VANDERBURGH COUNTY COUNCIL

BUDGET HEARINGS

AUGUST 9, 2005

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 9^th day of August, 2005 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:05 a.m. by County Council President Lloyd Winnecke.

President Winnecke: Good morning and welcome to the opening session of the 2005 Vanderburgh County budget hearings. We’ll begin with attendance roll call please.

President Winnecke: Would you please stand and join in the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

(The Pledge of Allegiance was given.)

President Winnecke: Okay, today we’ll review 21 different departmental budgets that comprise the entire Vanderburgh County budget. Today we have both small budgets and large budgets to review. Our objective is to consider each of the requests before us over the next three days before deciding the county’s spending priorities for 2006. We have about $62.3 million in General Fund requests before us. In order to remain under the state’s maximum levy, Council will need to trim at least $7 million. I would ask each office holder or department head to begin their budget presentations with their 2000 level accounts, unless you are requesting additional personnel, or if there is a personnel issue that you would like to speak specifically about, in which case you may start there. I’ll open the floor to Council questions or discussion upon the completion of each presentation. No voting will occur today. Just as a reminder, we’ll begin that process two weeks from today. Having said that, we’ll begin with Weights and Measures which is on page 84 of your budget book.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

President Winnecke: Good morning, Loretta.

Loretta Townsend: Good morning. Well–

President Winnecke: You may begin.

Loretta Townsend: Hopefully, you all have looked over what I’ve submitted. I know you’re going to cut something, my only request, and I told Jim beforehand, please ask before you do, because we better know where we can afford it, than what you guys do. I mean, last year it didn’t happen like that, but I know you have to from everybody in order to take a big hunk out of maybe three or four budgets. So, everybody’s going to have to give a little, but please ask us where we can most afford it. I’ll cut right to the chase, one thing that you see that’s zeroed out, which is Radio/Pagers, that’s because we switched to Communications which has our Internet, plus we went to cell phones which is 200 percent better. This way we don’t have to track down a pay phone or something like that in order to find out what’s going on if someone pages us. We found it’s actually a little bit cheaper. So, that’s the reason for that one, although I was told I should have left that money in there, then we would have something to play with, but I try to play fair with you, and I hope that in return you guys will do the same. Okay? The other thing, our rent went up $50 for the next year which I don’t think is too bad. It’s still the cheapest rent that anybody has in the city or county. The third thing is the vehicle. That’s going to come up over and over again. As you know we put in to get it out of this year’s. The last time I talked to him was, I guess was like, at Kenny Kent, they have what we need. There is nothing in that vehicle that you could call extras. It’s exactly what we need. They had four. None of them were here, I think one was in Alabama, one was in Memphis, this price will only hold as long as there’s one available. Now, he made the offer to trade out, whatever that means, I guess trade them something for whatever, for the truck that they have at one of these locations to get it up here, on the lot, so that we would have it in case you all let us, you know, purchase it. That was a week ago. I haven’t contacted the man since then, because I really didn’t know what to tell him. Now, it’s in this budget for next year. Now, the one’s we’re talking about is 2005, when the four are gone, they will become 2006, and I don’t think the price will remain. I’m positive that it won’t. I’ve talked to them at the city, finally, as I told Lloyd yesterday, she finally called, and the best they could do was make us an offer of a used vehicle. Now, they didn’t even say it was a truck that the Mayor has. Now, I’m going to take a minute and I’m going to tell you about what we have gotten before. You don’t get anything from another department that is of any use of all, or they’re not going to give it up. We’ve had four of them. The first one had no brakes on it. We put brakes on it, then that was from the City Engineer. We put brakes on it then they wanted it back. We gave it back to them, but we removed the seats out of it. Hey, I mean, you know, what’s fair is fair. The second one we had to call Mike’s Towing to get it off the lot. The third one had no floorboard up front by the driver. The other one, the power steering locked up on the Lloyd Expressway. We don’t want anymore hand me downs. We’ve got to have the kind of truck that we’ve asked for. Now, if it’s this year, or next year, I mean, the portion is 45/55, which I think is something like $11,000, they spent more than that putting a fence up around at Thunder on the Ohio. If this truck dies on the street, gas checking is over with. We can’t do it.

