able to do some work from home even on cycle with filing well right
- now, which is interesting. But as we have a closed facility right now, just making sure that we have
- options available to keep our employees working here, even if the compensation is not in the market
- compared to other counties. But thank you for coming in on that.
- We're clearly getting into budget season. It's on our minds. Thank you, Mr. President.
- Thank you, Commissioner Mandira, for being here and reading the letter that we receive every year. I
- wanted to remind the public that many of the topics that have been discussed in this departmental update
- were discussed on the June 30th Long-Term Finance Committee meeting. That is recorded for perpetuity
- and for you to go back and review.
- That's where we went into detail on a lot of the topics that we discuss in budget seasons every single
- year. And of course, Commissioner Madeira, this is not directed at you, but rather the public. I will
- also remind folks that on September the 2nd, which is about a month away,
- We are going to be starting our budgets. So the first budget hearing is about a month away. So if folks
- want to take it to heed what my colleagues are saying, I would certainly encourage all of you to go
- back and review that June 30th long-term finance committee meeting. Thank you. Anybody else with any
- questions or comments for Commissioner Mendeer? Yes. I don't have a question. Thank you for being here,
- Commissioner.
- on reading the letter. My colleagues have expressed some strong thoughts on where this is in the process.
- Here's one thing I don't want to get lost in kind of the shuffle of the budget is that for county employees
- who watch these discussions exceedingly intently, this council is grateful for your service and your
- work. And part of that is a record of pouring through this budget to figure out what
- or adjustments, or in certain years in the past, we had to do retention bonuses and training, all sorts
- of things that we've had to do over a number of years. Some of us have done this a number of years,
- but that effort is to speak to county employees about where it matters, what they take home in the best
- way that we can.
- we're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that.
- We're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that.
- We're going to be able to do
- And it's like we're walking into quicksand while dodging pies that are being thrown at each other. That,
- too, is part of our discussion. And I think that that discussion has done best when everybody remains
- at every table talking openly and accurately about all those things. And that's what I'm going to be
- doing in the next few months alongside these colleagues, that colleague, and a few other colleagues
- along the way. And I think that's the order of the day. But in that wash, I don't want to get
- our problems, our mistakes, I don't want it to get lost that we are grateful to the folks that make
- things happen. And we have to think about all the conditions in which they make it happen. Yes, Councilor
- Feidl. So I come from the labor representation field, as many of you know, and I can't help but wonder
- if we might want to think about doing a survey of our employees.
- I mean, I know that when I represented folks earlier in my career, that you'd be surprised what it is.
- They really wondered, and it wasn't always money. And so I don't know if that is something that's possible
- to do for the workers here, but I would certainly like to explore that avenue. Yeah, I don't say much
- what everybody is saying.
- among, upon, rather, the most wonderful time of the year, and it's a lot to take into consideration.
- While I have you, Commissioner Thomas, I do want to, okay, I just wanted to ask a question because I
- like watching CATS TV and I like watching government, and I noticed last week that you and Commissioner
- Thomas went to the city council to present Hopewell as a possible jail site.
- I was a little bit surprised on that, but I guess out of curiosity, I just wanted to ask while you're
- here, has anybody from city council, what feedback have y'all received from that presentation? I would
- say that the feedback has been in some ways mixed. We've had one
- city council member reach out with useful feedback and one reach out with primarily negative feedback.
- And then the rest have been silent. Have you all talked with Mayor Kerry Thompson about your proposal?
- Actually, the mayor has invited us to try to schedule a meeting and we are in the process of doing so.
- OK, I'm just I was curious because I think I know I heard from some county or
- from some colleagues in the city, and they were just as surprised as I was in watching that. So I just
- wanted to ask while we add you. So I guess stay tuned. Okay. All right. Anything else for the good of
- the order for Commissioner Thomas said anybody or sorry. Well, Commissioner Thomas is online,
- but Commissioner Madeira. All right. We'll let you get to it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Last
- call for any other department updates for items not on tonight's agenda.
- Seeing none, we will proceed. We don't have anything for consent agenda items this evening, so we will
- go into our conversations that we will have for the hiring freeze review. And up first is the clerk's
- office. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the clerk's
- clerk's office request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1215-0062
- election fund election board one part-time voter registration clerk position. Second. We got a motion
- and a second and we are joined by the chief deputy clerk Tana Branham.
- Good evening, Council. Thanks for having me. So I hope this is quick and easy. So this is a request
- to fill a vacant part-time voter registration position. This was previously approved to be filled by
- you earlier this year in April, I think it was. We posted the position. We accepted resumes. We did
- interviews. We found a great candidate. We hired him. He worked for one day and then unfortunately had
- a family health
- emergency and he just felt that he wouldn't be able to fulfill the duties of the role. So he resigned
- and the position is now vacant and we're now requesting to fill it once again. Thank you very much for
- that. Any questions on this item? Yes, Councillor Hawke. Yes, in a related incident, I think some of
- us were informed that the voter registration office was closed
- and many wondered, did they really think that because the justice building was closed that the showers
- building people didn't have to go to work? And before I would suggest we spend one more penny, we find
- out who gave them the permission to stay home. I'm not faulting the employees because I'm sure they
- did what they were told, but who told them that? And yes, it's a budgetary question because we're being asked to
- bill of the slide, plus money out of that election fund, and that's where these folks were getting paid
- from, I would believe, from the election fund. So do you have an answer as to who gave them the order
- to stay home? Yes, so that was Clerk Nicole Brown decided to close, and that was because we had a few
- voter registration people who were going to be out on vacation anyway this week, and then I wouldn't
- you know, so we so we just decided to go ahead and close with the justice building being closed on,
- and we wouldn't have any employees who would be able to help potentially help out any issues that would
- arise down in election central because they wouldn't be in. Well, certainly there were folks there that
- could have made up whatever shortfall. But what that is simply a use of county taxpayers that just went
- out the window and it's not acceptable.
- And remember, that that showers building has a lot of county employees working there. And many of them
- noticed, oh, we had this group who were taking a day off and getting paid. And so did they go back to
- work today? There were one employee. One employee did go back today. I remember correctly. But the office
- itself was not open. Just not acceptable.
- I understand you didn't make that choice. If it had been you, I was going to be very unhappy with you.
- It was a very poor choice and disrespectful of the people who paid the bills around here, and that's
- the people of this county. Thank you, Councilor Hawke, for bringing that to our attention. Councilor Iverson.
- I want to say that as one of your liaisons, I was disappointed to hear that this position, or the person
- filling this position only lasted one day. And I think this position is vitally important, given the
- fact that where the workforce is right now. So we approved this the last time, and I'm looking forward
- to approve it again.
- Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah, we were very disappointed. We were very excited to have
- this candidate on board. He was highly qualified and it was just a very unfortunate, you know, so it
- is what it is. Anybody else? Yes, Chancellor Decker. I have one question. So much of what this division
- of your office does comes down to making sure that any voter when they go in, they're guaranteed the
- administration of elections.
- has a Democrat or Republican involved in that. Does filling this assist you all with doing that? Yes,
- this would be a Republican position which, yeah, which we do need to fill in the office to ensure that
- we have an equal balance. Okay, thank you. Anybody else? Councillor Feidl. So the fact that employees
- were told to not work whenever
- the money come from? Do they have to take their time off? Or how is this happening that they get paid?
- I believe it will be an emergency closure. She. That that means go ahead for clarity. If the employees
- had already scheduled vacation times, they will not receive emergency time. So how many employees are
- we talking about that are being paid on the emergency? Let's see, it would be two full.
- one full-time employee and one part-time employee. For how many days? For three days. Okay, Ms. Turner-King,
- I'm gonna look to you and ask a question. I know we are all in here, so since it was brought up and
- how is that possible that that is something like that could
- happen, um, in which a building that's not even affected by what is happening in the low justice building,
- um, be able to do something like that. Cause I mean, essentially we're saying that they've been affected
- and that's not true.
- I don't have an answer right off the top of my head, but I'm happy to research it and talk with the
- board of commissioners to figure out how that happened. I know that the commissioners work with the
- board of judges in these closures, and so I don't know how other elected officials play into
- that calculation. Thank you. I think I saw Councilor Wilk's hand go up, and then I'll go to Councilor Decker.
- asking the same thing. So I think if we could get more information, that'd be great. Okay. I'm glad
- somebody else is thinking that too. Okay. Counselor Decker. My question would be this. I know that we
- have all separate elected officials, which is the root of sometimes a lot of our headaches that we have,
- right? But even with separate elected officials, I would be very curious, and maybe this is something
- that legal could look at and maybe advise us on.
- Can our commissioners not adopt an ordinance that says the hours of our buildings are open into the
- public? I'll give you a wild scenario. I'll pick on the recorder's office because Amy Swain is the best
- in the world, but you get a wild recorder elected, not named Amy Swain. We'll say that.
- And they just say, January 1st, I took an oath and I'm never going to turn that lock and that key again
- to open that door. Employees are not employees. Isn't there a requirement legally that a door open to
- an office? And if not, can we make one? And I'm not asking you to answer all that, but surely to God,
- there is a way to make sure that our services are open to the people beyond this kind of scenario here.
- So that's probably more homework than that. I'm not sure I want a response, but I will look into it.
- Council Henry, and then next. Thanks. I'm trying to find a way to tie the bends together here. So do
- you know what your average voter registration has been looking like lately per day? Like how many people
- are coming in to register?
- I do not know. I mean, most of the people who are coming into the office are candidates and candidate
- staff who are coming in for those kind of reasons, filing relief reasons. We don't have a lot of people
- coming in to register in the office. We'll get voter registration forms delivered to us.
- to process. I know we're all, we got a wild hair here, but I feel like I got to chime in. So I think
- the answer, maybe Councilor Deckard, is looking at a COOP. It's a continuity of operations or COOP for
- the county. Because you could go the other direction and say, we have another clerk facility that we
- could have had people working at, at the showers building. Instead of closing both, you could have moved,
- like whatever was not
- courthouse related or not essential to those computers. That's not you as the chief deputy, but in a
- way it is to dust off some of the county's continuity of operations plans that probably haven't been
- looked at since I wrote them 20 years ago with contractors here. But it's some of it. I mean, how do
- you keep things open if we have to close and do other services elsewhere? And I tie it back to, yeah,
- I mean, if right now we're kind of in maintenance mode between elections, there's not like a line out
- the door of voter
- registration or people dropping forms. I mean, we obviously weren't offering that service for a few
- days. I think that's probably where some of the heartburn is up here. But just thanks. Councillor Hogg.
- Yes. Just as a heads up and I don't know who's on vacation, but I think what you're going to find is
- if they get back from vacation and they took a part of their vacation day to be gone and another person
- got paid, emergency pay, and they didn't have to take part of their vacation day. I mean, I'm just saying
- there's situations where you have to look at the big picture, and it's just regrettable that this happened.
- And I'm not faulting the employees because they do as instructed. All right. Any other questions or
- comments on this item?
- Seeing none, we will move to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can raise your
- hand via Teams or make an appearance here in the room. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call
- vote. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk? No. Councilor Wilts? Yes.
- Thank you very much council. All right next up is item B from courts. Council I move to open for discussion
- and possible approval of the court's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire
- and fund 1000-0225 county general courts one full-time case management coordinator position. Second.
- Hello. We are joined by a good old crew. Yes. I first want to start off by introducing our deputy court
- administrator. This is Shani. She was the previous case management coordinator. So we're trying to fill
- that position.
- The courts are requesting to approve to fill the vacant case management coordinator's position. This
- position performs critical administrative and case management functions that support court administration
- and ensures the efficient operation of the courts. Primary responsibilities include analyzing, evaluating,
- and reporting statistical court data to the Indiana Supreme Court, compiling and distributing daily
- arrest lists and defendants and custody reports to appropriate parties, and ensuring compliance with
- the state criminal statute and reporting requirements.
- The position also coordinates court-ordered mental health evaluations by communicating with psychiatrists
- and psychologists, scheduling appointments, monitoring the timely receipt of evaluation reports, and
- distributing reports to the appropriate parties. In addition, this position prepares and maintains
- documentation necessary for invoice processing and payment and performs other daily administrative duties
- essential to effective operations of court administration.
- I was going to look to Judge DeKoff here and see if you had anything to add to this as well. No.
- As usual, Jamie has done a very succinct and thorough job of explaining it to you. So I'm here basically
- if you have any questions that you can't answer. Thank you very much for that. All right. And look into
- counsel to see if anybody has any questions on this item.
- I don't have any questions. I just wanted to say that the liaisons met with these three wonderful people
- last week and talked over this and a number of other issues around their budget and their staffing.
- And they've done a really nice job laying everything out. I hope everyone's looked through the
- I think it's a little bit of a case. Yes Council log. Yes and not just this position, but other positions
- that are being requested this evening. Uh. We've seen this happen every
- are coming before we get into budget hearings and ask to have slots filled when we've asked them to
- hold back for a while. And it seems to me that if we're going to be fair to all departments, we don't
- start filling these slots until we've gone through the budget session, then we decide which positions
- are the most needed for whatever dollars we have to work with. Because if we indeed move forward with
- some select
- the other departments who are waiting. And so this is really when you're in a situation where we were
- in. More than $5 million deficit for this year. And we were told to watch what we were
- that we would at least wait until all the budgets are turned in, see what the total requests are, look
- at the total revenue report from the auditor's office and see what money we have to work with. Because
- otherwise, we will be moving forward with some departments and then tell everybody else, you know, cut.
- So I think it's a matter of fairness to everyone to wait for budget.
- I'm guessing that the budget isn't part of our packet, but I mentioned that we reviewed their preliminary
- budget for next year as part of this meeting. And I'm not trying to play favorites, but I do feel like
- it's relevant that that was a big part of the discussion and where they've been able to hold back on
- some things and not feel averses
- pushing some things forward because of a need. And I'm not gonna make your own case for you at all,
- but I just wanted to point to the fact that they've been very communicative and provided information
- specifically when they first submitted the request. And my response was, I think you need to make more,
- provide more information so that council can think about this from a broader perspective.
- at four positions that we will not be filling next year so and with that fiscal impact combined of those
- four positions is two hundred and eighty one thousand fifty dollars and I'm to council will to this
- point though I will also say like you all have been one of the very few departments that have been very
- willing to like work and not feel things and want to actually one of the first ones that took a
- full-time and switched it to part-time as well. So, I mean, to be fair, like, you all are doing that
- with us in light of all the other things, and I wish other departments would take a note out of y'all's
- book, but I think there has been a little bit of a give between y'all, and I really appreciate that,
- and I appreciate the fact, you know, in the packet that I had a lot more in-depth,
- I was looking forward for that, so I appreciate that. Yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you. I would just
- add, just because it came up, I appreciate the budget preview just there. I think that helps to,
- you know, very rough order of magnitude balance numbers in my head as I'm looking at position X,
- but 200,000 off to the side Y. So I just appreciate that preview of what's to come there and what will
- look like a reduced budget on some of those account lines. So thank you.
- All right. Seeing none, we'll move 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. Seeing none, may we please have a roll
- call vote? Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hogg? No. Councillor Wilz? Yes. Councillor Henry?
- Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes, majority 6-1.
- Thank you. Next up is item C, also still with the court. Council, I move to open for discussion and
- possible approval of the court's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire,
- in fund 1000-0225, County General Court's one full-time court bailiff position. Second. All right, we
- got a motion and a second. And what would you all like to add to this item?
- So we have a bailiff that's going to be retiring August 31st. So in anticipation for that, we're asking
- that this position be granted to fill. And due to the retiring employee's payout obligation, the replacement
- bailiff will not even be able to begin until October the 2nd. But we want to start getting feelers out
- now. All right. Yes, Councillor Hoppe. Yes.
- Of course, it continues to baffle me why this isn't under the Sheriff's Department, as I've said before.
- But indeed, because this has to do with the safety of the courts, I'll be supporting this because we
- have to provide safety to the courts.
- somebody gets confused about why I say yes on some and no on others, there's the answer. Public safety
- will come first for, not just for our employees, but of course for the employees, but for all those
- who are attending in the court. You need a competent bailiff. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Councilor Decker.
- I had just a quick question. Is the bailiff under the courts because you have to be able to command
- them right quick? We do. Yes. Well, that speaks to that.
- So, and then the other thing, how many bailiffs do you have roughly? We have seven. Thank you. Welcome.
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. I want to take a point just real clear to commend you on the detail that Council
- Member Wilts just brought up. I love a good org chart, and there's not only an org chart for this year,
- but there's an organizational chart for next year included in our packet. And it looks like you paid
- really close detail to not only the salary changes from year to year, which I really appreciate that
- spreadsheet, but also lastly, the savings, which predominantly come from step increases. That's really
- good to see too. So thank you for including all that detail that Council Member Wilts referenced.
- Seeing no other further questions or comments on this item from Council, I'll move on to public comment.
- If there's public comment, raise your hand via Teams or come forward to the room. Now maybe please have
- a roll call vote. This is on the bailiff. Yes. Thank you. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Next up item D. Council I'm
- going to be combining items D and E into one motion. I move to open for discussion and possible approval
- of the court's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1000-0225
- County General Courts
- one full time floating court reporter position and simultaneously amend the 2026 salary ordinance to
- add new account line 14176 floating court reporter and remove account line 14167 associate court reporter.
- All right, we got a motion and a second. Go ahead. So we are requesting to have vacant
- court reporter position filled and retitled the floating court reporter and although the court will
- lose one court in twenty twenty seven the workload associated with that court will remain and will be
- redistributed among this existing courts. As a result continued staffing support is necessary to maintain
- efficient court operations and timely case processing. The floating court reporter will provide flexible
- support across both criminal and our civil courts. Assisting were needed to ensure continuity of services
- and adequate staff coverage. Duties will include monitoring and processing
- processing odyssey, e-file daily queues to ensure timely case updates and workflow completion, processing
- and issuing orders through the Indiana Court Technology Extra Net, known as INSIGHT, answering and directing
- incoming phone calls, and providing assistance to court users, the public, and other stakeholders. Additional
- responsibilities will include processing expungement cases, preparing and reviewing various reports,
- and performing the daily duties traditionally signed to court reporters.
- position will also provide courtroom and office support as operational needs require. This position
- as a floating court reporter is necessary to maintain operational efficiency, support timely case processing,
- and ensure adequate staffing coverage in both the courtroom and our court offices. Thank you for that
- explanation. I'll go Councilor Iverson and then Hawk. I want to emphasize the second sentence you read.
- Because I think that's really important. And you added more detail in the packet in your narrative.
- And I just want to make sure that this number is correct, that the workload associated with the court
- that's being lost is currently 2,393 cases. As of July 1st, yes, that was our pending caseload for a
- court that we're going to lose. So the fact that Monroe County is losing a court, does that mean that
- any of those cases are going to go away? No, they will not go away.
- They will not follow that judge out of that justice building like little ducklings. They will be there.
- All 2300, which is six months, which means we have six more months of filings in that court. And the
- other thing that I want to emphasize is this, is that with that comes changing numbers, changing data,
- doing input.
- The Supreme Court requires a great deal of us in terms of that. So it is not just here is a court, here
- is now another court, it involves a great amount of work. And so it is necessary that we have the ability
- to do that because those cases as of right now are 2,300 by the end of the year that will be more than that.
- our concern. And I will also say to you that losing that court is also new to the Supreme Court. This
- is the first time that they are experiencing this as well, that we have got to absorb what is left of
- what we are doing. So it's going to be a tremendous amount of work. The court administration has been
- working alongside the Supreme Court as well as trial court technology to ensure a smooth transition
- come January 1st.
- Thank you for extrapolating. I think it's vitally important that that gets out to the public. Yes, so
- much that questions that can be asked. But one, I will ask of the auditor. When we were being presented
- the numbers from our financial advisors, I thought, and I'm not looking at it, but I was thinking
- that he included in the revenue and expense items that we would have a savings of about a half a million
- dollars. Is that right? About a half a million dollars because we would no longer have the additional,
- what was that number? I'll have to look into that. I can't think of the number off the top of my head,
- but I will get that for you.
- I'm usually pretty good at numbers, but I don't have it memorized. I just thought that was quite a lot.
