VANDERBURGH COUNTY

BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

JULY 10, 2007

The Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners met in session this 10^th day of July, 2007 at 3:30 p.m. in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex with President Cheryl Musgrave presiding.

President Musgrave: Good afternoon. I’m going to call to order the July 10, 2007 meeting of the Board of Commissioners of Vanderburgh County. It’s approximately 3:30 in the afternoon. We will start with introductions on my right.

Marissa Nichoalds: Marissa Nichoalds, Superintendent of County Buildings.

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

President Musgrave: Cheryl Musgrave, Commissioner.

Commissioner Tornatta: Troy Tornatta, 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: The first item on our agenda is Mr. Roger Lehman with the Disaster Resistant Community update. I think I missed a C in there somehow. Perhaps you could tell us what that is?

Roger Lehman: I can do that. Thank you, President Musgrave and Commissioner Tornatta for allowing us to be here today to bring you an update on the Southwest Indiana Disaster Resistant Community Corporation, to be totally accurate. We call it the DRC just, for obvious reasons. First of all, I would like just to read the DRC mission statement:

“The mission of the Disaster Resistant Community Corporation is to advocate and educate mitigation to help all individuals, families and businesses in our community better anticipate, survive and recover from disasters that occur in Southwest Indiana, primarily the counties of Vanderburgh, Posey, Warrick, Gibson and Spencer.”

Having said that, I would call your attention to a handout that I provided you guys ahead of time. I’m just going to touch on some high points of it, if you have it with you, if not you can refer to it later. This group was started back in 1997, and has been together ever since, therefore, this is our ten year anniversary, 2007. We do have some special events coming up in the near future, which we’ll mention in a minute. But, as a little background, our effort to fulfill our mission is attempting to upgrade building codes. As an example, we do, we are the only area in the Midwest that requires our gas water heaters to be strapped down for seismic purposes, the nine counties of Southwest Indiana. The only place in the Midwest that requires that. The reason for that is the obvious one that we don’t want water heaters to fall over during earthquakes. The less obvious one is when that happens the gas line breaks and then the house burns down. Fire after an earthquake is often times more damaging than the earthquake. So, we want to minimize the impact of that. We work to remove structures in the flood plain. We’ve had some projects over the past years to purchase property and eliminate structures on those to prevent continued damage to those, to perform non-structural retrofits, which we have done to several day care centers over the past years, and also to do structural retrofit projects, which we have done to fire stations, including one in each county, also German Township station number nine, and two of the fire stations in the City of Evansville. So, we are a group that does things. Unfortunately, a group that does things needs one thing to continue and that is, of course, money. It’s hard to do things if you don’t have any resources. So, over the years we have received grants, we were recognized by Project Impact back in the day, with a grant of $500,000. We have been used by Purdue University in some of their research grants. We, basically, are supported however by the communities we operate through, which are the five counties in Southwest Indiana including, of course, Vanderburgh, and also the City of Evansville. Another project that we are currently involved in very seriously and very time consumingly, but very importantly, is a program called CERT, Community Emergency Response Teams. Christine Martin, who is with us today, Christine, please stand, is the Director of the DRC, and also a certified CERT instructor. She has personally instructed several hundred people on the CERT program. The CERT program provides that individuals in neighborhoods have enough training that they can be the first responders in a major disaster, because often the normal first responders, fire, police, sheriff and so on, can’t get to you very quickly in major disasters. So, they are trained to do that. We have 14 CERT teams in Vanderburgh County, totaling about 186 people. In the Southwest, in the five counties of Southwest Indiana we have about 320 people that have been trained in the CERT program. That provides, again, a back up to our normally thought of emergency response folks, and they are also available to them in case of major disaster, such as the tornado that we had, the CERT teams were available if the Fire Department or Police Department would call upon them. We are in the process now of, Christine is, of developing a refresher course. Every few years the CERT team members have to have a refresher course to keep their certification active. She is going to be doing that for, I guess, all 300 people in Southwest–

Christine Martin: In all five counties.

