VANDERBURGH COUNTY

BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

AUGUST 22, 2006

The Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners met in session this 22^nd day of August, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex with President Cheryl Musgrave presiding.

President Musgrave: Good afternoon. I would like to call to order the August 22, 2006 meeting of the Board of Commissioners of Vanderburgh County. It is 3:30, and we will start with introductions.

Marissa Nichoalds: Marissa Nichoalds, Superintendent of County Buildings.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Ted Ziemer, County Attorney.

Commissioner Nix: Bill Nix, County Commissioner.

President Musgrave: Cheryl Musgrave, County Commissioner.

Commissioner Shetler: Tom Shetler, County Commissioner.

Madelyn Grayson: Madelyn Grayson, Recording Secretary.

Bill Fluty: Bill Fluty, County Auditor.

President Musgrave: Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

(The Pledge of Allegiance was given.)

President Musgrave: In order to accommodate some schedules, we’ll move one thing on the agenda. Immediately after the regional 2030 plan we’ll hear the Women’s Equality Day proclamation.

President Musgrave: Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes of August 15^th?

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

Commissioner Shetler: Aye.

Commissioner Nix: Aye.

President Musgrave: We begin with our action items. I would like to welcome Laura Howell, of the GIS Department, if she is here; Linda Freeman, the Chief Deputy Surveyor, if she is here. I don’t see her. Robert Heiman and Tammy Barnett, you can come forward, with the League of Women Voters. Whichever one of you would like to start and talk about the project.

Laura Howell: Okay. Would you like to start? Since you requested the project, would you like to speak first?

Robert Heiman: I’m Roberta Heiman, President of the League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana. This project began early last year when we were co-sponsoring Meet Your Legislators, and we decided to show maps of the districts that the legislators represented. People were astounded. They gathered around these maps. They’d never seen, you know, anyway....then when the boundaries for some of the precincts were changed, and at the primary election people were going to the wrong places to vote, we did a survey. With Susan Kirk’s help we distributed a survey to every one of our 131 precincts. We got back more than a hundred of the forms, which was a terrific response, and the most common single problem, perhaps not the biggest, but the most common single problem was that people were going to the wrong polling places to vote. The polling places did not have maps to direct people, they had to call the Election Office to find out. So, we thought why not prepare the maps. So, the result is this wonderful thing that we have now. We thank you very much for doing that.

President Musgrave: Thank you.

Tammy Barnett: Yeah, just to, I’m Tammy Barnett also with the League of Women Voters for Southwestern Indiana. I just wanted to echo what Roberta said, it is very nice to have the precinct maps on the website. I tested it out today, typed in my address, found the ward and precinct and then you can click and right there is the map. So, we think that’s going to make it much easier for voters at the next election cycle. Our hope is to work with the Polling Place Advisory Committee and have the maps at each one of the polling places so that they’ll know where to direct people to go. Thanks so much.

President Musgrave: Thank you. Laura, do you have a demonstration of it?

Laura Howell: Yes, I was going to mouse. We’ve got two of us.

President Musgrave: Welcome to the Chief Deputy Surveyor, Linda Freeman.

Linda Freeman: Yeah, so, sorry I was running a little late there. It’s, when you’re in the office it seems like that phone is always ringing. It’s like, I’ve got to go. Linda Freeman with the Vanderburgh County Surveyor’s office, and then Laura Howell with the GIS Department. We were just going to give a little demonstration of how to find the maps, and then just a little information about them, and go through there. So, we’re doing it live, so, this is the way anybody else would have to go through it. So, if something happens, then those of you who have messed with computers can understand completely. So, you go to the Vanderburghgov.org webpage, and you’ll see lots of information there. You can go under the government to the county, and then to the County Commissioners website, or portion of the site. Then you have two places that you can pick it up here. You can pick it over in the left bar, or you can scroll down a little bit and catch the link for printable precinct maps. Then you’ll come to a listing that, with the precincts in a PDF format, which is a portable document format, you can pick up the free Adobe reader at the very top. There’s a selection of either map only, or map with aerial photos. Either of the maps have three frames on them. There we go. The frame in the upper right corner, it lists the districts, it gives you the ward and precinct number again, so you know you’re in the right place. It tells you your Congressional, your County Council, your State House, your State Senate, your County Commissioner and School Board district, which are the same, and then your township. Which, in this case, it’s a Center Township precinct, and it’s Center Township. But, then, like if you’re in the city and you need to know which township you are in, it will show you that. It gives you your poll name and location so that you know where you need to go to vote if you live within the boundaries of this particular precinct. I’ve also included the Voters Registration phone number, so if people have questions they can direct it to the Voters Registration office, and, hopefully get any questions that they may have about their polling location or things like that at the last minute from them. Below the district information you have a small locator map, so you can get an idea where this particular precinct is within the county boundary. Then, of course, the largest portion of the map, or the frame, that we set up on this is the precinct, and as much surrounding boundary that would fit in that frame. The main thing was that I was trying to make sure that the precinct itself was the largest portion in there. Then you do have some surrounding area, so that if someone lives, I can’t tell some of the streets, but, say you live in one of the streets over here you can say, “Oh, I’m in 5-6 instead of C-2.” Or you’re over there in the other precinct on the left hand side, but each of the maps, whether you go to the map with aerial photo, or with the map only, they still have that same information in those particular places. In Adobe reader you do have the capability of zooming in, so like this particular area you can tell is a mobile home park, and you can zoom in fairly tight, I think, before the pixelation starts to occur. But, it’s pretty interesting to see the photos behind it. Then for those people that do better with that type of representation, they can see that too. Another link on this particular page is the Indiana Voters link. It’s the Indiana State registration centralized site that has all the voter information for all the registered voters in the State of Indiana. So, if per chance you want to find out if you are registered to vote, you can type in your, or select your county, and I think Laura’s going to–

Laura Howell: It will be me.

Linda Freeman: So, she puts all her information in, and it’s a pretty slick little deal, you can then get your voter information there. It tells you your ward and precinct, whether you’re registered, and then the date of the status, which I’m assuming was when they put that information in, because I think you’ve registered before 2004.

Laura Howell: Yes.

Linda Freeman: Then it gives you the Voter Registration office contact information. There again, for people that may have further questions. But, with that information that she’s in Ward 3 Precinct 16, she could go back to those precinct maps and actually pick her ward and precinct, and then she could either go with the aerial photo or with the map only and figure out that, yes, she does live within those boundaries and that is her voting place, Aldersgate United Methodist Church, located at 5130 Lincoln Avenue. She can print this out if she’d like, or she could save it to her hard drive on her own computer at home. She could share it with her friends and neighbors to maybe generate a little voting action. Now the, just a little bit about the aerial photos for the folks that may want a little information on that, those are from the Indiana Geographic Information Council coordinated a state-wide digital orthophotography program, which facilitated the acquisition of state-wide high resolution photographs. That’s what these photographs came from. Now, since they’ve been translated down to a PDF document, some of the resolution, the resolution isn’t there that you would have if you actually accessed the photos from the website, the state website. But, you can tell that they do have a fair amount of resolution, even when you zoom in you can see some of the rooftop colors and things. It makes it pretty interesting.

President Musgrave: Now, these are 2005 photos?

Linda Freeman: Yeah, these were flown, oh, I’m sorry, did I say 2000?

President Musgrave: You didn’t say any year.

Linda Freeman: I’m so used to the 2000's, but, yes, these were flown in March of 2005 by the state. Indiana, or Vanderburgh County was one of 12 other counties that paid for the higher resolution. We’ve got six inch pixel resolution for these photos. We paid a little extra, but part of the funding came from the Homeland Security grant, and, then, I guess, our EMA picked up the additional funding for the higher resolution, which, of course makes it very nice when you really need to zoom in on these.