- And it probably included benefits and so forth. And we were advised early on that if any position needed
- to be filled in the court that's going to be vacant, that we do it on a temporary basis so that it was not
- the people who were hired would know it was a temporary position until the end of the year. Now I understand
- this is gonna go through. You had six people go say yes. I just think people need to know why I'm gonna
- say no. I do recall that our consultant did say we would have a cost savings from losing a court. I'm
- wondering, do you have
- numbers on that that you can share because I do so with our proposed budget even though we're going
- to be asking for some increases in certain line items our overall cost saving is going to be two hundred
- and four thousand nine hundred and twenty three dollars and I just want to point out since 2025 between
- 2025 26 and our proposed budget for 27 we will have reduced our budget by four hundred and sixty eight
- thousand five hundred and fifty nine dollars
- like me to repeat that. Can you say that slow? Both numbers you had were really important and I would
- love to hear them. So with our proposed budget for 2027, including the positions we're asking for, increases
- in certain line items, we will have still reduced our budget by $204,923.
- 25, 26, and our proposed budget for 27, we will have reduced our budget by $468,559. Welcome. Yes, Councilor
- Iverson. And I do want to remind Council that that is in the packet in a spreadsheet, particularly as
- it pertains to this item,
- That's on page 30 of the packet that's available to the public. Those numbers you just read out. Just
- to be fair, I do think it is worth following up on Councillor Hawke's question because I don't remember
- the number, but my thought was that it was closer to a quarter million, not a half million, and this
- is very close to that. That's my recollection as well, but we'll follow up and get those numbers.
- Seeing no other further questions or comments on this item, we'll move to public comment. You can raise
- your hand via team so you can come forward to the microphone in the room. Seeing none, maybe please
- have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor
- Cross? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes.
- No. Motion passes majority six one. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can I take one more minute? Yes,
- I want to and I think this kind of goes to the discussion that happened previous to us. The is closed.
- The courts are not. We have we are on
- minimalistic what we are doing, but for me to shut the courts, for the judges to shut the courts requires
- the special petition filed with the Indiana Supreme Court, who then has to grant us the permission to
- do so. To do that is involved, and so we try not to do it. But I also want to point out that on Friday
- afternoon when this took place, I have been around a long time. I have seen a lot of things. This was awful.
- There was water just by the gallon full, just spreading everywhere. And it was toilet water. I was there.
- They were there. There was others who were there. And we were trying our best. It was kind of like watching
- a blah movie. And then Dave Gardner showed up and shut off the water. Had that not happened, he tells
- us that it would have just continued down offices to offices.
- Yesterday, there were these folks and other court reporters and other office staff and me and other
- judges who were in there taking everything off of bookshelves, desks, et cetera, because they are ripping
- out carpeting. They are ripping out baseboards. They are trying to put us back together. I tried to
- negotiate for Wednesday. They convinced me Thursday. So they are telling us that we will be able to
- have the courts
- operational, we will still have people in jury rooms, court personnel in jury rooms, in the court conference
- room, so that we can function and proceed. I was supposed to have a jury trial next week. I contacted
- the attorneys and told them that cannot happen because I don't have space right now to put them. We
- were concerned there was a health hazard, which was also addressed and is being addressed.
- So we are not closed, because to close us requires the Indiana Supreme Court. But we are not
- fully operational, because we cannot be. So the prosecutor is doing the probable causes from all this
- time. I'm the duty judge this week, so I have released people from jail. We are still doing that so
- that we can continue to function as best as we can.
- but I do want to commend Jayma and Shannon and others in court services and there was other court personnel,
- other court staff, other judges who we were there because the more quickly we could get our stuff done,
- then they could start being there and they have been working on it and working diligently on it. We
- will not be
- They're working on court services first because that is the one where contact is first with the public.
- But we fully anticipate that Thursday we will have the justice building open, but definitely we will
- be. But I would like to also point out that when this happens, we now have to play catch up.
- because we have got to now re-dock it, re-do, re-inform so that we can keep those timelines where they're
- supposed to be. And by not shutting the courts, those timelines continue, which is important to the
- people who have business with the courts. So I just wanted to point out that I know that it sounds like
- when people say, well, you know, you're getting paid because you're shut down, you're not doing anything,
- it's because we can't fully operate.
- because of the hindrance, basically, of what this was. But I wanted to mention the court personnel and
- people who, like you, want us to be, we don't like sitting idly by. This causes for us a lot more work
- and a lot more headache, and we don't like it either.
- I just wanted to bring that to your attention, because it's a process, and it's a process again, and
- here we are still. But just so that you're aware. If I can, Judge DeKalb, thank you very much for explaining
- that and bringing that to our attention and the public's attention as well. And I'm sorry that we're
- having to go through this all over again. It wasn't your fault. Yeah.
- I just wanted to make sure that you mentioned like courts are on and people are calling and asking questions,
- and I've had people from the public ask questions and Mother job. We've gotten phone calls from people
- thinking that we are dealing with that. For folks because I think I read in the Herald times like there's
- a number that people could call. Is there a certain number if I am a person that has to be rescheduled and I'm
- Who should they contact to get that information? Right now the extension that they've put out there
- is the 349-2615, but we don't have anybody able to get to that phone right now because it is completely
- blocked. And there's folks that are in there working and we've been asked to stay out. So. Yes, Councilor Hawk.
- First of all, for you to know what my feelings on this, it's very small as compared to what you've been
- through, but when the sewer backed up at my house, same kind of situation because it was all under the
- concrete and they had to bust up the concrete and it was everywhere and everything had to be sanitized.
- There was nothing you could save. So what you're going to save of paperwork, I don't see how it could
- be. I'm just saying,
- What a horrible situation. Now, I'm probably not going to be everybody's favorite person when I say
- this, but this is going to happen again and again as long as the jail is above the courts or the offices.
- Because we know this has happened in part before, maybe not this bad. But there are those who seem to
- want to clog up the toilet stools on purpose. I mean, they get bored. They've got to have something
- to do, I guess.
- We don't know what goes downhill. And that came right down there. And it's a nasty, expensive situation.
- It's not fair to the public, and it certainly is not fair to the people who live there. And like I said,
- I didn't ask anybody if I could say this. I just said it, because it's not right. And it cannot, when
- we get through with doing another jail, which we are going to do,
- Do not put the courts or any offices below the jail. Anybody who understands water goes downhill, well,
- you know what went with this water. It went right down their heads, and it's not right. Yes. I just
- want to state that the motion and everything that was voted on had a salary ordinance amendment. And
- because that has a salary ordinance amendment,
- it has to require a second reading. So this will be back on the agenda for 8-11. Okay. Thank you. I
- just can't. Just to avoid. Well, thank you. We appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay.
- And I think Judge DeKoff, you might be sticking around for . . . What I'm going to do now is my probation
- chief and her deputy chief and
- title is. They're going to sit up here and I'm going to sit right behind them because they're again
- who have prepared all the paperwork for you but I'm also here to answer any questions or to be available.
- So I'm going to let them all sit up here and I'm just going to sit right back here. Okay thank you Judge.
- All right next up is item F from the probation department. Council I move to approve the probation
- department's request and fund 9142-0000 community correction grant even to create a count line 17801
- part-time.
- Thank you. All right, we got a motion and a second, and we are joined by Ms Linda Brady and her wonderful
- staff. Thank you very much. Good evening. And on my left is Becca Strickland. She's the community corrections
- executive director and deputy chief probation officer. On my right, Anthony Williams, another deputy
- chief probation officer. And they are our financial team, and they are just amazing. And I'm very grateful
- for both of them. So this request is
- I hope a quick one for you all. I came before you in March because we had probation officer assistants
- who run our day reporting and drug testing program. We were down to two probation officer assistants
- at that time. You gave me permission to hire up to four part timers up to 56 hours per week. By the
- time we got them hired, the two probation officer assistants on staff
- we were back to kind of being in the hole again. So because we didn't fill some of our Community Corrections
- field officer positions throughout 2026, there's extra money that won't be spent. And this user lose
- money will either use it or have to give it back to the state. And Anthony has figured out that about
- $42,500 would go and spent in our Community Corrections grant, and we have received back has received
- permission from the state.
- the D O C to be able to use that to fund probation officer assistance. So this request not only would
- save county general to the tune of $37,403, and that's an appropriation we already have for part time,
- but also would
- to reduce the money that we need from special purpose lit, public safety lit, and all department user
- fee funds for part time staff. So it's basically a savings across every place we've got part time staff.
- So the request is to create new community corrections grant line item for part time and permission from
- you all to fill up to 56 hours per week for up to four probation officer assistance. This is just to
- add the new account line, sorry.
- Oh, oh, so we're separating the two. Okay, new account line. Any questions for Brady on this item? Yes,
- Councilor Iverson. Just real quick, Mr. Thank you for getting all the documentation into the packet.
- That email exchange was pretty fun to read. So thank you for that.
- Yes, what other things could you do with this money? Could you perhaps put it into we know where we've
- got the shortfall and that's in providing insurance for employees. Is there a way that we can use that
- to help fill that gap between what is needed for the health insurance? Rather than because it looks
- like what we're doing is
- allowing for positions to be filled with this. And when that money is gone, it's not going to be there
- the following year. There's this money that's left over. Well, I have to say that these positions are
- important, that we cannot continue to run our day reporting program in our drug testing program with
- only four probation officer assistants. Before the hiring freeze, we had 15
- that we would still need staff to be paid some place, which it's budgeted right now in county general.
- So. Yeah, we could go ahead and spend the 37,000. We would still need staff to be paid some place, which
- it's budgeted right
- dollars plus that's already budgeted in County General, plus the money in public safety elsewhere, if
- the DOC would allow us to do that. But again, we still need the staff. Seeing no further questions or
- comments on this item, we'll go ahead and take 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.
- Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? This is to add an account line. You can do a voice
- vote. Okay. All those in favor of adding this account line signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. No. Okay. And motion carried 6-1. All right. Thank you. Next up is item G.
- Council, I will be combining items G and H in one motion. I move to open for discussion and possible
- approval of probation's request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire four full-time
- probation officer positions and fund 1,000-0226 county general probation and two full-time probation
- officer positions and fund 2504-0000 court alcohol and drug user fees as outlined on the agenda. Second.
- We got a motion and a second. What would you like to add to this? Okay. I'm Kim. I'm confused because
- when are we going to talk about the probation officer assistance filling them? I didn't see that on
- the agenda elsewhere because that was a request.
- what I have is the probate yeah the probation that was just read in I don't have anything with regards to the
- I believe it got missed. So while we're looking at that, while Steph is looking at that, why don't we
- just go ahead and do this and then we can come back, circle back. Perfect.
- Well, prior to the Monroe County hiring freeze, the probation department had 87 employees with 71 full
- time and 16 part time. And as of today, we have 24 staff vacancies. That is a 28% vacancy rate overall
- and a 20% vacancy rate for full time alone. And we have done a number of things to reassign duties and
- increase workload
- decreased workload where it's publicly safe to do so. And this is something we talked about with our
- county council liaisons and also Liz was able to join us for that meeting as well. We talked a lot about,
- should we go back before the county council as these vacancies have occurred and decided, no, we would
- wait and just as you had asked us to and see, can we reorganize the department? Are there duties that
- can be reorganized?
- And we worked with our presiding judge, Judge Decoff, Judge Harvey, our juvenile judge, the Criminal
- Division Board of Judges. And we reexamined duties across all divisions and all units across the department.
- And we did make some operational changes to the department. But after months of trying to manage, we
- have hit a wall. We cannot.
- go any further with this many staff vacancies. We believe we've exhausted all of our possible ways to
- reassign duties and we have to function. We're public safety officers and we have statutory duties.
- We have grant duties that we have to fulfill in order to get our grant monies. So the current request
- before you is to refill six of the eight probation officer vacancies. So still keeping two.
- vacant. Four of the five PO vacancies that are paid out of County General, two that are paid out of
- alcohol and drug program user fees. And then the savings, this would be a minimum return to County General
- of $222,173. And that's assuming a few things. Do you want to say what you assumed with your
- that we will have somebody start by that date. So that savings is going to increase along the way as
- well. Right. And again, we know that from past experience, it takes a long time to fill all of these
- positions. So we're going to have to do that. And we're going to have to make sure that we're able to
- fill all of these positions. So we're going to have to make sure that we're able to fill all of
- any probation officer position. We've just gone through several rounds of hiring for a receptionist
- position and it's just one of those things when people are looking for a job they're looking for a job
- but it takes a while to get through the process and sometimes people get another job in the middle of
- the process or drop out or start ghosting Becca. Becca does the hiring and we
- We it does take a long time to hire. So we know that even if you say yes tonight to all of this it's
- going to take time That's he went with he didn't want to over promise Anthony didn't want to over promise
- but to say minimum the return to county general would be two hundred and twenty two thousand one hundred
- seventy three dollars likely to be much more than that and also to let you know
- We have already been advisors, at least two more probation officers who've let me know they're probably
- going to leave in August. So that's, yeah. But this is what we're asking for right now. I did want to
- point out a few things we're not asking for before we get into the ask. The juvenile probation officer
- that's been vacant since January, we're not requesting to refill that position.
- We have a problem-solving court program, our mental health court probation officer. She's very talented
- and got hired away by Centerstone, and we're not requesting to refill her position. The other problem-solving
- court probation officers have taken on the mental health duties with the mental health court.
- We had a part-time, very experienced probation officer assigned to adult intake unit. She was a 20-year
- probation officer. She did pre-sentence investigations and intake assessments. She left in January.
- We're not asking to refill it now, nor for next year. And then here's the biggest, community corrections
- field officers. So I've been before you before to say
- community corrections field officers are very difficult to fill and keep filled. They don't require
- a degree, and it's a position that we tend to lose people to law enforcement. That has happened many,
- many times. So this past year, there are eight of those positions. Six of the eight have left the department.
- We're down to two. And we have decided that we've reallocated some of their supervision duties to the
- probation officers.
- They're responsible for home detention electronic monitoring, the community corrections probation officers.
- So they're doing the after hours calls when, like the cut and run, if somebody violates home detention
- electronic monitoring, they're the ones getting the alerts instead of just the field officers. And so
- we are going to, we plan to continue with two field officers for the rest of this year and also for
- next year.
- We were just reorganizing our duties, and that's been with the help of our judges to agree to manage
- things in this way. So those are things we're not asking for. And that's a lot, losing six full-time
- officer positions. Then the request is to refund four of the probation officers who are funded by county
- general and two that are funded by court alcohol and drug services.
- And if you have any specific questions, I know I gave you a packet with a lot of information. Just be
- glad to answer any other questions. Thank you. I'm sure we have some questions, and I'll ask. And so
- I know over the years, you were not like when I was your liaison with the late and great Cheryl Munson.
- Like you would always tell us about the kind of merry-go-round circles of people leave, they come,
- they go, they leave.
- And in researching and looking at the packet for this evening, I guess, to me, and you have over 40
- years of experience with this. Is this the worst that this has ever really been? Oh, absolutely. This
- is a post-COVID world. Before COVID,
- it would be rare that we'd ever have two probation officer vacancies at the same time. Now the community
- corrections field officers, that's a whole nother matter because that has been a difficult position
- to keep filled. But if we had two probation officer vacancies, that would be a lot. And ever since COVID,
- we've gone, I think we had once three months, three weeks one time and three months one time that we
- had a full staff, that's it. And so it is a new,
- world we're living in. And so, yes. And if you go to any trainings that talk to you about the younger
- generation that's in the workforce, they have different values than I'm a boomer. And so we boomers
- tend to stay in our places of employment. I forget what these two are. They're much younger than me,
- obviously. But they do have different values in the workforce. And they're not as likely to stay in a job for
- forever, like basically I have, until retirement. So it is a different workforce that we're dealing
- with, for sure. In the post-COVID world, we've never had vacancies like this, ever. So we're not alone.
- I'm in contact with probation chiefs across the nation. I serve on the National Association of Probation
- Executives. So there's probation chiefs from all over the country on this committee.
- They're dealing with the same kind of things in every state. So we're we're not alone and we're not
- special. So I appreciate that. My colleagues to see if anybody has any questions. Yes. Councilor Anderson.
- I wanted to start this off by first regardless of what people think about this request. It is clear
- that you bent over backwards trying to figure out a way to make this work. I think the
- I've said it a lot of times before, I'm a sucker for a good organizational chart. And the organizational
- chart that you've provided really outlines just how many vacancies you have and where you have looked
- to strategically try and place this request. So first of all, thank you. It seems like you really do
- understand some of the fiscal situation that we discussed earlier this evening that we just cannot fulfill
- every request.
- That being said, I'm in favor of this request. And the reason is that when we look around
- for evidence-based programming. You folks have been doing it. Quite frankly, when we're looking for
- folks to go into award-winning programs, these positions are going to be doing that work. I really am
- you know, I've been your liaison a couple of different times now in my tenure. And, you know, the vacancies,
- like President Crossley said, they just keep coming and coming. But I think it's important to keep these
- positions. I think it's important to provide these services to the community. And so that's why I'm
- in favor of this. Thank you.
- We've basically been kind of talking bean counting so far about how much it costs and that sort of thing,
- but you bring up the evidence-based practices. Not every probation department, certainly in the state
- or even across the nation, works on evidence-based programs, which means recidivism reduction.
- methods to reduce recidivism. And that's something we're very committed to. And our evidence-based practices
- team, our continuous quality improvement team, we work really hard to do things with fidelity. And we
- can't just say we're doing it. We're judged by the Department of Correction who gives us money. They
- come and evaluate us
- basically every three months now, they're making sure that we're moving towards becoming an evidence-based
- organization that's requirement of the grant. And Becca is the one who's taking the meetings with the
- Department of Correction, but they are, sometimes they come on site, sometimes they do these meetings
- through Zoom, but they are watching us to make sure we are doing what we say we're doing. Yes, Councilor
- Hawke. Yes.
- something that I wasn't aware until fairly recently, that in some other counties, I was given to understand
- most other counties, the supervisors, maybe I'm using the wrong title, they also carry cases and in
- our county, we do not assign cases to those folks. Can you tell me if we decided to assign
- cases and take some of the workload off of the other probation officers and sign those to the supervisors,
- would that not help out that stress level of our probation officers who might be leaving because they
- just can't take it anymore? That's a good question. And our supervisors have actually asked if they
- can take on some caseload. And you're right. Some counties, the supervisors do. But every county is
- organized differently in this state as you
- Probably no. 92 counties do things 92 different ways. But some of the supervisors are ready to take
- on some supervision of some cases for sure. And that's something we're looking into. And yeah, so it's
- a good question. Thank you. I would like to see that.
- happen before we start filling slots? Because how many supervisors do we have right now are not carrying
- caseloads? Well, it isn't really as simple as that, Marty, because they have to supervise their staff,
- which means they have to do annual evaluations, which is required by the probation rules. They have
- to train new staff. They actually have to watch their staff do their appointments and give them feedback
- and coach.
- Becca, if you want to pipe up for anything else, OK. So supervising seems like a generic thing.
- It's not. They're coaches. And they're coaching their staff. And we have so much turnover. If we didn't
- have all this turnover, they wouldn't have to spend quite as much time coaching and trying to get the
- people up to speed. But right now, we're just spinning. It's like kind of drowning.
- That's not going to be the answer, though, to give probation supervisors caseload. At some point, I
- had a caseload, and I'll tell you, I could not keep up with the casework and my supervisory duties.
- It was very, very difficult. So if we're going to do that, Marty, it's going to have to be a decision
- that's made by including our judges and all the supervisors, but it isn't going to be the answer to
- how many POs we need. Okay, but my question was...
- back to the question, how many supervisors do you have? Let's see, including them and myself, 12. Well?
- Well, myself, so there's nine. Nine under us. So if there was nine, would they, let's say, if each took
- three? I mean, if you split it up somewhat, I'm not saying that they could handle
- the same amount that others could, because you still have to supervise. But just like in the auditor's
- office, they've got people who are supervising, but they still have another job to be doing. And I know
- that it's much different when we're talking about probation officers. I'm just trying to come up with
- a way that you can provide the same services and share the workload.
