I'll call to order this meeting of the Executive Committee of the Voice Reduction District of Monroe
County Board. Let's do a roll call of committee members. Mr. Muglason. Yvonne Smith. Here. Madera. Here.
Wilts. You have a quorum present. Wilts couldn't be here today.
We have meeting minutes approval from our September 29th executive committee meeting. I had a few corrections
in the box. Did you see that? I saw those and those incorporated into the version for signature here.
Okay. Any comments? No.
then we need a motion to approve those as corrected. I move to approve the corrected. All those in favor?
Aye. The joint meeting minutes from back on July 9th.
have been approved by the CAC, I assume? Yeah. I meant to put a memo in front of them, but I have not,
and I will get their chair signature on them before they're presented for the board's approval. Okay.
Any comments on those? I did not see corrections to those in Dropbox. I didn't even look at them. I
wasn't there, so I figured. I will double-check for grammar and typos.
All right. Anything on the board of director meeting minutes from October 8th? And here I had a substantive
comment in the drop box. The change in the amount. Yes. Where the total claims amount was inaccurate.
Right. Inaccurately in the minutes reported correctly at the meeting. Yeah. And I got that. Yeah.
Any other comments on those minutes that will go to the full board? Just to add that for others benefit,
you've also added on the section about the compact release request for bid that there was consensus
among the committee to hold that for a few minutes before. Yes. To clarify that, we decided to put a
pause on that.
So those can go to the full board. Then we have five resolutions to look at today. Mr. McClassen, you
want to start us off about the use of public records for commercial purposes? Yeah, it's on page 22
in the memo. This is kind of in response to an issue that a handful of other districts are currently
having to deal with where they're getting.
via email, all the ones that I've been made aware of, requests for public records regarding payments.
I mean, very broad, lots of information requests, payments and contracts. The one that was forwarded
to me where I investigated the domain that it came from, it was pretty obvious this was a company that
gathers the information and sells it to prospective contractors and bidders.
So as I've indicated in the memo, state statute does allow for public agencies to prohibit that use
of public records. So we're asking via this resolution for the board to adopt such a policy so that
if we receive any such requests, we can just deny them based on the basis that they're for commercial
purposes. Makes sense to me.
I agree. I don't have any problems with this resolution at all. Thanks for being proactive about it.
Absolutely. Because I wasn't the first to get the email, we're able to be proactive. Well, it's good
that you all share information with the other districts. Get ahead of things like this.
It also cuts down on the amount of staff time having to deal with this. Yeah. Right. Yes. And that kind
of segues nicely into the next resolution, where should such a request be received that is legitimate
but is from a non-Indiana resident or an out-of-state entity, a state statute does allow for supplemental
fees to be collected
to process or respond to those claims, flat 25 cents per page, but then $25 per hour of staff time.
This resolution amends the district's fee resolution to incorporate those fees. What's in there is straight
out of the statute.
What would be the supplies that might be needed? So the one, two, three. Where as clause says, processing
requests for public records has a direct cost to the district, including supplies and staff time. Paper,
we have to print them. Don't think it. Is the 25 cents a page, though? Does that cover the cost of the
paper? Well, I mean, that's
I guess it's supposed to cover the cost of the paper, the ink toner, the use of a copy or printer machine
to produce them. And yeah, otherwise, there's not. That would be the only supply unless you want to
count the electric utility as a supply, the toner.
Are most of these requests digital now? How would that 25 cent per page be translated into sending them
a PDF? I asked that question because the statute doesn't specify. Our attorney didn't have a real good
answer, but he said, but what you're putting in your fee resolution is word for word out of the statute.
Now, if somebody asks for
a list of claims paid to a specific vendor in a certain time period produced in a report that could
be transmitted electronically, I wouldn't worry about charging a per page fee for that, just the stat
time to compile that. But as far as the statute doesn't specify that that per page fee applies across
the board or only to physically produced copies,
and our attorney didn't have a real good answer for that. But since what we were adding was straight
out of the statute, he was comfortable adding it in there. Okay. So electronic records requests basically
would just get the $25 per hour charge. That would be awesome. I would seek to recoup. Yeah.
Because the other thing that's in our fee resolution that the public records request, I mean, because
of the landfill, we have engineering drawings and maps that are larger than the legal size sheet of
paper. And we have an additional fee for those larger copies to be produced. The statute for public
records request doesn't address what happens if I have to produce a 24 by 36 engineering drawing, AutoCAD drawing.
which in all likelihood could be managed electronically unless they wanted a physical copy. So looking
at the red line version of the fee resolution, you do have in the current fee resolution copying services,
$1 per page for all documents larger than legal size. But then we're adding
is regardless of size, $0.25 per page. Right. And that's the copying services. If we're in a situation
where we're having a project at the landfill that's up for bid or proposal, and somebody comes in and
says, hey, I'd like some additional copies of this map or something like that for my bid packet.
