VANDERBURGH COUNTY

BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

SPECIAL MEETING

MAY 29, 2003

The Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners met in session this 29^th day of May, 2003 at 2:18 p.m. in Room 307 of the Civic Center Complex with President David Mosby presiding.

President Mosby: – roll call is as follows: Superintendent of Buildings, Tammy McKinney; Corporate Counsel, Kevin Winternheimer; Commissioner Fanello; myself; Commissioner Crouch; Auditor, Bill Fluty; and – Teri Lukeman. I looked down there and I thought, that’s not Madelyn. That’s right, Madelyn is on vacation. Thank you, Teri. Everybody please stand and say the Pledge.

(Pledge of Allegiance was given)

President Mosby: I think the first thing is Corporate Counsel would like to address the issue of the special meeting and I will hold my thoughts until after that.

Kevin Winternheimer: Okay, yeah, as I’m sure you read in this morning’s paper, there was an issue raised as to whether or not we can have special meetings without giving six days notice. As you know, under the Indiana Public Meeting Law, there is 48 hours notice required to the media and to the public, which was given. The question comes under a special statute of the County Executive, the County Commissioners, which says six days notice of the meeting must be given unless its an emergency. The intent of the statute, and this probably arose in some county long ago, but was to give six days notice to the Commissioners whenever a special meeting, meaning a non-regularly scheduled meeting is called. How they came up with six days or what county this arose that the legislature saw fit to impose a six day notice rule, I do not know and have not been able to find out. But in any event, the Commissioners are entitled to six days notice unless it’s an emergency meeting. Again, this is not notice to the public, this is notice to the Commissioners themselves. There’s two ways that we can have this meeting since we did not have six days notice. The first is if the County Commissioners each individually will waive the six day requirement. If they do not, then we can have the Commission declare this an emergency situation under Indiana Code 5-14-1.5-5, and just to go over that briefly, if we get to that point, it’s an emergency if there’s threatened injury to property or threatened injury to an individual or a disruption of governmental activity. Today we’re here for two issues: one having to do with the bond financing for the new jail and the second for the roof project itself. Concerning the bond issue for the new jail, it’s my understanding that the county has the opportunity to save millions of dollars and subsequently I’ve learned it’s maybe as much as five to ten million dollars. Although dollars itself may not create an emergency, as we all know, we live on a very fixed budget system here. There’s just so much in the pot, so if we do not save the five to ten million, there may be governmental activities that are threatened. But more importantly and more directly to the point is the fact that if we do not meet today, it’s my understanding that the County Council will not have enough time to take the matter up at their next meeting next week, which would delay this till the end of June. It’s been my understanding that we’ve been trying to close these bonds on or before July. If we do not get the approval until late in June, that could very possibly delay that process which means delaying the bidding of the project, which means delaying the actual completion of the project. So does it threaten governmental activity? Yes, very much so. It threatens issuing the bonds, it threatens getting the new jail done, if we don’t get this done. And I’m sure if, at the very least, the correction officers and the deputies as well as the 329 people we have in jail would all concur that delaying this project is not the thing to do. We have a jail that’s designed for 269 prisoners. We have about 329 there and we are striving to live up to the standards for jail facilities even with the extra 60 people that we have in there and sometimes, occasionally for periods of time, have more than that. So does it meet that criteria? My feeling is yes, it does quite clearly, because it does threaten the project itself. And delaying the project is a threat to the project. The second thing that we’re here for today is to discuss the roof. When I was contacted about this I was informed that there were, I guess for lack of a better way of describing it, sections of the roof, the center dome, that had pulled apart the outer covering, that it was, in effect, leaking. If you all have had any experience with leaking roofs even at your house, if there’s an access point to your roofing, water travels in many and varied ways throughout a separation in the outer covering. It threatens the decking to the material as well as other structures in the facility and equally important in this particular case, I’m informed that to do this repair it would be necessary to set scaffolding on the roof itself, the lower roof, I guess, for lack of a better term. That lower roof is set to be completed soon, so if we’re going to fix the upper part, we do not want to risk damage to a brand new roof and further leaks in the roof by waiting and delaying this until after the lower roof is repaired. The time to do it, if we’re going to do it is soon, before that lower roof is put on and secondly, as soon as possible to prevent further damage to our roof. Anytime you’ve got open weather, like I said, water coming in, that’s a very bad thing and it may travel in many different ways and to many different places before it’s damaged. So does it meet the requirement of an emergency? Yes, I think it does. But we may not even get to that point if the Commissioners themselves will waive their, individually waive their six day notice that they’re entitled to for not an emergency. If you will not all of you waive the six day notice, then I will ask you to declare it an emergency on the basis that I’ve described for these two projects.