- Because I think that you've got probation officers who feel that they cannot carry much more. Well,
- that's absolutely true. That's why I'm before you, because they don't feel like they can carry much
- more, because we have eight PO vacancies at this point. So they're absolutely right. But how many cases
- to give to a supervisor? How do you measure that workload? I mean, it's a decision that needs to be made.
- with our board of judges. Before we move on, I think you all continuously over the time here have made
- the case of what you all are trying to do. Try to believe that and try to ration out everything in this
- possibility. Like you said, 92 counties, 92 different problems. So with that being said, any other further
- questions or comments for council on this item?
- Seeing none, we'll move to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can raise your
- hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern here in the room. Still seeing none, maybe have a roll
- call vote. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hogg? No.
- Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry?
- Councilor Decker? Yes. Motion passes, majority 6-1. And Michelle, because there was some confusion about
- some of their items, is that something that I guess now we'll have to address at the 11th? Yes. Okay.
- Okay. Okay. So as far as hiring the probation officer assistance, I need to come back? Yes. On the 11th.
- Okay. So we have the line item.
- then we'll come back to ask for permission to hire. And that'll work out just fine, because the POAs,
- or probation officer assistants, are usually IU students. And they'll be back, I guess, next month.
- So coming right up. So thank you very much. And so then that was all of it. OK. Thank you so much.
- Thank you. We'll see you next month. Next up is item eight, which is council business. And that starts
- with the aviation department.
- Council, I move to approve the aviation department's request in fund 4801-0000 aviation construction
- to create new account lines that are outlined on the agenda and approve additional appropriations of
- $1,000 in the supplies category, $1,000 in the services category, and $2,500 in the capital category
- for a total appropriation of $4,500. Second. All right. We got a motion and a second. And I see that
- Mr. Labarty is online and he has his hand raised.
- Um, you should be able to unmute and state your case. Yep. There we go. Hello, Mr. Larry. Go. Good evening.
- Yeah. It wouldn't let me for a second. I think I had to be enabled, but here we are. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
- Good evening. The airport's requesting the creation of a dedicated Airbnb related receipt
- and expenditure lines within fund 4801, our aviation construction fund, so that all Airbnb revenue and
- expenses associated with the airport double wide can be tracked separately and consistently in the ledger.
- The request of appropriation will allow current and future Airbnb related expenses to be paid from the
- proper fund and account lines. This amount includes consideration of 2026 Airbnb related expenditures
- that may need to be corrected into these lines
- from the beginning of the year through the current. And so again, the aviation construction fund 4801
- is separate from our levy fund. And it's funded by all, I'm sorry, I'm getting a really bad echo, but
- it's funded by on airport generated revenue, which is part of what the Airbnb is part of. And historically
- those revenues have been receded
- Historically, they've been receded into the 1107 fund. So we're trying to separate all of that and kind
- of help us do some better accounting at the airport. We've been working with the auditor to kind of
- make this happen. She may wanna add something to this, but this is all we're trying to do. And none
- of this touches any of our levy fund. Thank you very much for that and looking at council to see if
- anybody has any questions or comments on this item.
- Yeah, I apologize. I was out of the room at the beginning. So if this was already stated, I'm sorry.
- I did have a question about what is the revenue generally for the Airbnb? I'm not I think annually we're
- averaging around
- $15,000 to $17,000 a year. Okay, so and revenue then will go into this new... Yes. These new lines.
- Yeah, and then the expenses that we have to maintain the Airbnb will come out of that fund as well.
- Okay, and you're going to go retroactive a little bit, I think, for 2026, you said? Yeah, for 2026,
- yes. Is everybody else getting that echo?
- Okay, just me, okay. But I do like your new goth look. Ah, yeah. You guys, you guys don't want to see
- the shade, the pale, the color that's going on here. You don't want that. It's all good. Thank you.
- Yes, Council Member Henry. Thank you, Madam President. Yeah, thank you for the, yeah, thick at night,
- black and white view here. This has been different.
- to say the least. This is part of, I think, the ongoing effort we've had to work with the Board of Aviation
- to develop some different account lines to help manage that very unique operation we have out there.
- We've talked about this with the disaster work and now, of course, this line too. I just want to ask
- the auditor's table if this is all in line with where we were going in terms of helping to just get
- clarity on the funded lines and how this revenue is moving through our county.
- this is definitely in alignment with what we have discussed at a few different meetings we've held,
- so we do have, you know, other steps to the plan where we're gonna maybe adjust some fund names and
- how those funds are utilized on the line, but this is kind of step one moving toward that. Just a quick
- note, and I know Michelle is going to be all over it, but we do not need to add the revenue line. That's
- something that we kind of do behind the scenes, so.
- that will occur separately. Carlos, thanks for the work on it and getting us this far and happy to support
- it as the liaison for the aviation folks. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks to everybody at the county, especially
- in the auditor's office has been helping us get, you know, walk down this road. All the team. All right.
- Seeing no other further questions or comments on this item, we'll move on. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see
- your hand, Councilor Hall. Just for the public to understand,
- When I say no to additional appropriations or something and maybe some other fund, this is like taking
- the revenue out of one fund and putting it over in the other fund. It doesn't mean that the revenue
- would be any different or the expenses would be any different. It's just that for accounting purposes,
- it needs to be, this needs to have happened. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay.
- this is just for overall transparency. So we can easily see what this unique project at the airport
- is bringing in, and then we can isolate that revenue and then use that revenue for the expenditures
- related. So it's a really great thing we're doing to move forward transparently. No other hands that
- are raised.
- go back 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. All right, and seeing none, can we please have a roll
- call vote? Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk? Yes. Councilor Wilk? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor
- Decker? Yes. Councilor Crossley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
- Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up is item B from the Youth Services Bureau.
- to approve additional appropriations of $48,150.23 in the personnel category and $1,000 in the services
- category for a total appropriation of $49,150.23. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. And
- we have Ms. Vanessa Schmidt. And we also, I think it looks like Ms. Sarah Jamison is online as well.
- So TSD, we might need to promote Sarah as well, too. I think Sarah's just going to observe. Oh, OK.
- So we should be OK. I appreciate it. All right. Please go ahead.
- Okay, thank you, Council. Like mentioned, we are here just to request the appropriation of some additional
- funds that we were able to earn during the first fiscal year of our grant. And then we are asking to
- just appropriate the second fiscal year of that grant that has already been awarded. It's a two-year
- grant. So the first small amount of money was awarded in the first year. We're just here to appropriate
- that. And then we're asking that we appropriate the second year.
- Thank you for that. Is there any questions or comments from Council on this item? Yes, Councilor Woltz.
- I have a question generally about youth services. It's not about this exact issue, but I've been talking
- with some folks lately and I'm curious, the children that you serve, typically my understanding is that
- They come to you in a variety of ways, but it's mostly self-admit, and they are able to leave at any
- time, and you work with them to figure out what's best and all that. My question is, how many of those
- youth would be categorized as homeless or unhoused? Sure.
- Well, it's a little hard to answer, because the federal definition of homelessness is a little bit different
- than, you know, it varies state to state, even though there's a federal definition. So, children that
- are placed by the Department of Child Services who aren't self-admitted or youth that could be court-ordered
- could be considered
- because there is no other place for them to be. However, the kids that are typically counted under the
- federal rule are youth that are either at risk of runaway, homelessness, or throwaway, and are safe
- place placements, who are the youth that are self-initiated and voluntarily come to the shelter. So,
- while we are unlocked from the inside, because we are a low-barrier, unlocked shelter,
- kids can walk out the door, that enacts an elopement procedure, in which we have to call law enforcement,
- since running away in Indiana is a crime. So, we don't function like a drop-in shelter, like many other
- states have, where kids can come and go, because unaccompanied minors, it's not legal in the state of
- Indiana. So, if a youth unfortunately chooses to leave property after we have tried to verbally de-escalate
- and get them to return, we do have to enact elopement procedures.
- So we want to make sure that youth that come are willing to be here, willing to follow the rules, and
- they sign a youth admission agreement as well. But that's done through a lot of conversation and mediation
- between whoever's placing the child and the child themselves. I hope that answers your question.
- So it does. Well, actually, it tells me a lot more than I even knew to ask.
- So typically then, um, what percentage of your, of your youth are, um, falling under that federal definition.
- So the court appointed, et cetera. Sure. I would say, um, without having the annual report right in
- front of me in 2025, a majority of our placements actually fell under that rule.
- So they were either safe place or parental placements, which are all voluntary placements. So they were
- not DCS and not court-ordered youth. But I would argue that DCS placements are homeless children. Also,
- it just doesn't fall under the federal rule. OK. OK, thank you. Yeah. All right, John. Yes, thank you for.
- commenting that it could be a parental placement as well. We see many times, well, at least we did when
- I was falling in so closely when I felt like I was camping out there. When you see parents who are just
- having so much problems with some of their youth and they just no longer know what to do to keep them
- safe and to keep the other people in the household safe,
- then they can take them in and take them to our youth shelter. And as a reminder, many times when you
- look at the number of placements at the shelter, Monroe County residents are not always the biggest
- number that's there. But because we do the safe place grant, then we are required to do that as well.
- But the other thing that I noticed on some of the correspondence was that the revenue in the past, just
- for an FYI, their per diem amount that they get from the state, then that comes in and we were keeping
- that separate at like a savings account for the YSB because we wanted
- to do some construction work there. And we were able to save that back and pay cash for what we wanted
- to do. But then after they did that, we were advised by the state that was like having two savings account,
- which we're not allowed to do, can't have two rainy day funds. So that per diem amount that they receive now
- revenue. And the amount that they have been bringing in under miscellaneous revenue is supposed to be
- reduced this year because the state is changing some of their. And. Theory about how they want to use
- the money. Am I using that correct? So I forget what the difference
- They may even have more people, but it may be people that are not paying through the state. It may be
- more parents dropping off or something. We just never know. Yeah, it's variable. The state with the
- new DCS state director is looking towards more of a model of kinship and foster care, which is overall
- a cheaper expense. They've also been
- more restrictive about how long they will place in an emergency shelter. And they're requiring DCS staff
- workers to do like cost analysis of what's the cheapest shelter. And so sometimes kids get moved from
- shelter to shelter just based on how much it's going to cost the state. And so we have seen a
- that we're not going to be able to. Um reduction in those premium funds. And so when we were, yes, speaking
- about budget, we just wanted to be transparent with that as far as what we might be looking at for revenue
- in 2027. Right and if they want to cut off time, they can be there for 30 days, but then they must leave
- after 30 days. Is that correct?
- They've actually changed. So they can stay 21 days. And by day 15, I have to determine if we're willing
- to provide an extension. The extension is only supposed to get them to 60 days. But by putting the waiver
- in, the state says they don't have to follow that. So we have had children placed for over 100 days
- by the state of Indiana in our shelter. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?
- on this item. That's a lot. All right. Seeing none, we will go to public comment. Please raise your
- hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern here in the room. Seeing none, may we please have a roll
- call vote? Councillor Hawke? Yes. Councillor Wilts? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Crossley?
- Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes.
- Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Right. Um, uh, counselor Decker didn't vote. It matters, but I was a guest
- too. So the motion is unanimous. Seven zero. Sorry about that. Thank you. All right. Next up is item C.
- council I move to approve the Youth Service Bureau's request and fund nine one zero three dash nine
- six two eight project safe place to create new account lines are outlined on the agenda and approve
- additional appropriations of three thousand dollars in the supplies category and six thousand eight
- hundred eighty dollars in the services category for a total appropriation of nine thousand eight hundred
- and eighty dollars second all right we got a motion and a second and what would you like to add to this item
- Thank you, Council. Again, this is just to approve our two years of a Safe Place grant. We were awarded.
- This grant will run from July of 26 to July of 28 and really helps to support our Safe Place program,
- including outreach materials, the things that we take out and give to kids who are at county fairs or
- at other events, promotional items during school presentations. This money helps to support those endeavors.
- Thank you very much, and congratulations on that.
- Thank you. Very important. Any questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, we'll move to public
- comment. If there's public comment, raise your hand via Teams or you can come forward to the lectern
- area in the room. And seeing none, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor
- Henry? Yes. Councilor Deckard?
- Councillor Crossley? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hawke? Yes. Motion
- passes unanimous. Thank you, councillors. Thank you. All right. Next up is a series of items from the
- sheriff's office.
- Council I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the sheriff's officer request to approve
- an in-house transfer of $69,000 and fund 1000-0005 County General Sheriff into the overtime account
- lines that are outlined on the agenda within the personnel category as per resolution 2025-41A. Second.
- All right we got a motion and a second welcome. Hello.
- Our overtime lines are about to be overexpended. One of them, they're both about 75% we've already used,
- and we just need to transfer more money in. We've had some high priority cases that have clearly used
- a lot of time, overtime resources. And the one is CHIRP. It's just the in-house. We need to transfer
- money in so that we're not in the negative by the end of the year. OK. All right. Thank you very much for that.
- Any questions or comments from Council on this item? Yes, Councilor Hawk. Yes, I understand that you
- will be receiving the reimbursement from CHIRP, but could you not just transfer within the same category?
- You don't have to come to us if it's in the same category. You can do it with a letter of transfer.
- Is your overtime line not in there?
- We are wanting to transfer from the vacant merit deputy position into the TURP one, and the next item
- is actually the deappropriation and appropriation. I'm just saying, is your overtime not also in with
- all your personnel in the same category? Yes. Well, then you don't have to, if you already have an overtime
- line. Excuse me, Councilor Hawke. Thank you.
- We have a resolution where a department has to come to the council to be able to move any funds into
- the overtime lines. So that is part of this process that you guys approved back earlier at the beginning
- of this year. So that's why she can't just move it on her own. She has to get council permission. Sometimes
- we just make things harder for them and for us because
- because she says she wants to do this, so she doesn't have to come back multiple times. But if we move
- down a rather large sum into the overtime more than what the chirp is going to reimburse, then that's
- something we've done, something we didn't intend to do. I mean, again, the overtime resolution was we
- couldn't pick and choose which department to say, nope, you stay. Yes, you go do it.
- So I think that's what that was about. Okay, and yes, Councilor Wilts. So I understand the resolution,
- that part, but the second part, I think, of Councilor Hock's point makes sense in that we do want to
- know that those funds will be reimbursed
- And so I guess we've worked before on how to track the CHIRP money, and it's difficult to know because
- it's reimbursable. I mean, I get all of that. What exactly is the anticipated reimbursement? Is there
- a way to know? And what are we doing about this? Might be auditor or I don't know.
- we're going to ask for the $13,500 from the second quarter. We put back in and then the third quarter
- was on the find it. Once we received that reimbursement, that's going to be $11,268.75. I have no idea
- what the fourth quarter will be by that time. 13 and 11 for six.
- Ms. Turner-King, would you like to add anything for that? Yes. So in regards to overall CHIRP management,
- as a reminder, this is a grant that is managed by BPD and that is shared by Bloomington Police Department,
- the Sheriff's Office, IU, and Ellisville. We have been, we have in the past just talked with the grant
- manager for Bloomington Police Department on how to better put in place a management system so that
- Each person who's spending a piece of that pie has an idea of how much of that pie we're getting. Bloomington
- Police Department has a new grant manager handling the chirp grant right now. And so I'm going to reach
- out to that individual and ask to schedule a meeting because I really feel like we're going more towards
- the need for a memorandum of understanding on how this grant is managed.
- Any questions or comments? Council Hoppe? It seems to me we ought to have a line that just says overtime
- with chirp, keep it separate. And know that it might, that line might be overspent, but the whole budget
- won't be overspent. We overspend in quite a bit if I'm wrong, because boy, I hate being wrong.
- on our reimbursement grants, we have to spend first before we get it. So correct. So this is a reimbursement
- grant. If we have a line item in there, then when the money comes in, we can put it in there. So I mean,
- I'm just trying to make sure we're not undoing what we tried to get done before. The other side was
- killing us.
- Ms. Gregory, would you like to, somebody? We've been working very closely with the sheriff's department
- on this grant and the general ledger and grants managers and almost constant communication back and
- forth, ensuring proper management and that the funds are separated as necessary. So this is, if I'm
- remembering correctly, this is corrected into the
- chair grant wants we receive funding to ensure that the separation and that we're not spending money
- that we have not received, if that makes sense, just because this is handled and managed a little bit
- differently. All right. Thank you very much for that. Any other questions or comments on this item?
- Seeing none, we'll move to public comment. Raise your hand via Teams or you can come forward to the
- lectern here in the room. May we please have a roll call vote?
- Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Crosley? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor
- Feidl? Yes. Councilor Locke? I'll say yes and I look forward to getting a report back how much we really
- got insured and what we're paying out in total for. Because this is clerical over time too. Councilor
- Wilts? Yes.
- Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. Next up is item F. Oh, I'm sorry, item E. Council, I move to approve
- the Sheriff's Office request and fund 8103-0000 Operation Pullover to approve an additional appropriation
- of $13,500 in the personnel category. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. What would you
- like to add to this item?
- this is just the housekeeping item where we're moving the funds from where we got reimbursed for the
- chirp grant. Other questions or comments on this item? All right, we'll move to public comment. Raising
- hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern here in the room. Maybe please have a roll call vote.
- Yes, Councillor Crossley.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- All right, we got a motion in a second. What would you like to add to this item? Nothing new. All right,
- yes, Councilor Williams. I just want to take this moment to ask before I forget, could you reach out
- and set up a time to talk with us, Councilor Hock and myself about the budget? Absolutely. Because we
- haven't done that yet. That would be great. Thank you. Any other questions?
- on the side. Seeing none. Um, we'll move to public comment. Raise your hand via team. So come forward
- to the lectern here in the room and still seeing them. Maybe please have a roll call vote. Counselor
- Crossley. Yes. Counselor Iverson. Yes. Counselor Fidel. Yes. Counselor Hawk. Yes. Counselor Wilkes.
- Yes. Counselor Henry. Yes. Counselor Decker. Yes.
- Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. All right. Next up are some items from the prosecutor's office.
- Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the prosecutor's office request to be
- exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1000-0009 County General Prosecutor one
- to two part-time clerical positions.
- All right. We got a motion and a second. We are joined by the prosecutor and Ms. Beth Hanlon. Welcome.
- Hi. Thank you. Good evening. We have typically carried at least a couple of part-time folks in our office,
- usually for some sort of overflow tasks from the legal secretary. So a lot of it is data entry. Some
- of it is filing.
- But it tends to be the more mundane aspects of the legal secretary's job that the legal secretaries
- just can't get to. Do you want me to wait for the bell to stop? Okay. You guys are used to it. I'm not
- used to it. Okay.
- In this particular instance, we're having trouble getting our cases closed out in our case management
- system timely. Right now, we have a legal secretary who serves as our receptionist, and one of her duties
- is to close out files. Unfortunately, our system won't just draw down closed case data from Odyssey,
- which is the program that the judges are using. So it has to be manually entered and compared with the
- judicial orders.
- And the reason it's important to do this is because we rely on it for criminal history information.
- But so does every other prosecutor in the state of Indiana. So it feeds into the state prosecutor case
- management system. So right now, we're currently about three months behind on our case closeouts. And
- we'd like to get to a position where those are taking no more than a month.
- We have a particular person in mind if we're permitted to hire who used to be a part-time person in
- our office, decided he wanted to fully retire, but now he wants to come back. And that would be wonderful
- because he already knows how to do the work that we're trying to get here.
- But he also wants to work fewer hours than he did previously, so that's why we would like to be able
- to hire a second part-time person, which again will be hopefully, if we're approved, somebody who is
- retired who's been involved with the system, who has some institutional knowledge, won't take a lot
- of training, but again can keep us from having to request overtime or use comp time for the secretaries
- to get some of this work done timely.
- that explanation. I'm looking to my colleagues to see if anybody has any questions on this item. Yes,
- Councillor Hawke. Yes, and you tell me why you're not waiting and putting this in your budget request
- for next year instead of getting ahead of all the other departments such as others. Nobody else has
- been doing today too, so not just pointing my fingers at you, but we see this every year, but we have
- Select departments who come and get ahead of all the other departments to get this included in their
- budget now, then it's already in there, and that's what happens. And it's not fair to the other departments.
- And so is there a specific reason why you cannot wait for budget session? Yes, because these cases are
- getting behind now. If we wait until the next budget session, we're waiting another six months to fill
- this need.
