is the Monroe County Council, I'd like all that meeting.
that pledge with us. I will move us to item number three on today's agenda, which by the way, our agendas
are available on the county's website at in.gov slash county slash Monroe. So you can follow along with
us and all of our packet information is included there. So you can get all of the detail that we're
seeing as well. Are there any, does anyone wish to amend tonight's agenda? Council member Feidl, I think
you have a- I'm getting there. Okay.
8N, I believe, right? That's the one you're referring to? Mm-hmm. Okay. I move to table 8N, which is
the resolution 26 through 29, 2027, target fund balance resolution to the October 27th meeting. Second.
All right, we have a motion and a second to move item 8N.
the request to approve resolution 2026-29, the 2027 target fund balance resolution, to our next meeting,
which is the 27th. We have a motion and a second. Any other further comments? Please. Ask why. We still
are awaiting some language, I think the legal office, on the impact of bonding. There's some interesting
things of that sort.
good stuff isn't that great yeah all right since we have everyone present all those in favor of amending
tonight's agenda please say aye aye all those opposed the ayes have it unanimously and so we have an
amended agenda next we'll move on to public comment for items that don't appear on tonight's agenda
there will be a three minute
per speaker time limits. Please come forward if you're here in the historic Notting Hill meeting room
to the podium or if you are on team simply raise your hand and we will recognize you.
could you please state your name for the record? Good evening council my name is Jamie Ford and I'm
a Monroe County resident. I'm here because I am in support of Councilor Hawke's idea of the money going
to Beacon if it must go to Beacon to be set up as a grant contract. Yes this council are stewards of
our tax dollars which includes your own tax dollars and I appreciate your hard work but it is our money
and it's we the people's money and we the people have a right to know where tax dollars are going. There's
also a sentiment that if someone questions an organization like Beacon that it's because of a hatred
of poor people or homeless people I can't speak for other
but for me that is inaccurate. I ask questions because I want to make sure that the people who need
help are in fact receiving help. The Crawford Apartments, which Beacon admits to directly being involved
with, appear to be a catastrophe. Out of 61 units, 32 are vacant. 32 individuals and or families are
experiencing homelessness despite housing being set aside specifically for them. We can argue about
the code, but either way conditions should not have deteriorated that badly. Multiple units and areas
are missing smoke detectors, which is putting people's lives at risk.
Yet, according to a B-Squared Bulletin article dated 7 August 2025, Beacon's executive director stated,
quote, for me, the focus is that we've done an amazing work. My Beacon team has done an incredible job
to help the property management fulfill their responsibilities, and we're sorry the property management
was not able to follow through, end quote. Beacon, an organization fighting homelessness in our area,
did work so, quote, unquote, successful that it directly contributed to homelessness in our area.
Throwing money at a problem does not automatically equate to a successful solution. For the sake of
those who need help, we need to be asking questions, finding out what went wrong, and establishing key
performance indicators to ensure that Beacon's future facility does not have the same outcome as the
Crawford Apartments. I look forward to reading your grant contract and working with Beacon on solving
homelessness. Thank you. Thank you. Does anybody else wish to speak for items not on the agenda this
evening? Looking at teams.
Looking in the NatU Hill Room. Seeing none. Let's move to department updates. We have two departments
that are going to be presenting at least tonight. There will be a time limit of 10 minutes per department
and I'd like to first invite up or have, excuse me, the statement from the Youth Services Bureau read
and I think that's going to happen from over here. Indeed.
There was an error with the location that was listed for the runaway and homeless youth grant that was
appropriated at the September 22nd, 2026 council meeting. The location should have been 9627 rather
than 9628. And so they just wanted that read into the record that they had, they're in the process of
fixing that. Thank you. Thank you for reading that. Council members, do you have any questions on this
department update?
Yes Mr. Deckard. I don't I just appreciate the conciseness and clarity around that kind of a correction.
I think sometimes we get really bogged down in a larger correction discussion on something like that
when really we just need that on the record and then we can move on down the road. Well thank you for
that. Seeing no other comments I think then we'll move to our next department update and this is I think
something I've been looking forward to. We have a bit to Dewees with an update from Stone Belt, and
I think Ms. Dewees has brought someone with her. And if you would like, you can sit at the table here.
Just make sure to get the microphone as close to your mouth as possible. Again, you have 10 minutes.
We'll leave that one. I did bring a few lead-behinds, too. I don't know if I can leave them there.
about the basics of our size and structure today. So thank you for having us. I think you all know I'm
Bitta Dewees and I want to introduce. I'm Keegan Burke. And we really are just here to say thank you
and give you an update of what's going on at Stone Belt. Our world can be quite challenging living in
about 90% of our funding comes from Medicaid and there's a lot going on in that world today. We
have a lot more regulations and rules we're having to follow in the efforts to weed out waste fraud
and abuse, which I very much support. But it leads to a whole lot more things we have to do to prove
that we're the quality provider that we are. And that makes the county tax dollars that you
to support stone belt so much more critical to our work. We were allocated in the last budget session
at the state to receive 2% rate increases for the last two years. So we should have gotten 4%. We got
zero because you may have heard they predicted a billion dollar shortfall in Medicaid a couple of years
ago. So again, our main point is to say thank you. It's critical to us to have some of that outside
revenue that the county provides to keep services going. But then what we also want to do is talk
a little bit about the good work we're doing. So I'm going to start with letting Keegan talk. And Keegan,
why don't you tell the council a little bit about what makes a good life for you and maybe how Stone
Belt has supported you to be able to get to where you are today? The way Stone Belt or the way where
Stone Belt is getting me today is I live in SLP, which is a port of living, with two roommates. And
Stone Belt provides services through that.
And I also attend a day program, which is through Stone Belt, five days a week. And it's been an amazing
trip and journey for me. So Keegan, when you first got started with Stone Belt, you were still living
with your mom, right? Yes, I was still living with my mom. And you started in a program called Project
Search? Yes, Project Search is where I got to know Ms. Bitta Dewees from.
that. Project Search is basically they help individuals with disabilities look for jobs and also people
with disabilities to experience what it's like to work. And it's a partnership we do with Cook Medical,
Ivy Tech, Upland out on profile, Stone Belt. They get to do internships. It's for young adults,
18 to 24. And you were once that young, Keegan. Yes, but I'm not young anymore. And then you moved into
a group home with us,
Yes, I used to live in a group home called Miller. It's on 713 East Miller Street. And still runs six
group homes here in Monroe County, serving about 50 individuals. And then you mentioned that you moved
into supported living, and that's where we support people in apartments. Some have roommates, most have
roommates, and they get varying levels of service. So Keegan, before, when you were in a group home,
you had to have staff with you all the time, right? And now do you?
I had to have staff with me all the time 24 seven, but now I don't. But there's still staff there to
help give meds and help with meal planning. But other than that, I have six hours of alone time, so
it's been a pretty good deal for me. And he actually moved into the new switch our departments that
did take forever to get open, but they're finally open and they're beautiful. So it's a great location
in the city.
I think one other thing I was going to have you mention, Stonebolt supports self advocates of Monroe
County, which is open to any citizen who wants to join. What's your role? I am the president of the
Monroe County Self Advocacy. And then Keegan's talked about several of the programs in terms of how
he experiences them, but I was just going to add a few that Keegan didn't mention. I'm going to make
sure I don't forget a few because we do a lot.
serve over 1,200 individuals a year. We have a clinic where we have psychiatric nurse practitioners
who do med management for people with a dual diagnosis. And in our world, that means intellectual disability
in a mental health condition. We also have therapists that provide support. We have behaviorists. We
have nurses. And we also have a partnership with Centerstone, where we provide skills development services
through their agency, but with our clients. So it's just a partnership and staffing and training that
we do. Anything else you want to add? Stone Belch has been a good place for me and it's been a good
place for me ever since I started. We'd just love to see if you have any questions for us before we
let you get to your meeting time.
Well, thank you so much for being here. And before I turn to my council colleagues, I just want to note
for the record that Councilmember Marty Hawk is now joining us in person. Council, who wants to start
off with the first question or comment? Councilmember Wilz. All right. First of all, thank you so much
for being here, both of you. It's good to see you both. And I don't really have a specific question, however,
I'm curious, and if you don't know, that's obviously perfectly fine, but I'm curious as to numbers of
people served. You said 1,200 per year? Yeah, so a lot of that number does run through the clinic. Each
program's different, and I'll leave these behind, but I have to look to get them about right. I think
people don't really realize how large we are. We have almost 500 employees, over 450 employees. We have
About 160, it's saying right now, in our residential programs. So that would be the group homes and
the supported living. We have 180 people or so in our day programs. That number used to be significantly
higher prior to COVID. We have over 200 in the employment program that are looking for jobs or finding
jobs or in various stages. And then over 800 are in those clinical services.
That is more than just Monroe County, though. We do cover Lawrence County and Bartholomew County as
well. But Monroe County is our by far largest county where we serve the most clients and where we have
our clinic. I think, oh, please, Mr. Dickens. I know it's as long as I've been alive, but how do you
know roughly how long has Stone Belt been in the community?
March 27, 1959. So 67 years this year. That's also my husband's birthday, so it's really easy for me
to remember. Same year or two. So it's really easy for me to remember. Thank you for saying that. I
think generationally, the example, probably we need to be looking more closely how to model anything
you're doing well for anything else we might be needing help with.
How am I doing on time? Do I have two minutes left? You've got three minutes. OK. I'll end with one
of the most incredible stories I heard. And I thought I knew Stone Belt's history, but when I took over
as the CEO,
About four years ago, I was contacted by someone whose mother had just passed away, and she asked if
I would write a letter talking about the impact her parents' generation made on the services for people
with disabilities back in the 50s. Her name was Carolyn Rhodes, and her mom was Mary Phillips, and her
dad was Dr. Gordon Phillips. They had a son named Timmy. None of us knew this story, not even Leslie.
We always knew we were founded by nine families. But they had a son named Timmy who had severe medical
disabilities. And they kept him at home as long as they could. And at about the age of two and a half,
he had to go to an institution. He passed away at the age of three.
That was in July of 58. They came home and reached out to Dr. Middleton, I think his name was was, way
before HIPAA. He gave them the names of every family in town that had children with disabilities.
They said, come to a meeting. We want to talk about services. Some parents were afraid of that. Some
wanted nothing to do with that. And nine families came.
That was again in November of 58 that this meeting was called. We were incorporated in March of 59.
That's how fast that happened when those parents got activated and the Phillips didn't even have a child
in the services. They did it for the rest of the folks of Monroe County. So that is one of the most
powerful stories I've heard in my recent past. And that's how we got started. I want to conclude by
saying that in a it seems like a former life.
I worked for you as one of those 450 employees. I remember hearing that last time I was here, Peter,
and that stuck with me. And I worked in the support of living spaces. And those are near and dear to
my heart. They're sprinkled all throughout this community. And I don't think folks really understand
how broad the footprint of that program is. So I have two questions for you. The first is these cuts
that are coming down the pike and the struggles that you're having with revenue.
How has that impacted those supportive living programs, those houses where one or two people live? And
then my second tangential question is, if folks want to support your mission, how can they do so? Great.
Thank you for that. They're impacting us greatly. The biggest issue Stone Belt has is staffing, and
that's based on what we can pay staffing.
We can't raise the price of our services. We're at the mercy of Medicaid. So when they give us rate
increases that don't come through, but the cost of everything else we do, everybody's feeling it. Every
cost has gone up for every one of us. We're struggling. And what we need to do is be able to raise wages
so we can keep staff. And if people want to go to donate or support Stone Belt, we would be incredibly
Thank you for that, Peter. You're very welcome, Ms. Dewees. Thank you for being here. And President
Keegan, thank you for your presence. Thank you very much, and I'm obliged. All right. We'll talk to
you soon. Can I leave these for you guys? I don't know what protocol is. And I'm over here. We're just
folks. Throw them out.
You know what? I can see this one fine. I'm fine. I can see it. It's fine. Do they need it? Because
I can see this one. All right. Well, we are arranging televisions. I think we're ready to move on to
item 6A. I move to approve the following consent agenda for item for October 13.
Court's request and fund 8 8 9 5 dash 0 0 0 0 County IV dash D incentive fund the creation of an account
line and simultaneously approve a category transfer of $2,835 from the capital category to services
category. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Are there any questions from council on
this consent agenda item?
Looking to my right, looking to my left, seeing none. All those in favor of today's consent agenda item,
please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? The ayes have it unanimously. Now move on to our sevens and
we'll start with item 7A. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval the park department's
request to be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1-000-0803
General Parks the director position. Second. All right we have a motion and a second we have Justin
Roddy from County Legal and John Robertson here to tell us what's going on welcome. I'm actually presenting
the item but Mr. Robertson's here for any council questions. Excellent we are flexible tonight.
So this is a request from the parks department to hire the parks director due to the current due to
the recent announcement that the current director plans on retiring in November. So per the current
job description the director position in part is responsible for supervising and directing all the parks
department personnel and developing monitoring and executing the parks master plan.
The director position also prepares and administers the parks budget as well as negotiates and presents
contracts. And there's a whole bunch of other tasks in that job description, but those are just some
highlights of it. So this position plays a vital part in ensuring the county parks are well maintained
and accessible to the community. The parks board has not decided whether they will be hiring an internal
or an external candidate, but they will make that decision if they have permission to hire, but there
will be internal candidates.
Do you have anything to add to that? I don't think so. That was very well said. Thanks, Molly. All right.
Council, do you have any questions or comments about this? Start here, then move on all the way down.
Thank you, Mr. President. I'm here. Anyway, this question is more for table. I appreciate you being
here tonight. It caught my attention in the packet that this is just unbelievable to me that this position
was 35 hours.
Is that correct in the packet? I just want to make sure that... Yes, that's correct. Okay. I'm just
overwhelmed by that, given the service of the predecessor and the role. I just want to make sure. Has
there been a historical conversation about lifting that position to a full 40 a week? I don't know that.
It may have predated my time here, but I'm taking it back by it being a 35-hour week position as we're
putting it back out in the market.
I will say if it has been a conversation, it predates my time as well, which is about 10 years. And
I'm not aware of any conversation to move it to 40. Thank you, Mr. President. I think maybe I'm looking,
Councilor Wilts may have the answer or a comment. I don't know that I have the answer. But as you know,
a lot of departments, in fact, perhaps,
all of them were reduced from 40 to 35 as a budgetary measure many years ago. And since then, it has
been incumbent on the department to request an increase in those hours with the understanding that that
would increase costs. And I think that our current soon to be former
parks director has been incredibly mindful of costs and is probably someone who puts in more than what's
on paper and does so willingly. And it might, to your point, it might be something that we should talk
about because I'm not sure that's realistic for a director. Thank you.
that. Yes and I think before we start talking about that number of hours or whatever, I don't think.
And I think what we need to look at is what is the total salary? And of course, we've been blessed with
a really great parks director and she put in whatever hours it took to get the job done. And I expect
another parks director should do the same thing or we will be really
question is back to who has the legal authority to choose? Is it the parks board or is it commissioner?
Is the parks board? It's the parks board. Okay. And do we have a full compliment there? Is the parks
board completely filled out or do we have any vacancies? I believe there's there is one vacancy right now.
the reason why I'm just saying is, you know, if you have very many vacancies, we need to make sure we
have those filled so that the parks board is choosing who they want to represent the parks department.
And I didn't know the answer to that question or I wouldn't have asked it. But I really didn't know.
So how many on the parks board? Oh, gosh, I think we've got seven right now. And there's both.
Are you saying there's a total of seven in one of the seven is missing or we have a total of seven and
we need another one to make eight? Yes. Yes, supposed to be eight. I believe so. OK, I'm sorry. That's
all right. In looking at the website, I think there's seven with one vacancy. OK, that's right. With
one vacancy.
I'm not looking at it. Otherwise, I apologize for that. Mr. Deckard, yeah. Point of information on it.
It looks like it was, it's vacant from extension and that's because extension has had change there and
it's an ex officio with voting privileges. But the other citizens appointees from the commissioners,
the circuit court,
the council and the mayor are in their seats. Yeah. And thanks for pointing that out. So we have been
attempting to contact Purdue to get that filled, but we have not since their former extension agent
left. Are there any other comments or questions? Right. I think that we should really
put the feet to the fire under Purdue to get somebody on that parks board, because there's a lot of
things that's planned that it would be really important to have that person from Purdue there. I mean,
with what I've been seeing what your plan is, I think it would be essential that we get that expertise
on that parks board. So let's push for that. Let's make that happen.