Commissioner Crouch: President Mosby? I’m still not sure that this meeting as it was noticed is a special meeting, which is the notice that the media received or whether it’s an emergency meeting which is what County Attorney Winternheimer advised me in a conversation. I do know that the Indiana Code is very specific in its definition of an emergency meeting. In fact, this emergency must be serious enough to waive all normal notice requirements to the public. However, the law states that the media be given the same notice as is given to the members of the governing body. I have had I.C. 36-2-2-8 and 5-14-1.5-5 researched and I do not believe that this meets the requirements of that law. If I am correct, any action taken today would be null and void. If this meeting is determined to be legal, I think it represents a lack of communication, cooperation and sharing of information. So my question, County Attorney Winternheimer, is this a special meeting or is this an emergency meeting?

President Mosby: My question is to you, do you want to waive your six days? If you waive your six days –

Commissioner Crouch: Out of common courtesy, I’d like my question to be answered.

President Mosby: Well, I can answer your question once you tell me if you’re waiving your six days.

Commissioner Crouch: No, the meeting currently that we’re at. Is it a special meeting or an emergency meeting?

Kevin Winternheimer: Mr. President, if I may. It’s a special meeting – one is not mutually exclusive of another. A special meeting is any meeting that is not regularly scheduled, so since this was not one of our regular Monday night meetings, it is a special meeting. However, it may qualify, and I believe it does, as an emergency meeting thereby negating not notice to the public, but notice to the Commissioners. We did give notice to the public 48 hours ahead of time as we are required by virtue of giving notice to the media. But is it an emergency, which is a special subunit of special meetings, I believe it is, but as I said, if you all individually waive your right to six days notice of a special meeting, then we don’t get into the subclass of an emergency special meeting, I guess would be the terminology. Although the statute does not use that terminology, it seems to be appropriate. It would be a special emergency meeting.

President Mosby: As far as I’m concerned, I’ll go ahead and declare it an emergency meeting. Nobody has to waive their six days rights –

Commissioner Fanello: Well, I’d like to know, --

President Mosby: – and I would do that on the basis of about three different things.

Commissioner Crouch said that she didn’t receive information. You know, we didn’t receive information until approximately Thursday or Friday. Monday was a holiday so Tuesday was as quick as I could get into the office to have Patty immediately call the news media and say we’re going to have a meeting. Whether it’s an emergency meeting or a special meeting, it’s not hard for me to take 30 minutes out of my day to come down here and do county business. County business does not run on Monday nights only. When I’ve got somebody telling me that I have a problem with the roof at the courthouse and they’re getting ready to go ahead and put the slate on, and once they put the slate on it’s going to cost me a half a million dollars more to come back and finish that center dome, that’s an emergency. When I have bonds that need to be sold by June the 17^th, and it’s going to save the taxpayers of this community some eight million dollars, that’s an emergency. It’s not hard for me to take 30 minutes out of my day to save this community eight and a half million dollars. If you have a problem with that, then it’s your problem. But my 30 minutes is well spent right here today.

Commissioner Crouch: And I’m not questioning the validity of the projects we’re talking about. What I am questioning is the notice to the public and following the law.

President Mosby: I followed the law. I give the 48 hours notice.