President Winnecke: Okay. Any other budget issues, line items that you would like to speak to, Loretta, this morning?

Loretta Townsend: No, because that’s our most important one.

President Winnecke: Okay. Any questions or discussions from members of Council? Mr. Wortman?

Councilmember Wortman: Mrs. Townsend, if that new vehicle would take place, would your Vehicle Repair, line item 3580, could that be cut back? Or do you have other places for that?

Loretta Townsend: Well, we’ve got the other two. We’ve got that Ford that would probably eat half of that up.

Councilmember Wortman: Okay.

Loretta Townsend: Because we’ve had trouble with the Ford. The doors won’t lock, the windows won’t go up and down. The antifreeze comes back, the fumes from the antifreeze, and they can’t figure out what’s wrong with it over at Meunsterman’s. Then we have the GMC. You could cut it back some, but keep in mind we still have the two other vehicles. We do use them. I mean, they are used with, oh, we’ve got almost two tons of weights, and this type of thing that, they’re used. They get, they’re used hard, but we can’t help it.

Councilmember Wortman: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Printing, 3410.

Loretta Townsend: Yeah, okay, on Printing, I wished you would leave that alone, because it looks like we’ve taken nothing out, but it’s because of the timing. It’s always like that every year. We have to order our stuff for 2006, and usually we don’t order that until at least the last of September or the first of October, which will take a pretty good bite out of that. But, it looks like we haven’t spent anything, it’s because of the time. I mean, this is August, you know, we don’t want to go out and spend it just so it will look good for you guys, and then come up short when we have to pay for our inspection books, and our 2006 stickers, and our red tags, and this type of thing. So, that Printing really, it should not be touched.

President Winnecke: Mr. Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: Loretta, what is the term on your lease agreement in your present space?

Loretta Townsend: Once a year.

Councilmember Sutton: So, it’s every year?

Loretta Townsend: Yeah.

Councilmember Sutton: I know that we really haven’t seen a lot of increases on there, but it’s just been some smaller increases just kind of gradually over time, they’ve been (Inaudible).

Loretta Townsend: I think last year it remained the same.

Councilmember Sutton: Uh-huh.

Loretta Townsend: Last year, I believe, if I remember, it remained the same. It went up $50 for 12 months. I mean, you know, I mean, that’s not too bad. That’s like four bucks a month, you know. A little over four bucks a month.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay.

Loretta Townsend: It’s where we belong. We have, the people have access to us, and you would be surprised how many scales are carried in to our office, which keeps us from having to get out and track them down everywhere. We have security for our vehicles. We do need that, because the equipment in them, well, in the gas truck, we don’t want anybody messing with that anyway, because they could blow themselves up.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, I guess my concern was a year to year lease like that. I mean, it’s been a pretty good space for you guys, and you’ve gotten accustomed to it, and with the parking arrangements, that’s worked out well. Just wouldn’t want to put us in a situation where, if there were some changes there, that we wouldn’t have another option or a place to go. So, I don’t know if we might want to think about maybe more than a year to year, maybe going a little bit longer.

Loretta Townsend: They wanted to.

Councilmember Sutton: So we could hold the price a little bit.

Loretta Townsend: I think we would be a lot better off. They at one time wanted to. I don’t know how the rest of them lease over there, whether they lease by the year, or five years, three years, or what. I really don’t know. I do know that we don’t discuss our rent with the rest of them. Because we pretty well got the better of the deal. I mean, you’ve got to look at that. There’s nothing available that you guys pay at all that is that cheap. But, he knows he’s going to get his money from us. We don’t actually, believe it or not, cause him any problems over there anyway. I wish we could go farther than that, but then you’ve got the Commissioners who have to sign the contract.

Councilmember Sutton: Right.

Loretta Townsend: So, that would be the place to start. I understand maybe that Bill Nix is the one who handles their contracts. I don’t know for the Commissioners. It’s all a new ball game as to who takes care of what over there, but I would like to so that we don’t have to go through this every year with them, you know.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay.

President Winnecke: Mrs. Abell?

Councilmember Abell: Loretta, I did talk to Phil Lawrence in Purchasing about your truck.