Councilmember Wilts. Yeah, I think that we should talk to Adi specifically because I'm not going to
dig into the code, but it looks like it needs to be the extension director. Whereas some of these, I
know we've talked about their role on, is it plan commission? What's the other? Yeah. And that's an
appointment that they make versus the actual
I don't know if that's the director or. It says extension agent in one, but that's I think. Antiquated
kind of went back in the day, you know there was that the one agent per county. But yeah, we should
talk to audience and I would encourage you all to reach out. Yeah, I know. So Justin is has attempted
to contact her about the board seat a couple times, but we're still working on that. Yeah. All right.
I will just say that I agree with Council Member Hawke. You've got a lot of work ahead of you, including
a park on the east side, which I am very excited about. I try and say that every single time you guys
come out here. It's in Kate's district, but it's close to mine. All right. Is there any public comment?
Could we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawke? Yes.
Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Motion passes unanimous 6-0.
Thank you. Go forth and hire. All right, that concludes our hiring freeze reviews. Now it's time to
move into council business. We'll start with item 8A. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible
approval the health department's request in fund
1161-9625 local public health services account line 10123 population health and outreach manager to
increase the work hours from 35 to 40. Second. All right we have Mr. Eric Gaus from the health department
here with us today welcome. Thank you so this request is being made to align the position with other manager
director level positions in the health department and also to reflect the actual hours the employee
has been working to ensure that the TV and other communicable disease investigation and case management
is completed per the department statutory requirements. I'd like to quote
I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's
a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's
a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.
position compared to other counties to see what the salary level is, because when we do that comparison
with other counties, and then we set a salary here, did we compare hours? Because if we had five more
hours, five more paid hours, then is that going to raise that salary much higher than what had been
compared to with the other counties? I'm just saying that's something we should look at as well as
the many, many benefits, which is a part of the compensation. So when we change anything from 35 to
40 hours, that really puts up, then it starts doing this whole thing of, OK, here's the salary level.
And then you're looking at everything else, so we'd better bring that one up. And so it really does
mess with the whole salary schedule. I'm not saying this is the particular case with this.
I was not a part of. I don't recall how the salary was set for this particular position. Did they look
at other counties? I don't have the answer for that question at this time. I can work. I can get that
for you, though. All right. Any other questions? Yes, Councilmember Wilts. I am not adept enough to
find a organizational chart.
for this department, although I know one exists. And my question is, is there a director position above?
No, this position reports to the health administrator. Okay. All right. And I know that we had talked
pretty extensively last fall about making those all 40. And I feel pretty strongly that there should
be some parity there, especially at the director level.
within the department. All right, council members, any other questions or comments? Yes, Councilor Rivera.
Okay, when you look at that, depending between the 35 and 40, did you look at the salary between 35
and 40 to see what the difference was, or did you just think they all should be working 40 hours, regardless
of the salary? When we discussed it at council, my recollection
is that the discussion was not about salary. There were a bunch of new positions being created at the
time, a lot of reorganization and structure being added. And my thought at the time was if you're adding
a level of manager into your
your architecture there for the department that they presumably should be working, you know, similar
hours and especially my main concern at the time was should they end up supervising someone that works
more hours that would get complicated perhaps. But we're talking about conversations from a while back.
So that's all I remember. Mr.
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Eric, for coming in again. I'll just, I think, restate what I've
been saying for the past few weeks regarding this department, that I'm taking it as a moment in time
where we're operating on budget assumptions, org charts, concepts that were installed by a former official.
We're in this kind of gray space where you all need to meet your day-to-day functions. And I highly
anticipate we're going to be having a much
larger conversation about that org chart over the next year with a new administrator or leadership in
that body.
It is still my impression from coming on years ago here and being in that department that I've never
understood the top heaviness of the director levels in these positions. That's not your fault, Eric.
You're trying to fund the spots right now. You know, I imagine when we go out on the market nationally
to find a new health administrator that the administrator's pay band is going to be interesting relative
to other counties of our size, right? To attract that kind of talent and expertise we may need to right the ship.
I guess what I'm saying is things have come before us week by week right now. I'm very open to just
getting over the hurdle. I anticipate this is going to be a much more complex conversation as we reevaluate
what this department is doing for our community. I also want to thank you for time you gave me on Monday
to talk through some of this.
I will say for the item in front of us and all the items that will be coming to us that it is essential
that frontline public health services continue to get delivered regardless of executive activities.
I'll put it that way and that has nothing to do with Eric on down right now. When I hear about vaccines
that are not getting in arms in this community because we don't have
staffing. I'm all about supporting what we got to do to get the job done in the interim so sorry for
consuming that much time on this but it is a highly moving target right now and I thank you for your
stress. Thank you for putting up with the stress. We're all feeling it too. Thank you. All right if
there are no other council comments let's go to the public. If you have a question for the Health Department
please raise your hand on Teams or come to the desk.
podium today.
I'm still Jamie Ford and I'm still a Monroe County resident. Something that might help with the health
department statutory requirements is to eliminate non statutory programs like the syringe program under
the population health and outreach. On 13 June 2026 I requested records for the syringe program after
reading some of the annual reports from the sheriff's department that listed the amounts of inmates
who voluntarily requested for help with their addiction. I was curious if there's any correlation between
those numbers and the amount of addiction help requested via the syringe program. The idea was to see
if there might be a need for separate services in our
area to help shield individuals who are trying to be addiction but are trapped in that cycle. Today,
13 October 2026, is four months to the day since I made that request and I still do not have those records.
The Substance Use Disorder Awareness Commission just held the Monroe County Recovery Summit. I did not
attend unfortunately, but I did watch the recordings on the CATS YouTube channel. The purpose of the summits
The purpose of the summit was to, quote, innovate ideas and collaborate on compassionate solutions.
And the theme was, quote, drug trends in our community. That sounds like a perfect opportunity to talk
about the 10 years worth of data collected in a health department program directly related to substance
use in our community based on what I saw that did not happen. Solutions could have been brainstormed
and program successes could have been built on, but the syringe program data was ignored at a summit
on drug trends in our community. I'm aware that there are studies by researchers elsewhere on harm reduction
groups elsewhere that are proving that harm reduction
works elsewhere after a decade plus of the syringe program in Monroe county we should have proof that
the program is working here now in Monroe county because it is ignored even in the best circumstances
like the summit i have to question if that's because the program is a failure if i'm wrong prove it
by releasing the records with all the instability in the health department perhaps the best it's best
to scale back eliminate by non statutory programs etc and do the work required to improve the health
services that are
the basic core requirements, and then in the future build it back up as necessary or as beneficial.
And I look forward to the health of Monroe County improved and to quote Council Henry, the ship being
righted in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Are there others that wish to make public comment on this
health department item? Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Hawk?
Yes. Councilor Wilts. Yes. Councilor Henry. Yes. Councilor Decker. Yes. Councilor Iverson. Yes. Motion
passes unanimous 6-0. To the table. Hold just a second. A question please. Just a second. Thank you
very much for your time. Thank you for being here. A question. Did you have a financial impact statement
that was attached to this to tell us what the financial impact would be? Was it
it's in the packet. As you might know, I've not had an opportunity to review the packet. For
those interested, it is on page 26 of today's packet. And again, those packet and agenda can be found at in.gov
slash Monroe slash county slash Monroe or simply by searching for Monroe County. All right, I think
that means that we are ready for item number B or letter B.
Council I move to open for discussion and possible approval the Highway Department's request and fund
1176-0000 motor vehicle highway the creation of a count line 16800 transitional temporary training position.
Second. We have a motion and a second and we are joined by our highway director Lisa Ridge. What do
we need to know?
evening. So we do have two people retiring this year so this is actually to make this line active so
that we can do some cross training in their departure. One is our financial manager is retiring and
then I have an item on here for Assistant Superintendent. Great. Council do you have any questions for
Ms. Ridge? All right.
there are none. We'll go to the public. Public, do you have any, is there any public comment on this?
Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Hock? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor
Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. Councilor Iverson? Yes. And Councilor Feidl? Yes. Motion passes unanimous,
six zero. Thank you for that. And that moves us to item C.
Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval of the Highway Department's request to
be exempt from the hiring freeze and be allowed to hire and fund 1176-0000 Motor Vehicle Highway, a
full-time assistant superintendent. Second. All right, we still have Lisa Ridge with us. So what do
we need to know? So we do have one of our assistant superintendents retiring at the end of December.
So we would like to take the steps of posting the position and being able to do some cross train before
we're looking at maybe the first of December, the first two weeks of December by the time we post it
and everything. But also I anticipate that we will have applicants from within our department.
I know we will. We've had a lot of different positions showing interest in this position.
I'd like to be able to, if I move somebody, then that opens that position. That could open another position.
Am I gonna have to come back here every two weeks or something for that rippling effect? So I'm only
asking to fill the assistant. Okay, so if I have a foreman that I move into that, that becomes the foreman
becomes open. If I move a truck driver into a foreman position, a truck driver position comes open.
I didn't know how you wanted me to handle that rippling effect in this request. Mr. Decker. This is
less a question for Ms. Ridge, but is there a way we could just set the motion up for that just so that
we could get that? And do we need 30 seconds to figure out what that would look like? Or does that defy the odds?
of the way back and look, but it was approved in one other position that I anticipated somebody moving
up and I didn't have to come back to fill that second position, but it was over that it was probably
six months ago. And if you had to bet your mortgage, you would say this is likely a strong strong likelihood.
We're going to see this pattern. We encourage our existing employees that are looking at a promotion
to promote and we want to promote within if we have a qualified applicant.
Our personnel policy states that we encourage people to do that. So I anticipate that yeah, we will
have qualified applicants within our department that we would like to look at. But then again, that
could open one or two positions below that position over the next six to eight weeks. Please.
I think there have been other instances where the motion was to approve the requested position. So in
this case, the assistant superintendent and any subsequent positions that become vacant due to promotions
to the requested position. I would move to amend the underlying motion from counselor final to reflect
what council just said, the subsequent positions.
We have a motion and a second on the amendment. Council, do you have any questions on the amendment?
Mr. Henry. Thank you, Mr. President, and I have a question for Mr. Henry King. So we have at multiple
times over the past year amended the hiring freeze resolution for these kinds of nuances. What does
that do to the resolution? Because it is a variation on the freeze, right?
I'm just trying to understand it because my heartburn is that you know I'm not opposed necessarily to
this but if we find out at the end of the meeting we have to write a resolution amendment I just want
to know what's coming then. I don't think that particular situation is addressed in the amendment but
the plan is to present to council in early November
a resolution to address whether council wants to continue the pack pause, continue the hiring freeze,
and all of the overtime resolution. So in the November draft, I can account for this circumstance. Okay,
but we're not violating the resolution by creating the motion here? Because we've done this before where
we've done something up here and then we've had to rewrite the thing. And that's kind of, I appreciate
that there's a future draft coming. I'm talking about between now and November, I guess.
I'm pulling up the resolution to look, but I, from recollection, believe the resolution is silent on
the matter. And in practice, I think we did the same thing for the auditor's position and maybe another
highway position. Okay, then if it's that kosher at the table, I'm good. Councillor Hawke has been very
patient. This is something that I discussed at the last meeting and it was said that we can discuss
it at this meeting. I don't think it's going to be discussed, however, I think
Realistically, we know we don't have a hiring freeze. All we're doing is requesting the department heads
to come visit with us every time they turn around as if they have nothing else to do. Now, if we have
it in their budget and we don't intend to say no to anybody, let's just get rid of this hiring freeze.
Let the department heads run their departments. I wanted to do a pause before months ago to see where
we were going to be.
but we didn't, only thing we paused was making the meetings realistic because we say yes to everybody.
I mean, and I'm happy to say yes, you know, that's fine. But I just think we just need to get rid of
this ridiculous hiring first that we don't intend to freeze. All right, Council Member Wilts. I don't
disagree, Councilor Hock.
and I look forward to having the conversation. But regarding the amendment, and this is not directed
at you at all, but I do want to put out there that this is specific to the cascade that happens from
just this position. While we are still in the hiring freeze, again, not directed specifically at you,
but it is not carte blanche to fill
open positions in your department. I also want to clarify something that I recognize where the resolution
was we will reevaluate that here shortly just as we will reevaluate literally everything before this
body at some point in the next year including the budget which will adopt shortly the minute we do it
will be changing that but I would say if any other department had had a specific issue they come
here to this table under the current resolution, they tell us a little bit of their headache. And the
hope is always that we can take a little bit of that headache away in this. And that's what my motion
intends to do. And so piecemeal, I think that's what we do until that resolution is either sustained
or stricken as we do this. And I think we have a department head very clearly telling us the options
here that this
would do for that while also being open to a public hire if that comes forward, but she also knows her
processes and I trust that. All right, any other council comments or questions on Mr. Deckard's amendment?
Is there any public comment on Mr. Deckard's amendment? Seeing none, may we please? That one. Oh, please.
Yep, sorry. Welcome to the podium. Oh, yet again.
I do not have a highway, right? Yeah, shockingly, I don't have a prepared statement, but as someone who
like often drives around in the area. And while I'm thankful for the infrastructure improvements, it
is constant. So if having this kind of amendment that's just going to allow that flow to keep the projects
going, so we can hopefully at some point say like, hey, we've done a good job. We can take a break from
all the construction at some point. I'm all for it. Perhaps in a matter of transparency, Ms. Ridge can
come back and just say, hey, we filled this. We're working on this one. And this one's coming down the
line next. That makes sense to me, especially for this department. Thank you.
Thank you. Is there any other public comment on Mr. Deckard's amendment? Seeing none, may we please
have a roll call vote? Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. Councilor
Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes. And Councilor Hauk? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. All right, that
brings us back to the underlying motion, which is now amended.
Councilmembers, do you have any other comments on this? Is there any additional public comments?
Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote on the amended motion? Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor
Decker? Yes. Councillor Iverson? Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. Councillor Hock? Yes. And Councillor Wilts?
Yes. Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you so much. That brings us to item D. Council, I will be combining items D and E into one motion.
I move to approve the highway department's request for a fund to fund transfer of cash of $8,125 from fund
1197-0000 stormwater management to fund 8959-0000 emergency watershed protection. The creation of account
lines 37411 construction and 37416 design and simultaneously and fund 8959-0000 emergency watershed
production.
approve an additional appropriation of $68,250 in the services category. Second. All right we have a
motion and a second. Ms. Ridge tell us about this. So due to the May 16, 2025 tornado we've received
numerous complaints of long from the residents along Clear Creek by Roger Street
that road, if you're familiar with that area. There's a lot of debris in the creek. The department,
Erica Pena, applied for a grant through USDA in the National Resources Conservation Service. Monroe
County was awarded that grant. She went through the process for the contracts, working with the commissioners
on the stormwater board to get everything in motion, getting a quote for the work to be done.
I just finished up today property owners letters for the right of entry to be able to enter onto the
property if we need to working with the city of Bloomington with an MOU to split the local cost. It
has to be done by November 16th for us to receive that grant reimbursement. So we're here to appropriate
those funds and hopefully this will be done in the next week or so, week or two. Excellent. Does anybody
have any questions or comments about this grant? Mr. Deckard.
Thank you for doing this. These little things add up. And when we get down the road into why did this,
why is this doing this? Why is this what these things can make a difference down the road? How long
is a project like this do you think take to do to work on and get done? The contractor is great to work
with. They have great equipment. I'm going to guess two to three days. Okay.
That's my guess. We meet tomorrow at 10 a.m. just so I can refresh myself on the project. Erica is out
on maternity leave until December so I'm just trying to keep it going so we can get that grant reimbursement
and get the project complete. Thank you. I'm gonna go to Mr. Henry then come back to the left.
Thank you Mr. President, thank you Lisa for that too. I mean this is
In on the plan commission side of things a notorious street corner in the county. This is a remarkable
I don't know if it's this the geography of the creek in proximity to the historic buildings and the
just the construction around there and the the stables on the other side of that with the.
kind of their own drainage ditch. I mean, there's a lot going on in that space. And for folks that don't
go through Clear Creek very often as the post office gets reopened and all that, you know, they should
take a drive in the countryside. I mean, so I appreciate the work and your youth counselor, Decker there,
but the number of times I've heard about the street corner in the past two years of just in the county
is remarkable. So it's a constant problem. Thank you for the effort. Council Member Wilts. Yes, thanks.
I just to clarify this particular project is it's a cleanup project. It's basically, yeah, they'll use
the equipment to get the tree, the trees that have been downed into the creek so they can remove it.
So the creek doesn't flood. It helps get the debris out. So the water can continuous to flow right now.
