Good morning. I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners. It
is Thursday, April 9th, and we will begin with our public statement, this time read by Commissioner
Jones. The Monroe County Board of Commissioners
Renew our commitment to welcome and protect the rights of all people, regardless of age, race, color,
creed, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, marital status, economic status, and
national origin. And we affirm the right of every person to live peacefully and without fear. We will
fight and resist at every step discrimination and harm
whatever their source. Even diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. We also stand in support of
our county public school system, both RBB and MCC. All right, thank you so much. All right, we will
move on now to our department updates. We have Ms. Kelly joining us from the health department.
Good morning. Good morning, commissioners.
According to the Indiana Department of Health, as of April 7th, COVID wastewater concentrations are
low and continuing to trend down. Flu activity is still high. The Health Department does still have
free flu and COVID tests available for the public. Individuals can walk in Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.
to 4 p.m. to receive free tests. And vaccines are still available through the Morgan County Health Department.
for appointments or more information. The number to call is 765-342-6621. Thank you so much. Comments
or questions? Commissioner Madeira? I have none. Thank you. Commissioner Johnson? No, I don't.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.
My name is Adye Kwanwa and I'm the Health and Human Science Educator and County Extension Director for
Purdue Extension here in Monroe County. And we just wanted to give the commissioners our quarterly update.
I have a couple of handouts if you don't mind me. You can hand them to Ms. Purdy. Thank you so much.
I'll start with providing updates regarding our 4-H youth. So we are on track to enroll more than 400
youth in our 4-H program. Right now, more than 4,000 youth are engaged through local learning events.
We offer our 4-H youth a wide range of experiences, including participating in clubs, interest meeting,
workforce skill workshops, leadership development, camp, livestock education, certification,
and identification events and camp counselor training as well. 4-H has been partnering with five schools
in our county for their spring learning festival and launching initiatives for intracurricular project-based
elementary programs, and this will help to engage kids before, during, and after school. Our youth are
exceeding not only locally, but in the state and national level as well. We have 16
local youths who have attended the Teen Leadership Weekend. Two youths are representing Manure County
nationally at Washington, DC. Two youths represent the county nationally at the 4-H Congress in Atlanta.
And one youth is representing Manure County in Washington, DC at the National 4-H Conference. There's
a lot of engagement at the state and national level just from one county. So our youth are doing a really good job.
In our agricultural realm, we have been continuing our partnership with Hoosier Energy for the past
couple of years to provide drone training.
And Hoosier Energy is committed to training their personnel, including all our EMCs across the southern
part of the state, on safe use of drone technology to enhance their operations. The drones help reduce
the risk to workers, make work more efficient, and assist with identifying infrastructure failures before
they occur. So this partnership has been continuing for a couple of years, and we've been helping to
educate Hoosier Energy employees as well.
In our health and human science realm, we've been offering financial literacy programs to third and
fourth graders here in our county, educating more than 150 third and fourth graders on saving, borrowing,
spending, and saving their money.
The Purdue Extension has been partnering with M Street Fiber Indiana to deploy a mobile classroom and
that classroom will help to educate and bring laptops to seniors to help educate them on financial literacy.
So we've been starting that program in the spring and we hope to continue to grow.
Through maternal and childhood support, we've been offering our monthly program with the Women's Center
and have been piloting a new Purdue program called Perinatal Mental Health, helping to talk to not only
moms and their support systems about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, how to identify them, and
providing moms with the resources they need to take care of themselves and their families. And of course,
we have our fair coming up in a couple of weeks through the end of June, beginning of July. So we also
hope to see you all there. Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you for the great update. What are the dates of the county fair this year? It is June
30th to July 6th. Sounds right. Yes, I think so. Yes, June 30th to July 6th. So very end of June and
the first week of July.
Thank you for the update and thank you for all the ways that you engage with the youth of Monroe County
and with all the folks in Monroe County in various ways. Appreciate that. Comments or questions, Commissioner
Jones? Yeah, I'm just very impressed by all that you're doing, especially for the youth, but all of
it is sounds like it's things that are really needed and you're doing a great job of supplying them.
Thank you.