Book a page, and we'll produce it for you.
So you don't foresee any of those large format pages being necessary for a public records request? For
non-Indiana residents and out-of-state entities, I don't foresee having to physically produce anything.
It would be electronic compiling of the requested data or records and then emailing or transmitting
electronically the requested records.
Okay. So you don't foresee that? I don't. We're going to do five pages of. I don't foresee the 25 cents
per page coming into play at all. Yeah. No, it's just how many, how much time does staff spend putting
it all together and we get $25 an hour for that. Okay. Why is the effective date December 10th and not
our November meeting?
fee resolution has to be introduced and heard at a subsequent meeting for public hearing. So we introduce
it in November and then do a public hearing and a vote in December. The public hearing will be December.
Yeah the public hearing the vote can occur at the same meeting and would for those to occur in December.
Any other questions or comments on that? Then we have fixing our salaries for next year. Then we get
into annual resolutions that are done every year. This is the same format and language we use every
year with maximum fixed rates updated based on what we've approved in the budget.
So why are all employees at the maximum fixed rate? That's how we generally bring people in at those
published rates. Most of the employees, particularly in the higher salary ranges, have been with the
district for a period of time.
We don't do like the city and the county does where we do ranges based on certifications, years
of experience, education levels. We just set a maximum fixed rate and there's not a policy in place.
But the only policy I know of, and I honestly don't know if it's still in place because before I was
director, but when we started doing the leachate treatment at the landfill, we did bring some people
in at 90 percent of the maximum fixed rate until they obtained their wastewater operator license
certification. I'd have to look to know if that was written into the personnel policy and it's something
that's still in place.
So, the rate is the rate. The rate is the rate. And for longevity, those payments are handled separately?
Mm-hmm. Yes. Is that the longevity scale and the personalities, or where would that be?
When does that first kick in? Five years? Year one. Year one. One year completed, then it's starting.
Yeah, I think the first year is based on $200, but the employees that work under 40 hours a week get
a prorated amount based on their hours work relative to 40. Yeah, I was thinking of, you know, the city has
And then with more longevity or towards the upper end of the rain. Right. And you're in their expertise.
You know, if the board wishes, that is certainly something that we could investigate doing in future
years. But I mean, we're first 30 people compared to the city and the county. And then, you know, we
don't necessarily have that. It's, you know, it's expertise.
education certification requirements in many of the positions the city and the county has. No,
it's fine. I just wanted to be reminded how it works. I had a question about the first paragraph of
the resolution. It says, be it resolved,
blah, blah, blah, to fix the number of employees whose salaries are payable from the waste production
district or budget, except as hereafter provided by IC 36-2-5. What is this except as hereafter provided?
What does that reference, Tino?
If you want to give you, I'd have to look up the site. Like I said, it's the same language that we've
used over and over again and I don't recall exactly what that citation is. To fix the number of employees.
It's just weird language. Be it resolved to fix the number of employees. We're fixing the number, we're
just- Well, no, the statute says that we have to identify each and every position that's going to be
paid. Okay. All right.
And we do that with. Yeah, we can't we can't just say we can't just say you know X thousand dollars
of hourly wages over the year and then the year goes on figure out what positions and of course it's
going to get paid that way to fix the number of employees. And then for the work periods. Okay.
I could have looked that up then, obviously. 36.25 is just budget procedures, where it does address
compensation of officers and employees, additional compensation for assessors, township assessors, and
their certifications. Among other budgetary issues,
3625 has sections that do address compensation. Okay, I mean, I don't really have an issue with it.
I was just trying to understand. We could certainly investigate it further and the
Is it necessary? Does it need to be amended, revised? So does that imply that if our processes somehow
did not meet IC 3625, then this resolution may not be in effect? Just trying to understand legally what
this does.
So longevity payments would be covered in 3625, which are outside the scope of the salary resolution.
kind of scrolling through it and see what I see. I mean, a lot of that compensation components of that
section of the statute deal more with elected officials, assessors, and their certifications. Something
specific to
health departments, accepting community corrections programs. So that may be something that was put
in there when we established the longevity policy to allow us to have the longevity policy in addition
to regular wages.