It's blocked. And the debris has been there since the May 16th, 2025 it's
It's a lot to work with. So, I mean, I commend Erica for taking this on. It's a lot when you're working
in a creek bed, the permits and everything that you need to do to be able to get in there, work with
the property owners. City of Bloomington has been great to partner with us on this. So yeah,
it takes a while. To Councilor Henry's point, this
this particular area has had a lot of stormwater issues, I guess. Correct. Not necessarily probably
strictly from this tornado. There's a lot broader issues in this area. Since the tornado, we just want
to help eliminate the impact the tornado had with blocking the creek bed. Absolutely fully support this.
I appreciate the work done to
bring grant money in for it 100 percent. I'm curious if there is anything that that is being worked
toward in terms of a more comprehensive solution. So right now we're also working on our updating our
long-range stormwater plan in the county. We're taking a little bit of a different approach than what
we did 10 years ago.
yesterday we met, I think there were 17 of us in the meeting and it's different departments around the
county that deal with the drainage issues around the county on a daily basis, whether it be through
playing commission petitions, our crews, the parks and rec department. So we're going through, we will
interview individually all of these departments. And this is gonna be a big area of how we put together
our long range stormwater plan.
the next round. Because these departments know the existing problems. They deal with it, especially
on Plain Commission. They know the problem areas. Our crews know the problem areas. We have a complaint
log from the citizens that are in this area and other areas that know where these issues are. So our
focus will be different areas and especially in these different watershed areas that have these drainage
issues. Looking forward to that. Thanks.
I will finish up then for oh wait I'm sorry thank you please. So thinking about the citizens and the
residents will you be getting updates on them at this point as well as all the departments you're talking
about or will it just be departments? So we will do also we'll have some public meetings too. Okay.
and we'll invite the public. We want to hear from the public. So, and this is going to be about a year
long process. We expect the plan to be done. Our target is August of 2027, but there'll be, I think
we put into the plan one or two public information meetings that we will encourage the public to come,
make sure that they see what, you know, that we have as an area that we haven't missed. So yeah, the
public will definitely be involved. Thank you.
I think we have to speak now. I have two questions for you. Number one, when the stormwater plan gets
kind of to the point where it can be unveiled, that would be great to hear in a department update. That
sounds really positive. My second question to you is, as the effects of climate change don't just impact
Monroe County, but they impact all of Indiana and surrounding communities. How competitive is this grant?
Are we up against a wall competing with our neighbors?
I'm sure we are. Every grant is competitive anymore. It just depends on if you want to take, if you
look at it, it took us a year and a half to get to this point. But I think there's grants out there,
but every grant is competitive anymore, especially with the storms that we've experienced over the last
two or three years, the climate change, it's just kind of changed everybody's day to day. So. Yeah.
All right. Thank you. All right.
There's no other council comments or questions. Let's go to the public. Do you have any questions or
comments for the highway department about this grant? Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote?
Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Harrison? Yes. Councillor Feigen? Yes. Councillor
Hock? Yes. Councillor Woods? Yes. Motion passes unanimous. Thanks for joining us.
All right. Next, we'll move on to item F. This is D. Oh, this is me. I'm sorry. There you go. Please
have a seat. I'm the one that's confused. I would now like to invite the Sheriff's Office to join us.
We knew what you meant.
present the required annual update regarding their pension plan. Sheriff Marte thank you for joining
us. Good evening council. I'd like to introduce to you Elaine. I'm so happy this year because the topic
she's going to talk about I really if I try to explain I'll probably get it backwards. But Elaine came
down from Indianapolis and she
She actually I was with for Gaza and then when she actually talks about what she's going to explain
to you and Give you the update when she does that with us with the board members the server board members
I'll tell you what she makes it easy for us to understand it. So so with that being said I Pass it on
the floor to relay. Thank you Elaine Beatty and I see familiar faces because we did this for the first
time last year I believe it was in December
And this is really just an update of that same format of the same type of information that is by statute
required to be reported. If you look at page three, it's just revisiting again that this is all reporting
requirements that became effective July of 2025. And the information has historically been prepared
and presented by the actuary for the
for the retirement and benefit plan, McCready and Keene. And they historically, and I mean presenting
it, they forward to the auditor's office information that is necessary for the reporting to the state
gateway reporting system. And a copy of that is in the back. What I did last year and have done again
this year is put it into a format that's a little bit more
conversational a little easier to understand than the way it's presented by the actuary to the auditor's
office. So just moving right along page number five again just to revisit this is the reporting of the
retirement plan and benefit plan that by state statute are for the sheriff and the sheriff's merit officers.
There is a sighting there of the reference that has been just the plan follows and adheres to Indiana
code 3681012. The vesting requirements are eight years of service with the department and the benefits
under this larger retirement plan are primarily to provide retirement incomes. There is a disability
benefit and a death benefit that are
smaller benefits but the primary again is for the retirement income. The plan administered by state
statute is the sheriff and the merit board. They make up a committee and one of their responsibilities
is choosing an actuarial firm, also choosing investment advisors, etc. The number of participants
covered by the program most recently active participants that are vested there were 26 and there were
18 that were not yet vested and there were seven employees who had separated employment and are going
to receive a benefit when they hit that age the magic age of 55. There are though 28
retirees and beneficiaries in payment status as of when these calculations were made. So bottom line,
what is the contribution rate for the employer as a percentage of payroll? 25.6% of payroll. The members
are paying in 4% of their pay through payroll deductions and the total
annual covered payroll for those eligible members in the program, sheriff and the deputies is 4,144,186.
turning the page another item that is requested on that gateway reporting system is how is the portfolio
of monies that have previously been deposited how are they being invested just as a broad asset class
equities there's about 70 percent of the portfolio is invested in equities
28, almost 29 percent in fixed income, and cash of about 2.1 percent being held at any given time. The
additional information that I think can be of certain importance to you folks as the fiscal body is
what's the funded percentage of the program, and based on a market value of assets, it's
over 80%, just a tick, but that's a great number to be at. Historically, that's been kind of a standard
or a gold standard of what is a well-funded program, 80% or higher. So you're in great company there.
The actuary when they prepare their calculations, they do assume that the bucket of money that's already
been deposited and is in the investing status is going to earn some future earnings on itself just because
of market performance. Six and a half percent is the assumed rate of return. Anything exceeding that,
that's great. Those are gains which reduce what the county must pay in. Anything shy of that,
bit of a shortcoming so that could certainly have implications on what the county's contribution levels
are. For the year 2025 the performance of the portfolio was 13.4 percent so again thank you for another
strong market performance that we've we've got going on in our markets right now.
And the annual benefits paid out during 2025 to those 28 pensioners and the retirees and beneficiaries
was $670,418. That's the ongoing commitment every year. On the next page seven, it shows a little bit
more detail about
Some of this, these are really terms that are frequently used by accountants in that government accounting
standards. So the actuarial present value of the future projected benefits is little over $22 million.
The service cost, and that is not for services necessary to administer the program.
Service cost is a term used in accounting to reflect the cost of people showing up for work and earning
one more year of benefit accrual or accumulation. So that is $729,000 and some change.
The actuary determines three different levels of contributions and I think that's something that had
been discussed briefly at the budget hearing. There is the actuarially determined minimum that's by
state standards being the minimum to keep the plan funded and that's pretty
very similar to what this for accounting purposes is determined to be the actuarial determined contribution,
$958,666. What employer contributions were budgeted and in fact paid this year, $1,030,893. The total
pension liability
is the overall net, pretty much of those numbers. And that's 16 million and some change. And then the
fiduciary net position, that's the market value of the portfolio at that given snapshot day and time.
That's the $13,232,563. So when you do a subtraction between those last two numbers,
there is an unfunded dollar amount of $3,200,145. And that's how it then determines that it's an 80.5%
funded, which is just a good place to be. Are there any questions about that, just the snapshot?
What is so important about this information, as it has been historically gathered and maintained by
the gateway reporting system that the state utilizes, is that it would be presented to the Pension Management
Oversight Committee, which is a summer study committee of legislators, every year by the state actuary,
and they would say, well, what does this mean? I mean, really.
What are we looking at here? And upon much further review and many discussions, part of Senate Enrolled
Act of 144 was some provisions that would say, okay, so let's just make sure that everybody is adhering
to what these county contributions are as have been developed by the actuary.
and let's monitor some things. So one of the provisions of it does state that for a five-year track
record has the unit that would be you here in Monroe County contributed at least that minimum contribution
that the actual developed. So on page eight just shows some bar chart there of saying for each of those
calendar years what was the minimum developed
by the actuary as necessary versus what actually was paid in. And what you'll see there is that the
amount paid in through the budgeting process by the county exceeded what the minimum was. And that's
a good thing. You know, you think about mortgaging your home, if you pay off, you wanna pay off your
loan a little bit faster, you make extra payments. And doesn't change the value of your home whatsoever,
But it does, in fact, just show that you're gaining some equity and you're doing a little bit better
in funding and getting rid of that unfunded obligation. The page nine then says, okay, so the General
Assembly is concerned that every year payments are being made that are at least equal to the minimum.
are the units making promises that might be beyond what realistically they're going to be able to afford.
And that's why this page here of a funded ratio is illustrated there because it is talking about the
health of the program itself in terms of the lighter
Larger mountain in the back there is the accrued liabilities. That's what the benefits are that the
members are earning every year, every day that they show up to work versus the darker or the gold smaller
mountain being what's happening with the assets.
in terms of the fair value, the market value. So this is just a five-year track record again, because
the General Assembly wants to make sure that over the course of the most recent five years, it's been
trending in the right direction. So what you're able to see there is that you have been doing just exactly
what you needed to do to move on the trend towards getting it closer to 100% funded.
noting that the 2023 number shows a bit of a dip, but that, if I may remind you, was January 1st following
2022, which was a really rough year for both equities and fixed income, neither one having positive
returns. So although the liabilities didn't take a dip, the market value of the portfolio did. So for
the data that's in the charts that we're looking at, this is Monroe County specific.
Yes, yes. So the next section runs through the same type of information for the smaller benefit plan.
Just as a recollection, you receive from the sheriff in his budget one number that combines the contributions
needed for the larger retirement plan and the benefit plan.
combined. That one dollar amount is then put into the bank that does the balancing between how much
needs to be deposited into the larger fund and how much needs to go into the smaller. It's all done
by the actuary and calculation. This benefit fund is established within state statute to cover smaller
obligations and those smaller obligations are
a life insurance policy that provides the same amount of life insurance for all participating members,
a long-term disability insurance contract, which provides benefits to those who may by reason of health
or mental capabilities be long-term disabled. And then there is also a support
dependents benefit in the event of the death of an officer that is again the same amount for all people
regardless of how many years of service they have and it's just a much smaller number. So you know the
insurance premiums and the smaller
benefit just don't require as much money to fund on an annual basis. The same number of members are
covered in this program. And what you can see here is that everyone is always vested, meaning for these
benefits, a life insurance policy covers doesn't matter if you've worked here one week or if you've
worked here 35 years, right? Same thing for long-term disability. So that's why
all the employees are considered active. There are some separated employees that could be entitled to
these dependence benefits or widows benefits, but it is somewhat conditional in that they must have
been continuously married to the retiring deputy until the date of the death.
I know that's old school, it's old fashioned, but it's in the statute. So there are a few of those hanging
around there. And then there are five current beneficiaries that are dependents from the death of previously
employed and since retired officers that are in payment status.
The contribution rate for this program related as a percentage of payroll is only 1.5%. Again, it's
a small lift as far as benefits. Same covered payroll, 4,144,086, and the plan members don't participate
in paying for this benefit. Again, by state statute, just the design of the program. The portfolio,
albeit smaller, is invested
pretty much the same way as that larger retirement plan is in that the portfolio is broken down to 60%
in equities and 40% in fixed income. Again, just pretty much a rinse and repeat of what the previous
presentation was about. The one thing to note then where it states additional information is that the
funding percentage ratio of
this program is 137% funded. And what that really means is, again, the insurance premiums are
very predictable. They have not changed in a very long time because they are part of a master policy
that covers all 92 counties in the state of Indiana. So that has really not had much variation in it.
those dependents receiving benefits, survivors, there just haven't been as many as the actuary deems
could be entitled to receive based on their expectations on how they calculate things. And in a really
good position for that.
The same actuarial assumed investment rate is used, 6.5%, and the earnings for this portfolio for the
year 2025 was at 12.7.
So handily beat that again. And looking there at the actual benefit payments for the 2025 calendar year,
out of this portfolio, it was only $12,000. So earlier reference, there were five people drawing $12,000.
It's a very small in terms of being rather
On page 13, the same type of calculation is done showing what's the present value of projected benefits,
a little over 1.3 million. The service cost being, again, that's pretty much the insurance premiums
in combination with the possibility of a person passing and a widow or dependent children being entitled
to receive a payment is $82,000.
the actuarially determined contribution is certainly less than that just based on needs and premiums
that are in payment status for the premiums, premiums for the insurance policies that are in effect.
So total pension liability is about 697,000. The market value of the portfolio is 957,000. So doing
the subtraction, you can see that there's far more asset
than necessary to cover those benefit obligations. And that puts it at 137% funded. On page 14, the
same five-year look back of was the amount determined by the actuary paid in full through the budgeting
of the portfolio? Yes. And as you can see, it is matched line for line, dollar for dollar.
The way that the plans have historically been funded, as I stated, is one number, right? One dollar
amount in a budget. And then it's separated. And rather than going through a calculation of saying,
well, let's prorate it or something, historically, it has been fund the benefit plan first and whatever
is left over goes in to fund the retirement plan since that's the
a larger ticket item. So you can see that you certainly have not had any problems passing with all five
years meeting or exceeding that actuarially determined contribution. Page 15, this one is that mountain
chart of the funded status. And because the funded status is very high in excess of 100%, we sort of
had to flip our mountain chart to say,
in the background, the larger mountain is the value of the assets. And the darker mountain on top of
that and not covering the entirety are the accrued liabilities. So it's just the trend, it's just the
way they've been set up. The portfolio has remained well above 100% funded for a long time. And that's
all good news as well.
The remainder of what's in this report is just reference to the IC code of the office reporting and
what needs to be included in the reporting and then a copy of the information that the actuary prepared
for the auditor's office to use in 27 when they report this information for review by the state. Ms.
Beattie, thank you for such a comprehensive presentation.
Sheriff Marte, should we turn this over to the council or do you want to make a statement? No,
this is it. All right, great. Council, do you have any questions about the retirement or other benefits?
Please, Councilmember Welts. Thank you for walking us through that and I'm afraid that even with that
very gentle walk, I probably don't have a full grasp. So I'll just preface with that and
My first question has to do with the 25% that is the amount that says the employer is on page five.
Is that the thing that we just funded or talked about funding because we haven't signed it off yet?
We're off by a year. That is what had been handled with the budgeting
last year but it's equal or 26 but it's equivalent it's the same that's the amount of money so when
we talk about it and that's where it's going yeah yes that's where it's going but it doesn't remain
the same percentage every year um for just for reference indiana um in purse indiana public retirement
systems they set a rate
And they keep it in place as a percentage until the portfolio is more than 95% funded. They do that
because they can. This program and all 91 other programs in the state have been left up to the local
units to have a lot more control over. And one of the things that was adopted was practices more
aligned with what a corporation would be doing. That means recalculated every year and take
into consideration gains and losses that have been happening over the years, over that particular year.
So for last year's budget, which was then for this year, 2026, that was the rate that was approved.
I suspect that in the budget you recently submitted for the 2027 calendar year, it may be a different
number. I mean, it is, but I don't know. I mean, there were three contributions. It's directly related
to, we were given kind of that, I forget what you called it, the actuarial minimum. Yeah. We were given
the minimum and then like a standard and then a deluxe premium. Go for it.
That's right. And so I'm just making sure that I'm like connecting the same pieces. Right. Right. When
you referenced the three different amounts, they were the way or the reason for them to be different
is that the payment towards the unfunded obligation was amortized, spread out over a different time frame.
So the minimum contribution is spread out over 20 years. The recommended is spread out over 15. So that's
saying, you know, you pay it off a little bit faster, you save time, you save money and interest. The
accelerated deluxe is spreading the payments out only over 10 years.
so that in a 10-year time frame, all that unfunded obligation would be paid off rather than 20. And
it doesn't change the obligation. It just means you've paid it off faster. You paid less in interest
charges. All right. I'll go to Councilmember Decker, and then I'll come back over to the right. I appreciate
all this. And I guess I'm going to ask you for a bottom line question here on your judgment. Are we
doing everything we're supposed to be doing? Yes.
And the summer study committee, pension management oversight commission met in September and the most
recent reports were pulled together and presented. And I thought, well, how does the county stack up?