Absolutely. These events are critical and more so now than ever before. And that county fair is literally
a couple of weeks away. I know. We're getting ready. Also, we're hoping to do our Citizen Academy Active
County Fair. So we're hoping to increase engagement. Finding this is a different twist to help engage
the county members and also kind of increase participation. So we're looking forward to kind of doing
something new this year as well. Awesome.
Yeah, and I mean, it is wonderful news that we have sort of national representation. So if that individual
wishes to come and speak and tell us about their experience, we'd love to have them here. Just let us
know. Absolutely. We'll do. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Commissioner. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Mr. Oh, we have John Baten online.
an update. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna unraise my hand here. TSC, I am able to share my screen. Hello
commissioners. Yeah, just here today to give an update from what we're doing with with the early voting
with the midterm primary. So I'll share my screen. We are working in collaboration with
the voter registration office, again, to track early voting across Monroe County. To get to our early
voting dashboard, you can go to the Monroe County main website, click on the GIS division link here,
and this will bring us view to our award-winning GIS division page with all of our exciting applications.
And you can click on this, scroll down, and we have a link here to the Monroe County 2026 midterm primary election.
We're doing pretty good so far this year for early voting in Monroe County for the primary. So you can
see we've had 339 votes cast over a total of two days so far. We have 27 days until the election, 89,755
registered voters as of April 7th. You can flip through these little gauges here, these indicators on
the top of the screen to see how we did with early voting and past midterm elections. So in 2020,
in 2022, we had 3,433, 2018 a little bit more.
2014, et cetera. We also have a chart here that's showing how we're doing at a per day basis versus
past primary midterm early voting elections. So as of two days, we're doing better than we have in the
past. Yesterday was actually a record setting opening day for early voting within the
the midterms. So yeah, this is it. Just kind of trying to get the word out that we're tracking this.
And as the election comes up on May 5th, we'll be doing live election reporting for that as well at
a county and precinct scale. That's all I've got. Great. Thank you so much. Comments or questions?
Commissioner Medeira? Yeah, I have a question. Where's 2024? Because it goes from 2022 to 2026. I know
that's kind of, oh, yeah, yeah. Sure, this is midterms. Yeah, OK.
The reason for that is that those... Good answer. Okay. Yep. Excellent. Anything else? I think I need
reading glasses. We all do. Commissioner Jones, comments or questions? Thanks so much for updating us
on this. It's interesting information to have. It's great to hear that people are getting out and voting.
Absolutely. Yep. And just a reminder to folks that we're at 501 North Morton Street on the main floor,
plenty of parking for this. And I think it's great to have these statistics for residents at any point.
They can see how we're doing and that may hopefully compel them to vote for whatever reason, but we
do need voters. So thank you so much.
Yeah, and I just want to highlight to this is a collaborative effort between the GIs division as well
as voter registration. So it's been a great kind of teamwork process. So thanks so much, guys. Good.
Yeah, thank you. I like that. Excellent. Thank you. All right. We have Mr. Cockrell. Yes, I'm going
to start off with an update, and then I'm going to have a request for you because things are moving
fast, as I'm sure every as you are aware, we had our
settlement agreement for the for the jail litigation extended until April 15th of 2025 or 2026 excuse
me need to make sure I'm right here 2026 we've been we've been continued to have conversations with
the with the attorney for the Indiana Civil Liberties Union or American the ACLU in the Indiana Division
I think they've changed their name and and the commissioners are a party to that
to the settlement agreement, of course. There's been some discussion about the potential to extend that
settlement agreement for a period of time, and that would require both, well, three parties, the Indian
Civil Liberties Union, Monroe County Board of Commissioners, and the Monroe County Sheriff to approve.
We don't have anything in detail, but since it expires before your next meeting, I would recommend and
request that you authorize
the President of the County Commissioners to execute that if it meets her standards. Yes, I would like
to move to allow the Board of Commissioners to authorize the President of the Board of Commissioners
to extend the settlement agreement. Second. All right, we have a motion and we have a second. Any comments
or questions, Commissioner Jones? No, not really.