- We also have had lines for these. This isn't an additional appropriation. For this particular request,
- we're just asking to fill a vacancy. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none.
- I know I wanted to go there, but before we go there, we need to go to public comment. If there's public
- comment on this item, you can come forward to the room here or raise your hand via Teams. And seeing
- none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Peidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
- No. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Deckert? Yes.
- Councillor Crossley. Yes. Motion passes majority six one. Thank you. Next up is item H.
- Council I move to approve the prosecutor office request and fund 1000-0009 County General Prosecutor
- to amend the 2026 salary ordinance account line 13029 Forensic Analysis and Technology Specialist,
- Pat B, not exempt from 35 hours to 40 hours with an effective date of August 9th. All right, we got
- a motion and a second. And what would you like to add to this item?
- Great, thank you. This is for a forensic analyst slash tech specialist. And this is someone in our office
- who is becoming increasingly more invaluable. The person who's in that position has been with us for
- about 20 years. And the duties have changed with the introduction to our case flow of body worn camera
- videos, more and more surveillance video items, cell phone,
- data and other kinds of digital evidence. I have now had him working over in the Ellisville Police Department
- part-time as part of the Monroe County High Tech Crime Unit to process digital evidence. And as a result,
- he has been able to get cases moving in our courts here in Monroe County because phones that were taking
- seven months to process
- to process or being processed in under 30 days because of his work. But we have a lot of work on his
- plate, and he is always close to going overtime. We're not allowed to do overtime, so sometimes we're
- giving him comp time.
- But we really just have enough work for him. And his work is so valuable to moving our cases forward.
- I can give you a couple of examples. He was recently able to crack into a phone in a murder case that
- had been pending for nine months. And his first week in the lab, he was able to crack that open and
- get into it.
- We had a jury trial last week he edits the videos to be in compliance with the rules of evidence so
- that we can present them to a jury without violating those rules and sometimes we have.
- evidence rulings that happen on the fly in the moment, and he can very quickly do that work and make
- sure that it doesn't violate constitutional or evidentiary rights. So he's very valuable. The workload
- is increased. He is constantly working more than
- than his 35 hours, and so it is my hope that we can give him a little more time to do this really important
- work for our office. I will say another aspect of his job, you know, Greg Cron and his department are
- great, tech services does a lot for us, but Rob keeps his
- folks out of our office for silly stuff. He's always doing our tech support both in the criminal division
- and in the child support division. He also sometimes gets loaned out to the judges for that purpose
- and defense attorneys. He's really good at what he does. He's very efficient. It's my hope that you
- will allow me to move him to 40 hours. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.
- or comments on this item. Yes, Councilor Woods. I just wanted to mention that, again, I've met with
- these fine folks and looked at a lot of what they've talked about and what they've included in the packet.
- And I think that this
- particular move makes a lot of sense in trying to be more efficient with the folks that we have and
- not having to add positions. So I think I'm usually a little bit more like
- is everybody in the whole department at the same 35 or 40 and thinking around those things. So I just
- want to kind of explain that I think this is a good strategy, especially given the way in which they've
- explained the workload for this particular position. Also, an email exchange was mentioned earlier as
- being entertaining. And I have to say, if you missed out on this one, it was pretty entertaining, too.
- Any other questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, we will move to public comment. Raise your
- hand via Teams or you can come forward to the room or come forward to the lectern here in the room.
- And seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote. Councillor Feidl. Yes. Councillor Haas. Councillor
- Wilts. Yes.
- Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Crosby? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. Motion passes
- majority six to one. This will need to come back for a second reading. On August 11th, but before you
- go, we got one more item, which is item I.
- Council I move to approve the prosecutor's office request and fund one thousand dash zero zero zero
- nine county general prosecutor to amend the twenty twenty six salary ordinance account line one three
- zero three three criminal investigator and account line one three zero three four criminal investigator
- Civ poll D not exempt from thirty five to forty hours with an effective date of August the ninth. Second.
- What would you like to add to this item. All right. Thank you.
- To give you a little insight into the investigators, we have two of them in the criminal division. And
- those are the two positions I'm talking about. They have a very active role in our intake process, receiving
- information from law enforcement, making sure that it's matched up with cases that are pending or cases
- that are in review. They do make some charging recommendations to our chief deputy, who does the majority
- of our charging and screening.
- The biggest backlog problem that they have with their workload are warrant requests. We receive requests
- from law enforcement for arrest warrants based on probable cause that crimes have been committed, and
- those get put on the back burner because nobody's in jail yet while we focus on those people who are
- arrested and who need charging decisions and probable cause determinations much quicker. And so as a
- result, we sometimes can get as far as three or four months behind on our warrant requests, whereas
- ideally we would like to have those reviewed,
- a decision made within a week at the outside. So like I said, it's just partially the workload. We're
- usually focused on the arrests and the things that are coming in right now and some of that stuff gets
- put on the back burner. They are responsible for doing background checks, criminal background checks for
- criminal cases as well, like for defendants, but also for witnesses and victims. We have to provide
- that information to defense attorneys by statute and ethical obligations.
- If we are able to increase their hours, we're hopeful to have a quicker turnaround on our arrest warrants,
- but also hopeful that they can help us locate missing witnesses and victims a little bit faster. Sometimes
- it can take some time. People change their phone number or move, and they don't let us know. And so
- sometimes we have to have our investigators dig into that. They can respond to emails quicker. We send
- monthly reports to law enforcement about what cases of theirs
- we've declined and what we've taken and where they're at, and so they can get onto those a little bit
- faster. They're usually about two weeks late now. I would just point out from a parity perspective,
- Mr. Hunt is here in the room. The public defender investigators are at 40 hours, so just from
- parity sake, I think it would be nice if we could pay our investigators at 40 hours and give them a
- few more hours to get some of these important tasks done. If you have any questions, please let me know.
- Thank you for that. Any questions or comments on this item? Yes. I was surprised by the last thing that
- you said. Do you have any idea how long it's not had parity?
- I don't know. I know that their support staff, I believe all of them work 40 hours, whereas the majority
- of my support staff works 35 hours. All right. No other further questions or comments on this item?
- We will move to public comment. You can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand
- via Teams. And seeing none, maybe 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.
- So items J and K as you can recall were tabled to what already seems like a packed August 11th meeting and so.
- We will move on to item L from the Board of Commissioners. County Council, excuse me, I move to approve
- the Board of Commissioners request and fund 1000-0068 County General Commissioners to create new account
- lines 30071 Community Access Television and 32115 WFHB Weather Alert and simultaneously approve additional
- appropriations of $167,718 in the services category.
- second okay we got a motion and a second and I see we are joined by Commissioner Madeira and Miss Angie
- Purdy welcome thank you um so the part that might be missing because we asked that you table the prior
- items is that the cable franchise fund um presently there I believe has a cash balance of just over
- three thousand dollars started off with a an appropriation of five hundred and something
- And so it's not able to sustain the accounts that are within that fund. So what this is is a request
- to put the lines that we are aware of. And I do believe we can reduce the community access TV line.
- Let me confirm. I was just looking at it.
- I request for the Community Access TV, we need to ensure as a balance of $80,859. So that instead of
- the 160 that I had initially presented, we can reduce that amount
- Did you catch that number? $80,859. I'm sorry, it was. Let's see here. So yes, $80,859.
- Council, I wish to amend my motion that we would approve additional appropriations of $86,859. Second.
- All right, we got a motion and a second to amend that to the amount as Councilor Iverson mentioned.
- Is there any other further questions or comments from Council on this item? Yes. Council President,
- is this about the amendment or the item at this point? The amendment, sorry. I have no questions about
- the amendment.
- All right seeing none all those in favor of amendment or approving the motion as amended signified by
- saying aye aye all those opposed same sign okay motion carries so now we'll come back to the original
- one and council Henry did you have a question yeah thank you madam president first I want to confirm
- the actual balance of the cable franchise fund you said three thousand I'm looking at a ledger today
- that says something differently can we get the actual number
- I'm looking at it right now and it shows a balance of $3,747.51. I'm seeing a cash balance that's different.
- I ran mine through the end of the year. I did not run through the end of the year, so let me do that
- quickly. I'm sorry, my computer restarted in an inopportune time, so give me a second.
- because I have what's current today so I think that's what was shared earlier. You're correct on the
- current balance today but departments often put in anticipated expenses ahead of time like if there's
- like a reoccurring invoice for example something similar so if you go out to the end of the year so
- December 31 of 26 the cash balance is looking like it will be 37
- Well, $3,747.51. Cash on hand today is $84,861. That's correct. OK. So just some questions that I have
- as we're trying to sort this out. We had originally appropriated in the cable franchise fund about $533,000
- at the beginning of the year. Presuming there was revenue coming in, do we have an understanding of
- the, like,
- that dropped off, can you walk me through that? Shouldn't we be getting receipts for fees from? This
- has been a conversation that we've had for a number of years now actually with the cable franchise because
- our revenue has been decreasing steadily over time. It's anticipated that next year our gross revenue
- will be about $254,000 in that particular fund. You were not on the council at that time. We've had
- numerous conversations.
- about putting some things in this fund and knowing we're going to be able to sustain it or support it.
- So this is why we're here now. So we had a carryover last year of 294-ish thousand. And then,
- so do we have, and right now it looks like the differential is like 310,000. So do we get any, that's
- what I'm asking. Do we get any receipts from any franchise fees? Because we have carryover.
- We clearly budgeted based on previous years. I'm just trying to figure out where the revenue is. Do
- you have any revenue on this? That's what I guess I'm asking. Yes, we have revenue. So for instance,
- the AT&T quarterly franchise, we have received $4,405.80 thus far. That is as of 728 of this year. Comcast,
- we have received $68,087.40.
- That was receded in February. Okay. I guess where I'm going with this is that, you know, as we budgeted
- last year, it was, you know, we had a four-year trend of account lines there, and we've been budgeting
- training and some of these things, and they're from year in, year out. It's July. It's the third quarter
- of the year. We're seeing this now. I guess at what point did you start to anticipate that we'd be down
- where we are. I'm just trying to understand the tracking of finances month to month. Certainly you would
- have, I thought, or one would assume there would be projections of how bad is bad until we get to this
- point where there's 3,000 left in the fund. When were you tracking this? When did this get to your attention?
- It came to my attention just before, I actually sent an email, I believe, to Councilors, when it came
- to my attention. So I don't know, a month ago?
- So we got six years into the fiscal where we were running out of funds, and we're at this point now,
- six months in. I guess I'm just trying to understand the forecasting and where the appropriations have
- gone. I guess I would have liked to know a little earlier. Sorry that that didn't work out for you.
- I'm sorry that didn't work out for you. I got it to you as quickly as I came to my attention, and I
- brought it to the council. Sorry that didn't work out for me.
- You have a finance person in your office, right? Every department has a finance person. Do they run
- this report monthly so we can understand that? No. I don't know that they actually run these particular
- reports because of the number of claims that they have to process each week. And we're also a person
- down in our office. So they're dealing with not only the claims that come in, but also responding to
- the public.
- Here's my heartburn. So we have a cash on hand and then I guess anticipated expenses. Of the anticipated
- expenses, which is like $83,000 between now and where your number is, of those anticipated expenses,
- how many of those must be paid or can be canceled in order to burn this fund a little more efficiently?
- I believe that these are all obligated. I can't speak for the technical services training line, but
- I can tell you that the
- Cat's line is certainly obligated. The WIU line is obligated. So I don't choose to not pay. Okay. Fellow
- Councillors, I guess we have sort of like half a thing here today. We're being asked to
- De-obligate funds from the remainder of the cable franchise fees. There's no minimum fund balance on
- that fund. We could burn it to zero. We don't have to hold any back in there. We have a point in time
- of how much cash is on hand. And what we have is like seven months into the year where I don't know
- what the burn rate is on your account lines. My concern is that we budgeted, there's a $300,000 gap
- that we're looking at. Either that was revenue that we should have
- talked about last year during budget season, or should have been informed about that wasn't coming in.
- I just hate to do another budget cycle this year, where we have hundreds of thousands of dollars that
- are kind of gapped, and we don't really, because we budgeted for this, we appropriated for
- it. The appropriations were there, we went through the appropriation process. The appropriations matched
- previous calendar years, 21, 22, 25, it's the same, I mean, there's a trend line there. But this is
- a big move around, and I guess,
- you know, maybe this is me just getting a little into the Excel sheets this evening, but, you know,
- we're more than halfway through the year to have this kind of adjustment. This should have been maybe
- better. Thank you, Madam President. And I guess to that point, Council Iverson and I are the liaisons
- board and we will go over this in our meeting when we go over budgets. So, Madam President,
- if I may just say, I don't believe it's a liaison issue. I mean, I think that
- is maybe been. No, I know. I understand. But again, it's like we can go over that. And then, you know,
- when it's coming down the pike for budget, that's something that we can, you know, talk about as well.
- Any other? Yes, Councillor Woods. Why were the previous two items tabled?
- answer that that's because we are trying to determine whether or not we have this is a statutorily defined
- fund or if it's a home rule fund if it's a home rule fund then we can the commissioners can modify the
- resolution to allow for those receipts to go directly into county general which would be the intention
- if we can do that we have like a message out to find out and don't know yeah
- I've been working with Miss Purdy and we discussed talking with the State Board of Accounts just to
- ensure, obviously, we're always very cautious to ensure we're handling the revenue appropriately. So
- I just want to confirm with the SBOA that the revenue, it does not need to be in its own separate fund, which
- I'm not satisfied with their response yet, so we're going to ask a few more questions before we proceed.
- But it appears that we can potentially dissolve this fund, which we could then move the balance then
- of the remaining funds into the general fund, for example, just so they could budget then appropriately
- from the general fund if that's what everybody chooses to do. So I'm simply investigating to give us options.
- and then we can proceed from there once I have all the information to share. Do you have another one?
- You go. That makes sense, thank you. And my other question then is, because we're looking at just L
- right now, correct, okay. We're gonna do,
- an additional appropriation in county general for a hundred and oh no 80 something we changed but do
- you have money extra lying around in yeah no so this is coming out of general pocket
- So just got it. Okay. Thank you. Did I see your hand raised? Yes. I remember distinctly when our council
- attorneys, Michael Flory, uh, pulled up the documents for this fund to make it clear that it did not
- have to have be cable related or
- it could be for telephone or communication. It could be for anything that the council would choose.
- To spend it on so. I don't know whether that helps in any way, but there was documentation on that.
- Uh and so that's when we started putting other things in there just to try and make budgets work. But
- everybody knows that the revenue would be coming down.
- And just for us to know, this is just another thing where we had in past counted on revenue that it
- will no longer sustain what we've been putting in there over the years. So that's just more money cutting
- into what our growth should be of the new revenue coming in. I mean, it's just that's just the way it
- is. You move over.
- The revenue over in the general, but the expenses are going to be more than the revenue you're moving
- over there. It's just like it's a whole brand new expense. That's the reason why I think a lot of this
- stuff about spending money should have waited for budgets. 9.90%. At this point, we don't have a better
- option right now. I mean, we can be upset about it.
- all that, but really, we have to pay our bills and these are obligations. So, all right, just
- so I understand, thank you. Yes, Councilor Henry. Thank you, Madam President. I would just, Councilor
- Rosse, I'd follow up. I mean, we have cash on hand to pay the bills. I mean, you don't have $86,000
- in bills coming in the next two weeks, do you? I don't think so. We've already paid the third quarter for
- for Comcat or for cats. We do owe WFHP $6,000. So I don't know when they're going to send that particular
- invoice. OK, so it's not like we can't pay the bills this month. I mean, at the end of the year, we
- have to have this. The urgency, if there's a feeling of urgency, I don't share it. That's what I'm saying.
- I'm sorry. I didn't imply urgency. It was more of despondency, if that's a word. I'm just late.
- I mean, it is what it is, is sort of where I was. I wasn't saying it was having to happen tonight, but
- it's housekeeping that, you know, we kind of have to figure out. Yes, Councilor Decker. Well, on the
- counter that we have to be cautious about, when you don't, when bodies and we're seeing this a lot in
- our country, particularly when you don't back up,
- what you have either obligated historically or appropriated, whatever the lines are filled in with,
- it starts sending messages that you're cutting those things. And when I look at these two particular
- community values listed on here, those are a little bit more external than not in this community.
- I mean, one of them we're literally broadcast out on as we speak.
- and everyone in their sister and especially the Marty Hawks of the world and Jennifer Crossley's, they
- anticipate that they'll go on and they'll see those. So I always get worried that any of our discussion
- here turns into rumors out there that we're changing course on how we pay bills. Internally, I think
- there's some discussion here that is exceedingly valid, but beyond it, to go to the point
- Versing on either of those lines is a massive policy change that's not been in this community for at
- least since my birth. Got to watch stuff like that. It's a very large conversation. Yeah, that's a big,
- big, large thing. Maybe that we should have had over the years about cable, but no one will care because
- they will still expect
- those items to be on that budget. And the same for our counterparts across the way at Morton Street.
- Council for that discussion. I'll move on to public comment. If there's public comment on this item,
- you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise your hand via Teams. Seeing none, may
- we please have a roll call vote.
- So just so everyone is clear, account line 30071 was reduced to $86,859. No, it was $80,859. Okay. Correct.
- Thank you. That's what I needed to know.
- So then one eight fifty nine eighty thousand eight fifty nine six thousand four. OK. So yes. So then
- that brings your new total to eighty six thousand eight fifty nine for this additional appropriation.
- Yeah. Sometimes I get my math wrong. So I appreciate you double checking. Yeah. I just want to make
- sure we were on the same page.
- because that's not what I talked, so thank you for that. Okay, Councilor Deckard. Yes. Councilor Crossley.
- Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Councilor Feidl. Yes. Councilor Hogg. Yes. Councilor Wilk. No. Councilor
- Henry. No. Motion passes majority 6-1.
- Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, next up is item M from TSD. Council, I move to approve the
- technical service department's request and fund 1000-0106 County General TSD to create new account lines
- 3002A training travel
- and 35003 reprographics and simultaneously approve additional appropriations of $46,000 in the services
- category. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. And we have our TSD director, Mr. Cohn here.
- Good evening, everyone. This is carryover again from the cable franchise. These were items that weren't
- previously in cable franchise that got moved in during the last budget. So I'm running in the same situation
- as just described by Ms. Purdy.
- We're not asking for any additional monies more than we'd already budgeted for and had that remaining
- balance left. For the reaper graphics, those expenses cover our monthly black and white copier costs,
- service agreements, and all that comes out of that reaper graphics line for the entire county. The training
- and travel, we cover our GMS subscription with that, our MS-ISOT subscription with that. We do advanced training.
- Since we've been changing infrastructure at the county and a lot of radically different than what we
- had before there's some knowledge gaps So we've been using utilizing those funds to plug those knowledge
- gaps so we don't have to keep leveraging professional services as a constant move so That also anytime
- I go I'm typically the one in my office who has to travel to conference That does cover my travel expenses
- for going to conferences as things It's very rare that I spend the evening at a conference. So that's been a
- a one-time-a-year charge where I have to go up for a two-day conference for the state where I'm typically
- a speaker, so. Thank you very much for that. Counselor? Yes. Do you plan when you're putting your budget
- together to bring to us, and before we get turned around, do you plan on putting these expenses over
- into QMCAP with your other expenses that you have there, or where do you plan to put these expenses
- for the next budget year?
- Well, it was my understanding that would continue to be in county general, but that's a conversation
- I'd have to have with Ms. Purdy and get direction on that, how they want me to go with that. It was
- my understanding county generals where these funds came from initially before I got moved to cable franchise.
- That's why they were going back there. So. Well, since the man is not going to be coming in and future
- the same, right? We need to figure out if I need to look for other locations. That's right. Yes. And
- what you know,
- you've been around long enough to know that we do all we can to try to protect County General so that
- we can pay our employees. And so I'm suggesting you take a look to see if there's room there in the
- QMCAP budget where you have a separate budget in QMCAP for that. Council Henry. Thank you. Thanks for
- the presentation. So I want to start off by saying since we haven't
- We haven't dealt with the current cable franchise fee, which was tabled, and we just now moved money
- out or created account lines for the Community Access and WFHB. Those resources are in cable franchise,
- right? Half of things. Maybe got checked. The auditor, is that reasonable? Okay. Right now, that money's
- sitting in one fund. We haven't closed that fund out and moved it, right?