I mean, number one, yes, you are paying what you need to pay every year. That's obvious by those nice
little bars, right? But what about
your funded percentages. You're 80% funded. How does that stack up with the other county pensions in
the state of Indiana for their sheriff's departments? And the average, although it doesn't go into exact
numbers of what all of them are, the average is between 75% funded up to 95% funded. So you're at 80,
boom, you're right in the middle, which is a really strong position
Thank you. Council Member Hawke. Yes. When we look at a budget, and there's a budget line for this,
do you work with the Sheriff's Department to determine what that dollar amount should be? Because we're
just looking at budgets. We don't begin to have your knowledge, or at least I shall say, I don't. And
when we look at that, should we assume that you
help prepare that dollar amount to be included? Well we provide we do investing of the pool of assets
and we provide that information to the actuary and the actuary is McCready and Keene that they're in
Indianapolis they have been involved with your plan since it started in 1973.
and all the other counties in the state, aside from one, and it was 1973. And they have a code of standards
that the actuaries must use to calculate how much needs to be funded. The underlying theme here is that
these programs are intended to be prepaid arrangements, which means while people are employed, that
contribution money is going in to be there
in the fund so that when that person separates employment, they're paid for as opposed to the old school
pay as you go. The old city police and fire and the old teachers plans got into a bit of trouble because
they said, well, we're not going to pay for them until they're gone. Well, then you you're paying for
them and hired a new replacement. And it's just seemed to kind of compound a problem there that you
need to prepay.
And so the actuary does determine that, but utilizing all the information from the assets, as well as
locally here, how many folks working here, what is the experience, has anyone passed away, you know,
that kind of thing. So yes, they do those calculations and present them to the sheriff. And I think
they send a copy to you, the auditor's office as well, for use in going through the budgeting process.
So when we're looking at the number, then we should just look to the auditor's office and say, does
this look like the fair number? Because we're just looking at the number along with a zillion other
numbers when we're looking at budgets. And there's times that we look like we're going to have to cut
someplace. But we want to know that when somebody tells us this is the number, it needs to be that we're
voting on it.
Uh, to the editor, what do you think? Sure. I'm happy to share reports as received, but I can't answer
questions that are meant to be directed toward this other vendor. Uh, okay. Okay. Again, the actuary
provides a report that is in total 70, probably about 70 pages, but they do a
cover letter that says these are the contributions that have been developed in this report. There's
the actuarial minimum, the recommended contribution, again, which is accelerated payment, and then the
really fast accelerate. So those are given to you folks, or those are given to the local units for them
to choose one of those three. Just don't ever go below the minimum. I really appreciate your making this.
as understandable as possible. But I don't think that McCready and King, if I'm pronouncing it right,
and of course, I've been around forever, so most of those people are gone and been changed over. But
they don't often make it as clear as you have made it to understand. And actually, I don't even recall
seeing their letters routinely like we used to. It was like not coming through as often.
They do everything electronically now, so that's. So anyway, thank you. You're welcome. That's a great
segue to my question is this professional report that you produced, may we have this electronically?
Oh, of course, yes. Excellent. If we could just send it to the auditor, the counselor, whoever.
Next time. Yeah, I'll send it to them. Perfect. Yeah, we all have email.
Thank you so much for this presentation. Thank you so much. I think once we do get this to, you know,
the folks that want to see it, the it's all very understandable. And and really, I think for folks watching
here, this sounds like a great deal. So, you know, if you're watching and this sounds like a good deal,
apply to the Sheriff's Department. I mean, this so I'll say that now I will say,
Whenever I hear these presentations and we start talking about market values and it gets us to that
80.5, man, I lose sleep over a jittery bond market inflation and stuff like that. I just, you know,
security. Oh, anyway. So these portfolios are invested for long-term provisions, meaning it's not the
same as you or I might have our investments in
it working for us because we know, hey, we're going to retire. But this program, again, started in 1973.
And so that's 50 years more than. And there are 28 people drawing. And they've served the community.
They've retired. And that portfolio needs to be around a lot longer than for all of us here. The intent
is that it's there to continually provide benefits for those people that have done public safety for
us. Right. Mr. Deckard.
I just had one follow-up question because we are on an island. I'm going to use a hypothetical situation
and you feel free to get back to me if you don't want to answer this. Let's say noble County. I'm going
to pick on them. Noble County is in a pool with us or what have it. And they screw this up. They don't
do what they should do. Right. Does that potentially ever hurt our people here? Absolutely not.
each one is operated completely independently. All right, well, thank you again. It's always a pleasure
to talk with you. See you next year. Yeah, we'll see you next year. All right, Council, that moves us
to item G still with the Sheriff's Office. Council, I move to open for discussion and possible approval
of the Sheriff's Office request in Fund 1000-005.
County General Sheriff and in-house transfer of $50,000 into the account line 17102 overtime from personnel
account lines that are outlined on the agenda per resolution 2025-41A. Second. All right, we are joined
by a whole bunch of folks from the Sheriff's Department. Sheriff Marte, are you kicking things off or
are we? I'm here to support Jamie.
please we have exhaust or almost exhausted our overtime line and when I was here in July we had one
opening we now have five American Deputy openings so with that we've had to have overtime that there's
lots of other reasons but we need money so it's pretty simple all right counsel do you have any questions
about this overtime item
My question is you have vacancies I'm hearing and we were doing so well keeping those. So what can we
do or is it just a difficult time right now to be hiring or are our competition raising their prices
so much that we're just no longer competitive? If you remember and I can remember the month when I came
to the council
And I will share my concerns that we're losing people to other departments because of the pay. They
are paying better than we are. And my fear was that we get to this point, and here we are. But I believe
we're ranked number four right now of lowest pay. And we're just losing people, leaving us for better pay.
we did if you recall we did discuss this before in the past. I hope you do remember that. So hopefully
you'll send us an update like for instance our nearby competitors for what we'll be looking to fill
all those slots. I would thank you
talk about the county surrounding us as well as right here Monroe County. And have you done an update
on that recently? Well, the people that we're losing, we're losing right here. BPD, IUPD, even the state.
All right. We've got some other folks who want to ask some questions. I'll go to Councilor Feidl.
you mentioned number four is that for number four in what you know it was so it was a while back ago
I can't remember the actual do you remember Randy yes you know the the order in which we were ranked
within the departments within Monroe County the other law enforcement agencies that we were fourth down
on the list as far as the starting pay of the county okay with comparing compared to BPD in this case
Thank you. Just the obvious follow-up. That doesn't include the value of the benefits or does it? Let's
talk about how awesome your benefits are. Right. I mean, that would have been the salary. Just the salary.
You know, people our age, like Randy and I, yeah, that's great. But for the young folks that we're getting,
in the door, they're looking at dollar signs, they really are. And part of me can't blame because they're
trying to support their family. If it's, you know, if you pay more somewhere else, that's where they
want to go. What bothers me, concerns me, is after we train them and they leave somewhere else, we just
finish training them. So that means they don't have to go back to the academy and someone else gets
that benefit, if that makes sense to you.
Member Wilkes, do you want to finish the thought? I have one more ridiculous thought. And please take
this. You know how I am. I say things and I know they're half-baked. And I think I've mentioned this
kind of thing before, but it just seems like to me and I've read about it in other communities where
the various law enforcement agencies elaborate on their salary levels and they
they discuss and I don't know I mean I don't know how it's legal I don't get how that works but there
is I've read about it in other communities where they had this problem and this is how they addressed
it with a little bit more cooperation. You haven't mentioned that before and I can't remember exactly
how I responded. The issue for us is that
for us, we're ready on the staff as it is. The function of what we do will not, we handle the county,
BPD handles BPD. If something happens in the city and we're driving by we see we'll react to it. BPD
most likely will be a go to Lake Monroe where we are. ISP
sometimes I have one trooper for multiple counties so I like if it could work believe me we would do
it for us but right now we're ready so much in a area that is difficult for us right now because when
Randy makes a shift we got to have a certain amount of people out there just to make sure that our people
are safe among themselves so that's where the overtime is coming in and we and if someone is sick or someone
you know, uh, has a newborn. I mean, all that has to be considered as well. So this is something that,
that, that, uh, we get worse if it doesn't get better soon, because what happens is by the time we get
someone to train them, it takes time, six months. And then once we get them, it takes time to get them
to a certain level to be by themselves.
then by the way I have to I'm not concerned now that okay they might leave go somewhere else and that
has happened. To that point like the the five vacancies that we have we're looking at a year turnaround
once an individual's hired if they have no prior experience by the time they go to the academy have
field training you know it's a year before they're actually out on their own and benefit to our staffing
levels so it's not a quick turnaround.
Yes please. Councilmember Feidl. So the five vacancies I was trying to figure out from this information
or maybe just on my own. What percentage is that of your workforce that you're missing? The positions
that you'd like to have filled. What is the five vacancies? What percentage is that? I don't quite understand
the question. Let's say how many positions would you need to be full staffed? Oh was it 45 I think?
45. So this five is nearly is right a little over 10% then. This five missing is a little over 10% no?
Yes I'm not that I'm not that good with the percentage. Okay yeah okay. Now but but also keep in mind
let's say I was fully staffed at 45. We are still under. Okay. So I mean the the population of the county
has grown you wouldn't believe
services that we we have to respond to and we don't have the people to actually do it and or the other
part that i think i mentioned before we can't even be proactive everything's reactive now which which
is it's not good yes please councilmember hawk yes uh i think i've heard you mention in the past that
many of the
people who work in the jail, jail staff, many times they'll start there and want to work up to being
a mayor and deputy. I hope I'm using the right terminology. But what concerns me is that recently we
were told, well, let's just put
some of those dollars over into one position, and you wouldn't fill the other positions. And so it just
seems to me that's sort of like working against what we need to be doing. If we're really training up
the people who work in the jail staff, if they want to then transition over into married deputies, then
to reduce the jail staff seems to me that was sort of backwards. But that's just my opinion.
Kate says it's something I'm just thinking about, so I'm just gonna spit it out there and say it. Okay,
I think if there's no other council comments, we'll go to the public. If you would like to make public
comment on this overtime item, please raise your hand on teams or come to the podium. Seeing none, may
we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl?
me yes. Councilor Hawk yes. Councilor Wilts yes. Councilor Henry yes. Councilor Decker yes. Motion passes
unanimous. Thank you all. Thank you. That brings us to item H still with the sheriff's office. Council
I move to approve resolution 2026-37 an interlocal cooperation agreement with the town of Ellisville. Second.
All right, we have a motion and a second. Ms. Molly Turner-King, I think, is going to present on this.
So last year, after receiving the Traffic Safety Improvement Grant from the Indiana Criminal Justice
Institute, the Sheriff's Office and the Ellitsville Police Department formed the Major Crafts Investigation
Team, which consists of four deputies and two Ellitsville police officers.
If you remember, this is the team that provides specialized investigations to fatal and major crashes
within the county. I believe at the commissioners meeting, the data provided was there were 12 crashes
investigated this year, 10 within county jurisdiction and two within city jurisdiction.
What this interlocal does is continue the use of that team for a second year. The funding for the interlocal
and the team comes from the grant, which in this year is in the amount of $60,427.50. That's the grant
amount with the local match. The funding is $75,534.38.
The interlocal was approved by the commissioners on the 8th, as well as the grant. The grant appropriation
should come to the council on the 27th. And then last night at the town council meeting for Ellitsville,
they approved the interlocal as well. So this resolution is the final step in approval so that we can
get the interlocal to the sheriff and chief journal to sign and back in place. All right. Thank you
for that, Ms. Malaitre King. Anything to add, gentlemen? No. We're here to answer questions.
Okay. Council, what questions do you have about this inner local? Oh, please, Councilmember Wells. I
can always think of something. First of all, cool. Congratulations on getting funding for this type
of thing. I think it's important. Welcome. And I know that you're passionate about this work, and I
appreciate
I appreciate that. It says that, first of all, is the ratio that Ms. Turner King just mentioned,
is that, I think she said town versus city when she said city, that meant Bloomington. Is that correct?
Elisville. Town, town of Elisville, got it. That's what that was where I was getting a little thrown
off. Okay. And this does not cover major accidents within
the city of Bloomington police. But they declined to participate so they handle. Any crashes within
the city themselves. And is there a. Obviously haven't read the
ratio or based on historical data or population that is given to Ellitsville or is it all operated within
your office and as a service to Ellitsville? Does that question make any sense? It makes sense. The
nature of the team and the way it's structured, we operate based on the needs of any specific crash
as it comes out.
And the personnel that respond to a crash is based on the circumstances of the crash and not the location
of it. So just for example, one of the town of Ellisville crashes, one of the Eltsal police officers
was at training out of town at the time and wasn't able to respond to that crash. Sheriff personnel
still responded. It had nothing to do with it ultimately. At the same time also, there's been
you know, crashes in the county where Velitsville officers still come and help us out if we needed their
particular expertise with something. And so in terms of 10 and 2 and how it shakes out this year really
isn't going to matter for the way we operate. It's based on the specialty of the individual officer.
And it indicates just in the description here that it's specifically about overtime pay for officers.
Is the idea that these responses are going to take a lot of time and effort, so overtime will be accrued
and you'll apply that to whoever spent the extra time? Is that the logic there?
That's certainly part of it. The grant actually funds, overtime is the big one, and that's the subject
primarily of the interlocal. But the interlocal also covers, as well as the grant, covers some training
expenses, as well as some equipment for the team to operate. But the overtime is what gets a lot of
attention, is one of the biggest, well, they're all big helps, but one of the big ones is, and especially
in light of the previous discussion about the overtime costs,
These cases occur at all hours of the day. Sometimes the personnel with the expertise aren't at work
at the time, so this pays for them to come in and respond and be available. And for the follow-up, these
cases are pretty intensive. Even after the initial scene response, the roadway is cleared. There's a
lot of work that needs to be done behind the scenes over the coming weeks and months to actually prepare
the final report on the investigation. We average, and it varies, but at least
for what's been billed to the grant. We've kind of averaged around approximately 22 hours of overtime
per crash. But there's additional work that gets done during the regularly scheduled duty shifts also.
So there's more time that that doesn't account for. Does this cover all of that? Yes. Excellent. The
funding for the coming year is actually, I think it's about a 36% increase over
the amount that we are awarded last year, um, in anticipation of, uh, us being able to grow and make
sure that we don't have any shortfalls, but the amount that we had last year just barely covered all
of our expenses. So it was good. It's good year. Thank you. Quick, quick follow up question. Feel free
to get back to me later if you need to. But, um, does this cut with this? If a crash happened near Unionville,
Would this cover that, or is this just Eltsville area? So it's all of Monroe County Sheriff's Office
jurisdiction as well as all of Eltsville jurisdiction. So for Unionville, that's an MCSO response that
the team will respond to if it's bad. We were talking earlier, a whole history of
crashes were kind of going up in my head and I thought, my heavens, this is awesome. Thank you.
Any questions? I'll conclude with one. I'm a firm believer that the Hoosier football team is going to
continue to win and that we are going to have increased traffic in our community. And this is the question
I asked earlier of another department. How competitive is this grant and can we continue to grow it
36% a year? Well, I hope that we don't have to grow it.
because that would almost certainly mean that we're responding to more. I agree with you, but there's
the field is so complex that there's a lot of equipment and training and other things. This grant could
also help fund where increases, maybe not to the overtime, but some of those expenses, the grant could
help cover also, but it is a competitive statewide grant. Our project here is to my knowledge, the only one
being operated for a crash team using this grant in the state, but from what I'm hearing, it's starting
to draw attention. So I wouldn't be surprised if we have some other communities around the state that
try to model what we're doing right now. Wouldn't be the first time that other communities modeled what
we did here in Monroe County. All right. Thank you so much. All right. I think if that exhausts
council comments. Let's go to the public. If you have any questions about this innovative grant, please
come to the podium in the historic Notting Hill meeting room or raise your hand on teams. I just had
a quick question.
Chancellor Hawke, since you're wearing an Ellitsville shirt, I'm assuming that maybe you might know,
but I believe that there's potential for the town of Ellitsville and the Richland area to somehow reorganize.
I'm just curious if that will change the numbers, if there's a possibility of if that area grows larger,
could we go and be like, hey, reorganize, give us more money? That would be great. So I was just curious.
Thanks. May I respond to that?
I've been on a family emergency visit today, and I just threw on whatever I could get on quickly to
get out the door, and I didn't change clothes when we got back in. So if I need to take my shirt off, I will.
I think the cream and crimson is much appreciated. I mean, I love it. So, yeah, no, the shops and sales
street are great. I've been there multiple times. So, yeah, no, I just said that because I'm not a resident
of Ellisville. So I don't know. I just didn't know if you had more information on it or not. So I was
just curious. All right. Well, thank you for that public comment. Is there additional public comment?
