Well, seeing that we have a quorum, I'll call to order this meeting of the Board of Directors of the
Waste Reduction District of Monroe County for Thursday, January 8th, 2025. Mr. 2026. Mr. McClassen,
will you please call the roll? Piedmont-Smith. Here. Thomas. Here. Wilts. Here. Jones.
Wofford. Here. Thompson. Deera. You have a quorum present in the room and at the moment no members online.
All right. Our next item of business per the agenda is election of officers. But since we have barely
a quorum here and there are some appointments from
entities that have yet to be made or confirmed I would entertain a motion to postpone this until February.
I move we continue this item to February 2026. Second. Any discussion. All those in favor please say
aye. Aye. Any opposed. All right so we will take a look at this at our February
is it February 12th meeting? Next we have the executive committee meeting minutes from December 2nd.
So those are just for your information. Then we have the board of director meeting minutes from December
11th. So do we have a motion to approve? Move approval of the board of director meeting minutes from
December 11th, 2025.
Are there any comments or questions about those minutes? Okay. All in favor of approval, please say
aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Those are approved. We will go on to the controller's report, starting
with cash flows. We have Teresa. The cash flow summary memo is on page 10 of the fourth packet.
Cash flow summary along with the debt service and capital cash flow statements were sent in an email
on Wednesday. Here are the balances as of December 31st. Debt service $149,236.46. Capital $46,148.34.
As noted, the December
operating balance operating fund grass and landfill post closure balances will be updated per notes
on the cash flow summary sheet. The issue with your end and adjusting entries to operating account was
has been resolved and landfill post closure bank statement was received today. All account balances
and we will have updated December 2025 cash flow reports and January 2026 board packet.
What questions are there on the account balances? Alright, are there any questions for control? I think
she meant that she'll have the totals in February. Because she just said January and that's what we're
doing now. Yeah, we'll have. We'll have the at the February board meeting in that packet you will have
the 12 month 2025 cash flow statement as well as the 2026 January cash flow statement.
Sounds good. I'm good with that. So the numbers for operating and for landfill post closure that were
in the email from yesterday, are those tentative numbers or? Those were actually November numbers. I
should have grade those or mark those out, but those were from November.
So when we have our December totals for our next board meeting, will we also have the detailed sheets
for line items for budget? Yeah, you will have those statement, cashflow statement. Okay, great. Any
other questions or comments on the cashflow? All right, we can go on to payroll and claims then.
On page 11 of the packet, you have a summary of the pre-approved payroll and claims since our last meeting
in the amount of $200,136.45. The backup for those numbers are on pages 12 through 33. The payroll and
claims for approval this week were sent in an email on Wednesday and are in the amount of $233,790.82.
Documentation was included in that Wednesday email. This brings a total of all payroll claims that we
are recommending for approval to $433,927.27. Are there questions regarding any of these claims? I'm
going to go ahead and make a motion to approve the payroll and claims
as presented in our packet with the date of January 2nd, 2026 and also to include payroll and claims
as submitted via email on Wednesday, January 7th, 2026. Okay. All right. We have a motion on the table
in a second. Are there any questions regarding the payroll and claims?
Are there any comments from the public? Is there any member of the public who would like to make a comment
on the payroll and claims? There's nobody here in the courthouse chambers, and I don't see any hands
on teams. Any final comments from directors?
All in favor of approval of payroll and claims as moved. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. All right.
Those are approved. Go on to resolution twenty twenty six oh one to amend the district approved vendor list. Mr.
Yeah, as we have to do from time to time due to changes in the vendors that we use, we do need to amend
our approved vendor list. You can see the memo on page 34 of the packet outlines the vendors were requesting
to be added and the vendors were requesting to be removed and the reasons why. So I will.
point out and apologize that on page 36 of the packet, the signature page of the resolution, for some
reason the header did not update and it has the wrong resolution number on that. So assuming that the
board takes a vote on this today, I will get a corrected version sent out for electronic signature after
the meeting.
All right, can we get a motion on the table regarding this resolution? I move approval of resolution
2026-01 to amend the district approved vendor list. Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded.
Are there any questions from board members? Is there anybody from the public who would like to comment
on this resolution? All right, seeing none, any final comments?