Commissioner Nix: You said there was an area on there where you could just go in and type in an address and it would take you to the ward and precinct. Is that–

Linda Freeman: I think Tammy made that statement, and I’m not sure that’s–

President Musgrave: It’s on the state’s website.

Commissioner Nix: Okay.

President Musgrave: You can find a polling place.

Commissioner Nix: It’s on the state’s site? Because I’m sure there’s a lot of people that that would be a good place for them to start.

Linda Freeman: Right. You can find your polling place here. The site that we have, and the maps and things that we have, we are currently going to be working on trying to have a little more interaction with the GIS mapping, as far as I understand. So, that way when you actually use the Vanderburghgis.com website, that this will be a little more fluid and you won’t have to maybe jump around so much to do that. But, part of this is that we are getting it up and running, but we thought we’d get this out for the people to at least see their precincts and things. There’s, I would like to ask the Commission to continue the tradition that the Surveyor’s office has had since, it seems like the beginning of time, but that we can provide hard copies of these maps, as we have since...I found a map from 1979, and then it was revised in 1985, but that we have these hard copies available for different people if they would like to come get them. I have provided them previously in the past for like Mr. Dennis Beadles from the Social Studies Department–

President Musgrave: Are you talking about these maps? Or a different map?

Linda Freeman: Just, like precinct maps and ward maps and Council district maps and things that we’ve provided in the past.

President Musgrave: I know that you’ve provided maps in the past, but I was so excited when, I know you did a great deal of the work on this project, so I think these are so much better than the maps that had been produced before, I hope that you moved to these.

Linda Freeman: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

President Musgrave: I would be thrilled to have you continue to do that.

Linda Freeman: Well, we started out, I mean, the one thing is, like when we started out in like 1979 it was all hand drawn.

President Musgrave: Oh, yeah.

Linda Freeman: Then, but we still used the TIGER line files and all the census data and stuff. Then, like this was Charlie Davis’ handiwork, and then we were able to go to AUTOCAD drawings, which have, you know, we had, this is very simplistic, but this was in AUTOCAD, so this was pretty cool. Then we’ve managed to come up, using the GIS, in 2001 I used the TIGER line files and things, which were crude. The TIGER line files were crude, but they did allow me to use the GIS, the ESRI software and stuff and create the maps that we had before, which that’s probably part of the look of those is that they are based on the TIGER line files.

President Musgrave: Well, between you and Laura, I think these maps are magnificent, and I do hope that you give them wide distribution. But, I hope that you will encourage people to do their own printing rather than to come down here and ask us.

Linda Freeman: Yeah, for a color set in the office it’s taking me, a full set is three hours to print.

President Musgrave: I know.

Linda Freeman: So, no, I definitely hope people, if they want a whole set for, you know, whatever purpose they may want, that they could pick and choose the ones....now, the other option that they have, if they want to look at just maybe the city wards, which comprises a big part of the voting areas, or voting population, is that I do have the ward maps that were created, and they are also online. The one thing about these is that there’s a table included that tells what changes were made. So, like particular here–

President Musgrave: Oh, good.

Linda Freeman: –ward three, precinct one was deleted and combined with 3-2. Precinct four was deleted and combined with 3-5, and so on. As you can see in the table, that’s included. But, this also gives the people their Congressional, their House, their Senate, their township, their School Board and Commissioners and County Council areas. Then, this gives an overall depiction of the whole ward and then the surrounding areas, there again. So, if folks aren’t in maybe the first ward or the third ward in one of these precincts they could look to see that, “Oh, gosh, I’m north of the creek, and I’m right in there. It looks like I’m in 5-5.” So, they could go find out information about that particular ward and precinct and then we’ll also work on trying to do this for the county precincts. The only thing about that is that you’re dealing with such a larger area, that trying to get it on....those I did on 8 ½ by 14, and an 8 ½ by 14 may not, you might have to need a magnifying glass to try and read some of the street names and stuff to try and keep it down to that. But, it might be something that–

President Musgrave: Or view it electronically.

Linda Freeman: –we could do an 11 by 17--

President Musgrave: Right.

Linda Freeman: –and post it up as a PDF that folks would be able to at least look at. They may not have the capability to print an 11 by 17, but they could at least look and see, you know, so, our office has always been very, let’s get the information out as much as we possibly can.

President Musgrave: Commissioner Nix, did you have a comment?

Commissioner Nix: No. That’s good work.

President Musgrave: Commissioner Shetler?

Commissioner Shetler: The only comment, yeah, excellent work, and I know that a lot of this is thanks to the GIS program that we had started a few years ago. Cheryl, you’re to be commended on that.

President Musgrave: I had a lot of good help.

Commissioner Shetler: I know.

Linda Freeman: Thank you.

Commissioner Shetler: I think the one, this is all good for people that have computers, but I don’t know what the percentages are, but there’s got to be some people out there that don’t have computers these days–

Linda Freeman: Right.

Commissioner Shetler: –and I’m just thinking that perhaps maybe at least newly registered people, that when they get mailed back their registration card, that perhaps there’s a way that we could include this map and tell them their poll location and the whole business after they’ve registered. Maybe at the Voters Registration office they could be handing them out as well.

Linda Freeman: Yeah, well, it’s like, yeah, we have copies of maps I’ve done, like for candidates and different things. They’ll call and say, “Well, do you have this?” I’m like, “I’ve got something, if you come and look at it, and then if it’s not what you want, if it’s something I have to create for you, then, you know, I can create it.” Then I usually keep an extra copy, because I figure if one person’s asking, the next guy’s going to be looking for the same type of map.

Robert Heiman: The League also hopes to post copies of these maps in public places, like libraries and high traffic areas like Wal-Mart stores, if they’ll let us. We also are working with the Polling Place Advisory Committee to put some signs at the polling places, say a couple of weeks before the election saying, “Vote Here”. You know, as you drive by, “Vote Here”, and directional signs to the door to go into. Because most of these places have more than one entrance and you don’t know which one to go to. Make it as easy as possible for people to find where to go to vote.

Commissioner Shetler: Alright.

Linda Freeman: Like I said, we’ve always, I’ve got maps in the office, and I try to keep extra sets laying around for folks that might come and want copies.

President Musgrave: Linda, what’s your e-mail address or your phone number, whichever you prefer, because I know that we’ve already had some public feedback, since I think yesterday. Somebody had gave us a good suggestion.

Linda Freeman: Yes, actually they are on the little maps, it says prepared by Linda Freeman, Vanderburgh County Surveyor’s office, and it’s 812-435-5210.

Laura Howell: Is it down here on the bottom?

Linda Freeman: Yeah, down there on the bottom.

Laura Howell: There we go.

Linda Freeman: So, that way if people have questions, or they want to know where they came from they can come and get additional copies at our office.

President Musgrave: Okay. Alright, thank you very much Laura and Linda, and to the League of Women Voters for making the suggestion which lead to the creation and posting of these. I hope that everyone uses them wisely, and that we have more civic involvement, more positive civic involvement.

Linda Freeman: People going to vote would be a good thing.

President Musgrave: People going to vote.

Linda Freeman: Yeah, and like if anybody’s got any questions on the aerial photos that they may just be curious about the aerial photos and things like that, I’ve got some handouts on accuracy and how they were created and stuff.

President Musgrave: Okay thank you.

Linda Freeman: Just in case.

President Musgrave: Thank you.

Linda Freeman: Thank you.

President Musgrave: Next we have Brad Mills from, I guess, you’re the Evansville MPO today? To talk about the regional 2030 transportation plan. That’s a date that I still have trouble thinking about. I understand you have a public hearing coming up?