Commissioner Crouch: And we are not, this body is not above the law. We need to follow it just like everyone else.

President Mosby: No, we are – and we gave the 48 hour notice. That’s why I immediately came in here Tuesday morning. I did not have the luxury of coming in here Monday. Monday was a holiday for everybody. So Tuesday morning everybody was notified. You were (inaudible) to call. I told Patty right away, call both Commissioners, tell them I need a special meeting. That’s as quick as I could do it.

Commissioner Crouch: And I was notified and I asked if there was – about the six days requirement of notice to a special meeting –

President Mosby: I don’t have six days. You know, I talked to three Councilmembers last night: Lloyd Winnecke, Jimmy Raben and Phil Hoy, right out there in that hall and all three of them said, most definitely, would you please have the meeting and get the information over to us. This is something we cannot review Wednesday morning and do Wednesday afternoon. And I said yes, I said we’re trying to have a special meeting right now and, hopefully, I will have that information to you by Friday morning. And they will have all weekend to look at it and look at the same thing Steve Meno has sent you and me. But I didn’t have this a week ago. And this is all on a timetable.

Commissioner Crouch: I believe the issue here is allowing the public to know about our meetings and allowing them to participate, and allowing other Commissioners to know about the meeting. I was notified that the meeting was at 10:00 by e-mail. After five requests to this office yesterday I finally received the agenda and the information, and happened to notice about two hours later that the meeting time had been changed to 2:15 and I was never noticed on the 2:15 meeting.

Commissioner Fanello: Well, I want to comment on a couple of those things because our assistant, Patty White, has a tremendous problem in getting hold of you. You do not return the e-mails, you do not answer the phone, and she has no cell phone number to contact you in case of an emergency, so she does her best to get hold of you and I think she does a good job at it. The other thing is, Steve Meno contacted Mike Clater on Friday and I received this information late Friday afternoon, which was not enough time for me to review the information or have any kind of contact with anyone. As soon as I talked to Steve Meno I asked him for more information. That information was given to us Wednesday afternoon and it was forwarded to Patty White as soon as it was given, and it was forwarded to you immediately. In fact, you even got it faster than Commissioner Mosby. So you’ve had the information. I know that you were not in the office yesterday but that Patty did contact you by e-mail and got you the information as soon as Steve Meno got us the latest spreadsheet. So all the information was given, the notice was given to the public, according to our County Attorney, in the time frame required by the statute. Now we’re having this meeting today for the benefit of the Council. Actually, we could have made this decision ourselves and not even involved the Council, but I thought it important enough when I had my conversation with Steve Meno, that the Council be involved in this decision because this affects the taxpayers and affects saving the taxpayers anywhere, as you see on this sheet, up to 10 million dollars. This is important enough to have a meeting.

Commissioner Crouch: And Monday is before the Council meeting on Wednesday.

Commissioner Fanello: Monday is, but that does not give the Council enough time to confer with the County Auditor. The County Council is the fiscal body as you know. You were the Auditor for eight years. That gives them enough time to confer with the Auditor about what they should do. We’re not the fiscal body here but we can make recommendations and I feel like I have a little bit of an advantage because I deal in financial situations all the time because I’m an accountant. So I have a little bit an of advantage over maybe some of the other members. But it’s not my decision, it is the County Council’s decision and they deserve the time to meet with the Auditor to go over this information. Now, this needs to be to Steve Meno by June 5^th, so that it can be put in the preliminary official statement before the bonds are issued, before the bonds are sold on June 17^th. The preliminary offi-cial statement is a document, if you’re not familiar with it, that goes to all those who are interested in purchasing the bonds.

Commissioner Crouch: Commissioner Fanello, I’m not arguing with you on that. What I am talking about is the law and us obeying the law and abiding by the law and the public being aware of everything that goes on with this body.

Commissioner Fanello: How does – we’ve noticed the public 48 hours in advance as the County Attorney said we needed to do. This meeting is held in the Civic Center in front of the public, we have the news media here, so I believe we’ve done our duty to hold this in the public.