Seeing none, when we please have a roll call vote. Those are vital. Yes. Councillor Hawke.
Yes. Councilor Wilkes? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Decker? Yes. And Councilor Iverson? Yes.
Motion passes unanimous. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Councilor. That brings us to item I on
our agenda. Council, I move to approve the Board of Commissioners request and fund 1000-0068 County
General Commissioners
for an additional appropriation of $90,000 in the services category. Second. All right. And it looks
like we have commissioners folks here. Angie Pretty is here. So thank you. And can you tell us what's
going on here? OK. Well, what's going on is that this year has not been particularly good for this account
line in the sense that we have had additional
services that had to be obtained. We've got vets environmental who's we started off with a justice building
and then we have expanded that to all of the county buildings having them assessed by vets and then
doing monthly checks on the and then and responding as appropriate. So we have that we have litigation
counsel that has been negligible at this point
so far at this point, so it's not really a big cost. However, I think Vette and the, we had some work
done on, we had the hand replaced for the dove on the peace monument that came out of here. And so this
particular account,
is always somewhat difficult and usually, it's one of those, I won't say usually, but when Council asks
everybody to get their budget as minimal as possible, then we try to do that. However, by doing that,
it also puts us into a position where we are not always able to respond as we should. All right, thank
you very much, Council.
Do you have any questions or comments about this professional services line? Number Henry. Thank you,
Mr. President. And thank you for opening up this conversation. So I took a look at this because I'm
trying to understand the numbers behind the request because in our FY26 budget, this was an account
line that we budgeted for 60,000.
And in 27, we're sitting at a proposal for 75,000. But the activity in LAL is a lot more than that,
right? Correct. And you've managed that primarily through in-house transfers up to a point,
is that right? Correct, as per council's directives. You'd mentioned, now I was looking at LAL, today's
pool before the meeting, and the litigation council piece, my math's mathing, is around 28,000 at this point?
No, four thousand. Um, you had, um, I just want to make sure I got it. So I have, um, and maybe I'm,
am I on again? There we are. So ice dealer was a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight payments
at $3,500 each. Oh, that's not litigation council. That is the lobbyist. Um, it used to be called TAM
capital. Okay. So that's not okay. So that's the lobbyist in that fund. And then that's, uh,
the communications consulting, and that's the stuff you budgeted for at the beginning of the year that
you knew you were going into. And then there's the Thompson response, right? Through Thompson, right,
what we're doing out there, the 70,000 to the Indianapolis firm, right? How much more do we expect Thompson
to cost? Do you have a projection from the vendors of what's going on out there? It's over 100,000
right now. We anticipate it's going to be closer to 150 by the time it's done.
So is that from like their initial estimate or are they just discovering more to do? I'm just trying
to understand how that like ratchets and how it all grows. I do know that they have found other more
areas that had debris. It's a really large property with the 80 some acres and so it's been
It's been quite difficult to get in and to get out. Parks has been awesome with helping our staff to
get things cleared up around there. But yeah, it's an expensive endeavor. So in the items tonight, we
have three items kind of lumped together. Do you have a breakdown of the cost for VET, the cost for
litigation counsel, the cost for Thompson individually, like what those are? I mean, I guess the sum
is $90,000, but you couldn't say how much is
of the $90,000, how much is going to litigation? How much is going? Do you have that? I have that $90,000.
If you look at our current budget, which you say you have, you can see that we're currently in the whole
$54,000. At least, well, we're actually in the whole, let's see here, more like $90,000. OK. And so
I do see that. I'm not trying to be that critical here, but I am trying to understand the nature of that.
professional services line and how it works in the county. I'm in CATS, or I'm sorry, I'm in Teams right
now. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen so everybody can see the numbers I'm looking at, because
it goes flat in a hurry. So I've got a breakout on that professional line that looks like this. I got
the FY26 budgeted at 60,000. I've got the FY to date, which is 138,409, which is your in-house transfers
that are covering additional things.
I had, you did about 69,000 in additional in-house today. You moved some stuff around today. And you
mentioned that in the packet, right, that you moved some stuff to cover things. I want to draw council's
attention to the percentage increases in column A. So if the house transfers you did today stay and
we do the additional 90,000, it's a 74% increase on top of the FY26 budget.
I presume you're going to transfer back what you're covering today if we approve the appropriation,
which gets us still to 62% over your budget amount of $60,000 for the year, because you have Thompson
and VET and all that. And then for FY27, when we go to budget approvals next week, that account line
right now is sitting at $75,000.
I'm only showing all this to say this fund, and you said it at the front end, does a lot of work, or
this line does a lot of work. Is there something we can do to get a better projection of what this account
line does in a given year? Because these are, there's a lot moving around here. I mean, it's not just,
I mean, if we go with 75,000 proposed for FY27, I would assume we're going to see a lot moving around
and coming back here
you know, and when we're at 62 to 74% increase in a year on an account line, I guess that's what I'm
looking at. So what can we do to project better on that professional services line so we know what our
expenses could be next year for that? Well, I did tell you during the budget session that I thought
$75,000 was probably not going to be enough, but that I was willing to give that a go for how things
normally go.
I cannot tell you there have been many years in which this this fund has been just this account has
been fine. This year has been exceptional in the sense of additional costs that are coming through that
were not originally planned. So I don't know. I don't know what you're saying, but I'm going to tell
you this. The 90,000 that we need right now.
is going into that line because it's already in the whole $94,776. Yeah, I get that. And it's how do
we get there, right? Because we had, and I'll yield in a minute. The Thompson encampment, we knew we
were going to be cleaning that up since January. And there was ample time, I think, to come to us and
budget out what a, if there was a new account line to deal with just encampment cleanup as opposed to,
you know, laboring this line. I just, I think these numbers are interesting. I just wanted to share
them. It's not, it's not meant as a negative or positive, but it is about how things move in the county.
I think sometimes the public asks what we buy around here. And, you know, I think this is just an example
of that, but I'll stop sharing my screen and yield back, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Henry.
Council Member Wilts. I just want to pick up on the, at least the expenses that,
that are showing up here, the nature that would be hard to predict year to year. And perhaps what we
want instead of predictive, I mean, we would love to be able to predict, don't get me wrong, but perhaps
what we can do is a different kind of tracking at some point in order to answer some of these questions at least.
I mean, you know, I think it's. Immediately following if not in real time. Um you know, I know there
have been. Other ideas tossed about in terms of requiring coming to council for more things, but that
really could hinder some emergency response if you know for some of these and I don't mean in the true.
taken care of. Is there an interest perhaps in maybe working with the auditor's office to identify a
way of accounting that would be more specific but not overly burdensome? Sure. I'm always happy to sit
down with Ms. Purdy so we can definitely work together. I'm happy to forward ledger reports.
or perhaps I could even give you a quick spreadsheet, just summarizing the different vendors and the
amount expended on each, maybe quarterly, or maybe Ms. Purdy could do that, but we can, I can help with
that, I'm happy to. Again, it's about finding that balance because it is something that is difficult,
it's opaque for us when we look at trying to budget for an account that we know
needs to be there for you to use. But at the same time, for transparency, we kind of would like to be
able to talk about it ahead of time or in real time and not retroactively. If I may? Yeah. I would love
to be able to come in and say, I would like to have a line created for the Thompson cleanup. But I have
always been told
I need to transfer my money. If I've got a line already that that money can be expended from, I need
to transfer it into there. And I have been before you and I have said, I don't think it's transparent.
I don't like this way of doing business. I would love to be able to come with everything that was not
planned on to you guys and ask, can I have this line made? I would not have a problem with that.
Mr. President? Please. I love this. Because the public needs to understand, for example, and I'm just
going to say it because both parts of the building are doing this, is we're absorbing litigation fees.
That should be pretty transparent to the public. When it's not in these lines, it's a challenge. We're
going to be cleaning up encampments probably for some time. I think Thompson is a big one, but I don't think
That's an endemic issue in our community. I mean, I don't think that's getting solved in the next two
fiscal years. Having an account line for that would just say, look, that's the account line we do that
work in probably makes sense. So absolutely. And to also then identify that you do have professional
services in here, I know our routine contractor communications work. You know, there's different avenues
that you've done there. I mean, Baker-Tilley's in there. I mean, so that stuff is the routine that we
know is coming year after year. So there's an opportunity here, isn't there?
But thank you, Mr. President. All right, let's look to the auditor who's showing some interest, and
then we'll come back to Mr. Deckard. One final thought. We often provide different analysis styles for
you. We could do a five-year average of these different expenses just to maybe give you a better idea.
But there's different ways of looking at things. So we can try to give you different tools to help you
make budgetary decisions as a whole, if that's helpful. Mr. Deckard.
I appreciate all these questions. I appreciate also your answers. One thing I will say is one year in
government, the ability to anticipate things moving forward has never been fully the way I would love
to have it in my planning mind. I can remember two months before the pandemic not seeing any of that,
despite the news basically telling us that it was coming.
solution idea for this, for Ms. Purdy and for commissioners are, I think, first an initial discussion
there about what are these things we see in the horizon that we roughly see in the year ahead? How do
we assist her with labeling that with our council liaisons and then the larger council to say, I'm going
to give you an example. Right now, Autumn is here.
But snow is coming, and we know we're going to be back to square one on a massive snowplow discussion
here that is not necessarily at least a ridge fix, but could be other people's fixes. And I think the
question becomes, how do we start thinking about
how that body of three elected officials with this administrator, how they want to start labeling those
things, planning for those things, throwing spaghetti at the wall to try to figure out what is maybe
a public health concern we'll have, et cetera. God forbid we have none, hopefully. But then the secondary
part to that is I think giving the attention and detail to that on how we not only manage it in the moment,
but manage the unintended consequences. For example, every counselor has had some thoughts about that
location, the Thompson location, and action being taken in some way. I know action's been taken maybe
different than what folks wanted, but we know that's going to cost either way. The Justice Building
is a good example. I think every single counselor
has yelled about the justice building. My active question is, how do commissioners and council start
figuring out ways to mitigate the unintended consequences of the remediation? I think they're doing
things right now. Everybody and their sister begged for things to be done. I think that doing it is
hard on the folks in there. Do we need to have a larger discussion about do we need to not have those
folks in those offices? And where the hell do we rent them? That is a commissioner
administrator council kind of fund option, that needs to kind of happen there. And friends, it's going
to cost. But I think for years, probably this bench and a few other benches has said, try to cut it,
try to cut it, try to cut it. And I think we need to proactively say, try to talk about where is this
going to go wrong? Because we are not the community of 1982 that says, we don't know how to spell encampment.
No, we have encampments. And we have buildings that have strange issues. And it's not just simply about
saving a courthouse. It's about managing a large campus that's spread out with aging buildings and important
employees and critical functions. And so I think that's a little bigger than this. But I think we need
to have that wholesale and avoid the ledger more to get it right by the policy that we need to do. Anyway.
I would just say 1982 was a fantastic year. Were you born then? Don't even. I was born in that August
year. All right. I just want to remind council that there is an underlying motion here. And while the
spirit of this conversation is fantastic, we do have other business to get to. But council member Wilts,
please. I have a question specifically about the, you mentioned about the vet services.
and that you were having testing and follow up in all of county buildings. I guess, I mean, I don't
have a problem with that in principle, but I'm curious as to what motivated that. Was it just an abundance
of precaution? Are you finding anything? I mean, we've we have found some and it gets mitigated when
we find it. But I mean, we have old buildings. It's humid. We have
people spill things. I mean, it's just mold is an issue no matter where you are. I mean, it's just part
of our environment. But we felt like it was important to give all the buildings and all the departments
the same kind of look as what we were giving to the justice building.
the the schedule of review be tapered for sites that maybe are not showing as much. And throughout for
those. So that's this is kind of in the first year. So we're still trying to get a rhythm I think for
that because each building has its own heartbeat. I don't know how else to describe it and need for
or needs for attention. So that's something that's coming out of the work that's being done this week
or this year. But yes, the intention is that we would be able to get to not having to do it every month,
not having to do it in every building every month, right? So that's the plan. That's the intention.
I don't know that we'll ever not be able to do it in the justice building.
to implode it. OK, thank you. All right. Again, that was a fantastic conversation. And I'm curious to
know whether the public has to weigh in. If you're here in the NatU Hill Room, please come to the podium.
If you're on Teams, please raise your hand. Welcome back. You have to stop meeting like this, I swear.
So again, Jamie Ford, Monroe County resident. I was just kind of struck by how vague this request is.
The other department, you know, I pulled up the agenda packet on my phone. I've been following through
and seen all of the paperwork they're submitting.
full grants, the financial impact, letters of support, et cetera, you know, listing out in the narratives
of, you know, we had this before the commissioners, they approved it on this date, after it went to
the board on this date. So you can see that kind of trail and see that, okay, this has been through
the various places, whereas this just, it's just, hey, we need $90,000 for all this stuff. And granted,
I've missed some meetings, I've tried to go back and kind of cross-reference all this, and some of this
stuff isn't exactly apparent, you know, so it's,
I mean, given the fact that I'm not one to just full-on blindly trust the government to begin with,
but especially with the... Your face is funny. But especially with how things have seemingly eroded
with the trust in the board of commissioners, it would be nice to see that breakdown that Councilor
Henry talked about, to see how much is going where, to see when stuff went before the commissioners,
just for transparency's sake. Because again, I did try to do my own research and find this stuff.
It was difficult to find. And that's not something you want to see from any part of your government,
but especially with your board of commissioners when other departments are being thorough and transparent.
So that's all I had to say. Thank you. Thank you for your public comment. Is there additional public
comment? Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Pounce. Hold on. Sorry.
Yeah. Lee, did you say something? All right. Council, thank you for letting me do this. Please, Lee,
if you want to unmute, you have three minutes. The floor is yours. All right.
My name is Lee Grunehaefer, I'm a resident in Monroe County. I also wanna applaud the conversation tonight
and all the hard work on getting these things right. I think some of these bills are hindsight bills.
Like if we could have thought about this, we would have thought about this. But I do think that more
planning in general is needed around
the long-term aspects of maintaining the campus. Thank you. Thank you for your public comment. All right,
last call on public comment. We love public comment in the county council. All right, seeing none, may
we please have a roll call vote. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor DeGrad? Yes.
Councilor Iverson? Yes. Councilor Feidl? Yes.
And Councilor Hawk is not currently present. So motion passes unanimous, five zero. That is true. And
I do want to make that for the record that Councilor member Hawk has left the building. Like left, left.
Yes. All right. Let's move on to item J. Council, I will be combining items J and K into one motion.
I move to approve the board of commissioners request to fund
County General County Buildings for a category transfer of $27,000 from the personnel category to the
services category and simultaneously approve an additional appropriation of $90,000 in the services
category. Second. All right. Ms. Purdy, it seems like that motion was incorrect. Can you please guide us as to?
I just read what was here. A transfer of 27 and an additional of 35,000. I believe the transfer is from
the maintenance supervisor position to utilities. Or 27. This is a utilities issue. Is that the 27?
That's 27. And then I'm also asking for an additional of 35 in the utilities line. Yeah, apparently
I'm sorry. Would you update it just real quickly? So change the 90 to 35,000. Yes, please. And everything
else is the same. That's right. I'll just reread it. Council, I will be combining items J and K into
one motion. I move to approve the board of commissioners request and fund
one zero zero zero dash zero one six one county general county buildings for a category transfer of
twenty seven thousand from the personnel category to the services category and simultaneously approve
an additional appropriation of thirty five thousand dollars in the services category. All right is pretty
can you tell us what's going on with these two items. We are certainly expanding
than what we currently have for anticipated for the year in utilities. And so this request is utilizing
the ability to transfer between categories, thereby reducing the actual amount in additional that is
requested. Okay. Council, what questions or comments do you have? Mr. Deckard, lead us off. What's making
those utilities costs go up so high?
They're utilities. I don't know. I mean, just general, like, national stuff, local, state. I mean, I
can't answer that. I really can't. To give you an example, the Justice Building is about $29,000 a month
by itself. So the other ones are not near that bad, but others are five, seven, and we have a few that
are less. More than normal.
No, I don't know that this is normal. I think that there's an increase in utility costs that I haven't
been able to account for. I mean, sometimes, OK, so when things happen, so it's a 24-7 facility, there's
rates that increase when we don't know that the increases are going to happen or in time for budgets.
And it depends on the weather. It depends on.
the number of people who are going in and out. It depends on how many fans they have running because
there's water in it. So I'm sorry, I don't mean to be flippant. It's utilities and that also includes
internet. So if you've got internet somewhere, then that becomes another cost.