Brad Mills: Yes. Brad Mills, Evansville Metropolitan Planning Organization. What we are doing is updating our 2030 transportation plan to a 2035 transportation plan.

What you see before you is the improvements that we have through 2030. What we are now asking for is for public comment and input on what they see as improvements for the following, or the preceding, or the next five years from 2030 to 2035. Also, we could take comments for projects between now and then. So, it doesn’t have to be just that far out into the future, it could be something that you see as a current problem, and something that we could work on with the city, with the county, with the state to try to make improvements. I have on the map here our website address, which is evansvillempo.com. At that location, you can view the current 2030 transportation plan that we have in there. You can also look at our schedule of meetings. We’ve already had one meeting, which was on August 15^th in Newburgh. We’ve got our meeting here in Vanderburgh County and the City of Evansville and it’s at the Central Library, tomorrow night, August 23^rd at 6:00 p.m. and will go to 7:30. Also, we will have one other meeting in Henderson, which will be at the Henderson County Library, the same time, 6:00 to 7:30, and that will be August 24^th. Also on our website we have interactive maps that you can go in and you can view and you can look at each of the five years that we break these down into. So, you can see what projects were proposed for what years. I’ve passed out a copy of a survey you should have on your desks there. That survey is online. You can fill it out online and submit it to us. We also have comment forms online that you can fill in and send back to us. Then we also have a really valuable tool, a guide to transportation terminology. So you hear us say all these acronyms and all these great sayings and you don’t have a clue what we said. You can go in there, look at that, and, hopefully, that will help answer some of the questions that you might have. Also, our other contact information, e-mail address, phone number it’s all at our website. So, if you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call. If not, we hope to see a lot of folks come out to our meeting at the Central Library tomorrow at 6:00.

President Musgrave: So, basically if you have a complaint about a road in Evansville, Warrick County, Henderson, now would be a good time to voice that–

Brad Mills: That’s correct.

President Musgrave: –either in person or to go to the website and e-mail it. I assume if they e-mail you a complaint about a road that’s not under your jurisdiction, you’ll forward that complaint on?

Brad Mills: Yes, we will.

President Musgrave: Okay.

Brad Mills: Alright.

President Musgrave: Do you have any questions?

Commissioner Shetler: As an optimist, I’m just wondering if it’s appropriate that we should voice the fact that I-69 ought to be six laned by the year 2030 or not?

Brad Mills: Alright, thank you.

Commissioner Shetler: Thank you, Brad.

Commissioner Nix: Thanks.

President Musgrave: Again, we’re taking out of order the Women’s Equality Day proclamation. Leslie Simmons? Before we do that, I forgot to do something. I need to authorize the signing of a letter to be sent to the polling places reminding them that they’ve agreed to allow the county to use their facility as a polling place in the November election. So, if I can have a motion to authorize me signing that letter.

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: Thank you. That takes care of a piece of business.

President Musgrave: Please come forward, Ms. Simmons.

Leslie Simmons: Leslie Simmons, I’m co-chair of this year’s Women’s Equality Day event. August 26^th was designated Women’s Equality Day by a joint resolution of Congress in 1971 to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s also called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which guarantees the right of women in the United States to vote. In Evansville-Vanderburgh County we are celebrating the occasion this Thursday morning at a breakfast event, which is an open event. All are invited, reservations are requested. It starts at 7:00 a.m. at the Executive Inn. This is the fourth annual event organized by a bi-partisan group of women to bring people together for education and inspiration. We celebrate the achievements of women, encourage women to be informed voters and to make a difference by being involved. The keynote speaker this year will be Reverend Della S. Porter, who is Pastor of Cleaves Memorial CME Church. She will also talk about, she will talk about the Civil Rights Movement and the experiences of African American women. This event provides an opportunity for community non-profit organizations to exhibit information about their organizations. This event also raises funds to support a Books for Children program, providing books for after school programs, including Boys and Girls Club, the YWCA, Carver Community Center and others. Because the first year celebration was initiated by a Vanderburgh County Commissioner, it seems fitting that there continues to be a connection with the Commission and the celebration. Commissioner Musgrave has asked that I read the proclamation that was prepared for this year. It reads as follows:

“Whereas, many decades of efforts by women and men were required to give women the right to vote; and, Whereas, 158 years ago the first women’s right convention took place in Seneca Falls, New York; and, Whereas, the observance of August 24^th not only commemorates the passage of the 19^th Amendment, but also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality for all citizens regardless of race or sex; and, Whereas, the women of Vanderburgh County are to be commended and supported in their organizations and activities, NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, the Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners does hereby proclaim August 24, 2006, Women’s Equality Day in Vanderburgh County, in remembrance of all those women and men who have worked to develop a more equitable community in which all people share burdens and benefits in truly equal partnership, acknowledging both the similarities and differences between women and men.”

President Musgrave: Commissioners, I would like a motion to approve this proclamation, which I will then read on Thursday morning at the breakfast.

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: And, if you’ll wait just a second, we’ll go ahead and sign it so that you can take one of the–

Leslie Simmons: Thank you. Shall I pass this out?

President Musgrave: Now, if you’ll take this with you, that way we’ll know it gets to the breakfast. Otherwise I’ll (Inaudible).

Leslie Simmons: Okay. Thank you very much.

President Musgrave: Next on the agenda is the Soil and Water Conservation District presentation. Mr. Darrell Rice is here to give us an update on the southwest district, southwest conservation district, is that what that stands for?