What do you think? Should we just leave it the way it is, or? I like leaving it the way it is. We can
always adjust it in the future. Yeah. So I guess I would just say, if by the way you could ask, if you're
talking to our legal counsel anyway, maybe you could ask about this. It's not going to vote no because
of it or anything like that. I think we can adjust it in the future, but I don't know exactly that we
know how we would change it now.
Maybe we would have better suggestions after talking to legal. Yeah. I'm guessing it's one of those
things that probably may not be necessary, but it doesn't have any harm to leave it in there. Yeah.
I don't think having it in there commits or obligates the district to anything it's not currently doing.
Right. I just like things to be as clear as possible when we're doing the business of the public.
Well, then they should write the statutes much simpler. On my list of what to get mad at the General
Assembly about this pretty low. Any other comments or questions? We can move on to the holiday schedule.
Again, it is what it always is. There are a couple of, I guess, new wrinkles this year based on what
the county adopted. The county did not include the two election days as holidays and instead granted
floating holidays. So proposing that same philosophy in here.
as well as since Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, not doing an observed Christmas Day holiday, because
we already do Christmas Eve. So we're granting floating holiday for Christmas. And I think I have a
total of four in here. If I remember when I looked at the counties with their observed holidays and
all the floating holidays, they got a total of 15.
I pay stars on 15, which when you do the table that's on page 40 of the packet, the math comes out real
nice. Oh, you said Juneteenth is the other one that's on a Saturday. Yeah. The only hiccup this year
is we have a total of seven holidays identified that fall on Friday and Saturday. So that kind of
puts the rural site operators a little above where they would normally be, but there's just not much
we can, that's just how it happened to fall this year. So, I mean, you know, we can probably go back
and look and there's probably been years where they were slightly, you're looking at paid holiday hours
totals or percentages, they were slightly below where they should have been just because, you know, we do,
they're 11 and a half hour days. And if X number of holidays puts them at 95% and one more holiday would
put them at 105% of what the relative to admin or what. And that's just, that's just kind of how that
falls. Um, but it wasn't it relatively recently, just a few years ago that we,
made them proportional at all? Based on, didn't they used to be, didn't we used to count their days
as equivalent of eight hour days? Um, I think that's been a little, I mean, we did at one point, but
I think it's been a few years since we started basing it on the scheduled hours relative to admin. Um,
and looking at that and trying to get everything to come up to as close to that 57.5% as we could. But
the South Walnut staff and the admin are right there at the same with each other. The seven Friday,
Saturday holidays, you know,
and nothing we can do about it. That's just how it all felt. Unless you want to make them work on Christmas
Day or something. What am I, the Grinch? Okay. Jody, do you have any comments on this? No. I had a couple of
comments on the text of the resolution. Okay. In the second whereas clause, can we say residents of
Monroe County instead of citizens of Monroe County? I like that better. Residents instead of citizens. Okay.
There were two dates on the lists on page two of the resolution that still said 2026. In the first list,
it was Veterans Day. I see them. Okay. In the second list, it was Martin Luther King Day. Okay. Easy
corrections. Well, other than that, I think it's good.
That brings us to the meeting schedule for next year. Yeah, I'm still proposing the second Thursday
of each month. The only hiccup being Veterans Day and November 11th is the second Thursday. Looking
at the counties,
calendar on the county website for 25 and 26, because I haven't filled everything in for 27 yet. It
does appear that the Naui Hill Room would be available at 4 p.m. on the 10th, Wednesday the 10th. It's
just a matter of board members' availability. And unfortunately, as you can see from this agenda, the
November meeting is kind of
We try to knock out all of the salary orders, the holiday schedule. We try to get up, you know, just
as we run into issues in years past where the December meeting starts to get into people's holiday time
and getting a quorum together. So we got in the habit of starting to try to address those things at
the November meetings. So should we
change the date, the November 11th date to November 10th? Or- I can do that. Second, well, it does say
second Thursday. Parentheses, unless otherwise indicated. I think that- Because that way people can
put it on their calendar. Right. To me, it makes sense to go ahead and change it in the resolution as
presented.
with our understanding that sometimes it's hard to schedule out that far, or that somebody may say Wednesdays
at four o'clock don't work for me, period, at the meeting. And the other side of it also being that
we can always pass the resolution with whatever dates we want in it, and we can reschedule individual
meetings as we need to as the years go by. But don't you publish
the whole schedule at the beginning of the year in the newspaper? We don't publish it. We're not required
to publish it in the paper. We're just required to provide it to the media outlets, which we do. Oh,
OK. And then, of course, populate the calendar on our website. The calendar will populate the calendar
on its website. Well, and if we know we're not going to meet on November 11th, let's just make it the
November 10th. And if we have to change that later, OK. But we know we're not meeting on
That was advocate on that. We have September 9th in there. We've always get to the September board meeting
knowing it's going to conflict with budget hearings or budget questions. And we did. I think the past
two, maybe three years, you just canceled the September meeting. Generally, you know, we just got done
with our budget. There's not a
all that other pressing issues that are going on. And we just, as we get close to that meeting date,
we just issue a cancellation notice. But it's there in case we do decide there's a need to meet and
then we reschedule it for a location or a date and time that doesn't conflict with the council budget
or budget recessions.