Are there any other comments or questions from Council? Add to that long list of reasons why utilities
are going up that anytime we started a new war and the Strait of Hormuz is closed, that makes things
a little more expensive. I thought that's what you were looking for. I'm just generally curious.
I'll say it. All right. If there are no other comments or questions from Council, let's go to the public.
public has any comment or wishes to raise their hand on teams that come to the podium? Seeing none,
may we please have a roll call vote? Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Decker? Yes. Councillor Iverson?
Yes. Councillor Feidl? Yes. And Councillor Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimous five zeros. Thank you.
Jesus Christ. All right. Thank you so much. Oh, that made it. All right.
Jesus. Council, do you need a break or do you move forward? I do. All right. A four minute break. Sorry,
Mr. Cockrell. We are going to be back here at seven twenty five. You won't even believe how fast we.
All right, cats, we're back.
Welcome back from our little break here. We're going to move on to item L in our agenda, which is the
2026 general obligation bond or geo bond as we refer to them.
a lot of times. This is the first reading and public hearing of those. At this time I want to open the
public hearing for the 2026 general bond. We'll have the first reading of the general obligation bond
ordinance and the general obligation appropriation ordinance. Members of the public will be given an
opportunity to comment. Those present in the NatU Hill meeting room will be asked to come to the podium.
Those attending virtually are asked to use the raised hand feature on your computer. Participants will
be given a
time of three minutes to make comment you'll be given a 30 second remaining reminder as follows is there
a bell thank you your your comments need to be limited to the general obligation bond and or projects
please following the public comment council have an opportunity to also make comment on the general
obligation bond and or projects once council is finished with their comments the public hearing will be closed
So we're going to start with resolution 2026-35. I open for discussion that resolution 2026-35 general
obligation bond and I ask Councilor Deckard to read the now therefore be it resolved into the record.
Oh I'm sorry hold on one second. The resolution that's in the packet was for the commissioners to approve
that's exhibit A to ordinance 2026-35 and then ordinance 2026-36 is the appropriation ordinance.
Okay so we don't need 35. Ordinance 20-26-35 if I may. Please. Is an ordinance of the Monroe County
Indiana authorizing the issuance of general obligations bonds for the purpose of providing funds to
pay the cost of certain public improvements within the county providing for the payment of such bonds
from ad valorem taxes to be levied upon all
the taxable property located in the county providing for the safeguarding of interests of the owners
of said bonds other matters connected therewith including the issuance of notes in anticipation of bonds
and repealing ordinance inconsistent herewith. So that is the introduction of the bond as required of
the ordinance as required by statute for ordinance 202635 and again part of that includes the
Resolution 2026-35, which was approved by the commissioners at a previous meeting. Essentially that,
along with the appropriation ordinance, which I guess I could introduce that as well for you guys, if
you wish. Please. Which is an ordinance of appropriation by the Monroe County for
the purpose of and I'm just going to read the now therefore now therefore be it ordained by the county
council of the Murano county indiana that section one the council finds that all proceeds require proceedings
required before appropriation of the proceeds of the bond and if necessary bans have been accomplished
and completed um that's why this one's
after 35 for the purpose of paying the cost of the projects and incidental expenses necessary to be
incurred with the projects and the bonds and if necessary bans an amount not to exceed six million five
hundred thousand dollars shall be appropriated from the proceeds of the bond and if necessary bans
Section 3 is the auditor is directed to submit and certify this ordinance and the related proceedings
to the Department of Local Government Finance in accordance with Indiana Code 61.1 18-5 and Section
4 this ordinance shall be in full force and effect after its passage. So that is the appropriation.
I think the list is included as Exhibit A to that which includes I believe everything that you guys
had discussed at previous meetings.
Thank you, Mr. Cockrell. So we think, Ms. Molly Turner-King, can we ask your guidance on something real
quick? So I think as we have it, as we've opened the public hearing, do we go one by one? Or I guess,
Mr. Cockrell, I guess,
The public hearing is only on ordinance 2026-36 because it is a public hearing of the additional
appropriation. I guess in either event they are ordinances although I would defer to council staff and
attorney because I think with additional appropriations there are different rules for an ordinance of
additional appropriation so you don't necessarily have to have unanimous approval of it. My recommendation
was to not approve an ordinance of appropriation
prior to approving the Bond Ordinance because of you've got to find that you've made all the necessarily
approvals prior to you approving the Appropriation Ordinance. So that would require a unanimous vote.
So Ordinance 2026.35 which is what I would call the Bond Ordinance requires unanimous approval at the
first reading or if it doesn't happen tonight it would come back at your next meeting.
it does get approved tonight then feel free to go ahead and vote on ordinance 2026.36 however if it
does not I think section one would prohibit you from approving that from a from a factual perspective
right so you have to approve 35 before you can approve 36 by the language of ordinance 2026.36. Thank
you for that guidance that's what I was looking for. Ms. Muller, can you give anything to add?
Okay, thank you so much. All right, so just as a reminder, we are still in that public hearing. And
what I'd like to do now is as we've heard from the, I think maybe we should go through the appendix
A and look at the list of projects as was, that is by the way, on page,
138 of tonight's packets if you're following along at home. Do you guys have questions about these because
my understanding is that there was a nice
conversation between the council and the commissioners about these projects a couple weeks ago. So twofold
we're going to offer the public an opportunity to ask questions and then we are going to ask questions
as well. Would you be able or Ms. Purdy or Mr. Cockrell to present these or if we could even get them
up on the screen that would be helpful as well. Again that's page 138 of tonight's packet. Well I will
do my best. That's all we ask.
Well I think there are four different three to four different groups asking making requests for the
use of these geobahn proceeds or go towards four different three or four different departments depending
on you. One is the sheriff with the ink car and body cameras so some of this would go for cameras in
the car some of us go for body cameras tasers and then the sheriff within the jail would be the there
are issues with the showers in the jail and some of the floor needs repaired as well as
cameras for the jail facility and then the Parks Department is requesting funds for some blacktop including
parking and ADA parking at the splash pad and playscape as well as shelter 9 parking and the top lot
ADA parking and then parking at the dog park G lot
parking and ADA fields 9 through 12 which are the soccer fields that are kind of all the way in the
back and then the commissioners are asking for want to utilize some of these funds for prosecutor prosecutor
renovation that's their space in the justice facility courthouse dome repair elevator repair drones
and cameras vehicles and those would be non-law enforcement vehicles correct
highway equipment including salt spreader boxes as well as some siren replacements. Those are the that's
the list of projects. Okay and are are we able to project that list onto the screen? Do you see if you
can allow me to share my screen? I've got it up.
All right, what is projected onto the screen is the list that Mr. Cockrell just read into the record.
And we're gonna enlarge in that. There we go. All right. So as I read at the top, we're gonna give first
crack of questions to the public, and then we're gonna come back to council. So if you are a member
of the public and you wish to ask a question or make a comment,
about this list of items to be included into the general obligation bond, please come forward into that
you Hill room or raise your hand on teams. Hello, Jamie Ford Monroe County resident in a case, you know,
Anybody knew it's not following along? It hasn't seen me every time an item's come up. Anyway, I just
had a question about the prosecutor renovation. I'm not familiar with the prosecutor's office. If that's
inside the Justice Building, I thought that was a continuous thing about how we can't renovate that
part of the building. So I don't know. It'd be great to see some explanation there. And then also,
I mean, drones are cool, but is that really necessary? I don't know. I mean, I would assume that
We don't have a public affairs office or something like that that can do cool videos and edit and release
it. But there are different businesses here in town that they could probably be hired for temporary
things. I mean, how often are we going to use this drone? Is this a necessary expense? It seems no.
Why not just contract a vendor? You can support local with our tax dollars. That's a great idea for
me. You're investing in local companies that can do this kind of stuff.
And again, I don't remember what specifically that was for, but it seems a little necessary. And I think
that was it. Thank you. Great. Thank you for your public comment. We have someone on Teams with their
hand raised. Please state your name for the record. And you've got three minutes.
My name is Lee Grunhafer, resident of Monroe County. I just, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yeah.
All right. I just wanted to impart this little bit of wisdom that my grandmother told me, don't buy
things on time. And, you know, in the GO bonds, you know, we're actually paying to borrow this money.
And is that really the best use of our funds? Thank you.
That's a lot. Thank you for your public comment. Is there additional public comment during this public
hearing of this first reading of the general obligation bonds? Seeing none, we're going to turn back
to council. Council, do you have any questions or comments about these general obligation bonds?
Councilmember Wilts. I'm going to
be brief because I've already shared my concerns. I do not think we should be bonding for this much
just because we can. I think that it will have repercussions, an increased debt load as we move forward
if we do this each year. And I don't want to start that pattern.
I'd be happy to support bonding for an amount close to half this, maybe a little bit more, but increasing
our ask this year sets a precedent for continuing to do that. And even though the length of time is
different, that actually costs more.
I've looked at it a few different ways. I know that there are a lot of really important projects here,
but I really can't support bonding for this amount. Okay. Mr. Cockrell. Yeah, I just want to make it
clear. The bond ordinance indicates that it's six and a half million dollars. I think in actuality,
what I think everybody has approved is closer to 4.1.
if you include. So I just kind of want to make sure that with your comments, if you're referring to
6.5, I think actually through your conversations with the commissioners, that's already been knocked
down to a little over half or a little bit more than a little over half. Please, yes. So I appreciate
that and you're right, that is much more reasonable in my mind. I would like to see us keep it at
what we have traditionally aimed for, which was closer to three, and I know we've gone over with things,
but I'm just not comfortable increasing our debt load and setting that precedent. But I appreciate that
because 4.1 is a lot lower than 6.5. Why does this say 6.5 still? Is that because of advertising?
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilor Wilts, because I think I don't want to repeat our conversation
from last week, but I appreciate you bringing it back because I share these concerns. I guess, you know,
when I think about the changes in state law have created the opportunity. It's kind of like, you know, being
You know young having a credit card your first real job and then hey your credit limits higher so you
know you've got this expansion of capability and of course there's a consequence of running it up.
As well, and I have that kind of feeling about this to say that you know if we did not have up to six
you know up to the six point whatever.
to use if we were still on the mindset of, well, we just spend the way we spend around here. The only
thing that's changed is legislation in the two-year period. Had that not happened two years ago, we'd
still be bonding the way we used to, right? Absolutely. So this is a long-term question, right? And
I appreciate, let me maybe restart my thought here. I appreciate that department heads bring us
capital things that they want to buy. They have the wish list, they have deferred maintenance, they
have things that they want to accomplish. And we get into that cycle where if we have the discussion
in one way, it is, boy, council doesn't want to buy an extra snowplow, council doesn't want to do these
things. And we talk about the objects rather than the credit card or the running up, right?
I do worry about what that long-term projection is on that debt service. I do wonder if we should be
tapping into other resources that we have accumulated already from the public, as I think the public
commenter made, to say, you know, if we've collected public taxes, like, and the dollars have been sitting
there, that that money is paid for in-house, doesn't require interest. I mean, we go out and buy it
tomorrow, and that kind of, you know, the money's here. And to really leverage those resources when we can,
I guess the question I have, Ms. Purdy and Jeff, do you forecast next year the things we didn't do coming
back? Are we already looking ahead to next year's bond? It might be too soon to say that, but are we
looking at $4 million next year, things that were deferred this year that we didn't wish list? What's
our future look like in this?
We do have the car cameras, which will be coming back, because that's ongoing. And I think the sirens
is a, I don't think that's a project that's completed. So those will be coming back. But I frankly think
if you guys just said, bring that maxes out at 3.1, we'll make it happen. I appreciate bringing up the
way we broke up some things over multiple bonds, because it kind of creates
almost a mandatory, that we must, because we've agreed at some point in the past that we're going to
break up a purchase over multiple bonds, it does tie the hands of, in my view, the public, especially
if they elect a whole set of new counselors, but they're still obligated to pay for decisions from a
bond discussion two, three, four, five years ago, right? And to be a little more cautious about how
much we are tying up the bond process with decisions that must be made,
like the nice-to-haves, the things we must pay for. These are, we're okay right now. I mean, but boy,
this could get, yeah, I mean, we may be on a path here where it does give me equal heartburn with some
of my colleagues. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Deckard. Are there any council members with,
oh, Mr. Henry. I was looking at, all right. Are there any other council members that have questions
or comments on this? Do I need to go again? No. I mean, you can, you can.
listen first. All right. Yes, please. I guess my. I feel like the discussion that we've had on all of
these items has been. Fairly decently articulated between both bodies. I would be much of course I'm
going to be happier with a the lowest bond that you can. And
to the taxpayer burden because I I mean I think about that literally all the time like how much how
much more can people take on and what's the unexpected things that are coming around the corner and
so I I guess what I would say is kind of to the spirit of what counselor wilts is saying something that
were more in the neck or in the neighborhood of four point one to lower that would be
make me a little bit happier if the commissioners can help us. Push that down and I know that with.
Bonds. At least in the past we've had a little bit of project management that gave us flexibility on
the back end to do things I don't most like that flexibility on the front end to say hey look it is
about the camera in the car it is about the shower the prosecutor prosecutor's office changes which
stop been updated. Since
Um, probably Carl Salzman or beyond Bob Miller was prosecutor. Um, I mean, we're talking, it's like
that way for some time and they're rolling around in chairs that they should be rolling. Anyway, all
that is to say going a little bit towards the lower end. I just don't know how we articulate that to
make sure that this 6.5 doesn't become 6.5. That's where I. Yeah.
ideas. One would be when you move to approve this, you amend it to read no more than 4.1 or no more
than 4.2. So that's what you're actually approving when you approve this, right? I know what's been
advertised a different way, but your ultimate vote probably should reflect where you think the maximum
is here, right? If it's 4.1, it's 4.1. If it's
3.1 is 3.1. I'm going to stick with 4.1 for this one because the other thing I think we should do is
when the state made this switch from allowing us to do a one-year bond to making it go over six-year
bonds or you have to have this three-year freeze, it really led to two different questions. One is,
do you just want to do a bond every three years for three times the amount or
do you want to do what we're doing, which is one each year? The thought with the three years for three
times the amount is that then every year it would be the same tax rate as it was with a one-year bond.
Just like if all these were 3.1 million, you would anticipate that the tax rate after year six would
be roughly similar. Interest rates have changed, and a one-year bond is different than a five-year bond,
all that kind of stuff. But roughly, it would be the same. To me, we have a financial advisor.
we could ask him the question is, if we were going to do this over six years, given all the estimates
you have, and we know what we have in year one, we know what we have in year two, what does year three,
four, five, and six need to look like in order to not go above what the bond payments were when we only
had a one-year bond? Does that make sense? It looks like it doesn't. I don't think they understand that there's
a little bit each year. I get that. I just don't think we need to ask the consultant because we have
the information from last year. We have the information from this year. We can see that adding more
borrowing power is increasing our debt load. And even if
If we maintained it at three instead of four or five or whatever, then you could theoretically, with
all of those variables, but theoretically manage it in much the same way we have. And that's fine with
me because I have always looked at it like I came into this position and we were carrying about this
amount and it's stable.
for the taxpayer. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate the fact that it allows us to get things done
that we wouldn't otherwise. So I'm cool with that. And I don't mind a little bit of increase. I get
that that's the cost of being here the past eight years. Things get more expensive, and so does debt.
And I just don't understand why we feel obligated to borrow
more just because we can. I guess my response is you could have even with the three-year bond you could
have done a four million dollar. I mean it's not a change from the state level saying hey right we've
changed these limits so now you can borrow more. Right. So it's kind of been an internal conversation
I guess. I'm just telling you where I fall on the internal conversation. And I think wherever you fall
you should
go with it should be how you vote and everything like that I guess the reason I said have a little bit
more analysis to it is because for the last five years we've kind of had an unprecedented at least in
my lifetime I know late 70s they had a which I guess was my lifetime but it was before I had a mortgage
there was a really high interest rates and so a little really high inflation and so we're kind of looking
at that for since 2020 right and so how does that play into so we have
my tax rate is the same, but everything costs more, including the value of my home. I know I'm going
to pay more, and there's a whole different way to look at it. And I think looking at it that way doesn't
mean you have to decide to go that way, but it would be interesting to know what looking at that way
would tell you about how, because I mean, let's face it, we were doing $2 million bonds until
probably 10 years ago I don't remember the actual date then we moved it up to three million because
the state gave us additional authority to go up to three million and the state when they did that tied
it to a rate that so that number increases every year based upon whatever and I don't remember
the calculation but I think it's basically the inflation or something that's supposed to be tied to
inflation so you know so the state has recognized that that inflation plays a role
But I know we're pretty theoretical and it's probably not a this year kind of question, but I do think
for next year, we should certainly look into how that plays together. I will make a quick comment. I
think I want to come to that process. I felt like the process to generate this list this year was much
better than in years past.