Loretta Townsend: He never did call me back at to this day. I had called him the day after we left here about it, and he’s never returned my phone call.

Councilmember Abell: Well, that’s neither here nor there. That’s not the story I got, but that’s okay. But, he can’t, you need to go through him for your negotiations on your truck, because he can get, if Kenny Kent is who you’re going to, they will probably agree to the QPA price that the state has negotiated, even without going through the QPA process in Indianapolis. He’s been successful in doing that with other vehicles here in town. You would still get the vehicle you want, it’s just a matter of having him do the negotiations on it.

Loretta Townsend: I would try, but honest to God, Marsha, he has not called me back. I’ve left...he wasn’t there to begin with, then I called and left it on his voice mail, and that was the same day that you suggested, which was fine with me, I don’t care where, you know, how do we get....he has not called me back as of right this minute.

Councilmember Abell: Well, you might want to try to give him a call.

Loretta Townsend: I’ll try.

Councilmember Abell: Because QPA’s are negotiated to save counties money by the state, and dealers who agree to fall under the QPA are interested in continuing that. So, I think he could be able to save us some money, if you would just call him–

Loretta Townsend: That’s fine. That’s, I mean–

Councilmember Abell: –and tell him which truck that you’ve looked at, tell him where you’ve looked at it, and then let him get a hold of them and work that out.

Loretta Townsend: I think that would be great, because what my concern is, what happens if the four are gone? I know it’s a used car salesman, or not a used car salesman, a car salesman, I’ve heard all the tales, but I’ve dealt with them, but I do believe the man is honest with the four 2005's. We don’t care if it’s a 2005 or a 2006, we just prefer it be a 2005, that will serve our purpose. So, that was my concern is the timing in it. But, if he doesn’t call me back, can I call you and have you have him call me? He might work it like that.

Councilmember Abell: Yeah, you can do that.

Loretta Townsend: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Any other questions or discussion? Loretta, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

COUNTY CLERK

President Winnecke: Next, County Clerk, page one in our budget books.

Susan Kirk: Susan Kirk, County Clerk.

President Winnecke: Good morning, Susie.

Susan Kirk: You know, Curt’s got a pretty nice truck. Curt Wortman, you might....oh, okay. So, do you want me to go through this and bore everyone?

President Winnecke: Yes, please, starting with your 2000, specifically the line items that are different or an increase from the previous year, I think are the items that Councilmembers have the most curiosity about.

Susan Kirk: Okay, for the, well, really, I didn’t, I really didn’t increase hardly anything except out at Kinder. Obviously, that’s, let’s see here, that’s line item 3603. Even though we are going to go through the destruction of records, so forth and so on, we still are going to have more records. No matter what you get rid of, it just keeps becoming more and more and more. I just feel like we’re going to end up needing that money in that line item. So, I did increase that by $5,000. Otherwise, I’m pretty well the same.

President Winnecke: Questions or discussion for the County Clerk? Mr. Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: Susie, back on line item 1990, Extra Help, can you talk about that a little bit?

Susan Kirk: Yes. I would, and Marsha can attest to this also, Misdemeanor and Traffic is just a nightmare down there. They have no room, the workload has increased, oh, every year. I would love to ask for another full time employee, but because there’s no space, there would be no place for them to sit, I thought it would be better maybe to ask for some part time help at least to file the shucks back. Get them out and file them back. That helps the girls, we took some money out of the a couple of different salaries and put it into part time help. It did help them down there to have someone at least file, to free up their time where they can do, you know, the entry, go to court, do their other duties. So, I put the $10,000 in there in hopes that, I know you guys don’t like to do part time help, but we need it so desperately down there. Like I said, I hope you’ll pass that, because it’s a cheap way to at least help them out, because they are standing up. They’ll be filing, so they don’t have a place to sit, because there’s not room for anybody else to sit down there.

Councilmember Sutton: The Office Supplies, I see a slight increase, a $10,000 increase there. You’ve spent almost $27,000, I guess through June 30^th here, talk a little bit about that. Are you expecting, what’s the, what are you anticipating?

