- I think we are ready to call this meeting to order. It is 3.35, my apologies for the delay, and we are
- here in the NatU Hill Room. It is Wednesday, September 3rd, and we have Commissioner Thomas, Commissioner
- Madeira, and Surveyor Tron, and Wright Randolph, and we are ready to begin, I believe. So our first
- agenda item,
- is public input for items not on the agenda. Is there anyone here in the NatU Hill Room that would like
- to provide public comment for matters not on the agenda? I see no takers. Anybody on Teams? Please raise
- your hand, virtual hand. I see no one on Teams.
- All right. Our next agenda item, please, is the approval of minutes for August 6, 2025. Move approval
- of the minutes for August 6, 2025. Second. Any public comment on this matter? Here in the NatU Hill Room,
- no one. And on Teams, I do not see anyone either.
- All right, we can just do a unanimous. I'm sorry. We can do a voice vote. A voice vote, yes. Okay. The what?
- Okay. Call it. Call for the vote, please. All those in favor of approving the minutes for August 6, 2025,
- say aye. Aye. The minutes are approved.
- Moving on to the stormwater expenditure report for July, 2025. We didn't have anything really big fleet
- maintenance. We had 9,352 86 and then the oil and gas 5,013 75. Awesome. Thank you very much.
- We are now on new business.
- we have a stormwater management ordinance draft updates. So I will give a brief overview of the ordinance
- updates and the reasoning for them. So just zoom in to the PDF just a few clicks. Thank you. So the
- The version that you have been provided with is our red line version. So it shows the previous contents
- that have been crossed out, as well as what is being added or modified within the existing ordinance.
- So House Bill 1037 was enacted, which requires local authority
- to be no more stringent than the IDEM, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, construction,
- stormwater, general permit. So we have worked closely with our legal office to update our ordinance
- so that it reflects exactly what's in the construction, stormwater, general permit. Excellent.
- Thank you so much. And we
- are required to take action to approve or deny that ordinance. And so I would like to turn to my colleagues
- to see if they have any comments. So one of the first questions I had was whether the drainage board
- had reviewed these. And the answer was yes. Mr. Schilling, is there anything you can add to the information
- about these changes?
- The statute was adopted that basically says you can't go beyond what is required in the construction
- general stormwater permit. And that permit is limited in scope to areas that involve one acre more of
- land disturbing activity or less than an acre of land disturbing activity in a basically means a subdivision
- or any PUD or any type of develop more than one lot. And so we went through and just basically tried
- to make sure that everything that we had adopted applied to
- The one acre less than one acre common plan requirement with the exception of the illicit discharge.
- I think that that's Not subject to that limitation You see but the the construction general
- permit incorporates a
- the county's standards and so forth in several places. And so we kept the standards that we had in there.
- We just wanted to make sure the situations that were authorized to apply them to. I don't think I'm
- going to say anything different. I don't have additional questions. I might just summarize what you
- said a little more
- simplified even though this is a very complex situation as the state enacted certain restrictions and
- what we did is modified the ordinance to identify everything we're allowed to do and we kept those in
- there and also in conjunction with planning we've also shipped other things where planning has the ability
- to have those in their ordinance that is still
- you know, allowed kind of from a state standpoint, from some of these legislation changes that we are
- encountering. And we've had an open discussion a while back about this, and this is just the end result, so.
- And I hope I said that pretty, I was trying to simplify it, so, okay. We are still able, without much,
- as guidance to require that any lot development has to keep the sediment and the dust on site. So that's
- still in our code. But other than that. It's a situation where the state's dictating something to everyone
- across the state.
- And it doesn't fit us locally at all, but we have to comply. And it's terrible because we all pay the price,
- all of us down the road with future problems and runoff and other issues that may result. So I think
- you made the best of a bad situation. Yep. And I fear that what we talked about before is that they're
- going to make these standards uniform and then sort of gut them.
- I hope that does not happen. I did see that we have several references in the ordinances, I'm sorry,
- in the sections that were changed to general references. These regulations shall not be interpreted
- or applied to impose restrictions or obligations in excess of those set forth or incorporated into the
- IDEM constructions or motor journal permit. So we're covered should anything change there.