I really liked the idea how generative we were together, and then the ranking system seemed to work
really well, and I think that lends itself to this ability to say, well, okay, if council's gonna give
us a number, then we can get underneath it. So the process this year, I think, has been really healthy.
I think, council, if you have no other questions,
Then I'll entertain a motion on these ordinances, but we could also simply conclude the hearing.
All right. Yes. What would be the timeline if we concluded it? Is it done then? No. This is the first
reading. The second reading will happen at our meeting on the 27th.
That's correct, the 27th. So that second reading would be the time where we'll actually have that vote.
Yes, Council Member Walts, and then I'll go to you. I have a question. If an amendment was offered to
change the number in the ordinance, would that be A, appropriate? I think you said it was. Okay, and then B,
Would that be something then that we could have? I don't want, I would like it to be a conversation.
I don't want to derail the process that we have been having, which I agree has been a good one. But
I would like to propose that we look at something lower than 4.1.
I don't know that we get support. So that's also another, I mean, don't, you know. And council member
Fiddle. So looking at the list of items. So if it is less than what you're asking, what is, was read,
how would those decisions be made to prioritize that list then? Thank you guys. If you're going to reduce
it, you should talk to the commissioners about what you want to take off.
And I guess historically, I would just point out that when things were removed from this list, there
was at least a review of whether there was an additional fund that currently exists that could be used
to pay for those projects, right? So a lot of times, it's we don't want to use this out of the bond,
but we'll pay for it out of fund X or whatever. Something without interest, I presume.
and I guess I can. Please, please, yeah. Just for technicality, you conclude the public hearing no matter
what, right? So then you make the decision of whether you want to vote on it tonight or wait till the
27th, and there is not a renewed need to have a public hearing at the next meeting. Of course, we always
recommend you take public comment on anything on your agenda, but just not the formal need for a public
notice for a public hearing. Okay. Any other comments? All right.
If there are no further comments or questions, then the general obligation bond public hearing is now
closed. And I will entertain a motion if there is one. And we're gonna, and if someone was going to
start, they would start with, excuse me, on 2026-35. Clarifying what it is you're looking for here.
If now is the time that if Council wants to adopt, uh, ordinance 2026-36 at that whatever dollar amount
you want, right? 4.132, whatever. Now would be the time to make that motion. Thank you. Alternatively,
we could just simply move on, but then that would bring us to the second reading in two weeks. So if
you want to make this change, now is the time to make that change.
Could it not be changed in two weeks? It has to be changed now. No, it could be changed. It just needs
to be changed before you vote. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so amendments can be made in the 27th. Thank you.
Although as staff, I would recommend if you were thinking along that way, give us a heads up so we can
have the document prepared with. I like Plan A and Plan B myself. Council Member Deckard. You know,
I was taking a 14th scan at the list and I don't know how I would construct
an amendment right now with those projects. And so my recommendation is that we, if we are going to
articulate that, or a member wants to, that we do that at the next meeting, keeping in mind that I think
we're going to have some back and forth with the commissioners on the other side of that. That's a healthy
discussion to have, but I'm not, I'm not seeing a path forward right now on that.
Yes, Mr. Cockrell. I just want to point out that we do have to get this done timely, right? So if 27th,
the next meeting is kind of anticipated, so if we could get it completed, that meeting, so we can get
it sold before, or out to be sold a bit before Thanksgiving, that's an important date for us to meet.
Okay. Member Henry. Thank you, Mr. President. I would agree with my colleague, Councillor Deckard,
maybe the need to play, but also just to reflect that on votes led to this nature where we are obligating
the county in such a way. We are down two members tonight and it would be probably to have them here
when we consider to get in two weeks. So. Right, well said. All right. I think we have reached a decision.
Thank you for being here and for presenting the information. It's helpful to have someone from Bond
Council here.
You want me to have someone from Bonham Council here? No, no, no, I'm saying you have that knowledge.
I'm trying to say thank you. All right, let's move on to item M. Council, I move to approve resolution
2026-33, approving the interlocal agreement between Monroe County, town of Ellitsville, and city of
Bloomington regarding animal control. All right, and it looks like Ms. Molly Turner King is going. Was
there a second? Oh my gosh, a motion and a second.
This is my jerking. This is the resolution that would approve the interlocal between Monroe County,
town of Ellitsville, and the city of Bloomington regarding you know more control. I'm unaware and I'm
going to look at Jeff of any major changes to this interlocal. I think it's pretty close to what it
has been always. I will note that the commissioners approved the interlocal on the 8th of October and
the town council approved it last night. And the only difference I there's a formula involved with how
the number and the cost is generated for both the Monroe County and the town of Eltsville. It's based
upon animals from those jurisdictions and it's calculated the cost of running the shelter is divided
by the number of animals they get at the shelter and then it's multiplied out so it's a ratio of how
many animals are from county jurisdictions. The city does take in or considers part of the
city's jurisdiction anything outside the county.
So if they got animals from Greene County that came in there, I think they have an additional charge
for the people who bring them in so they're kind of compensated that way but it doesn't count towards
the Monroe County's numbers but it does count towards the per animal cost of the shelter. Thank you
for those explanations. We're gonna start with Councilmember Henry. Thank you Mr. President. Mr. Cockrell,
this is a timely
thing to discuss tonight, because in another part of the building, we are looking at amending our county
ordinances to address animal control and welfare by way of zoning. How familiar are you with how we
define what animal control manages versus what animal control doesn't manage? It might be worth looking
at a little tonight. What qualifies is something that they would take care of versus a wildlife
rehabilitation facility in the county, like what's a rodent
What's a rabbit? Does that make sense? It does. And I've not dealt with that part of the code for a
decade and a half, right? So I'm not necessarily the most up to date on that. When I handled animal
management, what we looked at, with particularly the shelter's use, right? So the shelter was dogs,
cats, either brought in by the animal control officers or brought in by the public.
you know once every couple years livestock so if somebody's cows was on the road and we had to deal
with that typically I think there were a couple horses we took to the animal shelter but typically the
animal shelter wasn't equipped to handle those anyway. Thank you for indulging because you know the
range of what qualifies as you know a pet hot-bellied pig you know I think you mentioned horse it's
interesting because we bump into it in our
plan commission work quite a bit. You know, can someone keep, is the pig livestock or a pet? You know,
things like that. And then again, as we go a little step farther, our animal management office in the
county helps to manage, at least inspect the wildlife rehabbers in the county. So there's a gray space
about, well, you know, we wouldn't take squirrels to the animal shelter, but we are also sending people
there from that office to do investigatory work on whether or not
that's a hoarding facility or actually taking care of things. Now I just raise this for council's attention.
I'm not gonna use my time at the end of the meeting to get into liaison updates, but this is very timely
about this interlocal in that we may have a change in the county CDO that impacts where certain animals
can and cannot be kept in rural spaces. And it's the animal management office that has to make some
decisions about where they investigate. And then of course the second piece is
mean I don't I don't know if it really affects with the Richland-Ellisville merger one way or another
because the I guess the inner local would expand to all of Richland Township if it was annexed is that
right? I mean we'd have to revisit that. I guess it would but our numbers are based upon our costs are
based upon I think 2025 numbers and so in 2025 I almost feel it's a little bit like property taxes where we're
we're paying a year a year in arrears. So we're paying for our 20s, 2070 interlocal for what happened
in 2025 and in 2028 interlocal will be paying for what happened in 2026. So I think there will be impacts
based upon of may not be right. I mean, I can't predict the future, but if that merger is approved,
there certainly will be
changes in how we have to look at that formula. I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. President. Again,
this is another moving target. This office does amazing work for our county. It's one of the ones we
don't hear about very often in here. But their burden is a little more than just cats and dogs,
is my point. And these interlocals are very important for that. But they're also tied to huge other
parts of the county, which includes our comprehensive plan, our development ordinance, and zoning as
well. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you for that insight. Councilmember Feidl. So when I see this interlocal agreement between Monroe
County, town of Ellisville and city of Bloomington, it seems to me like with or without the merger,
either Richland Township or Ellisville is covered. Would that not be true? They're covered and I anticipate
they will always be covered. It's a matter of how you allocate the costs for some of the animals that
are from Richland Township, which is currently county.
And if they became town of Ellisville, then how that's tracked through the... Is there like a formula
or something? Okay, thank you. The cost is very formulaic. Okay, thank you. And there was the difference
based on the formula. It's based upon origin of where the animals are from and clearly the origin would
be different for some... Depending on where they stand, either from before the merger or not
having a merger or whatever, however, it turns out. Yeah. I am aware that it's happening. I have no,
no crystal ball on whether that is something that's going to or not going to. And I'm interested to
see how it does, if it does. I live there. That's member Dickard. Things that came to my mind on this.
And I've heard counselor Henry talk about,
some of these concerns with some of the animal locations and the balance of getting it right and not
overly burdening folks that are otherwise just trying to do a good job and be among the community. And
I wonder if, and I don't have the answer to this, so this is literally a wonder if, I wonder if in these
sorts of agreements,
regardless of what code says, if it's possible for a fiscal body even to say, here are the types of
activities we pay for and here are the types that we don't, or here are priorities we pay for and types
we don't. And I think that that might be something that even from just this venue, folks think about.
And in an era of state cuts, federal changes, economies to shifting good or bad,
It may be that local governments have to start triaging and prioritizing the kinds of activities that
they have. I mean, if you take a look at this meeting alone, the number of people in this room right
now, you have to ask yourself, if the economy doesn't allow for as much spending as what we're doing,
how many people
are essential to the room, essential to the function, and then what activities. I guess the second thing
I would just throw out there, and I'm putting this kind of in the hemisphere of county government to
be thinking about whether the merger goes through or not with our friends over there, this agreement
and the ratio of what the town would pay will change, right, for services. So that's
there's probably gonna be a whole, if it passes or doesn't pass, there's a whole myriad of things like
this, the county probably needs to make a master list of, because we're gonna have about 0.02 seconds
to make sure that it's still paid for and services are still rendered because somebody dealing with
whatever is still gonna want the same thing dealt with. And so I'm not saying, Mr. Cockrell, you have
to do all that, but I mean, everything that's been before us tonight, highway,
you name it, it switches by the town's own admission. And I think responsibly, we've got to start stockpiling
that in our minds. Sometimes I'm a little bit amazed. We're still talking about Bloomington annexation
and its effects when maybe we're not thinking about what this can mean. And I publicly said, I'll support
which direct, whichever direction the voters of that township in that town take that, but we still have
to figure out what that looks like on both ends of that. And so this agreement is one tiny sliver of
that, but it's really illustrative of what changes or what does not. Thank you, Mr. Decker. Is there
any more comment or questions on this agreement? Seeing none, I'll turn it over to the public.
If you have any comments or questions, please come up to the podium here in the net. You have a rumor,
raise your hand on teams. Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Iverson? Yes.
Councilor Feidl? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. Councilor Wilts? Yes. And Councilor Decker? Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. Have a good night. That brings us, item N was tabled. So this brings us to item O.
Council, I move to approve resolution 2025-41B, amendments relating to the use of overtime budget and
reporting. Second. We have a motion and a second. Ms. Molly Turner King, what do we need to know about
the amendments relating to the use of overtime? So on February 2nd of 2026, the council had amended
this resolution 2025-41 to add overtime language specific to the clerk's office.
After the passage of that amended resolution, council took subsequent actions to address additional
overtime needs of the clerk's office. So the newly amended resolution just reflects in red text the
subsequent actions that council took. It's not authorizing any new actions, it's just to provide a historical
reference to what was done after February 2nd.
it is specific to 2026 so it is not going these the actions in red do not carry over to 2027 and as
I mentioned earlier in the evening in November I plan on bringing a new resolution for overtime and
then we can account for just it as you see fit for 2027. All right and council and members of the public
that red line language is on page 161 of tonight's agenda or packet.
Council, do you have any questions or comments about this updated resolution? Seeing none, is there
any public comment on this resolution? Seeing none, may we please have a roll call vote? Councilor Feidl?
Yes. Councilor Wilz? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Deckard? Yes. And Councilor Iverson? Yes.
Motion passes unanimous.
Excellent thank you so much and that concludes council business for the evening which is wonderful that
moves us into a new section where we have presentations or discussions and that brings us to item 9a.
Council I move to open a discussion regarding the 2027 levy distribution. All right we have with us
our audit oh sorry motion and second no that's right.
Ms. Brianna Gregory, what do we need to know about the 2020 saving levy distribution? Yes, if I could
please be promoted so I may share my screen. Are you able to promote me, please?
Thank you. Okay, so hopefully what you'll see momentarily anyway. I'm showing that I'm sharing my screen.
I'm gonna stop and try it again.
We might need to pause just momentarily, and I'll email over to the assistant administrator. If you
don't mind, I'm so sorry. One moment. No, that's OK.
Hey, Lehua, you should have just received two emails from me. If you could open the first one please
and display that deficit calculation. I'm going to start there.
there it is. Here we go thank you sorry for that technical glitch. Okay what you'll see here if you
look at the deep dive calculation for the levy funds please and put your eyes on those 4B line 11 items
that are highlighted in yellow there. This is where I set the levies simply to support the budget at hand
The only exception is I added $100,000 to each levy so that it would support the minimum fund balances,
$100,000 over the minimum fund balances with every fund except for the general fund, which we want every
other available piece of funding to funnel.
So just as you know kind of to get you started in general practice. That's what I did That was my philosophy
just supporting the budgets making sure we're meeting those minimum fund balances So that we can support
services, you know for that six months at the end of the year and then just raising all of those budgets
with the exception of the general fund
not budgets, but raising the expected cash balance, anticipated cash balance by $100,000. So started
here and then had a really productive meeting with Councilor Iverson where he presented some of his
ideas, which I would like to show now. So just some slight tweaks, very close to what we did here with
his spin on it. Leihua, if you don't mind that second email, sharing that, please.
not the email, but the same document just edited. Perfect. Thank you. So this should look very similar.
The numbers are just tweaked slightly.
Let's see here, I believe aviation was elevated. I believe, if I remember correctly, Councilor Iverson,
health was lowered just slightly. Health was kept the same. Health was kept the same, I apologize.
And then, I'm sorry, I'm presenting your information here. Please take the lead. Reassessment was increased
from 923,000 to 1 million.
Then we have election registration was changed from $2.199 million to $2.1 million. And of course, then
those all changed the general property tax levy from $22,805,182 to $22,679,182. Exactly. Perfect.
thing I want to draw your attention to council is that this is the number anticipated to be in the general
fund if you go or the levy anticipated to be for the general fund if you go this route however we're
going to put in a higher number just to ensure that we don't leave anything on the table as far as the max levy.
And I'll simply add if while you're looking or comparing these two, you'll notice that on the far right
column in red, which I don't think is shown on the screen, if you can scroll over just a little bit
or pink pink there in the previous version, there were three funds that were showing negatives.
uh and so by rebalancing that property tax levy we were able to bring all but one positive and of course
the one remaining negative is county major bridge where they have a lot of projects still going yeah
just to further clarify um on that point the um the fund balances or the anticipated fund balances aren't
negative it's just they were deficit budgets so we were going into reserves in order to fully support
the budget and councilor iverson's uh version does not
allow for that. And then furthermore in the columns shown in blue, which is the 4B line 18, this is
our estimated cash balance at the end of the year in 2027. The rebalancing brings those to within the
minimum fund balances which are displayed in white over on the right. Now that's not
that we're going to have enough resources to pay our bills. And these. Are just estimates there what
we. For see being on the end of balance on without considering additional appropriations transfers we
may have to submit
All right, Council, do you have any comments or questions on what's portrayed on the screen? Mr. Henry.
Thank you, Mr. President. So the difference, so the simplified difference line is the delta between
the max levy and the new numbers. I'm sorry, could you please repeat that? Yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, I'm
in and out. So is that in the simple calc box, right, the last line, the simplified difference, is that the
the difference between the max levy and then the new number? What's the delta? What's the new number?
Sure. Just to remind you, that simple calculation is all county funds we're budgeting. We're just looking
at the levy right now and trying to set the available tax levy. What's the difference between the max
levy and what's been recalculated here? What's the cushion? Yeah.
The county major bridge fund is outside the max levy. Technically, the community of capital development
fund is as well, but the way the state prepares everything, they kind of include it in there because
we're, it's just the way they're presenting it. So the actual max levy is, sorry, one moment. I have
it in my mess of papers here.