which really only affects one of our members. Correct. If there is a need to absolutely meet, we could
move it here at the same time the work session's going on, just to meet and get our business taken care
of. Last ditch. Yeah. Urgent, if there was something urgent. Yeah, so I would still change November
11th to November 10th.
last risk that that's a Wednesday or something. Does that sound reasonable? We can do that. Tom, in
the third whereas clause, it says to ensure effective and efficient conductance of district business.
I don't know that that's a word. I would say just conduct.
I don't know what conductance is. Conduct. Yeah. I paid attention in your mom's English class.
Just kidding, I was never in her class, but she was in English. She does economics. It was a long time
ago that she taught English. When I was her kid back then. Okay. Electrical conductance.
I don't think that's what we're talking about though. We can change that. Thank you. Now we're at the
all other items deemed appropriate section of the agenda. Who has something?
two things. One thing, something that has come up since the packet was put together and distributed
that we'd like to include on the board agenda. We now have, I think, 10 more of the Brolov containers
that were ready to move and need to get declared surplus property. So we'd like to add that revolution
onto the board agenda. We got those identified today so we can
Put that together. And then our health insurance situation. Yeah. Yeah, it's covering people under 30
hours a week because there's nobody out there this time that we've been able to find and identify.
I think as I mentioned before, we have three employees that are going to be affected by this. There
is also a fourth that inquired about enrolling for the 2027 policy year that's going to fall into the
same boat, but they're not currently covered. Joey and I have been able to
look at it, figure out. So I think this has been mentioned before. We currently have a vacant material
handler position at the South Walnut facility. So we have offered the three employees that are faced
with losing coverage the opportunity to pick up a third shift a week at the South Walnut facility, but
we'll get them over 30 hours a week.
Unfortunately, the employee that's not currently covered, I don't know. They're not losing anything
and it sucks. Not fun discussions. If it's not something we're going to be able to continue to do,
I'm not comfortable allowing somebody that's not currently enrolled to get on the policy and make scheduling
adjustments to accommodate that. We're just gonna have to move forward with, in essence, grandfathering
the existing covered employees and moving forward. It's not a health insurance eligible position. Now,
dental and vision,
I always said fine, retirement says not an issue, disability says not an issue. The only thing that
they're losing is the health insurance. The three. The three, but as far as the group of eight employees
that fit into that schedule, none of the other benefit eligibility are impacted just to health insurance.
January 1st on, those positions will just not come with health insurance. But what about the three people
who are taking on the extra shifts? Well, we're going to, in essence, grandfather them in and make the,
I don't know, the concession is the right word, the accommodation by offering them that extra shift
because we have
We have the hours available. They're budgeted for. The position is not currently filled, and we can
do that. And then... But they have to take on the extra shift. They have to take on the extra shift.
Yeah. I mean, they have to work the shift, or they're not going to have their 30 hours a week. Or take
PTO or what have you.
and then use the relief operator to cover that shift on Saturdays at the South Walnut facility. So it's
a full-time job that's not filled right now? 40-hour position is not currently filled. Tuesday through
Saturday. We're doing some,
At the first of the year, we're going to change some of the scheduling rotations of South Walnut. Oh.
Because we currently have the truck drivers rotating Tuesday through Friday and Wednesday through Saturday
because they're 10-hour shifts. Oh, okay.
With some of the increases we're seeing in GBNs and customer needs, Joey wants them both of them Tuesday
through Friday every week. And so then the one material handle we have has agreed to go to Wednesday
through Saturday every week. And so we'll plug.
At this point, two of the three affected employees have agreed to pick up the shift. The third one is
unsure at this point. He may just look for other options. Because they all work Monday and Wednesday,
but Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, we'll plug them in to fill that gap and then have a relief operator work
with the material handler on Saturday. Okay. Then as those employees who are grandfathered retire or
leave, those positions will go back to just being rural site positions. Right. At some point, the attrition
is going to occur with those guys and then we'll have to reassess how we're doing the staffing at South Walnut.