- And we just took off the books, 80,000 that is not going to be covered in the general fund. So I'm not
- positive of the question if you could repeat it, but we know that today's balance of the cable franchise
- fund was 80-some thousand. But if you put that to the end of the year, then there were, I don't know,
- I think 3,500 or something remaining, 3,700. And we just voted to approve account lines and the probes.
- for things that were covered by cable franchise. So there's more in that account right now. I just want
- to maybe clarify this. I'm looking at our budget from last cycle and on the training and travel line
- and the reprographics lines, we had expenditures going back to 2021 in here. So when you say like it
- wasn't, do you mean like last year you felt that we moved it in? I didn't take over.
- I didn't come into this position until 22, so I only know from there going forward where things were
- budgeted. That's fine, Greg. I just want to make sure, because we've been using that fund for some years
- to do this work. I mean, at least back to 2021 on our expenditures in there for those two account lines.
- So like that, it's not a recent thing. It's been like five years of that. You've expensed $354 in training
- and travel up to this point.
- Correct. Yes, that's correct. We have five months left. I mean, are you going to spend $11,000 in travel
- between now and the end of the year? No. Where that's actually going is for certification courses that
- we've already signed up for that we paid last year. They're not due again until this September. So that's
- what our next payments do on that. That's $8,000 for certification courses coming up. This isn't really
- a question for you, but we committed to those purchases while out of a fund that we knew was running hot.
- I would go back to the board commissioners managing this account. Hey, I guess when you're ready to
- put your phone down, we could probably ask a question again. So did we do we? Hey, I'm just gonna say
- let's let's let's like, I don't know if she was paying attention to you calling her out. I will say
- that less.
- President, I apologize for the outburst, but it's been a hot evening with that particular table. It
- really has. So let's take the temperature down. Let me ask it again. So we've committed to costs for
- training, which is great. But when did we invoice those, or have those been paid out yet? Those haven't
- been paid out. I won't be invoiced on those till September. And we did that knowing this account was
- running hot anyway, that we were going ahead and spending down on an account line for training and travel while
- Not sure about the revenue. I brought this to you guys as soon as I knew. The best I can do. All right.
- So just and so where I'm at on this one is there's still cash on hand in the current fund to six spend
- that we just move stuff around. No there's not. Ma'am there is. We just please listen to your auditor.
- Respectfully, we just approved by this one vote $80,000 on account the salad coming out of general fund.
- It's not being expensed in the cable. So we can math it. Yes, we can. Please listen to your auditor.
- Mr. Green. Yes, there is a payment scheduled to go out on August 6th in the amount of $80,859. So that's
- in our claims process right now.
- We're juggling on a few different sheets here tonight. I just want to make sure, again, in this particular
- account that's just tricky for your office, we have funds that we're pulling from cable service or cable
- fees, a cumulative cap, general fund. It's a unique office, how we fund you. And maybe the longer term
- conversation is getting this all to one fund like the other, like a lot of our other
- I mean, I know there's a long history of how we fund technology and account, but this is a lot to juggle.
- My concern, going back to the training and travel line, is yeah, if we have anticipated appropriations,
- we had an account that we thought we had resource for removing stuff around, a bit of a challenge. That's
- all I got. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Anybody else have any questions on this? All right.
- Seeing none, I'll move to public comment. If there's public comment, raise your hand via Teams or come
- to the microphone here in the room. Sorry. I went off. Okay. And that being said, since says don't see
- any, maybe please have a roll call vote. Councillor Crossley. Yes. Councillor Iverson. Yes. Councillor
- Fiddle. Yes.
- Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- I'll give us a little more than that. $755,000, that would be excellent. Thank you. I guess you all
- good upstairs? All right. Okay. And we're back. And for the record, we are down to six councilors because
- Councillor Hawke has left the building. So that being said, we just got finished with item M, and we
- will move into item N, still with TSD.
- Council I move to approve the technical service department's request and fund 1170-0106 lit public safety
- TSD to create account line 30072 telephone maintenance and simultaneously approve additional appropriations
- of $50,000 in the services category and $75,135.26 in the capital category for a total appropriation
- of $125,135.26.
- All right, we got a motion and a second. And what would you like to add to this item? All right,
- thank you. So this item is actually two parts. The telephone maintenance is part of what got moved into
- cable franchise. That is your law enforcement phone systems, their cell phones, their cradle points
- that give communications in the car. That's what that line pays for there. The second part of this,
- we're running into an issue, acts on body cameras and acts on evidence.
- is what our Sheriff's Department and our jail or prosecutor everybody uses. That's the gold standard
- for these body cams, the evidence storage, the interrogation rooms. Axon has changed their product,
- and I've brought Eric Oliphant with me and Michael Hunt to speak a little bit more on what the conversation
- they've had with Axon, but unfortunately, what was offered to prosecutors before that package is now
- gone, so we're getting into a different evidence package.
- Unfortunately, with the way the evidence works now, you can't just take the evidence, say it's photo
- evidence, you can't just take the photo evidence off the phone. They're forced to capture the entire
- cell phone, which a lot of these new iPhones are a terabyte. So this is adding up very quick. And I've
- actually been speaking with other departments around the state trying to see what kind of solutions
- they've come up with. And they're all kind of scrambled and doing the same thing we are trying to figure
- out as they go.
- On that part, I would like to ask Erica to come up and speak a little bit about the conversation she's
- had on with Axon, what their situation was in the past and what their current offering is now. Yeah,
- so body cameras were adopted by our local law enforcement agencies with only minimal consultation with
- me. So they chose the companies that they wanted to use.
- The good news about that is that the vast majority of the law enforcement agencies that we work with do use
- the same product. So that's convenient because then we can kind of receive it in the same way. We had
- in the past, early in the adoption by the sheriff's office, well originally we were downloading everybody
- camera from the sheriff's office. They were sending us a download link. We were downloading it to our
- network. It was taking up a ton of space and it was also taking hours of staff time to do these downloads.
- If something happened and we lost network, we would also have to restart our download process. So it
- was very frustrating. A few years ago, we were able to get a free program as an extension of what the
- Sheriff's Office had. And through that, we were able to access the body camera videos through that program
- without downloading. So it's a web-based program.
- And we could just access everything that law enforcement had uploaded. We could access it for free.
- The public defenders, we had helped them work with Greg to get a version of it that wasn't free. It
- was a paid subscription so that instead of us having to download it for them to provide it to them,
- because legally we have to provide it all to them, or for them to get download links from us and have
- to download it and put it on our network, again,
- Greg would have to store it, we got them access so that we could just share it through that program,
- and they could access it in this web-based program as well. Well, you might well imagine our free contract
- and his paid contract expired. We heard from Axon, and they said it's no longer going to function this
- way for free. They want us to download everything that
- So law enforcement's version, they are allowed to use it for all of their digital evidence. So surveillance
- videos, cell phones, anything from a citizen that they get, they are allowed to upload it into Axon
- at no additional cost. We can, right now, access that through our portal. But what they're saying is
- we are out of compliance. We have to download everything that's not Axon generated
- and store it somewhere else. And that would be the same for the public defenders with the access that
- we have. So they are offering a product called Axon Justice. And this Axon Justice gives us unlimited
- cloud storage. And we're allowed to have all of those non-Axon generated things. So it's convenient.
- It saves a lot of time.
- it saves network space as well. One thing that the new product does include that we didn't have before
- is it will generate transcripts of the videos. Now, we have to check those transcripts for accuracy
- if we're ever going to use them in a courtroom, but they can definitely help us save some staff time,
- help us identify where critical interviews of suspects or victims or other things happen in those body
- cameras so that we can
- get to the chase a little bit quicker than we already can. My hope is that that feature plus some of
- the video editing features will save us some staff time. For our person, our tech specialist that you've
- just increased to 40 hours, maybe we can get him on some different projects if we can save a little
- time with the Saxon justice. And of course, because I'm asking for it,
- This is saving Greg the trouble of having to constantly be keeping up with server space and trying to
- figure out how to share things from my office to Mr. Hunt's office. I want to make sure that Mr. Hunt's
- office has the same access that we have so that there's no question about quality or whether we have
- an advantage that they don't have in this particular area. So I recognize that this package isn't
- cheap. If you look at the long-term cost, it is a 10-year agreement. Now, that being said, we do have
- an out on that. If we can't budget, they will allow us out of the product. I have looked at local solutions
- where we do onsite storage here based on the amount of data that the prosecutor and the public defenders
- have. For about $45,000, I could do one instance for one department here. That only covers
- the working copy. Then you've still got to make a backup copy. And so that's another 40. So when you
- start looking at it that way, and the fact that that's not a long-term solution, once they outgrow that
- storage, we have no scalability there. You're going to have to grow again. Whereas with the Axon
- offering. That is unlimited storage. So that does take care of us into the next 10 years. They back
- that up. The security is on them. None of it gets placed on the hands of the county. So when you look
- at the long-term cost, the big picture of it, it is a cost savings to the county. Mr. Hunt, do you have
- anything you would like to say, sir?
- I would just say whatever they have or most of whatever they have, if we have a case, they have to give
- to us. And this, if you use the same program, it certainly helps everybody. I've talked with other chief
- public defenders and they're all kind of fighting this storage problem and how do you get it. And there
- are new companies springing up everywhere
- transcribe and translate and all kinds, but they're expensive. So this is a growing field, and I think
- if we get in it together, it makes it much simpler for everyone. Yeah, one last thing I'll just say
- about my conversations with Axon is that they anticipate a 12% price increase next year.
- But if we start this year, we're guaranteed to have no more than a 4% increase each year for research
- and development so that they can keep making things to charge us lots of money for. I think body cameras
- are a really good thing in many ways. They provide good evidence. They provide accountability and training
- opportunities for law enforcement officers. I don't think any of us, when we first started rolling them
- out, understood
- what kind of cost it was going to be and what kind of impact it was going to have on our human resources.
- And it's huge. So I don't love feeding a big corporation to do what we do because we're doing it for
- the public. But unfortunately, that's just where we're at with all of our law enforcement agencies using
- the same Axon company. I do think it should be noted that
- Axon, we are out of contract with Axon. They've extended the storage. They're letting it go under the
- pretense that we're having this discussion now to figure out if we're moving forward. If we choose not
- to fund this this year, we will have to get the prosecutor's evidence out of there. There was over 11
- terabyte. So then we're going to have to make, and that was just theirs, and I haven't even gotten into
- the public defenders yet. So we will have to come up with an immediate solution if we don't move forward
- with this during this year.
- Thank you. Councillor Iverson and then I'll go Councillor Henry. I have two questions. Number one,
- you know, the sheriff's department is not here tonight sitting with us reviewing this. So is their body
- cam footage taking up additional space? No, sir. They're on a completely separate contract on a separate
- program. We've made a very substantial investment in acts on this year with renewed contracts and added
- body cams to the tune of about a little over two million dollars.
- worth of investment for the Sheriff's Department in the jail, but their storage array, they're on a
- completely separate contract, and they're not affected by the PDs or the prosecutor's counsel. My second
- question is, in the list of the software bundles, there's something called Community Link. What is that?
- Do you know? I do.
- If we have a citizen, a victim, a witness, somebody who says, hey, I recorded that on my cell phone,
- for example, community link, you send them a link and they can upload whatever video or item that they
- have to share with us. So it's extremely helpful tool. Law enforcement uses it all the time. With our
- current free access, we do not have access to that. We have to find a different way to do it typically,
- but this will allow us to do that.
- process as well. Okay. Council Member Henry. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for the presentation.
- This isn't really directed at this particular item tonight, but it is in thinking ahead to budget season
- as we have to do with this season of year. We have been, I think, a frog in a pot that's been slowly
- boiling when it comes to technology, right? The idea that every year we know there's costs
- But understanding that how big of the county budget or slice of the pie is going to have to keep going
- to funding this kind of stuff, you know, these subscription-based off-site storage of things. You know,
- clearly there's a huge amount of that in the law enforcement space because of evidence and what you
- need to maintain. But we keep seeing this, you know, and I mean, it's in everything we touch. And,
- you know, what, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago would have just been, you know,
- I mean, you would have bought giant computers and stuck them in a building. Like, this is becoming that
- same utility that road repair is, that snow removal is, like, core function. I worry that more and more
- of our pie or the budget is going to be eaten up by these kinds of costs that we can't control. Like,
- you're bringing us another increase, another increase we can have. Instead of the technology getting
- cheaper, you know, it seems to be getting subscription-based and more expensive for us in ways that
- I'm just saying tonight that getting better projections, understanding how much more of our budget's
- gonna be going to the stuff in the future is a critical challenge against things like, you know, COLA
- and raises and step increases and everything else we have to contend with up here. It's just a huge,
- it's becoming huge. I would like to say between the staff in my office and working with all the departments
- when it comes to IT, we've worked diligently over the last four years to make deals, to cut excess out,
- First year in, we cut over almost $200,000 out of our phone spending line. So we keep making these gains.
- They keep getting made up elsewhere. But I and all the other departments are working very diligently
- to find solutions that don't break the bank. But unfortunately, yes, IT costs are driving up.
- It's on and out. It's a core function of government, right? Yeah. Anyway, that's my speech.
- Yeah, I brought this to Greg when it came to my attention because I was hoping that he could come up
- with a solution that would be as cost effective as possible. Councilor Wilks. Just so I'm understanding
- math, are you ordering double what the quote is
- No. So what there is in your packet is two quotes. There's one packet for the prosecutor, one packet
- for the PDs. The quote totals are the same. So I'm asking for year one for both departments. So that's
- where that number comes from. Got it. Thank you. Are there questions or comments on this item? All right.
- Seeing none, we'll move to public comment. If there's public comment on this item, you can raise your
- hand via Teams or come forward to the lectern here in the room.
- Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor
- Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Cross? Yes. You caught me. Yes.
- Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. That was boring. Thank you all.
- up is enough items, none, which are presentations and discussions, and we will start with the 2026 bond
- projects. So yeah, that's me. Um, so I'm going to ask Miss Purdy to come up again. She's joined
- by Commissioner Madeira to give us, um, the presentation that we always look forward to hearing before
- our budget. Give us some food for thought.
- Okay, now this is not the one that comes with the pretty pictures and all of that. This is just to give
- you, this is the basic list of projects that have been submitted. Hopefully you had a chance to look
- at this early and you can kind of play around with it to see how much you're wanting to actually bond
- for. We did, I did provide it in a ranked order based on the commissioner's priority.
- And I think that the conversation here would be for you to ask questions. And the representatives from
- the different departments, I believe, are online so that they can answer questions if you have those
- about their particular projects and or purchases that they're asking as part of the bond. And I think
- that that's
- Kind of in a nutshell, gives you a starting place. I think I also said in the email that I sent out
- that there are two items that are carried over. One is the 440,000, which is interesting. It was just
- referenced in the prior item you had before you. That's the Taser body cam in car camera situation.
- That's actually a five-year contract that we have, and they're allowing us to pay for those products
- over five years, as opposed to the upfront
- I think it was like 2.1. And then the other is the SIREN project that the emergency management has.
- So that's been something that we've been, you guys have been supporting over the years. So I guess I
- will leave it at that. And I know that Richard and Kelly and I think Jamie's online and I suspect that
- the sheriff has somebody online if he has questions.
- and I'll open it up to council to see if anybody has questions. Councilor Wilks. First, thank you for
- pulling this together and bringing it to us early. We appreciate that. Giving us a chance to kind of
- check it out. And I'm gonna start with hopefully just like a little easy lob. Workhouse dome repair. Oh yeah.
- First of all, the estimate that I think I found in the packet said, it looked like it totaled 180, but
- the budget is asking, or the budget, the proposed little spreadsheet here says 200,000. I also noticed
- that they said something along the lines of, don't worry, we'll just renegotiate costs if it gets more
- expensive. And that, to me, seems kind of. Very concerning. Yeah, unfortunate.
- What is it? What's going on with us? So that proposal was to help build some budget numbers. I mean,
- I've since reached out to a group that we use for building envelope projects to help me manage that.
- But what's your question? Well, A, how much do you think it's going to cost? Because there was some
- difference
- And you're telling me this isn't the actual quote. Well, the estimate came in at 180. I have learned
- that I don't know the percentage number. I'm sure there's one out there, but we need to budget more.
- And then there's also going to be the expense of the professional services that will need to be included.
- I don't know that yet.
- This is the best number I have right now. It's mostly cleaning the limestone, right? No. We have issues
- with the copper dome. Some of the soldering joints have become disconnected. Leaking. It's leaking,
- yeah. Yes. We've had lots of water. All right. That's good to hear about.
- Was that what the caulking part was? Because the estimate was really just underneath the dome, right?
- No. So you had the company, they actually did a drone assessment of the, they took a drone and took
- it around the dome to see the damage and that's what's supposed to be in that
- picture is highlighting the area, I think, of where there's problems. And then going back to just to,
- these are just, these are always estimates. Nobody's gonna give us a hard cost at this point in time,
- especially in this particular market. I found it very interesting. Okay. I think for me,
- getting someone here to give me an idea of what it's going to cost because I see certain numbers and
- then I immediately go, okay, that has to go out. It meets a certain threshold I've got to bring in.
- It's different now. Thank you. Yes, Councilor Iverson. I've got a couple of questions. One, I'm going
- to, this is in the sheriff's lines, the three jail
- items, the showers, the cameras, the plumbing parts. That's $800,000 in a building that we don't have
- open right now. What's the thought process? This is tough, because there's been an argument saying,
- well, the building won't be around for that much longer. Maybe. Who knows? But at the same time, there's
- people living and working there.
- I believe, and I don't know if the sheriff or Phil or Kyle is online, but I will tell you the showers,
- they are a nightmare at the moment for the sheriff and for maintenance in there. There's problems with
- the sealants, and so they have issues with water getting behind them, adds to the mold issues within
- that particular building. It is horrible to be asking, I think, to put funds into
- a building that's dying. However, as you said, there's people who are still in there. They're still
- trying to work. The cameras is to help staff be
- the inmates and respond appropriately. I think they can do a much better job of explaining it than I
- can. The plumbing parts and fixtures, honestly, I think if you wanted to eliminate that, I think that
- we can handle it in our cumulative capital fund. If we're starting to get to nitty gritties, I do think
- that that is something that we could manage. I'm not a plumber. I don't pretend to be one. Is there
- a way to plumb this so that
- the situation we're experiencing now doesn't happen again? Oh, this current situation with the? Yeah.
- No. OK. The current situation was entirely intentional by inmates. And when somebody is purposely breaking
- a system, it doesn't matter what kind of maintenance you have. This is just the result of bad actions.
- bad actions and a bad design. This building, and I know Richard can talk about it, if you ever talk
- to David, he will be talking about you, about how wonderful the new facilities are, because everything's
- on the backside. They don't have to get into the areas with the people, and it's easily accessible,
- and the new systems have, they have the ability to stop items
- from going into the actual sewer line. And then there's a hook that staff can use to pull out the debris.
- So it never becomes a problem anywhere else. What does, my understanding does happen is if that kind
- of action is taken by the inmates, any kind of reverse flow is actually gonna be into the cell as opposed
- to out into
- And we saw some of those systems when we were touring different facilities. Yes. Yeah. OK. Well,
- thank you. You've answered my questions. Other questions? Do you have another one? I've got more if
- people don't want to ask them. The drones and cameras in the commissioner's budget, I didn't see the
- quote for that. I could have missed it. But can you explain more about that, particularly given that
- flock is such a contentious thing in the community?
- What's going on here? Okay, I don't, there is no quotes for that particular cost. It was just, I actually
- asked our director, our TSD director to give me a general idea because we didn't have time to get the
- information and time for to get it out to you guys because we had met with some other people who talked
- about this. But the purpose of the drones is
- property maintenance, property security. I know that maintenance is anxious to also use them for assessing
- our rooftops, the building envelopes at the top of our buildings. I think highway also, we'd like to
- be able to use one. So these are something that will allow us to ensure
- the safety and security of our buildings and our properties. Okay, wonderful. And, yeah, and whenever
- you get those quotes, it would be interesting to see the breakdown between the stable cameras and then
- the cameras that comply. Yeah. Yeah. I got a quick question. A couple of questions. One, I see the prosecutor
- renovation ads in here. Is that because of all the issues that the prosecutor's office has had?