I'm just gonna calculate it because it's easier than finding it right now. Okay. It's, I believe it's
34 million 10,486, but that's,
That's what we're showing as well. Yes, that's what it is. It's right here. I apologize. I missed it
originally. At the top of the simple calc, too. So what's the difference? What's the new difference
between? Because you're saying it's the cushion that you've developed. I'm struggling to understand
the question. So you just said, I just want to make sure I hear it right for more public edification,
right? There's the max levy that we're asking to go for everything. And then there's what's been adjusted.
What's the difference between is there or are we at parity? What's been?
Adjusted in the levy funds is equal to the max levy or is there a? It's yes, we're not going over that.
We can't go over the max levy. We won't get it. We just underneath it either. No, okay That's it. Yeah
You have all this documentation in your binder and I do I would like all of your eyes to confirm that
but yes We have the max levy noted here lines
Yeah, line 26. And then it's also on the maximum levy worksheet from the Department of Local Government
Finance. It's been in emails maybe 120 times. We're good. I appreciate it. Thank you. Any other council
comments or questions on the redistribution of the... Yes, Councilmember Wilts. Thank you. Appreciate
that. This took a lot of thinking.
actually the collaboration between the Otters office and the council office made it really kind of fun.
It was a really neat experience. Thank you. Excel. I love it. No, it's great. Um, that was
genuine appreciation. So you have a question and this is something I was thinking about kind of separately
from this, but the,
The strategy that we had had regarding the election fund for years was sort of one of prepping up for
the major expenditure year and always kind of keeping that in mind. How does this impact that? Is that
still happening in our minds?
balance in the general fund has remained fairly consistent year after year. What we've typically relied
on with the election fund just due to the current administration's budget practices, there's always
reversion. So I don't know how this last quarter of the year will end up, but the election fund is currently
sitting at
almost 50% unexpended for the budget for 2026. We still have an election. We do still have an election,
it's not a presidential though. Right, but we didn't budget for a presidential, correct? We did not.
So our budget reflects kind of, I get that our reversions, your point is not missed, I got that.
I guess I feel like though, I guess my question is, is this adjusted levy for election registration
fund? Is that in alignment with collecting enough over three years to make sure we cover the fourth? Yes.
Okay, thank you. All right, counsel, are there any other comments or questions on these changes that
really shore up our cash balances? All right. Hearing none, thank you. Okay. So, may I take that then?
you directing my team and myself to proceed with Councilor Iverson's adjustments here, and we'll have
the adoption ordinance then ready with these amounts in mind. Based on the comments that I heard from
Council, I believe that is the will of Council. Excellent, thank you. All right, we are then going to
move on to a quick update about must, because we have not
been able to do that. And I swear this is going to be brief, but we must do it. All right. So must had
its first meeting here in Monroe County on September the 18th at one o'clock in this very room. And
the conversation was what exactly we recommending to the state. What are we going to tell the state
about how we're moving from property tax to income tax and almost unanimously?
the people that spoke, both the statutory members and the non-statutory members said, we don't have
enough information. We're nervous, but we also, it's hard to articulate that. Whoever's sharing the
screen, can you zoom in? So in the legislation that created MUST, there was space for the statutory
members to unanimously agree on a statement
to then give back to the state. And this is the draft of kind of where that statement is. And let me,
can you all see that? Or should I read it? Okay. The municipal unit strategic task force or must of
Monroe County has concluded that it does not have enough information to sign off on rates for 2029 as
proposed by the state of Indiana.
The task force asks that the state consider increasing the non-municipal civil taxing unit rate cap
and or allow the county the flexibility to distribute the rate how it pleases. The issue appears to
originate from the group rate cap of 0.05% for townships and libraries, not the total cap of 0.20%.
Distributed on population, townships would need 0.31% to be made whole.
The task force asks the state maintain flexibility for fire and EMS tax rate distribution. The task
force also believes that any future legislation should address keeping current units of government whole
by allowing them to recover current local income tax at the time of imposition. The task force asks
the state give counties the ability to include school corporations in their tax rates as they are currently
ineligible for future local income tax distribution. Concerns have grown
as to the procedure for future consolidations or annexations. And the task force would like clear guidance
as to how that would affect tax imposition and distribution. The task force would like to postpone any
decisions until final statutes are set by state legislation as its understood changes are to come. This
must in Monroe County is considering adopting. Council Member Wilts.
You might have said this, but was this already reviewed and at least it's going to be reviewed at this
next meeting? So a version of this was distributed, but as it became more and more clear that townships
and libraries were really not going to ever be able to be made whole. And then what I mean by being
made whole is, so if a taxing unit has property tax revenue at this level,
being made whole means local income tax level would equal that amount. Libraries and our townships,
there's just no way that we could ever make them whole because of the way that the distribution is set
and also this tax cap. That language was put into this document based on the conversation we had at
the first must meeting. Similarly, we had the superintendent of schools and their financial directors
sitting in the audience and schools are
I mean, they really are up against it as well. And so that's why the language here is to say, well,
we need to give schools an option. We need to give them more options as well, because the way that the
meeting was structured was the statutory bodies gave their statements, and then we invited non-statutory
bodies to come forward and talk. And boy, the testimony from the township trustees was stark.
that was really impactful. And so the reason why this is a kind of a list of grievances or a list of
like requests comes from that testimony that we received in the first must meeting. I think personally,
it puts it back right back where it needs to be, which is the state. All right, Council Member Decker.
I appreciate very much the state's efforts to try to find relief
for complaints that they have heard. Any public servant is supposed to do that, but I think the product
of some of that effort is legislation that gives you a statement just like what you read. Even the last
part, if I may borrow from your screen for a second, the task force would like to postpone any decisions
until final statutes are set by state legislation
as its understood changes are to come. That line is the line that whether or not anybody in the state's
adopting a resolution, every single one of them, I think, are talking about that to some extent. I think
there's been great confusion on this about what's been done. I think there's even more bewilderment
about what is yet to come. And last night, literally, I was sitting with Councilor Iverson and Councilor
Wilts at a candidate forum
to talk with members of the public. And we were talking about, you don't know what you're going to do
in six minutes, let alone six months because of all this. You would have to bet that something will
change. And if it doesn't change, I think there's a lot of other problems such as what the townships
are saying. We also know that townships, township government are very good about
figuring out the services they have to offer. And when there's a gap in those services, they have vociferous
fights, which we've seen a time or two about how to get back on the highway. And I think there's a reason
for that. I heard someone articulating the other day how they were antiquated and out of shape. I can
get where someone might come up with that if they didn't know what they did. But the fact is they're
so close to the ground. And I think all that is to say,
I don't know how you get a statement much better than this. Um, it's, this is what it is. And none of
our experts we bring in to tell us things have, I think told us much clearer than that. So I'll stop
talking, but I appreciate it. And let me just add, uh, if there are improvements to be made, please
submit those improvement. You know, if there's a sentence that you want to add.
There's three sentences you want to add, you know, it's certainly something that could be improved.
Could that be shared with us? Absolutely. So we can review it. I like to percolate on things a little
longer. Sure. Yeah. And I will just before I go to Mr. Henry, I will say the next meeting of the must
where this is going to be voted on, although the vote is not binding,
is October 23rd at 1 p.m. And I would encourage folks to attend if for no other reason than to hear
the testimony of these groups talk about how anxious they are. I mean, man, I've got a hold waiting
at the library. I really don't want the library to go away, you know? All right, Mr. Henry. Thank you.
I appreciate the effort. I guess I just wasn't clear in the discussion here tonight. So are we saying,
so you're saying the four
statutory really required governments sitting up here. The concepts have been socialized, like the city
of Bloomington, Ellsworth, they're in accord with what is written here at this point. So this has been
distributed to them all. We have not heard feedback from any of the statutory bodies on this document.
The idea is that we'll hear feedback about this document or any of its iterations.
up until that point, on October 23rd at 1 p.m. Okay. I guess that's all I have for now. It feels like
the Monroe County answer to a otherwise boondoggle of a state law. I'm curious, if you discussed with
FSG or outside the county, if other counties are coming to a similar conclusion, or are we on our own
here with saying, do better? I will say,
The statement that FSG drafted for the first meeting on September the 18th was not a whole lot different
than this. My hunch, based on that fact, is that other communities are adopting very similar statements.
All right. Is there any public comment on this, either on Teams or in the room? Seeing none, I don't
think we have to vote on this.
I think we'll just move on. But do put it on your calendars, please. October 23rd at 1 p.m. right here
in the NatU Hill Room. It's worth listening to, I think. And one of the things we didn't mention was
fire and EMS. That's just wild. Just wild that people are looking to cut fire and EMS. All right, enough
of my soap box. Let's move to your soap box. It is time for counselor liaison updates and comments.
I'm gonna start with Mr. Henry.
Thank you, Mr. President. I kind of seeded some of my liaison work into our meeting, or of course the
meeting in terms of Planning Commission and others. I'd like to highlight, of course, that early voting
is on its merry way. I had my opportunity to vote early yesterday, and election operations seem to be
swimming and doing wonderfully. I want to thank all of the poll workers early voting, our absentee boards,
and those who are working to
collect overseas ballots, all the work that's going into that election. They're never easy. There's
always some wrinkles, some challenge, but things seem to be going well. But if you haven't voted yet,
do so and get that over with as we get into November. So thank you to the election staff for their hard
work there. I also had a chance to speak with
our acting health administration team yesterday as well, and I think some of that came out with Eric's
discussion this evening, and I'll just reiterate our need for flexibility as they work through what
is becoming an increasingly dramatic executive activity in that corner of our health building. And I
just wanna reiterate too that my concern in speaking with the administration team on down was are we
still delivering
good public health to the community despite the tumult. And I am concerned about vaccination season.
I am concerned about flu season. I am concerned about vaccines sitting in refrigerators instead of in
people's arms. So my plea to the Board of Health and to the powers that be are please sort this out
so we can get back to the good work of public health in this community. We really do need to get north
on these issues and focus on what's important, which is serving our public here.
I'll leave that comment there. And lastly, I'll just reiterate, as I mentioned this evening, on October
22nd, the Plan Commission will hold a public hearing in its reply to House Bill 1001, which requires
county governments in Indiana to compile housing studies that have been done in the past five years
in communities in the state and report them up.
It is no secret in our community that we have wildly different ideas about the housing crisis. And I
think I don't want to speak for others here, but I think there's a growing majority of people understand
that we do have a housing shortage issue in the community. These are statements of fact. However,
Um, that hearing on the 22nd, the majority of the plan commission continues to put forward a vision
that does not match that in data tables and reports that reflected a different version of the community
that I do not support. It says that we are overbuilt and that we have the housing we need and that all
we need to do is balance out wages or some other scales. This is a critical issue for over 80% of the
people in the community that cannot afford to buy a home here at 324,000 or so new. It is a critical
issue for the 67% of people at Brent and the city of Bloomington.
is a critical issue for those that are continuing to try to get that first rung of economic prosperity
and housing attainment, if that's what they choose. But that hearing will be here on the 22nd in this
room. The plan commission's obligation is to hear the public's comments about what is being sent to
the state. That package should be available on our county website, which includes not only the work
of the chamber and the BDC and IU and others who have done housing studies, but also some of these
alternative ideas about housing in the community. So I just raise that to your attention as we get closer
to that. But thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Henry. All right, let's let's go all the way down
to the colored legal pad. Councilmember Fiddle, decode the colors for us. I have a lot of things written
down here, but many of them were just, you know, liaisons and meetings.
community events that I was a part of. And one of the most important community event I did was vote.
And it was so seamless and productive and useful. I just was so proud of the process. And I enjoy being
able to see how many are voting early each day. That's really a cool thing. And I wanted to ask maybe,
can we put that link or whatever it is out there for the general public to have? Is there a way to highlight
that link somewhere
We got an email from John Baten, I think, that showed that link. It's actually on the home page of the
county right now. OK, thank you. The county's home page. It's right there. Thank you. So I want to direct
people to that because it's really kind of fun to see and watch and see how many are voting each day.
I really like looking at that. So part of the BEDC work was hiring a new executive director, CEO, and
they have one. Her name is Susan Borees Reed.
She comes with two decades of economic development work, public finance, municipal advisory work, and
community investments. And I've not met her personally, but I will meet her at the next BEDC meeting.
So I think I won't highlight all the other little things I did, but I was busy doing 15 other things
this month of these two weeks, I mean. Well, thank you. Council Member Wilts.
I will just say that I know that as we approach election day and are able to vote anytime between now
and then, there are a lot of folks who still want information before they go to the ballot box. And
last night, I was shown vote 411, literally with the
the numbers, so vote411.org. There are several places including, of course, the clerk's office here
locally and the state has a lovely website. This one was very smooth and I just wanted to provide it
as another option for folks who might want to see what's on their ballot, know who
who's going to be on their ballot and make sure that they have the registration information. So that's
it. Wonderful. That's vote411.org. Mr. Deckard. I'll be really, really quick. I appreciate some of the
larger discussions that we're starting to approach around here about questions on health and questions
on housing and things that the community
We can't look past because so many people can't look past it. I spent a little bit of time, uh, volunteering
for a Canada has some doors and I, I got to hear from residents in a new light and, uh, I'm always trying
to keep up and be, and be as aware as possible what's going on with families, but it is always enlightening.
to literally hear, this is what this means when this happens, including that pothole out there.
And so Mr. County guy, can you do something about that? One thing I just want to say, one of the duties
I had other than be a liaison was I got a chance to help our friends at United Way by singing karaoke
last Friday night. And I want to talk about that because
I'm, my singing is so bad that literally people were paying for me not to go on the stage, which raised
money for United Way. And that's awesome. But what was even better than that is it was out at Fowler,
um, pumpkin farm. And I'm not doing an ad for Fowler by the way, I worked for, uh, one of their kind
of predecessors back in the day, Melton's, uh, but this.
is a beautiful place in this autumn kind of season falls doing things. It's a beautiful place. And here
we have a business owner thriving in on just literally our border of our county, but is also using the
space there to bring in United Way, I think Stone Belt, which we heard from earlier this evening. I
think they were in there in a week prior. And I think Kiwanis were out there. So literally hosting that space for
bad singers like me with karaoke, but also drawing attention to it. And we have a million people doing
that kind of thing here all the time. And we see them at festivals. We see them out there doing things.
And that is just an absolute gift for this community. And I always think is our work here
And our counterparts everywhere, city, state, federal, is honoring all that hard work. Cause a lot of
these people aren't getting the things. They're not getting an extra check. They're just doing these
things and it's, it's a glorious thing to see. So make sure you're keeping your eye out for your neighbors
and all that. I'd also say that as we get near election hyper season, um, something I've been telling
a lot of folks is this is an exciting season. You got to take care of yourself in that.
out there. We're still friends and neighbors no matter what. Election results happen and we gotta look
out for each other.
after that. And for some people, taking care of themselves right now is doing all sorts of things to
make sure they and their family are okay. Sometimes it's going to the ballot box because that helps
them to take care of themselves. And whoever you do that for or don't do it for, including friends up
here or not friends up here, you should do it and vote because this is an important part that so many
people have done so much for. I think about
Gary Kisters all the time, who literally was from this community in World War II and had bravery beyond
bravery, and then came home, ran a business, and was just tremendous. So anyway, I'll stop. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Deckard. All right, I'm going to start with some good news for everybody.
Councilmember Crossley has seen the way I've been running this council into the ground so she is coming
back next week. She's so concerned about the way this council is running this so she never fear she'll
be back for budget adoption. She sends her regards by the way to everyone so that's exciting and just
as a reminder budget adoption is in one week.
so we will be having a series of votes on a series of budgets so council members bring your comments
and your it's going to be fun another budget adopted. I will also mention it was really fun to watch
our Indiana Hoosiers beat Nebraska
I hope you all got to see that game, but what was more impactful for me was watching Coach Cignetti
in the post game interview, talk about the value of resilience. If you haven't seen that interview,
I think it's a little, it's a bit, but it's, it's really good. And it reminded me an awful lot about
what it's like to be at this level of county government. Like we have to be so resilient. How many times
have we talked about this where
We don't know what's coming down the pike. We don't know how we're going to fund something. Should we
bond for it? Should we pay for it out in general? How should we redistribute the levies? Resilience
is such an important value to this council. And I wanted to share that. The last thing I want to share
is huge kudos and thanks to Lehua who's sitting right here. This is an incredibly
busy time. We've got FABTAC coming up, the Food and Beverage Tax Advisory Council, we've got a must
meeting, we've got budget adoption, we've got a council meeting tonight, a council meeting on the other
side of budget adoption and you know with our other staff member out I have not seen any hiccup in the
quality of service revisions so thank you so much for your hard work. We really deeply appreciate you.
All right. We are going to be joined. We're going to get back in this room five o'clock in one week
for budget adoption. This meeting is adjourned.