Do we need a, for a resolution, do we need a roll call vote? Not for this one. There's no financial
matters involved here. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that resolution
is adopted and we'll look for the request for electronic signatures once that page two header is corrected.
All right. Then we move to a correction with our...
Adjustment Entries in the Accounting System. Will it be Mr. MacLassan or Ms. Goins? I believe Ms. Goins
will explain this. Yeah. So per the accounting adjustments that we made was from when the LAL Associates
completed the conversion of the accounting system from Harris to LAL, there was a description fee of
approximately $48,000.
The previous controller, Kathy Martin, and myself have worked with representatives from Lao and the
State Board of Accounts and the government accounting consultants, Hartman and Williams, to identify
the sources of this discrepancy. Lao and State Board of Accounts both advised that the district should
not make immediate adjustment entries and wait to see if any or all of the discrepancies would correct
itself during monthly reconciliation. This, unfortunately, has not happened.
Those who have looked closely at the issue of the discrepancy is the result of clerical entry made in
Harris and that no funds are missing. Monthly bank reconciliations have always balanced and there are
no unaccounted for expenditures or missing receipts. Many of the heirs have been
identified and corrected. However, there was still discrepancy of approximately 17,000 that the district
has been unable to correct. The State Board of Account advised the district should make a correcting
adjustment in this accounting software to remove the discrepancy. Due to the district carrying
the discrepancy in Lowe for over a year and a half and the approaching year and reconciliation, staff
had made the necessary correcting
entry in law so that we can start the 26th year without this discrepancy. The board was asked
to retroactively approve the adjustments at the January board meeting. All right, thank you. So there
was a accounting or a record keeping
discrepancy when we moved from Harris to Lowe, but both the State Board of Accounts and our own research
and the Department of Williams consultants have determined that there's not actually any discrepancy
in the money, but just the record that needs to be corrected. Is that correct? Nobody that we had look
at this found anything to them that indicated that
you know, any funds were missing. This was more of a bookkeeping and entry errors, most likely in Harris,
that then got carried over into Lau when that transition occurred. Okay. Can we get a motion on the
table to approve the accounting software adjusting entry? As I find it. If I could, and if I,
I missed if Ms. Goins specified, but the,
The net adjustment is a claims increase of $17,199.50. There's no resolution or ordinance in here. It's
not a resolution. We just have to approve it. We were advised that the board just needed to approve
the adjustments similar to when they previously have approved
to make changes to the budget lines when things were misentered. I'm going to go ahead and make a motion
to approve the accounting. Adjustment entries necessary to. Bring wow and Harris together in a balanced
way. Second. Now I would like to maybe reframe what happened. Because the public may be
may have their ears perked up, understandably so. And so I think if we were to look at the cost of doing
business as a district and our bank account, not Harris, not Lowe, our bank account every month,
after month, after month, there's no issue. It's all balanced out and it all works. This is about entering
a number or a number of numbers
into Harris that somehow replicated itself or replicated something that was off balance. Now, with Wow,
that's less likely to happen. Correct. Because there is a reconciliation process with bank accounts
that Harris didn't have. So this is probably not going to, hopefully not going to happen again. So this
is not money missing. This is not money that's gone
you know, poof, the money has always been there and will be there. It is about what the accounting system
says is there and that is wrong. So that's all we're doing is correcting an entry error. Do I have that
right? Yes. That's what the public's going to care about. I would expand on that a little bit and say
that when SBOA was looked at, this actually was discovered and started
being looked at when we actually had an auditor on site auditing years 21, 22, and 23. And so she took
some time to look at it. And the suspicion was that there was an error made that recurred again and
again, like with every payroll or something like that, over who knows how many number of years. And
so that's what got the amount
to where it was, but again, it was an entry, a clerical error, not missing funds. Yeah,
thank you, Commissioner Thomas, for clarifying that. And we did discuss it at the executive committee
meeting as well, which I know you were unable to attend. But yeah, it's not great. We never like to
have inaccuracies in our
accounting system, but it is clear that this is not a matter of missing money or money that was spent
inappropriately. This is a matter of record-keeping error that was perpetuated over several years. And
to Commissioner Thomas's point with regard to LAO, you know, the fact that it has stayed consistent
over time and we've been using LAO for a year and three quarters now, yes, there are
LAO handles things differently that appear to prevent this type of thing from continuing to happen.