- is because of their base looks like it hasn't been updated since the building was opened. And I know
- that, so we thought we were moving forward on a new facility and all of that. Everything happens and
- so we're here. And so a few years back, we talked about doing some renovations for them.
- because of our stalemate we're kind of at. And it's like, I was over there meeting with them and it's
- just like, you know, they're professionals and their space looks terrible. They're crammed and they,
- you know, they really never complain. I mean, they do let us know about things and you know, and are
- vocal about
- things when they're not right, but they are extremely patient. And I do understand that, again, we're
- talking about a facility that we don't know where we're going with it. It would be nice that if we had
- new furniture and everything put into that place, that it would be something that could be moved to
- a new facility.
- new space. That's not going to be the case for carpeting and things of that nature. And then I want
- to go back to the cameras for the jail. Obviously, we can't put those into a new facility because they
- need to be in this one. But my understanding is that they could certainly be used as replacement,
- you know, so if there's problems with one. So it's a cost, but at the same time, you've kind of got
- a nice supply on hand for problems. Okay.
- Can I say something about the prosecutor's office too? That's one of the few behind the scenes spaces
- where victims go. And that represents the justice center. So we want a space where it's comfortable
- for victims as well. And right now, that space is not comfortable for victims for various reasons. OK,
- thank you. The other question, like I remember,
- like last year during budget season, I know we have the ongoing issues with the building in relation
- to like mold remediation and things like that. And so help me to remember, I know, I think it was something
- I had brought up before, like the mother of all problems, which is the HVAC system. Is, did we talk,
- is that in like QMCAB or is that,
- In last year's bonds or is that something that we can put into? like this because I guess Because for
- the time being And I know last year I'd said this like during our meeting that we had with staff and
- whatnot in the building I think the biggest thing that I just remember and working and housing is
- We had a really big issue with something. We had to gut everything out. And the remediation specialist
- said, you can do all of that. You can fumigate. But if you're not taking care of the HVAC system, it's
- just going to continue to be a problem. So I guess until the time being, because I think I've seen the
- emails that have, before all of this has gone down, is there a plan potentially for an HVAC system?
- And if not, how can we?
- make that happen? Quick and dirty answer is there isn't a plan at the moment for a new HVAC system.
- What we do want to do, and I guess what I need to, and Rich will be better explaining than myself, but
- we have put in new controls, which was one of the largest problems.
- We've also done work on the piping to wrap it. So because there was condensation that was occurring
- and then that was causing, you know, a drip, you get mold. So there's been a lot of activity with the
- current system and additions and modifications made to the current system to make it more comfortable
- for people and to be
- in not causing harm. So, okay, so we have vet come in every month and right now, the last time I spoke
- with Sarah, it was been a couple of weeks ago, I think, because we also have brought the State Department
- of Health in to do a test of the building so that we can have a completely outside opinion of the air
- quality of that building.
- I don't expect that this week, maybe next week, I think is what they had said, from IDOH. And then that's,
- you know, they're, we're still finding things, right? But at the same time, the overall assessment of
- the building is it's 95 to 99% better than it is outside. So there's been a,
- significant improvement in the air quality in that building. Now going back to the concern, which is
- legitimate, we are going to look at, this also kind of ties into you have any money to cover whatever,
- we need to get a contract, we'd like to get a contract with RQAW, who is an outside architectural firm
- in engineering, to look at the building and tell us
- want you know a couple a million things so the things first come off my mind is you know do we need
- at this point in time with the idea that we are going to be hopefully having another building do we
- need a brand new system at this point if we do need a system can we put it in while everybody's still
- in there and then if we can't how do you know how would it go in what and then
- anticipated costs, right? The fact that this is a 24-7, 365 day a year building poses problems for that
- kind of renovation, if you will. But the plan would be to bring the IDOH's response and assessment of
- the building to you guys. Talk with Sarah again.
- We're still continuing with on the control project, which I'm told is making significant differences
- in the building. I just will say that people are so, they've lost all hope, I think. They don't know
- how long they're gonna be in this building. Before they were willing to hang in there, I think, and
- then now there is just this perception of we're stuck here and it's,
- It's not a pleasant place. Did that help? It did. It did. And that's what, like, for that particular
- reason is why I'm trying to figure out, like, if, you know, that's still an ongoing issue, how can we
- take care of that while we are in transition of a lot of different things related to the future of the
- Justice Center project? So, yes, Councillor Henry. I want to pick up on where you're going with this because,
- Why RQAW, who's already done an assessment? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to a different firm that
- has fresh eyes on that building than one that's done one in the past? Well, we thought of RQAW because
- they did do an assessment on the jail, whether it was constitutional or not. But they're not involved.
- They're not DLZ, right?
- It could be considered as having a biased opinion on that particular building. Not saying that they
- would, but the perception would certainly be there. So our QAW has no dog in the fight, if you will.
- And so they are familiar with buildings and they're familiar with jails. And so it was our thought that
- they could provide us with an engineer's aspect of the needs of that
- HVAC system for that building. It kind of gets at using a vet to continue to assess as well. I mean,
- I guess what I'm asking is, if we have the same firms making assessments of the building and what, it's
- kind of like bringing IDOH in to do an independent assessment of air quality. I would almost want, or
- I would hope to hear that we'd bring in some fresh eyes on the building that haven't been in that space
- before, maybe have different ideas. I think Councilor Crossley just
- in the picture, for example, how to maintain HVAC, you know, either wiping the outside or cleaning the
- inside. I mean, there's very different views on how to go about that. I would just, it sounds to me
- that, you know, when we, you know, this is the second summer at least of, you know, similar issues.
- You know, we had the temperature spikes in the building. I mean, I don't, I have had different experiences
- shared with me by employees in that building that have not indicated things are better, you know, concerns
- about, you know,
- everything from whether or not house plans are causing this problem still in that assessment. I guess
- where I'm going is when you were out there seeking from the administration position a vendor to do work
- in a space like that, are these being put out for RFPs that are competitively judged or are you just
- sole sourcing these based on a vendor list you used? We're actually able to just choose because of the
- kind of service that it is. You don't have to bid it out.
- But we've not done anything yet as the administrator. I've not Requested anybody look at anything. We
- don't have any kind of contract in place if you have another and Company that you would like for us
- to look at please share that with us I wouldn't I wouldn't even offer that to say that I'd much rather
- see what an RFP That there's no need for that why would that be I
- Well, it's time consuming and it's not getting us anywhere where we need to be. And if we want to know
- the feasibility and the justifiability of putting in a new HVAC system, we just need someone
- who's professional. And we have that ability with architectural services. They do not have to be bid
- at or RFP'd.
- I think also there might be security concerns as well. There's three firms that do this kind of work
- in Indiana, Elevatus, RQAW, and DLZ. And if DLZ is already on the county horizon, then that leaves two.
- And so that is not a tremendous wealth of choices. So I think given that option, you know,
- our choices are already limited. And I think that my understanding is based on conversations with the
- sheriff. So I think that is someone else I'd like to have in the room if we are going to talk about,
- you know, looking at other firms for this project. Thank you. My question is also about the sheriff category.
- on your sheet, and it says a Pharaoh crime scene light. But when I looked that up, it's not a light.
- I mean, it's a scanner. I can't speak to it. This is not, I can't speak to what the sheriff has put
- on there. Okay. Is there anybody from the sheriff's?
- Well, that would definitely outreach out, I guess, because the description when they look at just a
- light, it was doing a lot more than just light, which is...
- Probably expected for $71,000. This might be one of those crime scene scanners where you put it down
- and it gives the 360. But I don't, when you say one of those, I've never heard of that. But yes, that
- is the description I was reading. Yeah. They've been in existence for about, I think, seven to 10 years
- by now. But yes, they're very handy. Cool. What do they do?
- They scan a crime scene, and they establish the relative distances of all of the items on the crime
- scene to everything else. And so in addition, so if you take a photograph of a crime scene, you have
- no idea how far anything is from anything else. And so this basically gives you a 360 of the crime scene,
- and you can take it into court and use it as evidence. And so it's pretty neat. But it is very sophisticated.
- But yes, it is considerably more than a lake. They're also helpful for accident reconstruction. Yes.
- Yes. OK. I'll go. Deckard and then I'll go. That's great. Thank you very much. I had just several like
- comments here. Let me pull it back up. I lost number one. Just an overall comment is that
- One thing I appreciate about the list is in all the bonds I've looked at and bond lists I've looked
- at, I think this is the one that I have seen that has had the most investment, proposed investment around
- two areas that we don't always see. Number one, the Justice Building. Number two, parks. And I'm always
- happy to see Kelly Whitmer in any room. But it's good to see those two focuses.
- And I think there's a lot of attention on one more than the other, but the other in a positive way.
- One question I just have generally, the Graymark jail area, would this help prevent, I want to say ask
- this for the public, would this help prevent what happened this last week? No. What more could we add
- to do that?
- My understanding is we can't, but we should get somebody, get a professional opinion outside of ours.
- But I was advised that the design of this particular facility because the pipes and everything are between
- ceilings and floors as opposed to going on the outside of a jail cell, we're not able to get the
- grinders and treble hook in? I don't know if... Yeah. The current design won't allow for that. As far
- as we've gotten right now is trying to use electronics to determine if we have an issue like a flow
- switch of sort, hey, this is going the wrong way, sets out an alert, and then you can get the water
- shut off faster.
- and avoid it maybe spreading farther. But as far as installing anything into the waste lines to prevent
- debris from collecting, that debris will gather somewhere. It will empty out into the cell. And that
- cell is above court services, the judges' chambers, the courts. It's going to empty out in there. And
- I don't know a way around that.
- The wives tell or whatever tell I hear is that it was some cigarette wrappers that went into the wrong
- place. I actually have a picture of it. But it was actually like a bread sack or a commissary's bag
- that was full of e-cigarettes. So there's the lithium batteries. And I've been advised that no grinder
- would actually grind up those, even if we had a grinder. But the new sales have a way to stop it, just
- before it even happened to be ground. That was present. There was clothing, I believe. You got anything
- else? No, I saw a bread sack full of e-cigarettes. That's what I saw. I don't know. I know we're talking
- about the current jail, but it always makes me think about some of the tours we
- we took at the new places and the fantastic things, my favorite part was actually walking behind the
- pods and seeing all the current technology and just simple things to permit this from happening. And
- if a cell did flood, there's now trough drains installed in the front and you can, it's just.
- I get there. Well, the reason I ask is I just,
- Like I was listening to the judge. I've listened to all the county employees that have given me all
- sorts of takes on this and they're going through a lot as you know, everybody is. But the thing that
- occurs to me is somebody with a bad and I'm planting something that I'm not creating here. This is probably
- already somebody with a bad week ahead just obstructs justice for an entire county and
- We just sat here and I've used this phrase in about seven meetings this week. We sat here as usual as
- the pitiful giant. Oh, there's nothing we can do about this or whatever. A bag of e-cigs or whatever
- that is, I don't smoke e-cigs, but whatever that looks like has to be seen at some point. I'm just wondering
- if there's not a multiple way to get at it. But overall, when we're looking at both sheriff and the
- jail and the prosecutor area, and I've had a lot of calls about that,
- I sometimes wonder if the aggressiveness in the bond doesn't need to be even more. What I would say
- is I'm not doing your job, you all are doing that out there with others, but if we need to be doing
- more aggressive things in that building than not, and I think I even said this last year after Councilor
- Crosley was done, and maybe even on HVAC things,
- I don't know. I might put it there. I've gone in and watched the streams of water and the effort to
- not have it, but anything that could help with that around that building. The other thing I just wanted
- to say is, looking at the rest of this here, siren replacement, how many do you think that gets us to
- replace? Do you know that by chance? I believe it's seven. Seven? Mm-hmm. Okay.
- continues. I think we did seven last year, right? I think it's been seven each year since 25. Yeah,
- that one always preys on my mind a little bit because that either works when it needs to or not. And
- then we're all out there cleaning up afterwards. But people are living out there trying to figure it
- out. So I'm gonna stop. I've said to enough. But if there's anything down the road that we
- Need to be more aggressive on this. I think a Pharaoh crime scene lie is tremendous. I remember when
- Sheriff Swain was in office, it was a garage he wanted that we're going to do some detective work in.
- But we are having real hand to mouth kind of putting the bread down the throat kind of moments. And
- if we need to be more aggressive in that area with some of this, I wouldn't I wouldn't be offended.
- I'll go Councilor Iverson, and then back to Wilkes. I want to talk about fleet vehicles. And I was really
- excited when I opened up that bid to see that the EVs were cheaper than the gas ones. Now, I have gotten
- in trouble before for trying to push EVs too fast and too hard in this county. So I just want to ask,
- the EVs are cheaper. Is that desirable in these departments?
- Yes and no. I think some folks are a little more excited about them than others. OK. I mean, these are
- great prices. They are. And I think that it's working with the departments to try to target specific
- tasks where that vehicle makes sense. I understand that. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Great. Thanks for including
- that. That made my day. Good.
- I was going to change the subject a little bit. I was going to follow up on the EV. EV and then I'll
- go back to Councilor Henry. I was thinking about the plug-in to charge them. Do you have enough of those
- units to accommodate the new EV purchases? Yeah, we could. But as part of our solar expansion, we're
- also installing chargers
- at several locations, a couple locations. We were going to install them at several locations, but learned
- otherwise that we can only put them in a couple. We're going to do some at the Youth Services Bureau
- Showers building. They'll be able to charge them once they get them and then it'd be ready for the next
- day. I mean, that's the key. Yes. Oh, yes. I mean, I imagine community corrections. You have the Johnson
- hardware lower lot, maybe a pair of EV or, you know,
- a pair of EV chargers or a single one that has dual charging capability. Two fleet vehicles park there
- overnight, ready to go the next day. They're gonna jump in and do probably their around town things.
- Nothing out of county, you know. I think they'll plug them back in every time they come back. Yeah.
- Yeah, gotcha. Thank you. Councilor Henry? Thank you. Is Ms. Nibel still on? I think.
- I saw her on there. Jamie had shared with me some additional detail about the sirens. Jamie, did you
- want to share that with the group, or I'm happy to see if you're not on still. She's on. I see her hand
- raised. So we can promote her so she could
- Hello. So we can hear you. Great. Yeah, so we are actually working through phase 3 this week and we
- should have all 7 finished this week and hopefully ready to go and screaming by our August 7th monthly
- test. For phase 3. And so yeah, we'll be moving into phase 4. There are
- Let me see, I got my list in front of me. Yeah, we have several on this list that are well. All of these
- are currently working. There are some of them that are a little inconsistent, so we're trying to nail
- down the inconsistencies. Been trying to work with the vendor to remedy those, but it's I I don't know.
- I been here four years and trying to troubleshoot for four years and they are just
- different animal. Every time they are inconsistent and don't sound I send the vendor and the next time
- we spot check them and they do sound I can't explain it so we've just put them on the list for replacement.
- I don't have actual quotes because I've been kind of working, trying to work through the vendor to get
- the quotes in hand before I send those off, so. Thank you, Jamie. I just want to make sure the body
- understood the context behind the grid there in terms of the quality and challenges we have keeping
- those up. All right, Councilor Wilks, it's your turn.
- list puts us at a $6 million bond. And there's been discussion around what, you know, are we changing
- how we do bonding? And I guess I was looking for some discussion around what we thought we were aiming for.
- So I did the math. We are forty three thousand nine hundred dollars away from the max. So we're we're
- right up on it. Yeah. And so I think but you're asking more of a philosophical question about just because
- we can, should we? He knows me. Do you have an answer? Never have. So I think Councilmember Deckard
- got us part of the way there.
- that when we are to use his term, bread to mouth, that maybe we should be using this as a tool to be
- addressing those really high risk, high need situations instead of using it for just different projects
- that are different departments. But then the question is,
- I mean, how do you define those and who defines those? Because if you were to ask all, I mean, if you're
- asked parks, these are all really important things, right? You were asked the sheriff, these are all
- really important things. You asked the commissioners, these are all really important things. So I think
- that's where I come down. Would you rank them the same way? That's a good question. That's a very good question.
- And I hadn't thought about that. Is this a consensus ranking from the commissioners? Seems, you know,
- it makes sense. Yeah, I guess I don't know how much, like,
- hesitant to bond at our maximum capacity. That makes me very nervous. But I also know we've got a lot
- of needs. So I guess I just wanted to see where other folks were landing on that. The question I would
- also have for you guys is, are you
- interested in all of the projects that are here. I know that there's been some concerns regarding the
- elevator in a building that's... Dead. Yes. I also noticed the flow on the numbering. Correct. Yeah.
- And I wondered about the bidding, if there were bidding on that or why the new TK was chosen, because
- it's ranked fourth in elevator worldwide.
- So there was a Tissenkripp elevator mentioned. I'm sorry, I'm not following. There's an elevator for
- the Justice Building. Right. And somewhere I saw there was a Tissenkripp mentioned. Maybe the provider
- of the elevator service? Yes. The elevator itself, right? I presume.
- provided I mean, I got that from the sheriff's office. I think on that note, though, like in terms of
- where I see the elevator, like ranked it as opposed to like the showers, the cameras, the plumbing parts,
- like because it's obviously taken us some time and will take time for us to get out of there. Um,
- I would think that we would put some, like, that would be a, I guess I'm surprised to see that that
- is in the low end of priorities. And I do share the same concern as Councilor Wills says, you know,
- maxing out going all jacked up. But I also understand that we have needs, but I also am looking to this going
- If we have our really needs right now, what is on this list of priorities that could potentially. Go
- in another pot or not be worked on right now. I guess that's that's my month. That I can. That would
- be my thing. Not much, but I would.
- I think that we could take the 60,000 out. You're not here. Oh, sorry. I think we could take out the
- plumbing parts and fixtures. It's not a lot, but it's something and absorb that in our cumulative capital
- fund. I saw Decker and then I'll go back to Iverson and then.
- one thing with us being a seven member body and we're down one right now i almost wonder if you take
- the the commissioner's priorities and you said how did they rank these and what does that do to cost
- if you simply remove the elevator you get them down to a 3.5 uh bond now i don't know if that's accidental
- or on purpose but they've got two answers here they've got a max bond and they've got the traditional
- What does that mean for us? I think with the seven-member body and again down one, it might be incumbent
- on us as a council. I think we've done this one other time on a different project or ARPA or who knows
- what it was. But I almost think we need to rank these amongst ourselves and get to a consensus number
- that sends the direction. I mean, a lot of us are talking about justice building.
- we've not talked we talked about sirens but to kind of see where all all of these things fly and again
- i don't want to let part we've not talked much about parks but that that is a nice investment there
- in a area facility that gets a lot more attention is getting ready to get a whole lot more attention
- more i almost think the council needs to
- do a ranking on this just so that we come out and match where the commissioners are and from there we
- could say consistently elevator makes it or we need to be negotiating around the elevator because it's
- one thing is we I kind of reject the whole argument and I do this respectfully I reject the whole argument
- you got a building that's not they're not going to be in much longer because I'm not convinced that
- we're moving too quick
- And no one could accuse us of doing that. I don't mean to laugh, but sometimes if you don't laugh,
- you'll cry. The secondary thing is, whatever happens, we still own a building that has very peculiar
- needs and an elevator issue. So it might be that we need to kind of ration this out between us. This
- might be a vehicle device by which both bodies talk to each other on things that have also larger discussions
- and maybe figure out where our priorities
- are even with the bomb. Council Iverson and then Henry. I'm just gonna be really quick. I really like
- the ranking and this is an answer to your question and it's pretty, but I think I would take away the
- block ranking where most of parks are grouped together as like a single ranking. Most of the sheriff
- is grouped together as a single ranking. And if I were to go through and do it myself, I would just
- rank each line. I don't know.
- personal preference. Yeah, I think that we can do that. I think I want to go back to something Councilor
- Goldstein, Councilor Decker said just now. So this is what we do, right? We get to July and we start
- talking about this. We get in the budget cycle in September and we haven't got a long enough runway
- to really think through.