Darrell Rice: Soil and Water Conservation District. It’s close. Give me just a minute to set up here. I do want to thank you very much for inviting us to come here today and give a presentation. I wanted to introduce you to our staff, first, Norma Duckworth is with me this afternoon. We also made available, through Carla, a packet of information to each one of you. Within that packet of information is a copy of a DVD that Bosse High School created for us, talking about the district, where we’ve been and where we’re going. Then, Vanderburgh County did a soil survey with GIS background for each one of you. Also, the Vanderburgh County Soil and Water Conservation District business plan, so you kind of know where we’re headed in the next five to ten years. I work for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is a division of the US Department of Agriculture. We also have in our office Norma Duckworth, who is our Water Quality Specialist, and also Rob Brown who used to work for your GIS division, now works in our office through the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, Division of Soil Conservation. When we’d received the call to do this presentation, I was beside myself with excitement, because it just gives us an opportunity to talk about what we’re doing here in Vanderburgh County and the tri-state area, and some of the conservation projects that we are accomplishing through this great partnership that we have with the County Commissioners and the County Council. The Vanderburgh County Soil and Water Conservation District has always had a pioneering spirit, and the Vanderburgh County Soil and Water Conservation District was actually the first district in Indiana. Quickly following that, it was also the first US Department of Soil Conservation in the state of Indiana. With that, Vanderburgh was the first district in southwestern Indiana to have developed a comprehensive watershed management plan, which encompassed all of the Pigeon Creek watershed. With this comprehensive watershed management plan, that has brought literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to Vanderburgh County and Evansville through grants, through different departments that we’ve been able to acquire. The Vanderburgh County district is the first district in southwestern Indiana to host a regional meeting for the National Association of Conservation Districts, here in Evansville. It was the first district to be awarded the Soil Conservation District of the Year, for both Indiana, and then also the Nation. It was also the first district in southwestern Indiana to spearhead the development of a local urban erosion control ordinance. The Soil and Water Conservation District could not have accomplished any of that without a strong partnership between the US Department of Agriculture, the Indiana Department of Agriculture, which is only a year old, the Division of Soil Conservation and the Vanderburgh County Commissioners and Council. Some of the projects we’ve been involved with recently is a project at Howell Wetlands, which all of you are familiar with. If you notice in the background there’s, once they created that wetland, they didn’t do a very good job of top soiling the area, and there was some severe erosion on the banks, deep enough to bury large objects in. What we did was applied for some grant monies, went in and applied top soil, mulch and seeded the area, and now it is what it is today, if you’ve been out there recently. Some of the other projects we’ve worked with is Mesker Park Zoo and their Asian horse exhibit. They had a severe gully erosion down the center of that display. We were instrumental through design and cost share, or actually a grant to fund the seeding of prairie grasses, which would be native to the area that these Asian horses are from, and solved a really severe erosion problem, which was also causing some major water quality problems downstream. Some of the things we’re looking for in the future, one of the other fun projects that we worked with at the zoo also was their animal waste composter. They were hauling all of their animal waste to the landfill, and now we’ve helped build a composter that they compost all of their waste and then use it back in the zoo around landscaping and different things. So, it was a great recycling opportunity. That’s located across St. Joe Avenue from the zoo. But, what we’re looking to in the future is a fun project called Rain Gardens. It’s a, and we have several opportunities in the next few weeks and months to create some of these rain gardens on voluntary basis on some people’s yards. What we’re doing is capturing the down spouts off the homes, creating these little garden areas to capture that runoff before it leaves the site, stores and detains the water temporarily, filters out any nutrients, oils and things like that before it leaves the site, and then is discharged where it normally did before. So, these little projects are really exciting to us. We possibly might have some demonstration areas on some of the parks areas within the city. So, projects like these are going to be a lot of fun. It does a great job of improving water quality and quality of life in Vanderburgh and Evansville. Some of the other projects we’re working on are constructing grassed waterways, and we are targeting more of these throughout the county. We’re looking at severe erosion problems. We can come in with USDA Cost Share money and help share in the cost of constructing these, which is eliminating huge gully erosion problems, improving the streams and all the creeks and tributaries downstream. We’re looking at doing a lot of, this happens to be on Ray Knoll’s property in northwestern, or northeastern Vanderburgh County, we’re planting a lot of warm season grasses, converting crop land to warm season grasses and prairie grasses to improve wildlife habitat. But, we are really excited about what warm season grasses, and this is a good demonstration of big blue stem. We’re really excited about carbon sequestration, and these warm season grasses create a tremendous amount of root system and sequester a tremendous amount of carbon within that plant and moving it down through the root system. These plants will have a system of ten to 12 feet deep, and they’ll create those root systems within three years. So, we’re really excited about things like this, where we’re converting crop land to these types of grasses and improving, helping improve water quality and the quality of life in Vanderburgh County. We’re also looking at a lot of filter strips. These are strips of grass along streams. We have a program through the US Department of Agriculture that cost shares and also pays a rental rate to the landowner to convert crop land to grasses. All the water that would flow from the crop fields will go across the grass, filter nutrients and pesticides out of the water before it gets into the tributaries, improving water quality for Vanderburgh County. So, we’re really excited about projects like this. We’re targeting, the Big Creek watershed is one of my pet projects. I’m envisioning filter strips from 41 all the way to the Posey County line. We’re about half way there. We still have a few tributaries we’ve got to tie together. But, in conjunction with the ditch association and US Drainage Board members, we’re real excited about pushing forward. Through a program called the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, Indiana has thrown extra money out for the Pigeon Creek watershed, which is kind of upping the ante for what we can pay landowners to put these projects in. So, we’re really excited about things like this, because it’s good for the farm, good for the farmers, and good for the water quality downstream. It saves a lot of money on cleaning ditches out in the long run, and does a great job as a precursor to those projects. We’re doing a lot of tree plantings. Not as many as I would love to see, but we do plant trees, converting crop land to trees. There again, when we’re looking at carbon sequestration, trees are the best plant to plant for long term carbon sequestration. So, we’re really excited about projects like that. We’re hoping more trees are planted. With these projects we can, there again, as we’re converting crop land, we can pay those annual rental rates to farmers, so they’re not really losing the income for that length of time. The last thing we are really focusing in on, the aerial photo background is a demonstration area that we have at the Warrick-Vanderburgh County line. That’s I-164 to the left. We have leased this property, 40 acres, as a conservation cropping and tillage demonstration area. This will be the second year. We have a field day next Thursday at 4:00 at the site. If you take Burkhardt all the way up to the end and go under I-164, it’s right there on the left. You can see the signs from I-164. We’re really excited about this as a demonstration area to show the public what we’re doing in conservation for farmers. We like to be proactive. We want to show the taxpayers that farmers are proactive in their approach to conservation, and these are demonstration areas to show farmers also that it is economically feasible to do conservation on their farms. Some of the other things we’re involved in, the US Department of Agriculture, through their programs, brought $3.2 million to Vanderburgh County through our farm programs in 2005. We also brought another quarter of a million dollars in conservation programs to that. So, we’re talking about a lot of money. When you start multiplying that into fuel, parts and tires and all those other things, we’re talking about multiplying that by another two times. So, you’re looking at a major impact to the economy of Vanderburgh County, and that’s through conservation programs. We were the first in the tri-county area to sponsor Project Wet. Much of the material for that Project Wet, which is a training material for water quality issues. A lot of that material was developed by one of our board members, Susan Fowler, who lives here in Evansville. We were the first to have a river watch monitoring program in cooperation with the Evansville Day School, which was an exciting program back in the late 80's early 90's, to start monitoring Pigeon Creek and see what’s going on with water quality through the biotics of that channel. We were also the first to have a full fledged water quality monitoring survey completed in the Barr Creek watershed, which is a tributary to Big Creek. The SWCD also financed, through grants, a HARZA study for water quality in the Pigeon Creek watershed, from Princeton all the way down to the Ohio River. We continue to work with engineering firms, developers and agra-businesses on erosion control, prevention and water quality and air quality improvement. Currently, we are applying for additional grants through the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and EPA to fund more conservation application for the county. Also, with that comes monitoring and education projects. One example of that, we had a couple of public meetings last week for the Big Creek watershed to bring more money to this area through grants. An exciting project I’m involved in also is, we’ve kind of coined, well, we have coined the term “smart growth”. It’s a term from Purdue University, and we’ve started a small group, just brain storming with interested citizens, government agencies and other individuals on how to keep green space, how to increase green space in Vanderburgh County. The Parks Department, the golf courses are working towards developing new wildlife areas, and we’ve also done a large project, we’ve accomplished just recently a large project on Angel Mounds. All these things make a better Vanderburgh County. So, we’re real excited about the things that we’re doing to help improve water quality, air quality, with this carbon sequestration, Vectren and some of the power companies are really excited about what we’re doing because they can in turn start taking carbon credits for the things that we are applying to the land. So, we’re really excited about the partnerships that are starting to develop. Questions?

President Musgrave: I’m going to ask you hang on here just a moment while we change the tape.

Darrell Rice: Alright.

(Tape change)

President Musgrave: Thank you. That was a wonderful presentation. I have a couple of questions. We were doing a rezoning a few months ago and somebody showed us an aerial photograph of around Angel Mounds where it was astonishing to see that, I think this was in the 1930's, all the trees were gone. There seem to be a lot more trees now, but would you say that we’re more forested now than at some point in the more recent past?

Darrell Rice: No.

President Musgrave: No? Less?