Yeah, Councillor Wells. In addition to the software system being a little bit more thorough in reconciling,
are there any other changes that you have or will make to maybe internal controls that
that might help this not happen again? Yes, and this was discussed at the executive committee meeting
that as a result of this, we will review the internal controls and if there are changes necessary or
that would help to prevent these types of things from happening again, then we will bring those to the
board. Thank you. All right, any other questions from board members?
public an opportunity, if any member of the public would like to comment on this, even though it's not
a resolution, it's just a vote to retroactively approve this data entry correction. Any member of the
public here to make a comment? Seeing none, I'll come back to the board if there are no final comments.
I would recommend a roll call on this. Yeah, I would too. OK. Let's do a roll call vote on the motion
to approve the accounting software adjusting entries. Wilts? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes.
Swalford? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. All right. Thank you. I'm sure that's a relief to Controller Goins.
and the executive director to get that start, start the year off fresh with. Yeah. All right. Next on
our agenda is a CAC report. Do we have anybody from the CAC to give a report today? I was not provided
a written report and I fortunately do not see any CAC members here to provide a verbal report. Okay.
While we're on the subject, have you received any new applications for the CAC?
Not to this point, no. We continue to promote the committee and encourage those interested to seek to
be appointed to the committee. I have reached out to Republic and Rumpke to anticipate that they will
both seek to have somebody appointed to the committee in the near future. Right, so if anybody is listening,
we need more members for our Citizens Advisory Committee.
for the waste reduction district, which is usually just one meeting a month and allows you to give input
into how we can reduce waste and increase sustainability in Monroe County. So please reach out. And
I would just add, not knowing how broad of a viewership we have that state statute does state that members
of the committee must reside within Monroe County.
While we can move on to department reports then, we'll start with the administration. So Mr. McClassen.
Yeah, just a couple of things. Off the memo, as we've done for the past few years, just kind of an observance
of Earth Day and Arbor Day, we are again doing online orders for compost bins and rain barrels.
That website, wastereductiondistrictorders.com, is up.
For people to place orders, we anticipate having the items ordered available to pick up beginning around
April the 24th. We are again this year accepting natural holiday trees and wreaths free of any ornaments,
tinsel decorations for recycling at all the recycling centers.
And Ms. Polkrod does still have a few openings for both in-person and virtual programs in the school
systems for the second semester. So if anybody is interested, they can reach out to her at the district
office to get things scheduled. And then beyond the memo, we are, as we do every time this year, getting
started into a new legislative session.
There are a few bills of interest to waste districts that have been filed. The big one is a battery
recycling bill that focuses on specifically on lithium ion batteries and not all lithium ion batteries.
But it is a bill that has been filed at both the Association of Indian Solid Waste Districts and the
Waste Hauler Association
providing input on. We are currently attempting to get a meeting scheduled with the authors of that
bill. Both groups would like to see some changes, potentially some expansion into what's covered by
that bill. And then that bill also kind of leads into a broader issue of extended producer responsibility,
which solid waste districts are keen on.
getting the legislature to take up and discuss, which they've previously done for electronic waste as
well as some mercury devices in previous years, so. Can you give us the bill number on that, please?
I can, sorry, give me a minute. Just in case anybody's interested and they can contact their legislators.
House Bill 1231. Mr. McClassen, when you say extended fiduciary responsibility, what do you mean? Extended
producer responsibility. Oh, producer responsibility. Yeah, which basically puts some of the burden
for managing
difficult to recycle, potentially hazardous or safety issues to dispose of products and materials back
on the producer of those items. It's not uncommon throughout the country. Many states have such bills
in place, but they tend to be for
specific items or materials, and there's obviously not a lot of uniformity or consensus state to state
as to exactly how that's managed. But it is something that would be beneficial to districts, to recyclers,
and even in some instances to waste management companies.
to help alleviate some of the burden that's faced when, you know, things get brought to us that are
expensive. I mean, you know, the battery bill is right now, you know, one thing it doesn't specifically
address are damaged lithium ion batteries, which are very expensive due to the safety issues
with transporting them and storing them to get those properly
managed for recycling or disposal. So, and we have taken some of those in and we've had, you know, absorbed
the cost of properly managing those. So, having some, you know, any type of expanded producer responsibility
on the books certainly benefits a number of the entities involved in managing those products and materials.
Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments about the administration department report? I did
want to... Oh, sorry. I just thought you said there was more than one bill. Is there... Oh, I'm sorry.
Yes. You guys got me all worked up on the battery bills.
The other one that's out there that to my knowledge has not been filed yet but have heard that is in
the works is and this I believe is a short session so we're not real sure where it might go but is a
fairly hefty bill that is potentially going to,
rewrite Title 13 of the Indiana Code, which is environment and where solid waste districts fall. So,
you know, following the rumors and what's being said about the authoring of that bill and seeing if
it will get filed and then obviously would be very interested in having input on what happens with that.
the filing deadline is tomorrow. Is it for house? I think so. That's what I learned today, so I'm not
sure, but that doesn't mean it won't show up next year, right? So that's right. Yeah, or that certain
aspects of it won't show up getting piggybacked onto bills that are moving. So thank you. So
I wanted to follow up. In December we had a joint meeting with the CAC and went over our five-year plan,
and it was noted that there may be a new structure for submitting five-year plans. There may be some
other template that we're going to have to use. Is there any word on that? I have not heard any additional
information. The state's working on what they're calling a materials management plan, which is intended
to replace the solid waste management plan.
And there are, there was federal money made available for grants to help, you know, local entities,
you know, develop their plan. Once we knew what the state's material management plan was, there's been
delays in that money being available to be applied for, I would say because the plan's not available.
I have to know what the management plan is to know what I'm applying for. So, yeah, I really don't know
where that's going or what's going on with that. Since we discussed that in December, I have received
no additional information regarding that. On a totally different topic.
Since our agreement with one sustainable Joe has concluded I wanted to inquire is the district in a
position to continue that project should either a nonprofit or a apartment complex desire to try a composting program.
So we've had some discussions internally about that, and we certainly are in a position to, you know,
if you'll recall, one sustainable job brought two new complexes on in November, and we agreed to fulfill
the 12-month partnership, or at least the remainder of the 12-month partnership period for those two
complexes. We're certainly in a position to do that, where we are also
providing some assistance to some of the complexes that are beyond that 12-month partnership period
that have had, you know, needed some minor repairs on their compost bins or things like that. You know,
our ability to continue it or in what way, shape, or form we would want that to continue, I guess staff
was wanting to have the,
new executive committee in place and initiate those discussions with that executive committee and kind
of, you know, what the staff feel like we have, you know, the time and resources to do and what would
the board's wishes be for the future of that program? Okay, great. So we can, the executive committee
can talk about that in the coming months.
Are there any other questions on the administration department report? So then we can move ahead to
the household hazardous waste and recycling reuse center report. Is Joey Long on the teams? He is. TSD,
if Joey Long and Lee Paulson could be allowed to participate in the meeting, please.
So I will start off with the recycling and reuse just to give everybody a heads up that we are getting
a lot of requests for garden materials that people can start their seeds and plants in for this upcoming
spring so we are currently saving material for that to reuse and we're glad to be able to do that so
if somebody needs something you know please get in sooner that way we can save the material for you.
The hazardous materials were in process of talking to our
got our trainer to do our annual has whopper training. We're trying to nail down a date that works for
everybody. Again, with the batteries that Tom hit on, we're looking at some places that will take larger
lithium ion watt hour batteries. That's our problem right now is a lot of places don't want to accept
batteries that has a lot of watt hours over them. They have a limit that we can accept. So we're
constantly looking at different outlets for that. And the rural sites, they're operating as normal.
The only thing I can add is we just completed some gravel work at the Elstville site on Tuesday. So
we added some gravels, packed it in and fixed out by the road and stuff. So that site should be good
to use for a while. And our next site that they are focusing on will be the Bethel Lane site. And I
don't have a date when they will be doing that.
But it's in the playgrounds. That's all I have. If you guys have any questions. Thank you, Mr. Long.