Susan Kirk: Okay, already the, we’ve got Superior, Circuit, and the Clerk are splitting the cost of a new printer. It’s for our Jury View. The court system, the judges also in Superior and Circuit will be using that for their summons, to actually ask, you know, the people to come in and be on the jury. So, you take toner cartridges for that’s around $250, so, that’s going to be an increase in supplies for us just to keep that printer up and running for our Jury View. We’re just going to go ahead and absorb the cost, basically, from Circuit and Superior for their summons, of which now they do, I don’t know where they do it at, but this printer will be connected to them, and they’ll be able to get, it’s all going to be done a lot quicker, it’s just that it’s going to cost a little bit more for the toner.

President Winnecke: Other questions for the Clerk? Okay, let’s move on to Clerk IV-D, which is on page six of your budget books.

CLERK IV-D

Susan Kirk: Okay, we’re pretty well staying the same there. I know that, Teri, you had called about $16,000, wasn’t it you that e-mailed me about $16,000 as far as, it’s like when someone needs to pay their child support they get the little coupon book, and people aren’t paying that. Then they’re not paying their $20 fee, you said it was like $16,000. I do want to address that while I’m here. I’ve got my girls working on that, trying to collect it to help the IV-D money. We’re going to talk to the judges and see if we can’t, you know, get some of that, but the state now, we have ISETS, and they are continually taking more away from us, not less work, particularly, but money. We get the incentive funds, of which you’ll notice when we had to do the revenue coming in, that’s going to really drop, because the state will be taking that money instead of us getting it. So, I left, I noticed a couple of years here they really didn’t spend quite that much, but I have a feeling we will, because the state, like I said, is going to be decreasing our incentive money, which helps with supplies and different things over there. But, we are going to try and collect that $16,000 ourselves, at no cost to the county. Now, I noticed the Election Office wasn’t listed on here. Do I have to come back for that? Or can I do that now?

President Winnecke: No, it’s next.

Susan Kirk: Okay.

President Winnecke: Any other questions of the Clerk for IV-D?

Councilmember Abell: Susie, on 2600, Office Supplies, are you planning, are you buying a new machine with that $45,000?

Susan Kirk: I’m sorry?

Councilmember Abell: On–

Susan Kirk: On what machines?

Councilmember Abell: On page six, 2600, Office Supplies, requested $45,000, are you buying a new machine?

Susan Kirk: Are we buying a new machine?

Councilmember Abell: Or a printer or something?

Susan Kirk: No. What we’re going to have to be purchasing, the IRS came down along with the State Board of Accounts, and they have a lot of new rules now that are going to be almost impossible to follow. We do have to purchase some new security for that office.

Councilmember Abell: Okay.

Susan Kirk: So, cabinets, different things like that, that we have to have like two locks, and all kinds of things now. It’s very secure, or going to be very secure.

President Winnecke: Other questions? Okay we move on to the Election Office, page 67.

Councilmember Sutton: One more thing just real quick.

President Winnecke: I’m sorry.

Councilmember Sutton: Before we get away from IV-D. In terms of revenue on IV-D, it’s a one third split, right, for you guys?

Susan Kirk: I don’t know, Royce. I don’t know the exact split. Do you, Marsha? Do you remember what it is?

Councilmember Abell: It’s two different accounts.

Susan Kirk: Right. What’s happening, Royce, is that normally if you do child support you can pay it, come to the office, go to the bank, you can do it electronically, well, the state now wants almost everything sent to them first, then they send it to us. Because, in other words, like say you owned a business and you’ve got 50 employees, and you’ve got two people there that pay child support, it’s mandated that they have to send that to the state. So, they send it to the state, then the state sends us a report. Instead of going the opposite direction, or the direction we used to, now it just goes backwards. The state, now that they are doing that it’s going to take more of our incentive money.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, I’m just trying to get a sense of how much you’re working with on that incentive fund.

Susan Kirk: How much do we work with it?

Councilmember Sutton: No, how much do you have? How much is it generating?

Susan Kirk: Oh, let’s see, Sandie, do you remember what I put down there? Was it $300,000, something like that. I think it was around $300,000, I think. I projected the next couple of years, probably, we will be down, I think I cut it almost in half within the next couple of years. We’ll be lucky if we’re getting half.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay.

President Winnecke: Any other questions before we move on to the Election Office?

Okay, page 67.