- what the long-term piece of this is. One thing that was brought up by Councilor Hawk last year, I remember,
- and I think Mr. Cockerill helped us understand it, is with the new bond capacity, right, that we went
- from, you know, what I think Marty said once was a million dollar a year bonding to now the potential
- of six million a year, which means over time that, frankly, the board commissioners could have $30 million
- of stuff over a 10-year period that you're working through, is not a small amount of money.
- I mean, you'll keep coming back 6 million, 6 million, 6 million. So that, I mean, when you think of
- our whole budget and how much money is getting moved and bonds to that oversight, I think we haven't
- sorted that out yet, right? Like, and so, you know, if we hit our max every year, I think, was there
- not, Ms. Turner-Kanger,
- I'm sorry. Sorry. Do you recall with the bonding from year to year that there's a cool off year or something
- in there? I'm just, I'm having, you know, it's been a year. Yeah. No, I'd have to look up specifics,
- but I know there's a cooling off period is what they're calling it with the new legislation.
- And so we have to bond over five years to kind of have a workaround, is my understanding. Now,
- I'm sure Ms. Turner-King could probably elaborate on that, but that's my recollection. So we could rack
- up $30 million over five years, take a year off, and then have and still be working to spend down on
- some of the budgets, right? Because we have residuals still from previous bond years that we're still
- picking up. I mean, that could potentially happen if you guys choose to bond that high.
- Councilor Wilson, your point earlier, like that's where my heartburn is of like just how much capacity
- we take in and understanding that if I could get if Councilor Roberts here, she'd say, you know, that 2.9%
- total for the whole county and what the city of Bloomington is doing right now and some of their activities
- pre-budget consuming some of that percentage, you know, something to think about. Councilor Decker,
- I like your idea of it may be an individual scoring. I have a, absent the criteria, I don't understand
- how we got to one through nine. You own a building, we do have,
- what we have. Our scoring might look different based on a shared criteria for what we're doing with
- that space. I am personally concerned the more we talk about that building as a asset and if we're not
- maintaining it and we want to put it up for sale someday it might become more and more difficult that
- we haven't done the maintenance bones of it you know to whatever that might be
- be used for in the future, including our own use, if it's repurposed. So my scoring might look different,
- but that's because I might need the criteria, or maybe we can get to a point where we have a shared
- vision for budgets. I hate to say performance or outcome-based budgeting. I know they've tried that
- in the city. But we don't share that among electeds about things. What drives these discussions are
- department heads that bring things to the board. The board brings it to us. But it's not an elected
- position that's
- guiding the community in the direction based on the public's interest at this point. But I'm up for
- rescoring it. But thank you, Madam President. You're welcome. Thank you. Yes, Councilor Wilts. Thanks
- for the discussion that I requested. Love it. But now I'm going to jump back into this stuff. I have
- two items. First is a $70,000 plow for the airport. And I didn't see an estimate for that.
- Can we get one from Carlos? Any info? Just nothing at this point in time from him. OK. OK. And then
- just because Kelly's sitting here, could we ask her to talk about stuff? Because I feel so bad she's
- been here all night. You can tell us whatever you want. It doesn't even have to be about this. That
- was a joke. Just tell us a joke. That's awesome. What do you want to know about asphalt?
- They don't have to turn it up so loud. Seriously, ours is asphalt. Yeah. We haven't had asphalt renovation
- ever like in 40 years. And asphalt that we do have is paper thin. There's no base to it because it was
- just kind of put down one day.
- I literally don't remember how it happened. So even though all the large trucks that came for the project
- really did a number on it, it probably would have occurred in the next few years anyway because our
- traffic volume every spring and fall, especially in the summer, is tremendous. It is literally like
- going to an IU football game and then trying to get out bumper to bumper
- Every Saturday we're bumper to bumper trying to get out of this place and it makes no one happy, but
- it really doesn't make them happy when their cars are hitting. I've told my staff to start collecting
- the car parts, so we're doing that. And another thing that we didn't expect is that it takes three of
- our staff every 10 days to go over it and try to correct it.
- which means they're not doing what they need to do other places, because now basically we have a pothole
- crew that I would rather have them doing other things. So it's asphalt. We either do it, we don't do
- it, we do some of it, or we rip it up and go back to gravel. What's the GX electric JD?
- I do know what that is. The reason why I've paused is that it's not the top of my list. It's an electric
- John Deere Gator for the limestone greenway. I'm not saying I'm opposed to it, but there's a lot of
- things that go with it. We don't know if we can charge it. We don't know if we have to get Cassidy Electric
- out to our little garage that we have. We don't know then, okay, everything else we have is gas and
- loud, because someone doesn't like the loud gate.
- The gator's not that loud, it's the blower, it's the mower, it's everything else, but all that's gonna
- be gas. And then we have to store those batteries. I'm not opposed to, I'm just saying, batteries blow
- up. And now we're putting it in a little garage that probably gets over 150 degrees in the summer. Anywho,
- not the top of my list, but I'm not opposed to electric things.
- But it comes with a cost. Nothing's just the $18,000. Everything. First of all, congratulations on the
- ribbon cutting at Karst. That was two weeks ago? It was. Or so? Or so. Or so. So congratulations. Our
- very own Trent Deckard was there wearing a pink polo. That was nice. He was the best dressed soccer
- player. Always is. So I was looking at this list, and I was thinking to myself,
- What is missing from this list? And an Eastside Park is missing from this list. What investments can
- we make in our brand new lovely Eastside Park? Right now we're fully funded and we're just fine. Perfect
- answer. May always be so.
- It's the cars firm park asphalt problem. We either do it or we don't do it. It's not rocket science
- on this one. And I understand there's very, you know, you have to say, wow, this isn't, you know, siren
- replacement. We understand priorities. Asphalt's not sexy, but it's something you need to have.
- I was just out there. Personally, I was just out there recently picking up a grandson and experiencing
- this asphalt you're talking about. I'm ready to say, yes, we need asphalt. I have two things.
- I do see the value in investing in something that we've just invested a lot in and is going to be supporting
- a lot of return in our community as much as I see investing in something that's falling apart. And so
- I wouldn't downplay it quite as much as you are. And I'm wondering, is there
- a sense of how much more expensive it would be if we did half this year, half next. I've been here a
- long time, and nothing is cheaper. Well, you know, people ask me that all the time. How about if we
- pay for this next year? I said, well, fine, give me $10,000 more. That's how it goes with everything,
- every building, everything that Richard's doing. Every time you put it off,
- It's going up. It has never, in my opinion, has ever gone down. So yeah, you can. I mean, that's fine
- to budget that way. I mean, it is what it is. I love working with you on budgets. It's just like it
- is. It's so fun. Yeah, it's important, but you know, it's not life or death.
- But it also carries the hidden employee costs as well. Oh, the maintenance. Yeah, the employee costs.
- The park board would have to come to decision, we're not going to do this. We're going to go gravel,
- or we're going to have to do something. Because we are not fully staffed. Bless you. We're not fully
- staffed for a variety of reasons. And we won't be fully staffed for a long time.
- are now our crews this big. And I have to prioritize restrooms, playgrounds, potholes are not as important
- as those items to make sure, but we would get to them when we get to them. Well, and everybody that
- goes to the park experiences the asphalt.
- Yes, we've been getting a lot of complaints. I mean, consistently and constantly. I mean, just it is.
- Yeah. And I just tell them, you know, we don't have the money to properly fix it. I'll go to Councilor
- Decker. And then because we still have two more items on our agenda to discuss, I think I want to come
- up with a proposal for councils with this. So, Councilor Decker. I'll just be quick. I always appreciate how Kelly
- brings things and much like Kate said the option to do it or not do it. But I will tell you this I learned
- in early in my council career here not long ago that I made the mistake of snickering one time when
- somebody was complaining about a condition on a soccer field at Karst and I had about 20 parents read me
- the, well, they called me a few names and some weren't Trent or Deckard. At the stadium. And I misread
- the usage on something that is highly trafficked. When you were joking, I'll say joking about going
- back to gravel, that is not an option for those folks.
- So as we do our whatever's coming out of President Crosley, we always got to be very cautious with this
- part, which I think Kate always says is the great equalizer on kids getting access to things they might
- not otherwise get access to. But by the way, those fields are beautiful. And I hope those kids know
- what they're doing on them, because I sure don't.
- It is a reminder you can have nice things in a really old place that does good things. Someday, maybe
- one of our kids will be in the World Cup. Who knows? Okay. So, Council, because I think we've had a
- rather robust conversation of a lot of different things on here, and some folks might think of other
- things that could be on here, or we can change out the ranking and whatnot.
- would you of let's kind of chew on this, but not obviously too long to kind of look at this. And then
- maybe we could come back to the drum board and think of like our next meeting. I hate to keep pushing
- things to next meeting because
- That is also August 11th, and it already sounds like tonight we have a lot on the agenda, plus the Crossley
- kid has a birthday on that. I'm just giving, I am volunteering my kids to the county government. Just
- loving it. So that being said, what would we, we can kind of look at this and make our rankings and
- potentially give it to,
- like staff for a discussion later on in August. Would that work for everybody? How late can you do asphalt?
- Well, because I think you have to have... For the following year? Right. Never mind.
- just thinking again because it's getting a little late and we have the other two and plus you know it's
- it's do we max out or you know do we reprioritize this list and take some things off maybe
- we're commissioners work with commissioners to see if we could get some things in cum cap or you know
- maybe wait on some things but I think that's something that we need to think about Michelle you know
- They're talking about ranking. I think if everybody ranked, and then you would know where everyone stands
- with regards to priorities, and then that would probably dictate what your amount is going to be. So
- we can do that. And then maybe we can work together to figure out when we should get our information
- to you all.
- like council staff to kind of have it for discussion. Again, I think we need to look at what we have
- on the docket for the August 11th. Well, we also have the non-binding reviews, which is the review of
- the levies and the tax caps. You know, so you're going to have a lot of stuff going on that night as
- well. But we've pushed things to both the August 11th as well as the 25th. I think either one is going
- to be OK. OK.
- OK, we'll double check that. OK, OK. So stay tuned. All right. Well, thank you all very much for a lovely
- presentation and feel like the Avengers of county government. So thank you. Thank you very much.
- All right. Next up, we remember we added a couple of items to our agenda. And so this is item nine B.
- the discussion regarding the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund, also known as LATCF. So,
- Councilor Deckard, this is something that I'm going to look to you for, so take it away. Thank you.
- I don't need to read a motion, right, to just open a discussion. So, Council, I wanted to talk
- this evening, and I know it's late, but this is an important item that I wanted to begin the discussion
- on. I want to start it. Councilor Wilts and I both. This is kind of coming from us. But I want to talk
- about specifically how the county might be able to best plug in to the streets to stability initiative.
- And we're joined this evening by Mary Morgan with heading home of South Central Indiana.
- I serve on the leadership team of Streets to Stability. In fact, we'll have a meeting at 730 tomorrow
- morning, right? Because we like to do early morning meetings. But the importance of that meeting and
- probably why the time is there is that it does include heading home as part of it. It includes the city
- at the table. It includes Monroe County. Commissioner Madera and I typically are there.
- It also represents homeless service providers. We have IU Health there, the Chamber of Commerce and
- other nonprofit and community partners engaging in a discussion about what we do for some of the individuals
- in our community who find themselves in a difficult situation that
- community has had over the years, but not to the extent that we've had or not to the extent that we've
- been able to solve this in a comprehensive way that makes sense and not in a way that certainly speaks
- to the capability of everybody kind of pulling together and working together. And so just briefly, I'll
- say this initiative is built around a pretty simple premise.
- Rather than managing the notion of encampments or zones where individuals find themselves on the street
- but seeking and living, the community concentrates resources in areas at a time, whether that's a zone
- or an encampment. And most importantly, rapidly connects people to housing and provides support for
- them necessary
- for them to remain house. And so the model that some of us have sat through, I'm trying to think, at
- least three or four of us have sat through some variation of the discussion when Clutch, and if I get
- any of this wrong, Mary Morgan, just waved me off. But Clutch, a consultant that's done this
- very successfully, sat down with a lot of, again, elected leaders, a lot of community partners to talk about
- how this might work or how it has worked over a two day period. It was a very gracious amount of time.
- I was able to be there on the first day. I know some people were able to join for all of it, but essentially
- the initiative that they're talking to us about focuses on one encampment or one geographic area at
- a time, spending four to six weeks approximately engaging people living in that area.
- providing up to 12 months of subsidized rent to eligible participants and housing support, and then
- pairing something that is necessary for all that to happen, case management, behavioral health, employment
- assistance, and other supportive services. And to do this, to do this, obviously it requires funding,
- and obviously we are
- strapped on funding whether we're looking at this budget that we're currently in or next year's but
- as I have listened to this program listen to this idea as I've talked to counselor wilt and thought
- about our options for what we might do as a county with something that is having some success out there
- and I'll let Mary Morgan speak to all that because I don't I don't want to
- feel that thunder. How we might do it to demonstrate the county's buy-in to this along with the other
- entities in the community that are being asked, how we might do it is I am proposing, and I never get
- the acronym right, is that we consider strongly using our LATCF funding. That's local assistance, community,
- local assistance, tribal. Local area. Why don't you say it?
- and tribal consistency. You had it. I had it. I had it so late at night. But you use those dollars,
- which my understanding, talking to the auditors, we got to designate those by the end of 2027. Now,
- we don't have a plethora there. We have about $162,000.
- that would be a good way for the county, in my opinion, that would be a good way for the county to buy
- into a program that is offering us something that I don't think that we're seeing. I'm going to be real
- frank on that. And I don't know that we friends are coming up with our own solutions on our own too
- well. I also know that we're not letting life, letting our situation remain as is, is
- clearly not an option. We heard at the opening tonight that for some of our in-house members, this temporary
- solution that they have, that they're pursuing is not in the long-term working for the community. And
- so I would offer this as a thought and I'll let others jump in and we might wanna just hear from Mary
- Morgan too, Madam President, but I wanted to open up this discussion. Sure. I would welcome you, Ms. Morgan,
- come and speak to what you are getting called to do. It doesn't matter. Have a seat. Have a seat, yeah.
- Good evening. Hello. Hi. Hello. Thank you, Council Member Deckert, for your introduction, and I appreciate
- you all considering this request. I think you've all read in the media or received the press release
- from us about streets to stability, which has Council Member Deckert
- said is a program that's been deployed in other communities, including Indianapolis. This is an opportunity
- that we have gained through our partnership with Community Solutions, which runs the Built for Zero
- program that we've been partnering with for several years. Built for Zero and Community Solutions are
- providing the consultants, clutch consulting, at no cost to us, and we've been working with them for
- several months.
- The program does include very targeted approaches to zones and or encampments in a community with intensive
- work before people are housed to identify their barriers. 12 months of subsidy and intensive case management
- during that 12 month period. So we put people on a path when month 13 comes, they will remain stably
- housed even after the subsidies end.
- We're leveraging the heading home resources to pull this off through the community foundation grant
- that they received through the Lilly Endowment last year. That's allowed us to deploy six outreach case
- managers that have already been working with people who are unsheltered. So these are people who are
- not going to Wheeler Mission, not going to Friends Place, not going to any other shelters, but they
- are sleeping in encampments, sleeping in their cars, sleeping on the streets.
- We have those case managers that were prepared to deploy for this new initiative because those goals
- aligned where both of them are targeted towards addressing unsheltered homelessness. We're also using
- the resources through this Lilly Endowment and Community Foundation grant. We have a position that does
- landlord engagement and has been working with landlords to try to bring them into the fold in partnering with us.
- It's going to be a little bit challenging because there are constraints that are in place that I'm sure
- you're aware of.
- that many people who are in sheltered experience that prevent them from getting into housing easily.
- So we feel that it's an incentive to have a guaranteed 12-month income at a time when there's some softness
- in the rental market. We also have some funding that would provide some incentives, maybe an extra first
- month's rent or deposit as incentives to house people that they might not otherwise house. And also
- having those points of contact with a case manager
- that's working on stabilization as well as our own heading home resources gives some confidence to landlords
- that I think is going to be successful in bringing them to the table. So one of the things that Community
- Solution has done for us is to provide a $350,000 grant to start this initiative and then
- Additional funds that were matching funds So what we are hoping to find from our community partners
- are some additional resources so that we can Not only just do this first phase which will house 10 to
- 12 people and we'll start that in August but additionally the entirety of our unhoused residents here,
- which will be multi-year venture and
- We estimate 150 to 160 people are currently not living in shelter. So this is a big initiative. We're
- taking a risk on it. We are really grateful to the partnership of the county, which has supported,
- you know, through time and resources, efforts to address homelessness. It's a complicated problem, as
- you know. And we're just going to try something different. And look forward to partnering with you.
- answer any questions you might have. We're happy to come back and give a more detailed presentation
- if you like. I'll take a point of privilege. Thank you and thank you for the work that you continue
- to do. I know it's not an easy task. I'm curious to know what's the city of Bloomington like? Have they
- been given the same presentation? Like what's their thoughts on
- you know, this type of initiative as well. So the administration is supporting it. The mayor is part
- of the leadership team that Councilmember Decker and Commissioner Madeira are on. We've been talking
- to them about we've had the same conversations. They are also looking at some options for funding. And
- I'm planning to go to the city council just to give a presentation at some point soon.
- Yes, Councilor Iverson. I have some questions, but I want to start by thanking my colleagues, Councilmember
- Deckard and Councilmember Wilts, for bringing this important topic up in an especially timely manner.
- We heard just four days ago, five days ago, that the commissioners have started the process of eviction
- on one of our encampments, and so I thank both of you for
- for bringing this forward. I have two questions for you, first of all. Does this involve a contract
- with the county, or is this certainly just something that you're looking for funding? We have no formal
- arrangement at this point. If the county wants us to explore that, we'd be happy to, if you want some
- kind of MOU or some other kind of agreement, happy to do that. At this point, we are just,
- exploring funding opportunities because we can't do the initiative beyond the first phase if we don't
- have any funding from community partners. And typically in other communities where this approach has
- been used, the city and the county are the first in. They're not the only in, but the consultants have
- never seen a community, the business community, for example, step up without
- leadership from the government, the local government. Can I ask a second question? And maybe this is
- getting into your presentation. So if I'm stealing the thunder. Steal away. All right. What is the timeline
- here? When do you need funding by? When is phase one over? When do we get into phase two? All that jazz.
- We are starting phase one in mid-August. That terrified look on my face.
- is, yeah, we are gonna be starting in mid-August with, we're not calling it a pilot, but really it's
- a way for us to get sea legs as we try to work through the process and just figure out what's working
- here, what's not, what we need to adjust. It'll take about four to six weeks and at the end of that time,
- we will have 10 to 12 people housed, and we will have them starting work with our stabilization case
- manager. Beyond that, will depend on the resources that we can garner. Honestly, that's really the biggest
- thing. Councilor Henry. Thank you, and thank you for coming in and sitting through all that meeting
- to have this conversation. Thank you, Councilor Decker, for bringing it to
- a formal setting in our discussion. You said the number, it was 160, is that the number I just heard?
- We estimate 150 to 160 unsheltered. And then just doing math in terms of how the program works, the
- first triage of 15? 10 to 12. 10 to 12. And the cost of that effort for that initial
- 350. So just doing the math into 160 over years. If this takes off and works, there's a sustainment
- activity, right? That's right. That's helpful for me to understand a little bit of it. I think the merit
- is there. And I think for me, it's not really a question of your presentation or discussion. It's more
- about where the money comes from.
- So if LTCF is a one shot, you know, like if that's an opportunity to kickstart, but then we
- have a sustainment model. I think of like the way we fund like Centerstone, for example, like 250,000
- a year, they come to us every year in that budget line, how we get something sustainable. And that,
- and so it's like, one way this goes is we kick it off and then we, that's from us, right? Another is
- to say, if we're baking it into the general fund as a no different than,
- contracting with a vendor to do that work on our behalf as a government, what sustainment looks like.
- And so my mind goes right there. This is really in the weeds at this hour, but it's really what that
- fund was meant for in the context of ARPA. And I know we didn't sit in that timeframe because it didn't
- have a date on it that we had to use it by. So it's just me thinking out loud right now about short-term,
- long-term.