- I don't have any further comments or questions. Any other? Any public comments here in the NatU Hill Room?
- Any comments online? Seeing none, I would like to call for a voice vote.
- We have to have a motion first. I'm going to go ahead and move that we approve the stormwater management
- ordinance draft updates. Second. Now we can get the vote. Yes. All those in favor of adopting the stormwater
- management ordinance draft updates say aye. Motion passes. I would make one note. Erica has advised us that
- The state is looking into the new permit requirements starting next year. And so some of these things
- hopefully can be cleared up or resolved through that process. Thanks. We actually have two county surveyors
- on the steering committee, the stormwater steering committee, one as our president of the affiliate
- and another one as a certified engineer.
- Just want to make sure people are aware that we have a direct line to some of the folks that will be
- on the steering committee. And I've expressed some of the concerns as far as the lay of the land here
- versus up north. And, you know, hopefully we can make sure the legislators are aware that everything
- isn't flat in Indiana and certain measures are important to have in place. So I'll leave it there.
- That's one of those negative aspects of the one size fits all approach. Yes. The next agenda item under
- new business is the stormwater budget update. I didn't see that on my agenda. Sorry about that.
- So we had budget hearings our first round, I guess you would call.
- of budget hearings last week. So I represent the stormwater budget, the MVH budget, among other budgets
- within the department. We had proposed some changes to our motor vehicle highway budget of moving some
- of the employees into the county general. That was removed from the county general. When they got to
- the stormwater budget, it was mentioned by the council.
- for me to go back and look on utilizing all the budgets within my department and if any could be used
- to help with the personnel issue, trying to sustain an MVH budget and reaching out to other budgets
- and utilizing them. Since the creation of Stormwater in 2012, it's always been kind of housed by itself.
- All the equipment,
- Everything is housed at the Monroe County Highway Facility. All the utilities, all the building maintenance,
- everything is paid out of that MVH for stormwater. Also, a lot of the administration, I oversee the
- stormwater. I oversee the crews out at the garage on a daily basis amongst with superintendent.
- There's engineering assistance from our county engineer for the crews. They reach out.
- also on some of the stormwater projects such as Stip Road, Marlin Hills, Redbud. Those, according to
- our engineer, he reviewed all of those plans as part of his duties. So I had proposed to you all,
- I had sent an email of moving a portion of those salaries into the stormwater budget.
- just a percentage with their benefits. One, to retain all of our employees in the county highway department,
- whether it be Stormwater, Cune Bridge, or MVH. Things have changed a lot with the MVH budget.
- The distributions on the MVH budget will decrease. You can reach out to LTAP, as I stated in the email,
- those will go down. The only thing that hurts is our paving.
- When we pay more for our overhead and employees and insurance costs and fuel costs going up, that decreases
- our paving. We work our crews together. They used to be pretty separated. Now we do it together.
- which is basically drainage. So back in the day, I know when Terry Quillman was here, he wanted to take
- over all the ditching for the county, realized that it wasn't possible and not doable. You had to have
- the help with the two crews to get it done and make a difference in this county. So the stormwater purchased
- their own gradle. So it's worked really well with having the crews together in one location.
- So that's why we proposed the idea of doing a percentage of three positions, the director, superintendent
- and engineer out of a portion of the stormwater budget. And I would reach out to Dave on chapter 766.
- I've looked at chapter 766. I don't see a lot of restriction there that it can't be done. I know we
- pay a quarter of the salary for the surveyor position,
- out of the stormwater budget. And then our crews, our admin staff, and all the employees out of that budget.
- I'm not trying to cushion any other budgets. I'm just trying to make it all work. Our crews work great
- together, and I want to keep it that way. I want to maintain what we've built and do it to where we
- can keep all of our employees and work together.
- So, but again, it's your, I just proposed this to the board. It was recommended to me from the County
- Council and I wanted to bring it to you so you can have that discussion and it is ultimately your decision.