But at this point, you know, even though that may leave us a day a week, you know, where we'll have
a material handler 30 hours a week versus 40 hours a week, Joey's still, Joey's comfortable that between
the guys that are in HHW and him and Danny that if things happen that we can get a body over there to
kind of slack.
We're keeping both material handbook positions I see in the salary. Well, it's in the salary. It's budgeted
for. Those wages are going to go to a site operator position, which is just scheduled for an hourly
rate, not a maximum of X dollars per year. It's a per hour maximum. We'll stay within that per hour
maximum. They're just going to get 33 hours a week instead of 23.
but they're going to be paid less for the hours at the recycling center than a material handler would
be. We'll try now. I mean, we can't look at adjusting that. I mean, I don't know whether the work is
that much harder or what. I mean, a little bit. I mean, they don't have to, you know, when the truck
drivers get back with a load,
from GBN, they're going to have to help unload those trucks so we can get them back out on the road.
And it's not something that they have to do with the sites. But we can see how it goes. First, I need
to know how many of them are actually going to do this and what date we're going to plug them in. But
when you or Joey talked to the three site operators that currently
use the health insurance, they didn't raise that concern that, well, actually, this other don't ask
me to do eight hours a week is... No, they didn't ask about the hourly wage difference or anything like
that. We're already making an accommodation. Yeah. Then the other thing,
that that's going to force me to do something I've procrastinated for years on and that we're going
to have to update the personnel policy handbook to identify these as not health insurance eligible positions.
We'll do some other things in there just because I'm in there doing it, but we need to
redefine full-time, and we need to redefine benefit eligibility. Do we have a time frame for that? I
would hope to bring it to the December meeting so that it's adopted and in place for January 1, which
means it's probably not going to be a revision that includes everything that needs to change. But we'll
get it. We haven't updated the thing since we did.
our name change. I mean, you know, there's a number of things that I can go through there pretty quickly
and easily update and revise and we'll, but yeah, I mean, I'd like to, I'd like to at least have something
knowing that we may have to come back and revisit it later in 2027, but I would at least like to have
something for the board to approve
that takes care of this insurance situation in the policy handler. Well, that's a relatively good outcome.
So thank you for working on
accommodating those employees, I think. Yeah. I feel for the one that wanted to, and I don't know what
changed in his circumstances or life, that didn't need it before, but need it now. If they're no longer
benefit eligible positions, we have to draw the line. Yeah. What about the health insurance rates? Do
we have them?
more accurate quote now? Yes, we're actually dealing with that today. The increase is different for
the PPO and the HSA plans. The sum total was like a 7.9% increase. The HSA plans went up about 10%
The PPO plans went up five percent, five and a half percent. And then the breakdown with how many employees
are enrolled in law, the sum total is going to be about an eight percent. Is that, and how, what did
we budget for? I think I budgeted for 13 or 14, because I was told we were looking at that, at that
range back in July, which is all the guessing game at that point.
Okay, so this is good. Yeah, but the administrator does have clients that do the renew throughout the
year. And then she was just able to tell me, well, the clients that have renewed over the past couple
of months are 10% to 50%. She had clients that were, and yeah, she just kind of said, based on what
I'm seeing, we should probably anticipate being in the 12 to 15%, right?
We'll save somebody there. I think the budget is going to be fine. Barring too many people getting married,
having kids, hiring in and wanting insurance replacing somebody that doesn't. Top ones. That's a whole
different budget line.
OK, anything else? Anything for you, Jody? Nope. All right, let's get you out of here on time. Adjourned.
Adjourned. Thank you. Who wants to sign in? I can do it. So any issues with the grant sheet for the
claims that we're doing?
Anybody like it, okay? I like it a lot. Great. I haven't heard comments from anybody else. It was confusing
when the roof was in Department RRC. I looked at that on the standing for your email. RRC, internally,
is self-walled. But then you also had Department of Recycling.
which was South Walnut as well. So we have two things that make sense. And there's one I put on because
it seemed to cover all the departments. So I'll get in with John and we'll figure out that because for
budgeting purposes, we have a recycling department, a household hazardous waste department, rural site
department. And then we have
the RRC, which is the South Walnut Recycling HHW Complex as a whole. And then, but oftentimes when things
come in, we'll break the things. Like that roof repair was probably broken up between South Walnut Recycling
and household hazardous waste, depending on what portion of the roof. The contractor comes back and
says, 25% of the work was over here, 75% was over here.
Then we would have broke the... And then you wind up with RRC in your description. That doesn't mean
anything to the board. Right. Okay. Well, thanks for putting it to that. Have a good night, guys.
You too. Thank you.