Roger Lehman: –in all five counties. I also would like to introduce, here with me today is co-president of the board of directors, Harold Matthews, the Chief of Security for the University of Evansville. He’s here to answer any questions or to fill in the gaps that I may leave. If you turn to the second page, if you have that with you, of the handout, I just wanted to call your attention to the main goals; to educate in order to save lives and make the community safer, to reduce property damages and economic losses, to shorten recovery time for businesses to resume regular operations, and to minimize social disruption and shorten the recovery period of the community. Now, another project that we have coming up in the very near future is called Fortified for Safer Living. This is a project we are working with the institute for business and home safety, and we’ll have a ground breaking for a new structure in Evansville-Vanderburgh County on August the 15^th, which you all will shortly receive an invitation to. The handout that I provided to you that’s called Aurora Fortified Project, there will be a similar document that will be entitled Evansville-Vanderburgh County Fortified Project. That will be a matter of national attention, IBHS, the Institute for Business and Home Safety, is the insurance industry’s primary group for reducing losses by mitigating hazards. That’s one of their big things, obviously. There are a few other events that are going on through October in conjunction with our 10^th anniversary, and those would be, I’ve got them right here; Disasters Do Happen Here, that will be in August, which will address tornados, earthquakes and emotional impact of those events. In September, Business Pandemic Planning, and I’ll refer to the business aspect of DRC in just a minute. In September will be Insuring Business Survival, and in October will be Special Needs Planning, which we are looking the special needs citizens in our community, and how they need to be addressed relative to disasters and response to disasters. Now, speaking of businesses, the DRC has a, somewhat of a sub-committee, but it’s an entity unto itself that is made up of private businesses, and it’s called the Disaster Recovery Business Alliance, DRBA. That would be on the third page of your hand out, if you have that handy. Now DRBA is unique in that there aren’t very many of these organizations in the United States. There have been a few, most have gone by the wayside. Ours is still active. There are a few in a couple of other cities that are still active. The uniqueness of DRBA is that private industry traditionally does not interact with government except in regulatory type of activities. What DRBA does, it provides a bridge between the government and private industry so that they can participate, not only in the normal business of government/private enterprises, but also in planning for disasters and recovery from disasters, even to the extent that in our situation we have a spot for them in the emergency operations center that DRBA provides a person to be there, so that as we’re responding to disasters and recovering, that business has a person that’s right there amongst the decision makers, giving input and providing information from the business community. It has not been done in the past. We are one of the first that has accomplished that. A mission statement from DRBA now, this is the business side is:

“To establish and support the operational, informational and personal links among Southwest Indiana businesses that will expedite normalization of productivity, commerce and quality of life following large scale emergencies in the area.”

Many businesses have had internal disaster plans for some time. Many did not have external disaster plans. In other words, what happens if your suppliers don’t supply you? Even if your business is not severally damaged, and your personnel can get there, if they have no materials to work with, what are they going to do? So, part of the DRBA planning and educational process is to help businesses understand that they have to look at many aspects of things that go on outside the area. The other big thing we look at is, if you’re in business and your business isn’t severely damaged, what if none of you workers come to work? How are you going to produce product at that time? So, we encourage businesses to talk with their employees, provide them education and information on how to respond to disasters and for them to plan on what their employees will do, so that their employees have kind of a feel for what’s going on. On the last page of the hand out, there’s five major areas; hazard and risk assessment, education awareness, hazard mitigation, business resumption, business and community recovery. Those are the goals that we have, and all of the efforts that we make go toward those goals. Last but not least, we solicit the Commissioners support for DRC and DRBA so that we can continue our mission to help our citizens to be as safe as possible, and help our businesses continue to be up and running in the face of potential disaster. I would be glad to answer any questions you may have.

President Musgrave: I think you’re over in the Orr Iron Building now, right?

Roger Lehman: Yes.

President Musgrave: Where are you moving since that is going?

Roger Lehman: We’ll be moving to the technology center downtown.

President Musgrave: Okay, good.

Roger Lehman: And, we’ll be having our educational site with this new fortified home. One aspect that we’re looking at that’s a little bit outside of the scope of our normal activities, but we think we will be incorporating into the fortified home is also some green building aspects of construction. Since this structure that we’re going to be building will be used for an educational tool for four or five years for safety issues, we feel like that perhaps we might want to incorporate some green building things in there also, so it can be kind of a dual purpose, so that the education can be more comprehensive than it would be otherwise.

President Musgrave: Alright, well, thank you very much for coming–

Roger Lehman: Thank you very much.

President Musgrave: –as part of our continuing series of boards to which we make appointments to come and tell us a little bit about what you do, and your plans for the upcoming year. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Martin.

Madelyn Grayson: Roger, do you have an available, an extra one available for the record?

Roger Lehman: I’ll get you a clean copy.

Madelyn Grayson: Okay, thank you.

President Musgrave: Okay.

President Musgrave: Next is Mr. Steve Craig, Manager of Burdette.

Steve Craig: Steve Craig, Manager of Burdette. At this time I would like to receive permission from the Vanderburgh County Commissioners to pursue property that has become available adjacent to Burdette Park.

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: I’ll second. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

Steve Craig: Thank you.

President Musgrave: Thank you.

President Musgrave: We now move to award APA-017-2007, guard rails and various culvert pipes. Ms. Debbie Spalding from the Purchasing Department.