- I'd like to ask my colleagues if they have any comments, questions. Go ahead. Yeah, I was actually kind
- of wanting to go last,
- One, I want to make a very stern comment of the fact that if there's contributions being made in the
- effort to support stormwater, I'm not against making sure that they're compensated for that. But also,
- I want to see way more detail, way more information
- What was circulated was 50%. Then it was then mentioned that maybe 25 to 30%. I reviewed the council
- budget hearing and they did ask Director Ridge to kind of look at all of the funds. They didn't single
- out stormwater. Stormwater went first, kind of went up and down and then they went into the other budget
- discussions.
- it is true they said look at everything so you know that's what she did. I also want to address the
- 25% of my salary. I think there's a I want to make a distinguished point here as I serve on the board
- and I feel like all the time and contribution other members of the board like the
- county commissioners, if they wanted to kind of shift some of their percentage into the fund,
- I think that's more of a comparable analogy because we all know that there could be one item and there's
- immense amount of time that I will dive into these different topics. I'll also talk about my commitments
- to attending and being a member of the MS4 partnership, the INASM, the Indiana Association of Flip Plane
- and Stormwater Management.
- the Indiana Lake Management Society, the LTAP Stormwater Conference. I put an abundance of time and
- effort to make sure that I'm educated and well-versed in these. I also do webinars from Christopher
- Burke that actually, if I was certified, would go to my continuing education to be certified.
- I do all of these things, also my office,
- has a huge contribution to these efforts as well. So, you know, I would be happy to kind of create a
- presentation because that's going to be my request today is that we move this conversation to another
- date that the speed of this makes me very uncomfortable.
- to try to make a decision. I think we need to kind of see these breakdowns of how these time efforts
- and costs are absorbed because I don't even know what 25% would look like unless I just kind of did
- the rough math of what the 50% looked like, which was a 220 plus thousand. I want to say 223.
- Let's just kind of round it up to 225,000 annually. 23,422. Yeah.
- as an annual fixed cost with potential cost of living adjustments and everything else. Like I said,
- I'm totally amenable to discuss this, make sure that we have like a forecast. I don't want to be in
- a position that unfortunately Director Rich is in right now of trying to make sure that all these funds
- are sustainable. I also just wanted to bring up a couple other additional points.
- back in 2020 when we had fsg here and we were kind of looking at raising the rates. That was complemented
- by the Monroe County Highway Department stormwater service transportation plan and business strategy.
- That goes from 2021 to 2023.
- and none of these reports was it brought up that there's a significant overhead cost being paid by highway
- or the personnel contributing to the stormwater program. Also you know we have the long-range plan the
- last actual update that I had from this plan which I'm always curious we mentioned it here and here
- but was about 2017-18 when it said there's about 60 projects within said plan and I would like to kind
- of see a list
- of how we've been executing these plans. There's also you know the fiduciary responsibility that we
- have and I don't want to fear monger but we still have the potential annexation so that could really
- dip into the revenue. I know that that
- is probably something no one wants to really consider, but we've literally sat at this dais and discussed
- improvements off of that road and the bridge, and the discussion is that may be annexed, let's not move
- in that direction. I advocated for a long-term engineering approach so we could do incremental improvements,
- and if it does, we could pass that plan on. So if people want to discard that possibility, that's fine,
- we didn't in the past so I'm not going to do that today. I feel it's my fiduciary responsibility to
- make sure that these ongoing discussions are accounted for some of our decision making. Also we talk
- about other costs and other things. I can't be a hundred percent but there was a bond ordinance number 2020
- Ordinance number 2020 slash 40. A lot of it has identified as highway. I would like to pair into that
- a little bit and wonder if those were some of the additional costs like buying the shovels for or the
- I'm not going to say it right, but how they plow the snow and they attach the plow to the truck. We
- buy all of that equipment unless maybe some of it came out of this bond and but then we
- install or hook that up to the stormwater equipment and the fleet crew does go to serve snow removal
- purposes and other purposes within the highway department. You know I feel like we do a great job of
- trying to balance that. I really wonder like
- with the contributions that stormwater does with highway and highway does with stormwater is is there
- exorbitant difference where we should be taking on these fixed costs why we've been discussing creating
- another long-term plan that's going to take a lot of additional cost also if that annexation does occur
- i don't think the workload is going to reduce itself by any means these plans that i just mentioned have
- 5, 10, 15, 20 year projections. We're not there. And, you know, I understand that this is from the direction
- of the Council and I understand that this is a tough decision. I'm not willing to support it today.