Darrell Rice: Yeah, and actually we are working through the Smart Growth group in trying to assess, through aerial photography, where we are, and I’ve tried to tap into some information that Purdue University has, from some of their satellite imagery, where we’re trying to assess where we were five years ago, and where we are today. Some of the information we’re seeing is as much as a 20 percent decrease in wooded vegetation in Vanderburgh County. That’s kind of alarming to me. We’re losing a tremendous amount of farm land acres to development. Typically, not always, but it’s easy to go in and annihilate all the vegetation on a development.

President Musgrave: But farmland to development does not destroy trees, so where are you seeing the trees?

Darrell Rice: Well, typically there are fence rows, small wooded areas that are on those tracts of land. So, those things disappear. Because it makes it easier to throw roads in, and put your sewers in and things like that. So, yes, there is a decrease. That’s one thing, through this Smart Growth group, we’re trying to assess where we are, so we know exactly what’s happening and what can we do to turn this thing around.

President Musgrave: Well, I would like to see your report when you get that done.

Darrell Rice: Excellent.

President Musgrave: I listened to a rather fascinating speech last night at the Farm Bureau’s annual meeting where they were talking about the growth in ethanol production, and the numbers of barrels, I mean, it’s not barrels–

Darrell Rice: Bushels.

President Musgrave: Bushels of corn that are going to be needed to fuel those plants. It’s basically everything we grow now. It got me to thinking is some of this crop land that you’re converting to grass now, is that going to be pushed back into crop land? Do you have any projections on that?

Darrell Rice: Probably not on a local basis. With the Conservation Reserve program it’s designed to retire marginal crop land.

President Musgrave: Okay.

Darrell Rice: The marginal crop land is usually highly erodible type soils, that production is not maximized anyway. With the introduction of warm season grasses though, with that creation of a huge amount of organic matter in that soil profile, it will build the soil back to a place long before it was brought into crop land. So, it possibly could be a conversion, but I don’t see a lot of that. I see more filter strips and things like that to go in conjunction with it.

Commissioner Nix: You’d mentioned a water monitoring system, or something that you had set up with the Day School back in the late 80's. Has anything been done since then with any kind of school?

Darrell Rice: There’s actually a national website through the River Watch program that you can get on and actually see some of the monitoring data that schools and different groups. They’re looking mostly at the biology in the stream itself, more than just chemicals and things like that, because the biotics of the stream kind of indicate what, how healthy that stream is. So, you can get on River Watch, and I believe Day School is still part of that program. But, it’s multiplied to a much larger scope than it was.

Norma Duckworth: There’s several people monitoring from Mater Dei (Inaudible).

Darrell Rice: Yeah, several of the schools, yeah.

President Musgrave: Okay, Commissioner Shetler, do you have any comments? Well, thank you very much–

Darrell Rice: Absolutely.

President Musgrave: –for the presentation.

Darrell Rice: Thank you for the invitation.

President Musgrave: It was nice of you to come and tell us about the state of soil and water conservation and your partnership with the county on furthering that.

President Musgrave: We now have Dave Rector, I believe, to come forward. I see Judge Trockman with you to talk about the old jail and sallyport holding cell.

Dave Rector: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Dave Rector, Building Authority. I also asked Judge Trockman to join me on this, even though he’s next on the agenda for the next one. After several meetings with the judges, Commissioner Nix and Chief Williams and the security force, we finally have a recommendation on the old jail space, as far as holding cells is concerned versus the possibility of constructing a new sallyport and holding cell facility. That’s what we’re proposing, and we would like your agreement or consensus with that. The reason it’s important is so that we can continue to move forward with the design for the demolition of the old jail space, or we’re going to say we’re going to stay up there and design around it. We’ve reached the decision where we think it’s best to construct a separate facility so we can totally abandon that space. I thought probably it best that Judge Trockman be here to answer any questions you might have, along with Commissioner Nix, for your support, or non-support of that project.

Commissioner Shetler: Is this based on economics? Based on, I mean, what’s the decision based on?

Dave Rector: It’s based on economics, but more than that it’s based on the judges and the Sheriff’s Department’s concern for safety and security. As you know now, the bus pulls up outside and the inmates unloading and loading are exposed to whatever environment there may be occurring at the time. In addition, it’s based on how we’re going to have to try to work around that space in the old jail, if we could. As we’ve gotten into this, we find that, obviously, the circuitry is all tied together, the plumbing is all tied together, and quite actually we’ve found that the HVAC, well, there’s no A/C in the old jail, but the heating/ventilating system, air conditioning system for the first floor and the basement are on the second floor of the jail, and for the heating/ventilating for the jail are on the third floor, and it’s....we could not isolate that system without taking them out of there for a period of time, in order to not only disconnect what it was, and then re-plumb, re-wire, re-distribute it, and then put them back in. The cost of doing that was balanced against just going to a whole new facility, along with the security that the judges and the Sheriff’s Department felt necessary.

Commissioner Shetler: Can you give me an idea on numbers, when you weigh it out? I mean, I know you probably don’t have firm numbers.

Dave Rector: We don’t have for the demolition yet–

Commissioner Shetler: Right.

Dave Rector: –that’s what we’re working on, why we need this decision. We’re guessing this facility is in the $600,000 range, and that’s an order of magnitude estimate. Not knowing what might happen, as you see, where it’s located, with footers against the courts building, against re-working the drive. But, we feel fairly comfortable, as an order of magnitude estimate, that would cover it.

Commissioner Shetler: Are we going to lose any parking places? What kind of other things--

Dave Rector: We would lose five parking places that we will re-capture around on the other side of the brick wall. There’s available parking with the detectives that have moved out. We’ve moved 24 detectives out of the building, as you know, that used to park against the sidewalk on this side of the building, and Chief Hill has been made aware that until this all sorts out, those parking places may or may not stay with his department. We may have to reserve some for any that we lose in the courts lot.

President Musgrave: Do I read this right that you lose sidewalk access from the parking lot over to the front, the back of the building?

Dave Rector: No, actually, what we’ll do, we’re doing (Inaudible) work right here. We’ll come through here and punch a hole through–

President Musgrave: So you can walk this way?

Dave Rector: So you can walk around. Or we’ll punch a hole through the wall down here.

President Musgrave: Okay.

Commissioner Nix: I’m sorry. We did talk about that.

President Musgrave: That’s alright.

Wayne Trockman: There were three, really three options. One was, Wayne Trockman, Vanderburgh Superior Court. There were really three options; one was continue to use a portion of the second floor where the jail existed. That caused problems as I understood with use of the second floor for any other purpose. It would take basically most of the second floor, and it also caused problems because prisoners would be moved into many different areas before they would finally end up where they were going. The second option was building an appendage onto the courthouse, which could be done at that back door. That would be probably, at least after some discussions with Commissioner Nix and Mr. Rector, more expensive than this option. It also would take a larger portion of the parking lot, and it would have to be made somewhat aesthetically pleasing, so it didn’t look like an appendage to the building. Then, this third option, which does not take any additional space, just a few parking spaces, brings the prisoners right to where they are going. That bridge leads right into all the holding areas that we continue to use in the courthouse. So, there isn’t a lot of movement of prisoners from one place to another. That was a safety issue that was expressed by the Sheriff’s Department. And, it’s up on the second floor, so, except for, or it’s above ground, so, except for those five or so parking spaces, and an area for that bus to park while loading and unloading, there’s no additional space that’s taken. It seemed like the best choice of the three.

Commissioner Shetler: Time table? Does this seem to be the quicker of the alternatives as well?

Dave Rector: Well, yes, it is the quicker of the alternatives. The time table will be further discussions with you all and our board as to whether we do a bond anticipation note, whether we wait and try to get all the figures together and bond the whole project, do we use some of the joint funds we have. So, the time table hinges on how we move forward with funding. I don’t think any of us have those answers yet.