Are there any questions on that report? I don't see any. So thank you. Oh, I have one question, actually.
Yeah. Usually we have a table with the details of the tonnage of recycling and household hazardous waste and such.
Is that so since yeah, I can get that to you since we switched the room. We have stuff coming at different
dates, so I have to wait till all the different vendors sends me their stuff or I can make sure it matches
up to the numbers that I have. That way everything is. Reporting the right way, so sometimes you know.
One of the vendors, you know, pushes me out a week or two. Later than most vendors.
before they send me an early report. I think the issue this month was the board packet going out so
close to the first of the month and holidays winding up December that I think things are just behind
and we should have everything caught up and that table to you for February. Okay, great, thank you.
All right, shall we move on to landfill and environmental compliance with Mr. Paulson?
Okay, good afternoon. There's a lot of echo there. The report that I submitted pretty accurately describes
what's going on at the landfill right now. We're still, the thing I'd highlight is that our treatment
system is down right now because one of the valves is not working correctly.
It has had a technician out to diagnose and waiting to get on the schedule to get it replaced. Again,
with the holidays at the end of the year and the beginning of the year here, it's just trying to get
the right things in place to get that going. Currently, our pond is at an okay table right now. We are
hauling some water right now just to kind of make sure that we're maintaining. But I've emailed and
contacted the appropriate people and just haven't heard anything back yet, so just waiting. Other than
that, we're free to ask questions if you need. All right, thank you. Are there any questions for Mr.
Paulson? I had a question related to the leachate generation table that you included.
The total for the last six months is about 1.3 million gallons generated. And when I look at the same
period in 2024, it was only 200, about 230,000. So it was a lot less in the last six months of 24 versus
the last six months of 25. I'm wondering why that is. It seems to be our weather patterns right now
at the end of the year seem to be more drought.
Um, and then, um, we had, uh, last year we had, were spot cleaning pieces of the pond to try to keep
some of that invasive weed stuff out of the pond. And we just didn't have a lot of generation. Uh, we've
got several, you know, we, we just didn't have a lot of generation. Um, and that's, uh, kind of how
it was. Um, that's just some of the stuff I can control and I can't control.
that. I got a green light finally. I'm looking at the August 25 of hauled volume was that did we not
do a pond clean out at that time to remove invasive species that also basically drains all the water
out of the pond? Yeah in 25 we did. Between them and RH Marlin.
So there's 276,000 gallons of that is specific to really when we get the invasive vegetation weeds that,
you know, get into the pond and become to a level that they're a burden. The only way to remove them
is to suck everything out of the pond. And so that, you know, as to generation that during that time of year,
Otherwise, we would just be letting the pond fill up and not doing any hauling or treating. And then
the other high figure was for December, 278,000 gallons. Does that have to do with the valve being out
of order? Well, the hauled number being that high would, yes. But that 300 or almost 400,000
gallons of leachate generation. Again, things aren't consistent, you know, year to year, but that's
not out of the range of normal for that time of year. Okay. I see there is a, there is, on December
of 24, I see now what she, I think she's talking about. There's an error in the December 24 that it
didn't fully populate, so that would be a little higher.
But yes, there's an error. We had more than four total gallons for the month of December at 24, yes.
Yeah, that total is that math doesn't work. Yeah, not at all. Not that I see that. Sorry about that.
So the difference is not that great. Four gallons in a month would be nice, though. Easy on the budget.
Yes, it would. Yes, it would.
Thank you. All right. If there are no other questions we can move to public comment. This is a period
of open public comment for anybody who would like to comment on the work of the voice reduction district.
Please raise your hand in teams if you want to say something. Not seeing any hands raised.
So we can go to our final item, which is comments from directors. Do any directors have any comments
to make at this time? I'd just like to say it's been a pleasure working with Mr. Swafford. I understand
that he's not in the running to be reappointed from Ellisville. So thank you so much for your many years
of service. I thank you guys.
Thank you. Oh, thank you, Mr. Swafford. We'll miss you here. I'll miss you guys, too. I really appreciate
all of your many, many years of dedication here. All right, so I'll just end by saying go IU and we're
adjourned.