- I don't want to be involved in creating a quorum where this
- could even pass. So I might abruptly leave the meeting. That's how adamantly I want to understand why
- we would support this. And then finally, I'll kind of leave it here. In 2016, the budget was sent out to us.
- The budget was $1,219,677 that was sent on a Wednesday on the 10th at 1230.
- or 8 a.m. We met on Thursdays back then. A new budget was sent at $1,561,607. On Thursday, the next day at 2.51,
- we met at 3 o'clock. I literally left my office, walked over here, had that much time to look at the
- budget that had a difference of $341,930. And it was an actionable item. And they voted and said, yes.
- and it passed. I do not feel comfortable being in this position again. I don't feel comfortable speaking
- so freely but I am not in support of doing this without having a presentation of showing us the impacts
- because these are rate payer fees and to distribute that is very important and I understand that this
- might take away from other services but
- I feel like it's one in the same because this will deplete our level ability to complete projects and
- provide services as well. It's a very difficult situation. I had to go to my own budget hearing.
- I have a dedicated fund. And due to kind of this shortfalls, I may lose personnel in 2027, part-time
- personnel. And that's not a comfortable situation. And I would do anything to preserve that. But I might
- not be able to have that ability.
- totally in sympathetic in the in the difficulty here but I really need to be convinced and again I am
- absolutely not prepared to vote on this today and I would ask that we create a special meeting or October
- 1st the Council said they want to adopt the budget October 14th that gives us enough time if we do have
- changes that we can present that they can go ahead and entertain those or we could really look at a
- long-term budget plan beginning of 2026 and then our 2027 budget because they're going to be dealing
- with reconciling this shortfall for a number of years to come. So thank you.
- I am not a fan of the council decision to put Ms Ridge in this situation because the answer is either
- we accept this or we pave less roadway. And that's really not reflective of the reality. I don't know.
- I understand your concerns, Mr. Enright Randolph. I understand your concerns. But I also know that there
- is a great deal that's done utilizing both groups of MVH funded highway stormwater. They have vastly
- improved the longevity of our roadways.
- And at the same time, by utilizing stormwater crews. And at the same time, provided stormwater with
- much needed equipment and or personnel. I don't know that it's that meshing of tasks has already happened.
- The question is, what does that
- look like in a budget. And yes, there is a stormwater fee. MVH is the tax collected by the state and
- then distributed based on the number of miles of roadway in each county. Two different pots of money.
- But the efficiency has been in utilizing these crews together and making significant changes and
- and limiting the cost to taxpayers as a result. I don't want to stop that from happening. And so if
- we become fixated on this is stormwater, this is MVH, we lose some of that synergy that has brought
- great improvement across the county to our infrastructure.
- but I do understand the point. We can hear this in October, right? And we'll still make all of our deadlines,
- correct? Okay. Is that true? Yeah. Okay. So I would ask the surveyor to please be very specific about
- the budgetary information he is seeking so that on October 1st, we don't hear, oh, but I didn't,
- But that doesn't answer my question. We need to make sure that you're really clear with staff about
- what specifically it is that you want. Because I imagine if you dig down and look at each person's daily
- budgeting of time, you could be in the weeds so quick, and you're not going to get an answer.