Bill Fluty: I’d just say, it is a public meeting, but actually, they’re here to report the decision that’s made. You haven’t given enough time to the public to –

Commissioner Fanello: We’re not making the decision, Bill. We’re not making the decision. You will make that decision with the Council.

Bill Fluty: No decision is to be made today?

Commissioner Fanello: We are making a recommendation to the Council, what they should do. The Council, the ultimate decision is up to the County Council. They need to set the payment, not us. We are making a recommendation.

Bill Fluty: Rather than put a cloud over this meeting, I think we have a scheduled meeting for Monday. We could just put this in that time line of Monday and Tuesday for the Council to have that information rather than to put a cloud over what needs to be decided today. Because we have an issue –

Commissioner Fanello: We’re not making any decisions today. We’re making a recommendation to save the taxpayers 7.1 million dollars, 8.2 million dollars, 9.2 million dollars, however you want to look at it. And if you all are not interested in us being involved in saving the taxpayers umpteen million dollars, then maybe you need to re-evaluate why we’re here.

Bill Fluty: Catherine, we all want to save the taxpayers money but we sure do want to follow the law and give the public notice. I spent last week at the Auditor’s conference, we spent 45 minutes on legal advertising. They say special meetings should be six days out and, of course, an emergency meeting is different. This was presented as a special meeting at the beginning, so it doesn’t meet the letter of the law, I believe. I’ve talked to Bruce Hartman on this subject. He says, actually what we’re trying to do is to relay what decisions we make, what action we’re taking, what we’re discussing to the public. And I think we need to follow that.

President Mosby: You know, I’m not sure where this six days comes from but in that case, we would never have a special meeting. We meet every Monday, we’re here every seven days. So if I had to turn around on Tuesday and give a six day notice we’d be back to Monday. So I don’t know who that law affects. You know, maybe it’s for counties that meet every two weeks or once a month or something, I’m not sure. But as far as I’m concerned, the law says that I can have an emergency meeting if I give a 48 hour notice, so there’s no cloud, as you’re saying, over whatever. Because I legally, and as Commissioner Crouch stated, this meeting was originally scheduled for 10:00 and then moved back to 2:15, I did that for the 48 hour reason because of all the questions that arose. I mean, originally, I called Patty at 8:00, told her to schedule it for 10:00, have the 48 hour out to the news media. Commissioner Crouch, at that time, was balking, so we went back and researched everything. At 12:30, 1:00 we decided let’s give another 48 hours and we’ll move it to 2:15. That’s why we’re here at 2:15 instead of 10:00, because of your questions. And so as far as I’m concerned, it’s legal, I’ll declare it an emergency meeting. I feel like all this falls under emergency because there’s not time to continue to deal with this. I mean, the people are here from South Bend putting the roof on. We’ve got June 5^th deadlines that need to be met and I’ve got Councilmen that stood in that hall yesterday and told me, get me that information as quick as possible.

Commissioner Fanello: And I did speak with Councilman Winnecke this morning and they were very – he was very appreciative that we were going to take the matter under advisement and forward the information to them as soon as possible.

Commissioner Crouch: The only thing I’d like to add is the six day notice was the opinion of County Attorney Winternheimer at the May 20^th meeting of last year, regarding special meetings. And since this is a special meeting and the six day notice was not met...

Kevin Winternheimer: Again, if I could ask you on the record for each one of you to state whether you waive your six day notice. If you waive your six day notice, we can proceed to try to save the taxpayers eight million dollars. If not, then we will have to declare it an emergency meeting. It is not a violation of the law if it’s an emergency meeting. It is not a violation, it is a right you have. But as a right you have, you may waive it. You are not waiving it for the public. The public got their legally entitled to notice, by notice to the media. But it’s your individual right, and if you’ll waive that on the record, I would ask that you do that, then clearly nothing is, there is no cloud, there is no issue here on the meeting. And we don’t even have to proceed to the emergency part. So I’d ask that each one of you state whether you waive your individual right to six day notice.