ELECTION OFFICE

Susan Kirk: It’s pretty well the same. I just, I decreased election assistants down from, well, what was expended, actually $50,000 down to $45,000. I don’t know what this election’s going to be like. You’re not sure if people enjoyed voting so much last year, that they’re all going to come back because it was a wonderful experience, or if it’s going to go back to the old ways where, you know, this will be our lowest voter turn out in an election. We’re not too sure, but I’m banking on maybe a little bit lower. Let’s see, absentee teams, I did raise that some, because I feel like that’s going to be more of a trend now. They’re making it so easy for people to get absentee ballots, word has spread, and I feel like that we’re going to, that’s where we’re going to have the bulk of our work is going to be of the absentee teams that actually go out to the homes and vote people. All the rest of them pretty well stayed the same, except Assistant Canvassing Board, I would like election evening to have a few more people on hand for processing. So, to make that maybe a little bit speedier, because, obviously, we can’t count on ES&S to have too many people. Then, the inspectors, judges, clerks, attorney, that all stays the same. Precinct meals, same. Election Board meals, I put $650, I guess, is that for them to eat election day? Okay, I don’t think we’ll even use all of that. Office Supplies, keep that about the same. When you get down to Travel/Mileage, obviously that has to be a little bit more, because I anticipate absentee teams out and about a little bit more there. Postage/Freight, I went ahead and put that at $40,000, they spent $23,000. I don’t know why it was $37,000--

Councilmember Raben: You’re a line up. You’re a line too high.

Susan Kirk: I’m too high? Oh, I am too high. Good. Okay, I left that about the same. Mileage, like I said, I increased that a little bit. Printing, going to keep it right there. I’ve got a call into Rob McGinnis with ES&S, he’s coming down this Friday, I want to try to redo that contract, just tweak it a little bit with ES&S, because they do the precinct kits, and I think we can do our printing a little bit cheaper here. So, we’re going to go over that, the contract, and see if there’s anyway that we can maybe, like I said, tweak that. Legal Advertising, I upped that, and I don’t even know if that’s going to be enough, because we have to print all the candidates in the paper, and this is the largest ballot with the most candidates, and as you well know it costs quite a bit of money to advertise that in the newspaper. We have to list all of the candidates. So, like I said, we may not even make it with that. Equipment Repair, I don’t think we have that much to repair over there, so I lowered that one. Contractual Services, I left that just about the same. Repairs to Building and Grounds, I put $2,000 in there, which it won’t cost that much, but we want to remove the wall that is around the supervisors desk, because the supervisor wants to be able to see and hear everything that’s going on, and not have that barrier. So, I don’t know how much it costs to take that down, but we want to do that. Then they’re also talking about, the Commissioners, like buying 23 more machines, which means, I don’t know where we’re going to put them exactly, but there will have to be something built to store those machines. So, that’s why I’ve got $2,000 there. Let’s see here, Equipment Lease and Rental, that’s the copier. Office Furniture, you just never know, that’s not much, but a filing cabinet maybe. So, that’s pretty well it.

President Winnecke: I had a couple of questions. If you could chat about line 2700, Other Supplies. What falls into that category, Susie?

Susan Kirk: Other Supplies are things other than pens, pencils, you know, the regular little office supplies. It could be like, usually like, say if we needed a maybe a fax machine, or maybe you needed a chair, or something like that. It’s just one of those little, we’ve always had it in Voter Registration, it was just kind of little oddball things that didn’t seem to fall under the regular little pens and paper type thing, that’s what I took it out of.

President Winnecke: Then, could you speak to line 3530, specifically what is Contractual Services? Is that our arrangement with ES&S?

Susan Kirk: Contractual Services, which one is it, is that ES&S, too? So, we’re paying them double?

Councilmember Abell: Well, you’re not paying them double. Part of it, we had to separate part of ES&S’s expense because the state would only reimburse us for certain things. Some things they wouldn’t reimburse us for. Contractual Services, $10,000 is for the support that night that is not included in the state’s reimbursement.

Susan Kirk: What about Kinder, where does that come out of? When they deliver the machines, which one is that?

Councilmember Abell: That’s probably, that may be under that, too. I don’t know where that was.