Yes, that sounds like a darn good idea. Yeah, it's a very good idea. I appreciate you bringing this
forward and thinking about that timeline, because that is a big one looming. And since we just made
a motion, we'll go ahead and take public comment on this item. You can raise your hand on Teams or Podium.
Seeing none, all those in favor of authorizing me to sign off on a private settlement agreement extension
signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries 3-0. Did you have other updates to offer? I think that's
the one I had. All right. Excellent. Thank you so much.
All right, now we will move on. I don't see any other department updates. All right, now we'll move
on to public comments. Public comment is time reserved for items not on our agenda. Each speaker has
up to three minutes and we ask that you provide your name and county of residence before you begin.
Raise your hand on teams.
or come to the podium. We'll move on to our next item, please. Yes, I would like to move approval of
the minutes for April 2nd, 2026. Second. We have a motion and we have a second. Any comments, corrections?
Okay. All those in favor of approving the minutes for April 2nd, 2026, signify by saying aye.
I motion carries three zero. Next item, please. I'd like to move approval of the claims docket for accounts
payable for April 9th, 2026. Second. We have a motion and we have a second. This is Guyardo. Tell us
all about it, please.
The accounts payable claims docking for April 9, 2026 totals $815,910.80. This includes all emergency
claims and adjustments. All right. Thank you so much. Any comments or questions? Commissioner Maduro?
No, I do not have any. Thank you. Commissioner Jones? No, I don't. Thank you. I don't either. Let's
see if there's any public comment on this item. You can raise your hand on Teams or come to the podium.
Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the claim stock at accounts payable April 9, 2026 signify
by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries. We don't have any reports. We will now move on to new business place.
I would like to move approval for Graber Post Buildings Incorporated Service Agreement, fund name County
General, fund number 1000, in an amount not to exceed $30,730.57. Second.
We have a motion, and we have a second. Ms. Whitmer, tell us all about it, please. We have what we call
a recreation barn, kind of like. It's this rectangle with bays in it. The last storm took off part of
our roof, so the park board wanted to replace the roof and replace the siding, because that's more cost
effective. Why they're all there, since the siding is at least 35 years old. It could be 40 some.
So they just want to get it done. It should last another 25 years. Barring any big storms. Barring,
yeah, getting hit by a storm. All right. Comments or questions? Commissioner Jones? No, I don't.
This makes. Yeah. Commissioner Madeira? No, I don't have any. Thank you. Is the roof replacement partially
covered by insurance? Nope. No. OK. All right. That answers that question.
All right, any public comment on this item? You raise your hand in teams or come to the podium.
Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the Graver Post Buildings Inc. Service Agreement signify
by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries 3-0. Thank you. Item, please. Yes, I'd like to move approval for
Richard Hansen Service Agreement, memorandum of understanding.
Fund name, County General, fund number 1,000 in the amount of $10,000. Second. We have a motion and
we have a second. Ms. Hamlin is joining us via Teams. Good morning. Sorry, I think I'm good now.
This is a request for approval and signature on a contract between our office and Rich Hanson for the
purposes of training cadets at the Indiana Law Force Academy at Indiana University's Police Department.
We had historically used our staff to train for this purpose in-house. However, we found that it's more
cost effective to contract with
to provide these services as the caseloads do not really allow for our staff to take off days to train.
Um, the funding under this contract has already been approved for the budget for 2026. So no appropriation
is being requested. Great. Thank you so much. Comments or questions. Commissioner Madera? Uh, no, I
do not have any. Thank you. Commissioner Jones. Yeah, this is
I think a great idea. It's definitely a good idea to do this kind of training. I can see how it would
be a bit much for the office. Yeah. It would be a lot of time. Excellent. Yeah. It does go on for weeks
and weeks. Yeah. Bringing this forward and the foresight to include it in your budget was very wise.
All right. Let's see if there's any public comment on this item. You can raise your hand on Teams or
come to the podium.
Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the Richard Hansen Service Agreement Memorandum of Understanding
signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries 3-0. Next item, please. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Yes,
I would like to move approval for Signal Construction Incorporated traffic signal services. Fund names
Motor Vehicle Highway, County General, and Parks Non-Reverting. Fund numbers 1173, 1000, 1178, and 1179.
in the amount not to exceed $50,000. Second. We have a motion and we have a second. Ms. Ridge.