President Mosby: At this time I will ask that each Commissioner, on a roll call vote, waive their right for the six day meeting. Commissioner Crouch?

Commissioner Crouch: I think it’s important that we abide by the law. I vote no.

President Mosby: Commissioner Fanello?

Commissioner Fanello: I’m here to serve the taxpayers 24 hours a day. I waive my six day requirement.

President Mosby: Commissioner Mosby? I called the meeting and I definitely waive my six day notice.

Kevin Winternheimer: I couldn’t hear Commissioner Crouch?

President Mosby: She voted no.

Kevin Winternheimer: Okay, then I would ask that you declare it an emergency.

President Mosby: At this time I will ask for a motion to declare this an emergency meeting.

Commissioner Crouch: No.

Commissioner Fanello: Yes, in order to save the taxpayers millions of dollars.

President Mosby: I need a motion.

Commissioner Crouch: Motion to declare --

Commissioner Fanello: Oh, motion to declare an emergency meeting.

President Mosby: Second and so ordered.

Kevin Winternheimer: Now you may proceed. Thank you.

Commissioner Fanello: I’d like a roll call vote on that.

President Mosby: Commissioner Crouch, roll call vote on emergency meeting.

Commissioner Crouch: I do not believe that both of these items meet that criteria. No.

President Mosby: Commissioner Fanello?

Commissioner Fanello: I believe a leaking roof at the Old Courthouse and saving the taxpayers approximately anywhere from one to ten million dollars is an emergency and needs to get to the Council as soon as possible, so yes.

President Mosby: Commissioner Mosby, I vote yes.

President Mosby: The first order of business, Old Courthouse roof. I will give you a document and a picture which I have at this time, one for the record. What this is, is it was brought to my attention Thursday afternoon, Friday morning by Midland Construction, who was over doing the Old Courthouse roof at the Old Courthouse. When we bid this roof, the four corner domes and the decking and slate roof were all to be replaced in the 1.1 million dollar roof project. It was, at that time, just left out, I guess, I don’t know if it’s an oversight on Will Fosse’s part or whoever, that we do not replace the center dome upon starting the repairs over at the Old Courthouse. Midland discovered and in the picture as best as we could get, you will see where there’s parts of that center dome that are gone. Tammy has been over to the Old Courthouse as late as Thursday and she, at that time, has taken pictures of this and that’s as best as we can get. She climbed the scaffold and went to the roof and tried to take pictures of the dome. What you will also have in front of you is a document, and this is a document that I had asked Midland back when they first started this job, when they pointed out to me that the center dome was not a part of this project. Do you want us to look at the center dome? And I said if it’s not a part of the project, look at it, see if you see any flaws in it. If you do, go ahead and work up a price, see what it would cost to replace the center dome. While you’re there, what it’s going to cost five years down the road. Well, upon starting the roof project and noticing that there is sections of the center dome missing, they immediately brought it to my attention, Tammy’s attention, that’s why we took the pictures. What it amounts to, if we replace it now while the project is going, and this has to be done within the next week or two because they are already putting slate on, we can do it for a cost of about $300,000. If we come back after the project is done and we try to do this, as Midland stated, you will in turn have to build another $125,000 worth of scaffolding from ground to roof, you’ll have to build approximately $125,000 worth of scaffolding from the roof to the top of the dome, at that time you will have to take all the slate back off. Slate cannot be walked on, it cannot be built on. And what they are doing right now is they’re working outside of areas of the center dome. If we want to do this, they can go ahead and build the scaffolding, the materials and the labor, that’s the $300,000. If we don’t, five years down the road we come back, take it all off, rebuild all the scaffolding, we’re looking at $550,000. That’s the one thing that they need to know immediately. I called Councilman Raben, who’s president of the Council. He accepted a late transfer from the Commissioner’s office. What we have done is taken the $300,000 that we put in the budget for parking for the Old Courthouse. Since we’ve got the trailers moved in over there, all the scaffolding is moved in over there, we are not going to be in any way, shape or form ready to start the parking at the Old Courthouse this year because of all the construction going on. So we’re going to transfer the $300,000 from the parking over to the roof, go ahead and get the roof completely done, center dome and all, and then we can come back next year in CCD and re-appropriate the parking lot when they’re done and still do the parking. That is the reason for this, that’s the reason for the transfer going into the Council and for us to give Midland some type of indication within the next week or two, so they’ll go ahead and start around the dome.