Commissioner Nix: I guess, just touching on what Judge Trockman said, it does clean this building up to the fact that we can use it for other uses, and we’re not going to hamstring ourselves to the fact that we’ve got to build around. In this particular case, if we would put it over here, it wouldn’t necessarily be a security issue, but it’s just one more thing that we would have to work around in this building. If we can get it over there where it needs to be, and I personally believe it needs to be over there, then I think we need to move forward with it.

President Musgrave: What action are you looking for today?

Dave Rector: I don’t know, Counselor, I don’t know if we need a motion or not, but just a consensus or an agreement that, yeah, you all feel that this is the way to move forward so I can take it to my board so I can direct the engineering firm to now look at that area in the demolition scope of the work, as to gut the whole thing, not trying to isolate this area. Then, on the other side, the next phase, as we’re planning it, we can plan to use that space, versus not using it. So, I don’t know if it’s a motion.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Is this county property that’s no longer covered by the lease?

Dave Rector: It’s Building Authority property that the county is leasing.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Building Authority property that the county is leasing, and you’re going to be demolishing some of the property that the county is leasing?

Dave Rector: Yes.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: What happens to the lease payments being made by the county for this property?

Dave Rector: They continue. It’s still county leased space, that if they still want it, they could even sub-lease it. But, the lease continues whether the space is used or not, because it’s for the operation of the building.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Sure, that’s what I thought.

Dave Rector: Yeah.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: So, the county is really agreeing, or not, to allow the demolition of some property that it is leasing, and for which the lease payments will continue. So, I think you would certainly need a motion to approve that.

President Musgrave: So, we’re not actually authorizing demolition of anything today? We’re authorizing you to move forward with plans and going in a certain direction?

Dave Rector: Yes. Who knows, that might change at some point. But, we’ve got to keep moving in some direction. Right now we’ve stalemated around this issue to continue with the demo scope.

Commissioner Nix: Once again, we felt like, it needed some time to see how this process was going to work, transporting inmates from the facility out there. We just didn’t want to make something happen in the first three or four months. We wanted to wring it out and make sure it’s going to work, and I think we’re to that point now. But, you know, versus doing something in January or February of last year, or of this year, and then coming back and saying, “Why did we do that? We should have thought this out a little bit.” But, I think we’ve done that now, and this is, what Mr. Rector is saying, is the next step then.

Commissioner Shetler: Let me ask you this, a legal question, and that is the bond money that was used to build the jail in the first place, I understand that there’s a fair sum, I guess, left, I guess, enough to cover this, isn’t there?

Dave Rector: No, there’s about $330,000 left.

Commissioner Shetler: Okay. Is it possible to use that money for this, since it’s related?

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: I think so.

President Musgrave: The Auditor is shaking his head no.

Commissioner Nix: I’ve been told by your counsel, Kathryn, she had a chance to look at it, and we could not use it off site. It couldn’t be used for off site.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Okay, off site.

Commissioner Nix: Yes.

Dave Rector: That’s what we understand.

Commissioner Nix: I mean, we can look at that.

President Musgrave: There is bond defeasance money from this building. How much of that money is left?

Dave Rector: We have about $450,000 there.

President Musgrave: So, it’s still not even enough to build this if it did indeed come in at $600,000. Well, Commissioner Nix, do you want to make the motion?

Commissioner Nix: I guess, the motion would be that we move forward with plans, and not necessarily nail anything down?

Dave Rector: Yes.

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: I’ll second.

President Musgrave: And, to clarify for the record, which we will put a copy of these plans in there, this is the plan that we’re talking about, correct?

Dave Rector: Yes. I think the key word here is plan.

President Musgrave: Okay. We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor?

Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: The motion carries.

President Musgrave: Judge Trockman, I believe you’re next on the agenda. You are here to discuss Short Circuit Court renovation. I guess, you’ve run short on that Short Circuit Court fund?

Wayne Trockman: We have. As you know, many areas of the courthouse have been improved over the last year and a half. There is one last item that we think should be improved, and that is Short Circuit. I think it got it’s name years ago because it was used as a hearing room for Circuit Court when it was in use during trials, and someone probably just came up with the name Short Circuit, and it stuck, because it is much smaller. But, it’s used everyday now by Superior Court. It has a jury box, and it’s capable of conducting civil jury trials. In fact, the plan, the renovations that have already been completed include a jury room that is completed and furnished next to that courtroom. That courtroom was built probably 16 or 18 years ago, if I had to guess, and it was built by inmates at the Safe House. It’s adequate for holding hearings. It’s outdated, outmoded and needs renovation, especially if it’s going to be used for jury trials. The biggest problem with it is there is a large janitorial closet that juts well into the courtroom, and makes it very difficult for counsel to even sit at one of the two counsel tables. It was designed terribly inadequate for a court reporter to do his or her job. The price, as I understand from David, of making the renovations is about $45,000. I think that we have, left over from the renovations, approximately $10,000, is that correct?

Dave Rector: Yes.

Wayne Trockman: So, our request, Superior Court’s request is that the money that is being held in that joint account that funded, I believe that was the account that funded much of the other renovations.

Dave Rector: It came from that account. It’s kind of convoluted in the way it all came about. But, this is the remaining interest money from the defeased bonds that we had borrowed the first amount to pay that came from that. Then this was the surplus that we have in our joint account, but yes, in essence.

Wayne Trockman: So, we’re asking for approval of up to $35,000, and that would complete all of the renovations that had been planned to the courthouse.

Commissioner Shetler: Is that the same $440,000 that we were referring to a moment ago?

Dave Rector: Yes.

President Musgrave: That’s Building Authority bond defeasance money, right?

Dave Rector: It’s the money that we set aside in a joint account for both of us. So, we can’t spend that money without your approval. You can’t spend it without our approval. It was just for building projects, whatever you all, we all, thought might be needed.

President Musgrave: And there have been some minor ones over the past year, the Commissioners office got a little bit of improvement. Can you think of anything else that we’ve done with that?

Dave Rector: We’ve worked through, that didn’t particularly come from that fund, but we’ve worked through, we did the Juvenile Court renovation, Adult Misdemeanor, we did new Division II and Division IV courtrooms, magistrate offices, some renovations to Judge Lloyd’s office, to Small Claims. We’ve made pretty good use of the money, but it’s just wound down now to we don’t have enough to finish Short Circuit. In fact, we’ve done more than we thought we were going to get to do with it because of the bids, the way they came in. We didn’t intend to get to do some of these others. This was kind of a wish list the judges had developed, hoping to do as they progressed through if the money held out, and it didn’t.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Wasn’t part of it for the cameras? Wasn’t part of that money used for readying these rooms?

President Musgrave: Yes.

Dave Rector: No, it didn’t come from that fund.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: It did not come from that fund?

Dave Rector: No.

President Musgrave: I thought it did. Okay, Commissioners, you have before you a request for an additional, but we are told that it’s the last request. Can we have that in writing? For money, totaling $35,000 for the courts.

Commissioner Shetler: So moved.

Commissioner Nix: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: The motion carries.

Dave Rector: Thank you.

Wayne Trockman: Thank you.

Commissioner Nix: Thanks.

Discussion of Video Arraignment

Commissioner Nix: Mr. Rector, before you step away, just real quick, video arraignment. Now, I was out at the jail the other day, and it seems like it’s working real smooth. I didn’t know if you had any comments on that at all.

Dave Rector: From my involvement and observation, I’ll let Judge relate to it again, I think it’s going super. I think they’re averaging 15 a day? Fifteen to 20 a day, in talking to a deputy at the jail. The monitors are worked out. It went in, actually, it went in pretty seamless. It’s kind of scary that the project went as well as it did. I think they just had their first felony last week? Two weeks ago? Judge could probably comment to that better than I.