Susan Kirk: Well, you only spent $8,000--

Councilmember Abell: (Inaudible) paid that.

Susan Kirk: The Commissioners? Oh, cool, that’s good. That’s even better.

President Winnecke: That might, I would be kind of curious to know specifically what falls under that.

Susan Kirk: We’ll go back and look up some of the old bills and see what was taken out of....I just know, Lloyd, that that’s what, you know, I did in Voter Registration when it didn’t–

President Winnecke: Right.

Susan Kirk: –honestly fall into the, like I said, pens and paper type thing.

President Winnecke: Other questions or comments? Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: One question, 3570, Janitorial Services, what is that for?

Susan Kirk: We have to pay, election day, you get your choice, we’ll either pay you $50 to rent your building, or you get a janitorial fee. Plus, the School Corporation, the janitorial fee, normally, say it was a church, it would be $15, but the School Corporation you have to actually pay those janitors what they make per hour. So, that’s why that’s in there. I mean, we have to have that. There’s no cutting, and I’m like, I would like to know if you’re going to be cutting something, I need to know what it is. Let me make the decisions if there’s anywhere we could possibly cut.

President Winnecke: Mrs. Abell?

Councilmember Abell: I just have one comment. I think this precinct is a part of the state’s agreement with them, and you may have to keep those for the three years that they reimburse us. We entered into an agreement where we got certain printing and things included with the purchase, so that we could get the state to pay for it, rather than us have to buy it separate later. You might want to check that contract for that.

Susan Kirk: We have, and I know that we are one of like four counties that really got a lot from ES&S. I talked to Rob and he seems to think that we can get our own. They are state forms, so, we can get our state forms, and I think he may give right there. I’m going to see about some of his voter outreach, some of that kind of money, and see if we can’t get that down just a little bit. If we can, if the Commissioners want to buy some more machines, maybe we can use some of that. But, because my Chief Deputy and I will be very hands on, very hands on with the election process. So, anywhere we can cut, we’re going to try to cut to help us out a little bit.

President Winnecke: Other questions or comments? Thank you, Susie.

Susan Kirk: You’re welcome.

President Winnecke: See you in a couple of weeks.

Susan Kirk: Curt, she’s waiting for the truck, I think.

SUPERIOR COURT

President Winnecke: Before we begin with Superior Court, I would like to briefly outline one line item that is new to the courts budget, and as Judge Dietsch and I have spoken, we’re not quite clear legally if it can be in there, and I’m going to ask Mr. Ahlers to research whether it can be in the courts budget or in the Commissioners budget, where it has historically been. That’s line item 3050--

Councilmember Abell: What page?

President Winnecke: –on page 105, Patient/Inmate Care, it’s in there for $1.7 million. This is for treatment of our county’s or our community’s juvenile offenders. As I said, historically this has been in the Commissioners budget, it has been moved to the courts budget this year after much discussion between various parties. Again, if we can research that to determine where the best place for that is legally, that would be great.

Terry Dietsch: I can get you started, Jeff.

President Winnecke: Judge Niemeier will offer more detail in just a bit, but there have been extensive discussions between Commission President Crouch, Judge Niemier, myself, and officials of the Youth Care Center. The YCC, as you may know, currently has a ten bed facility here in town, and oversees excellent programming for our community’s juvenile offenders. However, the court is forced to send a lot of juveniles, in fact all female offenders outside of our county because of a lack of space. The point of the discussions between the county and the YCC have focused on a longer term commitment between the county and the Youth Care Center, with an expanded facility of 36 beds. There are certainly details still to be negotiated, and certainly definitive direction lies with this body because of our budget oversight. The judge can offer some insight of his own into the discussions that have been on-going, but I can tell you based on my understanding of the discussions, it appears that the arrangement may be either a savings to the count operationally, on an annual basis, or at worst, maybe a wash, and certainly a savings in terms of whether this county wanted to go forward and build it’s own facility. I would say that a lot of attention has been focused in recent years on the jail and community corrections. Now we’re talking about making a real firm commitment, a stronger commitment to addressing our juvenile offenders, an idea that I think has a positive, long term effect on the future population of our new jail. So, it will be a few minutes before we get to that, but I wanted to sort of tee that up before Judge Niemeier came up to speak. So, without further ado, Judge Dietsch.