Commissioner Crouch: So we filed the late transfer?

President Mosby: We filed the late transfer, it was on the agenda yesterday and I will speak to that next Wednesday at the meeting.

Commissioner Crouch: Well, I’m glad that – do we need to or are you looking for some kind of a motion of support, or –

President Mosby: I need a motion from this Commission that, you know, outside of just me, this is what we want to do. But, I mean, I did call Councilman Raben and ask him to accept the transfer and he said, with all these details, most definitely he would take it.

Commissioner Crouch: Well, I mean, I’m very encouraged that we’re doing that because as long as I’ve sat on here as a Commissioner, we have never come to this body for approval on appropriations or transfers. And quite honestly, that probably needs to happen before they do go to Council, so I’m encouraged that we’re starting that practice now. And I’ll make a motion that we support the late transfer.

Commissioner Fanello: I’ll second that motion and just as an additional comment to – I talked to Tammy McKinney, our superintendent, this morning about maybe why this wasn’t in the original specs and she explained to me why that was, and the fact that, obviously, nobody can get up there to even look at this. And now that they’re up there with the scaffolding, they can see everything in detail. And so there probably would have been no way that we could have known about it when we did the original specs.

President Mosby: I have a motion on the floor and a second to support the transfer from Old Courthouse parking to Old Courthouse roof and I will say so ordered to that issue. And it was on the Council’s agenda yesterday and I will go to Council and give them our recommendation next week.

President Mosby: The second issue is jail financing and you should have a letter from Steve Meno from Fifth Third and you should also have a handout on a spreadsheet on what terms, estimated annual payments will be, total interest, total estimated tax impact and our current average interest rate, and our payment adjustments. Any questions?

Commissioner Fanello: I was just going to say, I spoke with Steve Meno again and went over this information. And originally, if you remember whenever you file your paperwork with the Department of Government Finance, you always look at maximum numbers. And so the maximum annual lease payment that was approved for Vanderburgh County was 3.3 million. Well, with all of the good interest rates that we have right now, and these are outstanding interest rates on here, the 25 year payment term actually results in a $2,455,000 payment, and results in $22,000,000 worth of interest which is a lot better than what we were originally looking at, which was approximately $32,000,000 in interest. So even right off the top, we’re in a better situation than our original estimates. But I would just say that I’ve gone over it and looked at the county’s financial information and I would just make a – I would like for this body to pass a recommendation that the Council accept a higher payment and pay off this bond issue earlier. And I would suggest that they look at making a $3,000,000 payment and pay this off in 19 or 18 years, whichever one they choose. And we could save anywhere from 7.1 to 8.2 million dollars.

Commissioner Crouch: You know, I do believe it’s extremely important to save money and I know that this Commission does it every chance they can, as does the Council. In fact, we have recently refinanced our bond issues to save money and to pay them off earlier. And, in fact, the USI, this is the second time its been refinanced, so I do support that. However, I do believe in these economic times with most people in this county and city facing higher property taxes, I can only support that plan that has the least impact on them, and hope that in the future we will be able to refinance and shorten the terms as we’ve done on all of our issues. So at this point in time, I would only be supportive of that term which has the least impact on the taxpayers.