Debbie Spalding: Good afternoon. We solicited bids for culvert pipes and guard rails this year. We did receive inquiries from six companies and bid specifications were sent out to them. This bid was advertised in the paper twice in July , and bids were opened in this meeting, in this group’s meeting on June 26^th. The response that we got back, we received responses from three bidders, and I’m here today to ask for your permission to award the aluminum culvert pipe and most of the guard rail materials to CPI Supply, and the concrete culvert pipe to M & W Concrete. You have the bid tabulations in front of you.

President Musgrave: Any questions? Is there a motion?

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: I’ll second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

Debbie Spalding: Thank you.

President Musgrave: Thank you.

President Musgrave: We now, you have permission to advertise for weapons for the Sheriff’s Department.

Debbie Spalding: Right. I would just like to ask for permission to advertise for the weapons for the Sheriff’s Department.

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: Second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

President Musgrave: Contracts, agreements and leases, we have the agreement with Integrated Consultants, Incorporated on behalf of the Vanderburgh County Sheriff. Is there anyone here to address this? Mr. Ziemer, do you have any information for the Commissioners?

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: None in addition to the information I supplied with my e-mail of July the 3^rd. This agreement is to replace a prior three year agreement, which was approved by Commissioners Fanello and Mosby and–

Commissioner Tornatta: Mourdock.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: –Mourdock. That one expired, and this would be a new agreement beginning January 1, 2007. They’ve been providing these services without an agreement since that date. The cost of the agreement is $10,000 a month for the year 2007, $10,300 a month for the year 2008, $10,609 per month for the year 2009. I did speak to Sheriff Williams about this and he advised me, and also he advised Matt Arvay that funds had been appropriated for the payments of $10,000 a month for 2007, and that he was asking Council to appropriate the required funds for 2008. The agreement does have a provision that if funds aren’t appropriated that no payments are required to be made. That’s as much as I know.

President Musgrave: I understand that this is a contract for the sole individual who assists in maintaining the computers out at the County jail. I understand even before we had the new jail this individual was working on those computers. But, I understand it’s a substantial increase over the prior contract, perhaps even 100 percent increase, or getting close to that, and I do have some questions about it, and Commissioner Nix is generally our liaison with the Sheriff’s Department and he is not able to be here today. So, I would request that we not only table this, but, perhaps, Commissioner Tornatta, you would check with members of Council, because this contract does go into the future, and I would like to know their outlook on this.

Commissioner Tornatta: Well, I don’t have a problem with that. I think that anytime we’re dealing with these types of numbers, I think it’s good that the Council has an opportunity to send it back to us with their approval, as a work of agreement with the Council. So, I would have no problem with that. Just recommend as well that we table this and I’ll go back to the Council and talk about it.

President Musgrave: Alright, if this is a motion, I’ll second it. Alright. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries. Next on the agenda is the Superior Court RoboCare license agreement for government agencies. I’m sorry, RoboCuff. Is that a RoboCuff or RoboCare?

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: RoboCuff.

President Musgrave: Okay.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: They do both, but this is RoboCuff.

President Musgrave: Alright. I understand that they’ve been using this product, which, I guess, is some sort of electronic cuffing device?

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Yes, and the contract’s recommended by Judge Niemeier. They’ve been using RoboCuff, he tells me for over a year without having a formal contract, and this is now to formally have a contract in place–

President Musgrave: Alright.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: –for the services. The agreement spells out the various services that will be required of RoboCuff. I think what the Judge has initialed here is that it would be a monthly plan of $1,250 per month for the services that are required.

President Musgrave: Okay. Is there a motion?

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: I’ll second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Let me just ask, did you get it, has it been marked up so that there’s a place for the Commissioners to sign it now? Okay. There wasn’t on the original draft, but thank you.

President Musgrave: We move now to department head reports. Mr. Duckworth, and then, Mr. Stoll, you have several things, correct? Alright, are there any other department heads here? No.

Mike Duckworth: I feel fortunate that I got to go before John Stoll. That’s a first, I think. I just have one brief request and that is, in the previous budget the Council, well, the Commissioners request from my recommendation and the Council approved an amount to build a training room/lunch room area in our facility. Through previous meetings we’ve had the engineering completed on that, and I would like to ask permission at this time to get pricing on that.

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: Second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

Mike Duckworth: Just one last thing, just for the general public’s knowledge, we are working through our paving season, and we’ve completed, of the 33 roads that were approved by the Commission and the Council to have resurfaced this year, we’ve completed all but nine. We’re working through that at this time. So, that’s a good thing.

President Musgrave: That is a good thing.

Mike Duckworth: Thank you very much.

President Musgrave: Well done.

President Musgrave: Mr. Stoll?

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: John, are you going to have any objection to Mike coming before you at these meetings? Does that make any difference? Okay, thank you.

John Stoll: Feel free.

President Musgrave: Will this in total take more than nine minutes? Which is how much time we have left on the clock.

John Stoll: I can go fast.

President Musgrave: Okay, go.