- And I think that's what's going to happen, honestly. Because I don't know how you say,
- I spent two and a half hours here, and I spent an hour and a half here, and part of that was stormwater,
- and all of that was stormwater, but some of this was MVH. How do you do that? I just don't know how
- those numbers can be provided in a way that answers your question. I'm not denying the sincerity of
- your question. I'm not denying the importance of your question. I'm just saying I just don't know that
- it's possible
- to drill down to that level to give you the answers that you need. And if the decision is, well,
- I guess we just don't do paving, then I will be happy to forward phone calls to the surveyor's office
- because we get those. So I'm happy to delay this until October 1st, but I just ask for real clarity
- about the budget information that you want, not right here right now, but just please email staff as
- quickly as you can so they can prepare. That's all I'm asking for because I don't want to come back
- in October to open this up again and have the same thing happen. I don't want to see services cut back
- in any area that's provided by the county. That's a tough one. Also,
- I'm not in the position where I'm actually looking at all these budgets in its totality and how they're
- effective. I serve on this board so it kind of brings a narrow focus so I don't have the luxury
- of understanding how to disperse these funds where they benefit each
- other individual fund that is kind of underneath the Commissioner's umbrella and underneath the direction
- of Director Ridge. Really what I'm looking for and we can talk more is kind of what you mentioned of
- how some of these costs are there, what that dollar amount is, maybe try to figure out how much time
- is spent with the crew
- at highway and just trying to do a cost analysis, but we don't have to get super granular. Some of it
- can be kind of more kind of high level takeaways, but you know, that's what I really want to see and
- I want to make sure that those percentage are appropriately put into that budget. And yes, I'll work with you,
- give you more that would
- work send me maybe some information I'll have follow-up questions in this and we can get it all sorted
- out and you know we can bring this question forward but also I feel like a lot should be presented to
- me based off of the fact that you know I serve on the board and I really have to look at the budget
- and make sure that whatever we're doing we don't end up in another situation where
- Um, we have to reduce services, um, due to, uh, fixed personnel costs. So I'm not looking for anything
- super granular, but just, you know, things that kind of support what was presented today and also a
- couple breakdowns of how that contribution stormwater gives and kind of more of a, you know, um, general, uh,
- calculation.
- It doesn't have to be hour to hour, minute to minute, but I just need something to compare. I also favor
- postponing this until October 1st for the reasons my colleagues have suggested, especially since that
- discussion would still be timely. We also will take public comment on that. Is there anyone who wants
- to offer public comment here?
- Is there anyone who wants to offer public comment online? I'm going to continue this item, the stormwater
- budget update to the meeting of October 1st. Second. All of those in favor of continuing the stormwater
- budget update to October 1st, say aye. Aye. This matter is continued.
- I was wondering, I'm sorry, it's a little out of order, but I just wanted to make sure that legal did
- look at it and there is no issues with potentially shifting some of these salaries over into stormwater.
- I think that's, we never, I got lost into kind of being somewhat prepared. I think to the extent the
- highway personnel are doing stormwater,
- activities that it can be because the ordinance says it has to be exclusively for stormwater purposes.
- One additional comment is I have a non-reverting dedicated fund and all the part-time comes out of that
- and I'm very rigid on what they can and can't do to make sure that they're following those statutes and
- It's just, it makes it very tough to kind of split salaries and then make sure that, you know,
- they're not over focused on one end of the other. But I don't wish that on anyone, but that's how my
- entire office is made up. And I really hope that there's a path forward that can bring the relief that
- we're looking for. Thank you. Thank you both.
- I would like to move on to the next agenda item, which our staff reports. And we have one, the Stipp
- Road Project update. Yes. So as you are aware, we have the Morris Creek Road, Stipp Road project.
- Morris Creek Road is complete. The first half of it, the total project is complete. So now we've moved
- on to Stipp Road and the Lake Monroe water levels were
- a bit too high because of all the spring rains we had, so they have finally dropped low enough.
- We have our kickoff meeting on Friday, and then the contractor is set to start next week on Stipp Road.
- So that'll be very exciting to get that underway and done before the end of the year.
- And then I have one more item. We did hire a new stormwater technician, and he is here with us today.
- Ross Carlson started with us last week, and he's right in the swing of things. He brings a wealth of
- knowledge about conservation, waterways. Yeah, he's a great addition to the team. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
- the luxury of meeting him at one of the Indiana Lakes Management Society. And it was like my first one.
- And I was like, ah, dah, dah, dah. They're like way more in the scientific side of things,
- which is a bit over my head. But I do want to say he was very welcoming and actually kind of made me
- feel like I've been there attending for multiple years. And I think he's going to be a great addition
- to the stormwater team. Wonderful. Glad to see you're already here making waves.
- Any other comments or questions from my colleagues? I really want to figure out how we can help make
- sure that we're compensating for our portion. I mean, it matters a lot to me. We're in a tough time,
- so I just wanted to express that again since I had a lot to say. Mr. Thomas, any comments or questions?
- Thank you.
- All right, then I believe we can adjourn. The date of our next meeting is October 1st, 2025.