President Mosby: And I guess I will just say, I know we originally talked about a 2.6 - 2.7 million dollar annual payment when we originally started this, and the Commissioners have stuck to the $35,000,000 issue in every case and scenario that has came in front of us. We have done whatever we had to do to save taxpayer money and to be competent to the taxpayer and I don’t think we’re ever going to find a time in the near future where interest rates are going to be this good, that we could be refunding this bond any time soon. If anything, I think interest rates will get higher, times are going to get better. I’m sure it will be a long ways out before we could ever look at saving seven or eight million dollars again. The 2.7 as opposed to the 2.9, I don’t think is a substantial hike when we knew we could go as high as 3.3 at one point. I think that the County Council could tighten their belt and they could find the $200,000 needed to save this community either 7.1 or 8.2 million dollars. That is also the reason I thought this meeting was of such importance and the Council needs these documents to look at, and I’m sure, being prudent, they’re going to look at the same thing I’m looking at and hopefully, keep the interests of the taxpayers in mind here. And we will get a good interest rate and we can be looking at an 18 or 19 year issuance rather than a 25 year issuance. And I would have to say that I favor one of the two, and if they want to go for the 19 instead of the 18, it’s $125,000 more, but that’s up to them. But I would favor looking at one of them two and saving the 7.1 or 8.2 million.

Commissioner Fanello: And I would just add that all of the scenarios here given, give a very low tax impact and I don’t think the difference between the 25 year and the 19 year is too excessive. And I believe the taxpayers would probably like to save over 7 or 8 million dollars over the next 20 years. So I think that’s a better savings to them. I’m going to make a motion that we recommend to the County Council to accept the either 19 year scenario or the 18 year scenario, which results in either a $3,000,000 payment or a little above a $3,000,000 payment, so that we can save that 7 or 8 million dollars. And I make that in the form of a motion.

President Mosby: Keep in mind, they have $4,000,000 they haven’t touched. So, I mean, we’ve got one or two years payments in advance. I mean, we paid for the road out of the bond issue. Which one did you go?

Commissioner Fanello: Well, I would, you know, anything that – I think they ought to, quite frankly, I think they ought to accept the 18 year lease term, which that pays the debt off seven years early, results in a $3,075,000 payment and saves approximately 8.2 million dollars in interest. That would be my first choice. The second choice would be the 19 year scenario, which is a little bit less of a payment and results in a 7.1 million dollar savings. So either one of those, I think, are very good scenarios. And I think that they could structure the budget next year. It’s a matter of going through the budget and tightening the budget, and finding that extra – granted, remember, we don’t start paying this off until 2006. So this is not even something that they really have to consider next year, but they know about it now so that they can start planning next year, and in 2005, so they’ve got time to maybe kind of tweak their budgets over the next couple of years to be able to afford that. So I think with that much time frame given, that they can tweak the budget enough over the next couple of years to come up with the $3,000,000 payment.

President Mosby: I will second the motion that we look at 18 first and 19 second. That’s fine with me. And with a motion and a second, I’ll say – any other discussion? So ordered. That concludes this meeting. There’s no other business been advertised on this agenda, so I will accept a motion to adjourn.

Commissioner Fanello: Before we do that, will you instruct Patty White to send these documents over to Sandie Deig so she can get them to the County Council?

President Mosby: Yes, I will instruct that we have Patty, as soon as possible, and I told President Raben and his Finance Chairman Winnecke that we would try to get them over this afternoon or first thing in the morning. So I will instruct that she...

Commissioner Fanello: Motion to adjourn.

President Mosby: Okay. So ordered.

(Meeting adjourned at 2:53 p.m.)

Those in Attendance:

         David W. Mosby             Catherine Fanello           Suzanne M. Crouch

         Kevin Winternheimer      Bill Fluty                          Tammy McKinney

         Teri Lukeman                 Eric Williams                   Dave Rector

         Brad Ellsworth                Dan Dowell                     Others Unidentified

         Members of Media

         VANDERBURGH COUNTY

         BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

         David W. Mosby, President

         Catherine Fanello, Vice President

         Suzanne M. Crouch, Member

         Recorded and transcribed by Teri Lukeman.