Commissioner Nix: I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, I just didn’t know if you had any comments on it at all, or how it’s working.

Wayne Trockman: Actually, we expected a learning curve and problems, but it’s all really gone off without a hitch. We’re waiting for the second shoe to drop. But, we are, once that got up and running, we’ve reduced the number of transports by about a third. There are about 15 to 20 misdemeanors transported everyday, about 50 or so total, on average, transported. So, we’ve reduced that by about 15. So, the bus is able to handle all of the transports, on most days now, and we hope to transition to Circuit and Superior Courts soon so we can eliminate maybe even up to another third of the transports. But, it’s gone very well.

Commissioner Nix: Thank you.

Dave Rector: I’m glad you asked that question, because that did remind me, that’s where some of this shortfall came about. For some reason the video arraignment part for misdemeanor here wasn’t planned, as it was at the jail and the bond. To get that done, that came out of some of this money that they were looking to other projects. In the past, I guess, they thought they had some funding for that. So, we had to do that out of this fund to get the video arraignment up and running.

President Musgrave: Okay.

Commissioner Nix: Thank you.

President Musgrave: We move now to contracts, leases and agreements, Local Public Health Coordinator grant for 2007. I understand our attorney has reviewed this and found it to be legally acceptable. Does anybody from the Health Department have anything to say? It doesn’t look like it. Is there a motion?

Commissioner Shetler: So moved.

Commissioner Nix: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: Did I skip something? I did.

President Musgrave: Local Emergency Planning Committee, LEPC Awareness Week proclamation. Mr. Caldwell? You are here to ask us to make our second proclamation of the day.

Dwayne Caldwell: That I am. Well, I am Dwayne Caldwell, I’m the Chairman of the Vanderburgh County LEPC, your Local Emergency Planning Committee. Very nice to see you all this afternoon. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll give you just the barest background on LEPC and what we are and what we do, and then why I’m here asking for you support. Back in 1984, a leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India released a cloud of Methyl isocyanate, which killed 3,800 people. Congress acted to prevent that from happening in the United States by passing the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. The body that administers that Act is the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Now, the Vanderburgh local planning committee is made up of industry, responders, elected officials, citizens who volunteer their time in order to make sure that the citizens stay free from chemical accidents. It’s completely funded by industries that are regulated by the Act. So, it doesn’t cost the county anything. I’m sure that’s a nice thing for all of us here. We do a lot of information gathering from the industries, we make sure that the plan to combat chemical incidents is kept up-to-date, and we educate the folks in Vanderburgh County on how to protect themselves. Now, I’m sure you’re going to agree with me that we are very blessed in Vanderburgh County to have top notch emergency responders. But, the thing that’s going to make a difference between a chemical release being a small incident, and a chemical release being an unprecedented disaster is the public knowing what to do to protect themselves during a chemical emergency. That’s why I’m here to ask for your support in joining us on the 5^th of September at 2:00 to offer your support for this proclamation for LEPC Awareness Week.

President Musgrave: Do you want to read the proclamation, or pertinent parts?

Dwayne Caldwell: Have you got a copy there?

President Musgrave: I do.

Dwayne Caldwell: I’ll have to use my preacher voice here.

“Proclamation of LEPC Awareness Week. On behalf of the citizens of Vanderburgh County, we Cheryl Musgrave, Bill Nix and Tom Shelter, Jr., hereby proclaim the week of September 5-11, 2006 as LEPC Awareness Week. Whereas, the citizens of Vanderburgh County need to be conscious of the role that chemicals play in their daily lives, the benefits and hazards posed to our families, especially our children, and the ways to prevent possible harm; and, Whereas, all citizens have a right-to-know the types, locations, hazards, and quantities of reportable hazardous chemicals within our community and to know proper procedures to take in case of an accident or emergency; and, Whereas, better communication between local emergency planning committees, local businesses, industry, retail, service and farming sectors is necessary to increase the involvement of off-site emergency planning for hazardous materials accidents; and, Whereas, first responders, such as firefighters, law enforcement, and emergency medical services personnel, must be informed of reportable types and amounts of hazardous materials and chemicals that are present in the community and must be properly trained to safely respond in the event of an emergency; and, Whereas, Local Emergency Planning Committees have become knowledgeable and thus also raise the understanding of the citizens they serve about manufactured chemicals used or sold in the factories, companies, retail stores and farms in their areas; and, Whereas, it is essential for local governments and the Local Emergency Planning Committee to help prevent the accidental releases of hazardous materials, to prepare plans for responding to accidental releases, and to implement programs to protect the well being of all citizens and visitors to this area; and, NOW, THEREFORE ,BE IT RESOLVED, that we, Cheryl A.W. Musgrave, Bill Nix and Tom Shetler, Jr., do hereby proclaim the week of September 5-11, 2006, as LEPC Awareness Week in Vanderburgh County as a means to support the goal of working cooperatively together to effectively address the concerns of local communities and plan for a safer future in Vanderburgh County.”

President Musgrave: Okay, is there a motion to adopt the proclamation?

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: We’ve given you a nice copy. I think you can keep that.

Dwayne Caldwell: That’s ours? Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. We appreciate your time, we appreciate your support.

President Musgrave: I’m sorry I skipped over you earlier.

Dwayne Caldwell: Oh, that’s okay. I’ve been married 17 years, I’m used to such things.

President Musgrave: Unless I’ve skipped over anyone else, we can move now to department head reports. I understand Marissa Nichoalds has a report on our workshop.

Marissa Nichoalds: Actually, I have three items for you today. First is an update on the workshop that’s planned for August 31^st, to let you know we have approximately 120 people registered so far. We are taking reservations at the door, the lunch is $17, the workshop is free. All documentation can be found on the Commissioners website.

President Musgrave: That is our economic development workshop that’s going to discuss how we can support existing business, and how we can attract new business, and what we can all do together.

Marissa Nichoalds: Next, the Commissioners received a letter from the American Red Cross thanking them for their sponsorship of the blood drive on August 18^th. They had a goal of reaching 31 presenting donors with 25 productive units. They actually had 40 presenting donors, and got 27 successful donations. So, they exceeded all of their goals for that. Finally, I have a letter from BKD, from the Commissioners to BKD to be signed by the President outlining the processes that were used to review the Centre’s budget.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: I’ve just today been given a copy of that letter. It doesn’t mention the Centre anywhere. It talks about that you’re agreeing that we’re responsible for the (Inaudible) subject matter, but it doesn’t tell what the subject matter is.

President Musgrave: So, do you want to look it over?

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: I can’t recommend that you sign this letter in it’s present form. I know that they can make it in a form that you could sign it, but the first time I saw it was today, and I don’t recommend that you sign it today.

President Musgrave: Alright, so we’ll put that off for two weeks from today. We do not have a meeting next week, and if you could have that, negotiate with them to get the proper language in there and bring it back, that would be great.

President Musgrave: John Stoll, County Engineer has a report. I believe you’re the only department head who has something to report.

John Stoll: First, I have a change order on contract VC06-06-01, this is the Pinehurst Drive paving project. The increase is $12,772.40. The reason for the increase was additional, one additional inlet box had to be added because the location where they were tying in a pipe, the inlet box had deteriorated to the point it couldn’t be repaired, so it had to be replaced. Some additional curb replacement was needed to direct the runoff to that curb inlet, and then also they added some additional asphalt to provide a better crown in the road to help the drainage as well. I would request approval of that change order.

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: The motion carries.