Good morning. So the services provided for the contract is for routine maintenance, emergencies, annual
inspection, for traffic signals, hawk signals, and the flashing beacons at trail crossings as needed.
Not routing but routine. Not routing maintenance. It is routine.
All right. Excellent. Thank you so much. Comments or questions? Yeah, I should probably know this, but
what's a hawk signal? So if you go on Gifford Road in the curve at the Curse Trail or at Vernal Pike
and Loesch, it's overhead. Those are called what we call. Well, thank you.
Comments or questions, Commissioner Madera? No, this is, again, critical. For sure. All right. Let's
see if there's any public comment on this item. All right. Seeing none, all those in favor, approving
the signal construction, Inc. traffic signal services, signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries 3-0.
We don't have any appointments today and just a few announcements, a reminder that with spring storms
that it's a good time to go to our county website.
and sign up for the resident alert services. And you can do so through our website, in.gov slash county
slash Monroe. You will be alerted about weather emergencies by phone, text, and or email. And we really
encourage residents to do this for their safety. The next blood drives that we're holding in conjunction
with Ivy Tech,
are Tuesday, May 5th and Thursday, May 7th at 200 Daniels Way, room 130A and B. The Tuesday is 1 to 6 p.m.
Thursday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Please make an appointment at redcross.org. If you can't make an appointment
but can stop in, I recommend that you do because we are always in need of blood products in Monroe County.
We have already begun early voting, as we saw earlier in the meeting, with some strong numbers. Remember,
this is at the North Showers building. Lots of parking available. No meters. Thank you. And most of
the hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday.
and we have a couple of Saturdays thrown in the 25th of April and the 2nd of May 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and
the last day for early voting is 4th 8 a.m. to noon and of course Election Day if you prefer to go on
Election Day is May 5th this year and just a reminder that we do have
Positions open on boards and commissions, animal management, health board, and even the library board.
So if you or someone you know would be a good fit, please go to our website, in.gov slash county slash
Monroe and take a look at the available positions and you can apply online.
We do have virtual office hours each month, six different hours available. Check out the calendar at
the bottom of the webpage. We do not have a work session. Our next meeting is April 23rd. And did I
miss anything? Anything else? I think that I'd just like to highlight that for the folks in seminary
point apartments, there will be an open house on April 11th. And so that is a very valuable opportunity
to potentially find other housing opportunities. And actually, I don't know if this is the right time
to do this, but I was having a conversation with a constituent. And Jeff, there was a question that
came up. The county actually could not possibly keep these in their inventory, right? We have to turn
them over to the CIB legally.
We don't have a housing authority. There's no way that we could have made a land trust of this. I think
in order, there is a scenario where if these properties were no longer deemed appropriate or necessary
for the convention center, that there could be opportunities
I mean, the county does not have a housing authority or things like that, but it would open up opportunities
for this property. But since this property was purchased with innkeeper's tax for the intent of doing
exactly what it's being requested for, you've got to honor that commitment. Right. And for that to happen,
the CIB would have to no longer need those properties. Right. I mean, if the CIB said we don't need
those properties and never will, that kind of would release you from having any kind of those hooks.
Which is definitely not the situation. Definitely not. Yes. Thank you so much for clarifying. Yes, I
think there's still a lot of misinformation out there in the community on that point. Thank you so much
for that clarification. But I think the open house is a great opportunity. And again, there's a lot
of help and assistance out there in the community for that effort. So thank you. Yeah.
forgot to mention that there are a couple of programs being offered to the public from the Youth Service
Bureau. One is called Empowered Parenting Workshop, EPW, eight-week program. This is free, designed
to enhance the relationship between parents, guardians, and their adolescent children. And it starts
April 15th.
is a free 10-week harm reduction program designed to support adolescents struggling with substance use.
You can contact the Youth Service Bureau at 812-349-2986 if you'd like to sign up for either of these
sessions. And again, free to the public. Great, great service that we offer. Anything else?
So thank you so much. Excellent. All right. So our next meeting is April 23rd. And with that, we are
adjourned. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Katz. Thank you, TSD.