- So for me, I just need a little bit more info on the nature of the LACCF, how it sat for a few years,
- and maybe this is more of a general fund conversation. I think ahead, that's all. This is just back
- of a napkin thinking right now. So it has nothing to do with the merit of the program or its value,
- it's mostly just how we move money around county government. Is a service we're delivering year in,
- year out to get that 160 to zero, how we can be a good partner in the long term
- Any other questions or comments? Yes, Councilor Wilks. I just want to say thank you for being here.
- And I think this program and this conversation have been months and months in the making. So I'm really
- excited to be talking about this even. And it's such an innovative approach, at least in our community.
- that I wanted us to be able to have a public discussion around the program and giving it kind of that
- boost that it needs at the beginning. And it's more than just the dollar amount. And because as Mary
- pointed out, the government
- support, the government show of support is critical here. And as we all know, we own property that has
- a huge liability right now with the unsheltered homeless population. And the future of those people
- is not just a concern for us broadly, it's a concern for us specifically. And I think that I
- very much appreciate the long-term concern. And I've been thinking about that as well. And I've got
- some ideas that are way too crazy even for me to be talking about out loud quite yet. But I don't want
- to let the lack of that long-term impede our ability to show support in the short term.
- I guess that's really my point. The auditor has her hand up because my next question is, what's next?
- Sure. So I'm not sure if it's been discussed between council and commissioners or at all, but I'm wondering
- if there's an appetite for obligating the opioid funding that is where
- settlement agreement. So where the county is scheduled, the schedule has us receiving funding through
- 2038. So that gives us some time and some funding to consider if there's an appetite for that. And the
- uses are appropriate. Well, essentially right now, like in the long term, we can use the L.A. TCF. I'm
- just going to keep doing it. So we could use that and then maybe think like in the long
- grand scheme of things to think about other ways as well. Because also with this being said, we can
- talk about this, but this is much like ARPA where we can have the conversations and now the pressure
- is to be put on with commissioners to get on board with this type of project because
- we can appropriate the funds, but ultimately the contract and everything lies within them. So that being
- said, that just made me have another question. Are you going to be talking soon with the commissioners
- about this great project initiative? Jodi is, Commissioner Madeira is on the leadership team and I have
- had conversations with
- Commissioner Thomas as well. I have not talked to Commissioner Jones and I'm I'm happy to give a presentation
- to them at a future meeting as well. My sense is that they are supportive of this. I wouldn't want to
- speak to. I don't. Definitely. I know we got folks on line. I'm not saying that they need to like go.
- to your meeting and whatnot. But I'm just curious because we're having this discussion. And so this
- is something like, one can't do one without the other. So it's almost like, how do we proceed? How do
- we move forward with those things? Well, I will say that to the auditor's original question, Councilor
- Decker and I did send an email this past week
- just offering to work with the commissioners on this idea and indicated that we would be having this
- discussion tonight in the hopes that we could do something together. I really do think this is an opportunity
- for us to collaborate and be jointly in support of a really positive thing. But specifically, I mean,
- we asked Mary
- to come. So that's why she's here. And I think a next step certainly is for us to follow up on that
- email and let them know how this discussion went and see what they would like to do in terms of the next
- the next step for engaging with heading home on this. We felt there was a little bit of urgency given
- the start of the program, the amount of time it takes for us to appropriate anything, and wanting to
- see some continuity from that phase one, give them the ability to be thinking about phase two. So,
- go ahead. I was just going to add, I appreciate it also. I've had many
- good discussions with Commissioner Madera about it. She's on the leadership team and no one's thrown
- anything down the hallway at me saying no on this. But I echo where Kate's at. I think we're in an urgent
- place where communities are with expert guidance such as Mary Morgan and our friends at Clutch making
- decisions to start charting pathways to try things that are just
- they just have to work better than what we conventionally have done, which is sometimes in the counties
- kind of set and say, I don't know, this is new to us. We've never done it. I think we have to go beyond
- it. And this is extremely innovative in that way. And so I'm grateful to Mary Morgan being here late
- and keeping us moving. Yes, Council Iverson. So this came out in the commissioners meeting on Thursday
- that the clearing of the Thompson property
- was kind of an issue because the commissioners are taking two weeks off. The next two meetings are canceled.
- And so a conversation with the commissioners is going to have to wait for another couple of weeks, at
- least to do it in a public meeting. And so in my mind, us talking about this is very much related with
- Thompson property. Should it be? Am I linking those?
- Because in my mind those folks need to go someplace and it seems like this is the this is a salute maybe
- a partial solution for some of those people But but in my in my is that a bridge too far? I will say
- that the clutch advises us not to identify publicly the places that we're going to Target or address
- until after we've housed people there. It's their
- there are a couple of concerns. One is just that people either will leave because they don't want to
- engage with us or that they'll more people will come because they know that a particular area is going
- to be have an offer of housing, which I would love to be able to do it all at once. And we just don't
- have the capacity to do that. So the, and the other thing is just community,
- There's well intentioned going to a site when we're trying to work with people and causing some challenges.
- Yeah. So but to your point, there are a significant number of people at the power line, the Thompson
- property. And one way or another, they will be in our community and very likely and sheltered. And so
- we will be working with them at some point. So it's just not.
- I'm not sure I'm answering your question, but you are. Our our our goal is to over time address all
- of the unsheltered residents that we have. It's just that we're not making that public before we actually
- do a site. I understand. Oh, Councilor Henry. I guess it's a counselor's point. The calendar isn't in
- our favor for that urgency with the board commissioners with their current schedule, given their
- understanding that there's some concerns about, I guess, privacy is the word I'll use about the nature
- of the work. I would, for one, benefit from a more formal interpretation of what Clutch does. I appreciate
- that my colleagues might be a little more steeped in it, having worked with you in these meetings, to
- better understand that. Because clearly there's a nexus of a county urgency on one location or encampment versus
- the success factors that this organization may have. Frankly, maybe looking at somewhere else. I don't
- know that we can't say that because we just understood that there's some city here, I could definitely
- benefit from. I'd be happy to. presentation if we have it. If I understand August 11, it's getting awfully
- packed. You know, there's that urgency might be beneficial. I'm curious. I did not watch
- the commissioners meeting. And I know that the next two meetings are canceled. They gone from town would
- still be working with them. Perhaps. No, I know not formally. I was wondering if there was a reason
- given at the meeting. That's all.
- But from my understanding, they don't have quorum. And so for the next couple of weeks, they're just
- going to be like playing dockets or that type of approval. But Commissioner Thomas is online. So I don't
- know if she wanted to address that. We don't have to put people on the spot if she wants to.
- That's great. But we can certainly reach back out and perhaps start the appropriation process and adjust
- in case like we've done with things before.
- just so it's advertised and so that we can move things, you know, at the speed of molest various my
- mom said. Well, the only other thing that I would add and I see her hand raised, but I'll finish this
- and then I'll go to Commissioner Thomas. Maybe it would be a good idea for the books with you to use
- their public comment time. And like I know that there has been like
- you know, emails, but I guess in order for us to really get this out to the public, to really express
- the sense of urgency and, you know, to really see how we can get on board and everybody collaborate
- and do something together. Maybe that would be a good, you know, thing to have. So that's just a food
- for thought. And I saw Commissioner Thomas hands was raised or hand teams and just one.
- I just raised one. Hello. So I think the discussion about our schedule is kind of a moot point because
- you haven't advertised this either. So your next meeting is two days before our next meeting. So we're
- not that far off. It's not a big deal. But I think
- we need some real clarity on opioid money versus the remainder of the ARPA money. My understanding is
- this pot of money has to be spent by December of 27. It's that little pot of money that gives us a little
- extra time, if I remember that correctly. So I think that's the big question. And I think for me, my concerns
- after talking to some folks in the community is what happens in year two for the folks who were helped
- initially. And how does this program actually work? And I think that what I need to do is have a phone
- conversation with Ms. Morgan. She's going to be on the phone a lot or teams or something to have some
- of my questions addressed as well. And that can be done before we have our next meeting.
- We need direction if we're going to put it on our agenda. What fund is this coming out of? What is this
- going to look like? Thank you so much, everyone. This is my fourth meeting while on vacation today.
- Thank you. Enjoy. Sorry. I guess to answer the question about, because we briefly touched about this
- special type of funding at the joint meeting that we had,
- And it was almost talked about that this is something that should possibly come out because ARPA, we
- are literally about to go into month eight of the year, which is insane. And my understanding with ARPA
- is we couldn't really, with the remainder of things, it's really helpful for us to finish out or give
- money to some of those projects. We can't really start a new initiative. And technically, this would almost be
- So just, if you don't mind me clarifying just a little bit. So this is separate from the, it is ARPA
- funding, but it's LATCF. So it's separate from the other ARPA funding. So this doesn't have to go into
- a plan. We simply have to spend it on appropriate governmental expenses, which this definitely falls
- into that category. The other
- piece of information I want to share is that we still have to report on this, and it's still federal
- funding. So we need to, you know, proceed with caution and make sure we're, you know, keeping good records.
- The reporting portal for this funding only goes to the end of twenty twenty seven, which is why our
- experts have pushed for us to to obligate and expend by that point just to be
- very cautious. So we think that would be best, even though we haven't seen a firm deadline. That is
- what they're advising. So I'd like to stick with that if possible. So, yes, it would be great if we
- could obligate and proceed with a plan for this. OK, OK. So it sounds like
- Ms. Morgan, you and Commissioner Thomas will be getting on the phone talking here soon before things
- get added to their agenda. And it sounds like from maybe explaining or listening to all of us, there's
- definitely some interest there to work on this initiative. And then again, Major, thank you to being
- here tonight and presenting that to us. And our colleagues here, Councilors Deckert,
- Deckard and Wilt for bringing this to the attention because in the grand scheme of things, our federal
- governments are not really helping with the Latin state isn't either with some of the things that they're
- doing, but we have to help us help ourselves because who's going to save us? So yeah, so that's, I think
- that's the, that's been my,
- for the day is who's going to save us. So I think that's it. So I appreciate that. Any other things
- that any updates, feel free to, you know, use our public comment or, you know, come chat with us at
- our next few meetings that we have coming up. Right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
- Have a good night. All right. Moving on to the last agenda item is also something that we added.
- Um, which was item nine C. Oh God. Okay. So I think this is just. Okay. So yes. So ding. Um, um, it
- is sleepy time. Um, and so because we did, uh,
- We did add item 9C for this. I know Ms. Turner-King has some things that she wants to talk to us about
- about. So earlier today, I sent the council a memo on the special purpose tax. And in that memo,
- it discusses, I want to draw your attention to specifically item three, which is a notice component.
- In reviewing statute six, 3.63, 7.5,
- It reads if a county adopting body makes any fiscal decision that has a financial impact to an underlying
- local taxing unit The decision must be made and notice must be given to the affected local taxing unit
- by August 1st of the year For the special purpose tax the underlying impacted Taxing unit is the county
- so it does seem weird that the county would give the county notice but
- As a precaution, I am going to recommend that council direct the auditor's office to send notice to
- the board of commissioners that provides the council is considering changing the special purpose tax,
- that the change includes potentially increasing the rate from the current rate of point zero three to
- a rate not exceed point two five percent, which is the maximum allowable per statute, and that the change
- that the change to potentially increase the rate would occur before October 31st. So this allows the
- council to continue moving forward and evaluating that rate. And then if you do decide to adjust it,
- we have the precautionary step of giving notice, because I would rather give notice and not need it
- than find out we didn't do it and it be required. OK. So, yes, Council, I was.
- Does that require a motion or simply consent of the council? The safest way is to do a motion to direct
- the notice be sent prior to August 1st, okay council I move to direct the county auditor to notify the
- Monroe County Commissioners that the County Council is reviewing the special-purpose tax lit as And
- the language recommended by miss my attorney King that she just talked about
- All right. We got a motion and a second to send notice to commissioners to talk about this. Is there
- any further comments or questions on this item? Yes, Councilor Williams. I think notifying ourselves
- is insane, and I really appreciate you. And for clarity, the notice is just sent by email. So this is
- not a cost burdensome requirement. So we're going to email ourselves.
- I just think it's crazy and I think it's perfectly lovely that you thought of it and I appreciate you.
- Okay, any other questions or comments on this? All right, seeing none, I'll move to public comment.
- If there's public comment on this item, you can come forward to the lectern here in the room or raise
- your hand via Teams. And seeing none, we can do a voice vote.
- So all those in favor of the motion that was presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed,
- same sign. Excuse me, I choked on. OK, motion. Sorry, motion carries. All right. And now we come to
- the final conclusion of the night, which is county counselor liaison updates and comments. And I.
- I'm going to ask that we keep it brief because it's been a long night. But actually it's been necessary
- and like conversations have been like there have been lots of discussions that have been had that have
- been really helpful. So I'm going to look to my left and just go ahead and down the soldiering line
- of county councils. So council councilor Fidel you're up next.
- So I don't have too much to report. I'll be real brief. So just a couple of DBI meetings, both with
- the membership itself and the board in the past few weeks and then some pre budget meetings with different
- liaison assignments. And that's wrapped up my life for a little while. I have no official anything to
- report right now. Thanks.
- I'll just be really quick, two quick things. I have the privilege of being our rep on the Monroe County
- Women's Commission. The Women's Commission had a meeting, I believe it was a week and a half ago, or
- maybe it was last week. And one of the things that came out of it, in addition to considering the potential
- for recommending a health and all rubric for us policymakers to use, was some discussion
- around a presentation that came from some SPIA students related to capturing community survey data on
- where we're at and how people find themselves around health care barriers, all these great things. And
- I'm hopeful that someone from either the Women's Commission or the students can come and make
- that presentation to us. I think it'd be pretty beneficial. I think it would back up a lot of what we
- all see out there that folks really struggle.
- around health care and other needs. So I'm going to work on trying to get a version of that for us,
- because I think it'd be incredibly informative. Second, we've had a theme with that and with this evening
- about dignity of life, no matter where you're at in the community. And I think that's just the reality
- where the county is in twenty twenty six. And I took a meeting with I know a counselor Henry did as well.
- some community members that are extremely concerned about rental rights and just dignity around where
- you live. Whether it be in the city or the county, folks still expect to have dignity of life around
- their safety, their services and other things like that. And the county of 2026
- I think can offer those things. And so I'm sure some of you others will be contacted as well, but it
- was one of the most moving meetings I think I've ever taken. And when you get the request to hear about
- some of the rental concerns that folks have and quality of life and living in this community, I would
- urge you to take it serious. Thank you.
- What I want to talk about tonight is the coming 2029 changes, which is going to move us from property
- tax to income tax and the the idea that now the state wants us to have a must meeting and that we're
- supposed to be setting rates for other taxing units. And I think what a lot of folks are really focusing
- on, particularly in what we're
- the presentation we received from AIC was about kind of the nuts and bolts about how it's gonna work
- and kind of the steps that we need to take. But I've been having some meetings with some people and
- I think really what's getting lost in a lot of that analysis is just how much this change is going to
- hurt our libraries. Just how much this change
- is going to hurt RBB and MCSC. MCSC. Just how much this change is going to hurt our township trustees.
- And if we don't pay attention to what we're doing, this could have profound impacts on other taxing
- units. And so I want to be really bright eyed about this as we're moving into August.
- because a lot of responsibility has been put on county councils to make these decisions. And there is
- a heavy weight that's been put upon us. I also want to say that the supposed benefits of this are really
- not great. That what the state government is essentially telling us is
- We need to make decisions that are going to hurt some of our key community assets. And in a response
- that people are going to get a couple hundred dollars of tax breaks. I think we're really getting the
- wool pulled over our eyes here, and I'm really worried about it because and I'm going to I'm going to
- wrap up here, but the
- The thing that's happening right now is that a war of choice across the seas means that our gas prices
- are going up, that our grocery prices are going up. And now we're being told by the state that we're
- going to be severely impacting a lot of our key community institutions at the same time that we're losing
- a court, at the same time we're losing pretrial release, at the same time we're losing our specialty
- courts, at the same time we're losing
- dollars that goes towards rapid rehousing and the list goes on and on. We are losing a lot. We're not
- very much gain. And I think people are going to start to realize that as we're getting closer and closer
- to twenty twenty nine. Thank you for that. I remember during last year we were talking about
- the great tax cut that was coming, I compared it to something like a Polar Pop a day, which is roughly
- what it is. It's like 300 bucks, right? Just line them up on the desk, that's your visual. For the year.
- For the year. And the trade-off in all public services on the other end of that ledger is difficult.
- And so I wanted to maybe just not, I just want to say one thing, I guess, that's kind of connected to
- a lot of things that happened here tonight, and it's been opined on, is that
- My approach to all of this comes from a place of, are we getting the most out of our tax dollars and
- coming into this building? And are we driving that conversation from being duly elected officials that
- were put here to do that, or is it being driven by other forces? The irony of what you just said, or
- what will hit this desk in a month, is whether or not, down to the department level, our own government
- is understanding that these things are changing.
- Because budgets come at us and it's pretty much, you know, here's the department, here's what it wants,
- it wants what it had last year plus a certain percent, as if all this stuff isn't happening, right?
- And I appreciate there's a survival there. They're looking at their staff, they're looking at COLA,
- they're looking at all that. But to get to a place where, you know, are we funding the values of our
- community? Are we prioritizing the things we've heard here tonight? And the role that we have in this
- moment, are we able to work with what the state has done on our back? That stuff is what drives my,
- I find sometimes very sharp views on this. I just come out in a profoundly different way than others,
- and I appreciate that that's where I'm at. So the extent that sharp elbows are thrown, I apologize for
- that, but it's coming from this absolute place that we have to use these dollars for the best possible
- way we can. And that gets to, I will say that just second, that yeah, Councilor Decker and I had an
- opportunity to meet with Hoosier Action, which is a group that does this advocacy work on behalf of
- all sorts of communities in our state.
- And I understand that Harold Times is gonna be reporting on this as well, but I tend to continue to
- have that dialogue that we got to experience, Trent. It is a golden moment for the county to lean in
- on protecting those renters in our county that have nowhere to go when the landlord has wronged them.
- We don't have mechanisms for that. We have a page and a half of ordinance on the books in this county
- that empowers the health department to make those determinations. And if they can't find mold, that
- is the end of the rental
- dispute and we all know that rental disputes are more than just mold damage right. I mean landlord tenant
- relations building inspection all of it. We are we are grossly behind where the city of Bloomington
- is on this to the detriment of hundreds of renters in our community. I'm at least encouraged that there
- is a clearly a spirit of change coming and started in May. One of us gets deleted on the other side
- of the building.
- But I think both of us are in the direction of that. We must do some more and we need to do it with
- the budget that has available and squeeze every nickel out of it to make some of these changes in people's
- lives. And I look forward to joining anybody on that effort at this table. Thank you, Madam President.
- You're welcome. And to that respect, I think I'm the only renter that is on county council and literally
- must. Must treat us half city, half county.
- and some of us they're taken care of with respect to hand and some of us they're not and I think that's
- something that I think about every day when I drive to one half of my street and turn you know in the
- other half and so I just I think about that and also with my like years of housing background some of
- the things that you know tenant
- landlord relations. Yeah, I think y'all brought up a good point. Who do you talk to when you're at odds
- about something in your house and it's, you know, it's their word against the tenant.
- And so I think we've seen in the community in which, you know, bodily harm has been done to folks as
- a result of not having proper inspections like smoke sectors. So that's definitely something to consider
- and to think about. And I welcome I haven't been contacted yet, but I welcome having that conversation
- because I think it's worth having. On a lighter note, I will say
- As we think about Tuesday, this is our last Tuesday before MCCSE kids go back into the world. So, and
- I think RBB also goes as well too, but for me and mine, we go to our MCCSE. And so I'm just, I'm thinking
- about folks having patience and adhering to safety guidelines because the yellow buses are coming back,
- whether you like it or not. And also on another note,
- We have a great tradition that has come back and it's coming back for the second year in a row. And
- it is the taste of Bloomington that is coming. And for the second year in a row, we're gonna get some
- nice weather. So be kind, be nice, take Ubers, walk, because I definitely have walked a lot and enjoy
- the upcoming week and weekend. And with that being said, I thank you all for your time and we are adjourned.