John Stoll: Next, I have two supplemental agreements on the Green River Road contract with DLZ. The first one basically, it’s kind of a complex contract, but the original contract was split into two phases, phase one being Lynch to Hirsch, and phase two being Hirsch to Heckel. The contract anticipated that the wetland mitigation part of the project would be addressed in phase two, rather than phase one. The original phase one agreement amount was $476,000, and the original phase two project amount was $935,000. Given the fact that the wetland mitigation was anticipated in phase two, the costs for that were included in the $935,000 portion. As it turned out, with the north project limit of phase one going up to the point where the regulatory agencies said we had to do the wetland mitigation in phase one, the phase one, the costs for this wetland mitigation had to be shifted from phase two to phase one. So, the supplemental agreement is transferring $47,000 from what was anticipated to be a phase two cost into the phase one agreement. It means no net change to the overall contract amount, and it increases our phase one costs by $47,000. I know it’s confusing, but in the end the final revision for supplemental agreement number two results in the phase one design between Lynch and Hirsch being $523,000,and the phase two design estimate being $888,500. No net increase to Vanderburgh County. Given the fact that that needs to be done in order to progress the project, I would request that that supplemental agreement be approved.

President Musgrave: Is there a motion?

Commissioner Shetler: So moved.

Commissioner Nix: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: The motion carries.

John Stoll: Then the next item is supplemental agreement number three for that same project, that was contracted with DLZ. This, in turn, makes more amendments to both phases, excuse me, phases one and phase two, in the sense that phase two was originally anticipated to be a federal aid project. Now, it will all be locally funded through the TIF bonds. The supplemental number three, in turn, results in the contract being, the contract total being $1,168,000. That reduces the previous by $243,500. This is, it does make adjustments to both phase one and phase two as far as the overall contract amounts, but that will be the final cost to Vanderburgh County, the $1,168,000. In doing the contract this way, the soils evaluations have been removed from the contract. So, we will have to get a separate soils contract. We’re anticipating combining that with the soils work for the portion of the project between Hirsch, I mean, I’m sorry, between Heckel and Millersburg that will be designed by Bernardin Lochmueller. Hopefully, we’ll see a cost savings by combining things in that manner. Once we get the results of that soils work back, then, ultimately, we will have to do another supplemental agreement, because not knowing what the soil conditions are, DLZ’s contract can’t anticipate what kind of foundation work is needed for all the overflow structures out on that project. So, we will see another supplemental, but it’s not addressed at this time.

Commissioner Shetler: With your permission, let me elaborate just a little bit on this supplemental contract. We back on June the 30^th, Commissioner Nix and attorney Ted Ziemer and along with County Engineer, John Stoll met with DLZ to work out that contract as it existed. We found out back in the spring, we had sent out RFP’s to engineers across the state, getting information for them to put the proposals in front of us to decide on a variety of different projects. We, in the course of doing that, on Green River Road the County Engineer received a phone call from a potential sub-contractor that that contract had been signed by previous Commissioners with their firm that outlined that if at any time in the future, if federal money or county money would become available for that specific project, that they would, in fact, get the work on that job. There’s questions about, some legal questions whether or not, in fact, that was a valid contract in placing that underneath some future body, Commissioners and stuff. But, at best we were looking at probably a 50-50. We felt, the Commissioners felt it best to have a public meeting, that we held on June the 30^th with the engineers, DLZ, which that contract was signed by, and felt that the best opportunity for us might be to try to work out the terms of it, to mitigate the damages in anyway, or the cost of that, so that we could get it down as low as possible. In so doing, we reduced that by $243,500. I think that negotiation session was very fruitful, and it was certainly worth our while to do that. Part of the deal at the time was when they had signed the contract, they didn’t know how long in the future that may come about. They, you know, it could have been something that materialized in two years, or four years, or 20 years. So, they were signing their names to a contract that they had no idea exactly when that may come to fruition. Once they knew that, that we were serious about it, we had the monies in place, and that we were ready to combine these projects together, it made it more attractive to them to look at this thing, and to do some combining, and therefore reducing the costs $243,000. So, I think we have a very good, workable relationship with Joe and the people at DLZ with this, and I think it’s going to benefit the county greatly. I’m glad that we were able to get the money down and save the taxpayers a quarter of a million dollars in this process.

Commissioner Nix: And another part of the process too, instead of, and I know Commissioner Musgrave has alluded to this in the past, to drag this thing out for–

President Musgrave: Years.

Commissioner Nix: —years, in lieu of doing it in the two to three year process, it’s going to save the county a tremendous amount of money. It just all goes into the fact that the quicker you get these things done, the more economical they are going to be, to a point. I mean, you’ve got to be careful that you don’t put a bunch of time into it and work days and nights and all that, but it’s the right thing to do to move forward with this as quickly as possible.

President Musgrave: Well, I want to thank you both. I know that you were in that meeting, and our attorney, and Mr. Stoll. I was in Indianapolis that day, but your work that day in saving the county $243,500 on a contract signed by previous Commissioners, I think your time was well spent. I believe you need a motion to approve all the amendments that have been made to that contract, is that correct?

John Stoll: Yes, and they all have been approved, reviewed and approved by the County Attorney.

Commissioner Shetler: So moved.

Commissioner Nix: Second.

President Musgrave: All in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: The motion carries.

John Stoll: The next item I have is, I’ve got a claim form to shift $6,000 from the TIF Fund to the Green River Road-Lynch account to cover the cost of the supplemental agreement that was signed last week. The $6,000 supplemental was signed with Beam Longest and Neff. This should be the last cost that would come off of the existing TIF money, rather than the new bond issue. I’ve got that claim form requested, and request your approval on that.

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Musgrave: All those in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: The motion carries.

John Stoll: Next, I have a set of plans for the improvements on Ruston Lane at Highway 57. This project is in conjunction with the Shoe Carnival warehouse up on Highway 57. The plans were done by Morley and Associates, and the plans consist of providing separate westbound shared through and left lane, and a dedicated right turn lane on Ruston at 57, on the east leg of 57 and Ruston. It also provides some additional work out on Highway 57. That includes a southbound left turn lane and some widening to accommodate that left turn lane, but your approval, basically, is just on the Ruston Lane improvements. Everything else would be under INDOT’s jurisdiction. I’ve reviewed the plans and would request your approval.

Commissioner Nix: So moved.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Musgrave: Is there a cost to this to the county?

John Stoll: This is all going to be covered by the developer, as far as I know, at this point. I’m not aware of any other way that they’ve got it funded. I know that they were looking at some other alternatives, but I’m not aware that anything was ever ironed out.

President Musgrave: Okay, so this motion is based on the fact that it will not cost us anything? Okay. All those in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Musgrave: The motion carries.

John Stoll: The last item that I have is a letter to send to Sam Sarvis at INDOT. This is in regard to the Green River Road and Morgan Avenue intersection project that they have in the works. A couple of weeks ago Commissioner Nix and the County Surveyor Bill Jeffers and Linda Freeman from his office and I met with Bart Mueller of INDOT to discuss the Green River and Morgan project. Basically, that project has what we feel is an undersized culvert, under Green River just immediately south of Morgan Avenue. The letter basically is asking INDOT to reconsider the possibility of changing the scope of their project to replace that culvert, due to the fact that some recent flood studies that were done, coordinated through the Building Commission’s office showed that that culvert is responsible for a 1.25 foot jump in the flood water, 100 year flood elevations out in the east side. This affects, basically, the entire TIF district area that was recently expanded. Given the fact that it jumps the flood elevations, then that requires additional fill throughout the entire east side, and that’s why we’re asking INDOT to reconsider. Basically the letter just outlines why we think it’s important that they reconsider that, and replace that culvert. It basically indicates that the county’s already spent ove