John Stoll: First, I have a contract with Bernardin Lochmueller and Associates for $43,000 for bridge design services for First Avenue. This is a supplemental agreement to follow up on their previous studies where they identified the soil problems on the First Avenue Bridge over Pigeon Creek. This will basically provide us a bridge design to bridge over those problems.

Commissioner Tornatta: Motion to approve.

President Musgrave: I’ll second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

John Stoll: Next, I need to request your approval to make several offers on the right-of-way on Green River Road. The parcel numbers, the property owners and the amounts are as follows; parcel 3, Seib, $2,550; parcel 5, Denton, $1,800; parcel 8, Dempsey, $325; parcel 10, Hollis, $4,900; parcel 11, Todd, $300; parcel 12, Whitledge, $1,900; parcel 13, Ruff, $200; parcel 14, Titzer, $750; parcel 16, Benedna Corporation, $150; parcel 17, Lamb, $2,050; parcel 18, Sarchenko, $400; parcel 26, Schwent, $900; parcel 27, Allen, $500; parcel 36, Farmer, $2,550.

Commissioner Tornatta: Move approval.

President Musgrave: Second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

John Stoll: Next, I have two right-of-way offers for the Cross Pointe Boulevard project. They are, parcel 2, L & S Properties, and the amount is $8,900; and parcel 6, Greg Rand, Incorporated, $55,500.

Commissioner Tornatta: Move approval.

President Musgrave: Second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

John Stoll: Next, are some offers for the Oak Hill and Bergdolt intersection project. They are, parcel 2, Turley, $575; parcel 3, Jenkins, $400; parcel 4, Jones, $325; parcel 8, Oak Hill Baptist Church, $2,050; parcel 12, Strickland, $5,025; and parcel 13, Moyes, $1,000.

Commissioner Tornatta: Move approval.

President Musgrave: I’ll second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

John Stoll: The last item I have is a time extension request from J.H. Rudolph for the Bohannon Estates Barrett Law project for the street repairs. They are requesting a time extension until August 15^th on the basis that it took a while to get some answers to some questions they had in regard to the design. So, I would recommend approval of that time extension.

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: Second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. The motion carries.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: May I just ask how far, what was the original timing on that one?

John Stoll: Off the top of my head I don’t remember. I believe the delay was like 42 days, something like that, so, the completion date was probably right around now.

President Musgrave: Is that it?

John Stoll: That’s it.

President Musgrave: Okay.

President Musgrave: Is there any new business?

President Musgrave: Any old business? Oh, there is old business, a reminder that there is no Commission meeting on July 17, 2007. We will be meeting to hear the two or three rezoning petitions that will come before us, but we will not follow, we will not proceed that with a regular Commission meeting.

President Musgrave: Is there any public comment?

President Musgrave: We have a list of consent items on the agenda. Is there a motion?

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: I will second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye. Is there a motion to adjourn?

Commissioner Tornatta: So moved.

President Musgrave: I’ll second. All those in favor?

Commissioner Tornatta: Aye.

President Musgrave: Aye.

(The meeting was adjourned at 3:55 p.m.)

CONSENT ITEMS:

Health Department (1)              Burdette Park (12)                    Sheriff Office (3)

VCCC (3)                                  Voter Registration (1)               Circuit Court (1)

County Clerk (1)                       Knight Assessor (1)                  Scott Assr. (1)

Treasurer (1)

Travel Requests:

Health Department (3)              Treasurer (2)                            County Clerk (1)

Commissioners (3)                   Voter Registration (1)               SWCD (1)

Coroner (1)                               County Assessor (1)

Auditor: A/P Vouchers: July 2007.

Commissioners:

Knight Township Fire Dept. Grant Semi-Annual & Grant Close Out Reports.

Bernardin Lochmueller: University Parkway Project Ph. II & III Update.

Department Head Meeting Notes: June 26, 2007.

County Engineer: Pay Request No. 30: Burkhardt-Green River TIF Projects.

Surplus Requests:

Circuit Court: Probation Dept: chairs, t.v., t.v. stand, vcr.

DADS: Compaq computer.

County Clerk: chairs. 

Department Head Reports:

Burdette Park                           County Engineer                       County Highway

Ozone Officer                           Supt. Of Bldgs.                         Veterans Service

Those in Attendance:

Cheryl Musgrave                      Troy Tornatta                            Bill Fluty

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.          Marissa Nichoalds                    Madelyn Grayson

Roger Lehman                          Christine Martin                        Steve Craig

Debbie Spalding                       Mike Duckworth                        John Stoll

Others Unidentified                   Members of Media

VANDERBURGH COUNTY

BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

  (No longer in office when minutes approved.)

Cheryl A.W. Musgrave, President

Bill Nix, Vice President

Troy Tornatta, Member

(Recorded and transcribed by Madelyn Grayson.)