Terry Dietsch: Okay, Mr. President, members of the Council. From a budgetary standpoint, the court has no objection to that transfer. I simply have a concern whether it’s a proper item in the courts budget, as opposed to the Commissioners budget. But, we can find that out. Heeding your admonition about not discussing 100 accounts, I would like to call your attention to that particular 100 account. Then skip to the 2620, which is Office Supplies, and we have asked for an additional $2,000. The reason for that is the cost of paper, and particularly the cost of toner keeps increasing. This is our best estimate of how much we would need in that particular account. 3050, Patient/Inmate Care, that’s what has just been discussed. 3250, Law Books, we have entered into an agreement with West Publishing, whereby in effect we are getting a discount on some of our purchases on law books. In addition to that, we have been assured that a cost increase from year to year would not exceed, I think it’s four percent. Now, we’ve encountered some problems this year that we’re attempting to work out, but our best guess is that we’re going to need that $3,000 increase that we have requested for that particular account. Printing, we’ve asked for, that’s 3410, we’ve asked for an additional $1,000. That’s really because of the juvenile order books. From time to time they have to be replaced, and they are very expensive. Equipment and Repair, 3520, we asked for an increase in that. That is mainly for the maintenance contracts on the courts recording equipment. We normally receive from the Council $12,500 in that account. Last year, for whatever reason, well, because of the budget constraints, that was reduced to $11,000, and we understood that, but we would like to have that set in at $12,500, if that’s possible. Understanding, again, that there are budget restraints. 3620, Copy Machine Lease, we have asked for an additional $2,250. The reason for that is this, we were able to secure a copy machine for the new juvenile complex through the Building Authority. One year, without any maintenance costs. However, that year runs out in July of 2006. We’re going to have to undertake that. So, the $2,250 is for the last six months of 2006. Okay, oh, Continuing Education, if you will recall, 3730, if you will recall, last year you requested that the education funds, the funds appropriated for purposes of continuing education be consolidated into one account. We had no objection to that. In other words, we have training for probation officers, we have training for judges, we have training for magistrates, we used to keep those separate. You suggested we put them together, and that’s fine, we did. Okay, we feel that an additional $2,000 is going to be needed in that account for 2006 in order to take care of the educational requirements. 3932, CASA, we’re asking for an additional $5,000 in that account, even though there’s a lot in that now. The reason for that is we have, in effect, received an unfunded mandate by way of legislation that requires a CASA person to be appointed in every CSHCNS case in the county. That’s a considerable number. That’s why we’re asking for that amount of money.

President Winnecke: Judge, may I ask, may I stop you right there while we change the tape?

Terry Dietsch: Yes, certainly.

(Tape Change)

Terry Dietsch: The next item is 3941, Guardian Ad-Litem, we are asking for an additional $10,000 in that account, because in fiscal 2005, we ran out and had to come back and ask for an additional appropriation. In 3980, Transportation of Children and Miscellaneous, the juvenile division has informed us that they would like an additional $4,500, most likely because gasoline prices have risen, as we all know, and, in fact, we’re transporting more juveniles. That’s the reason for that increase. Office Furniture, 4210, we realize that, on occasion, all of the office furniture and office machines accounts are zeroed out, again because of budget constraints. We received nothing in that account last year. We do have file cabinets, desks and chairs that needed to be purchased or replaced in 2006, and that’s the reason we ask for that amount. Now, 4220, Office Machines.

Councilmember Sutton: Yes.

Terry Dietsch: That’s a hefty item, $95,000. Let me tell you why it was put in at that figure. Our liaison, Mr. Raben, and I think maybe, Mr. Winnecke, you were there also, we discussed this, we’re going to be forced to go to a new type of recording system that’s going to be compatible with a number of things, in the future namely. Probably what amounts to a mandate from the Supreme Court to have that kind of equipment. Also, it’s going to have some additional advantage, we use disks rather than tapes. We can record a lot more on disks than we can on tapes. Also, it is compatible with the type of equipment used in federal court for interpreters. We are using interpreters more and more and more, and it can be disruptive during a trial. But, there are devices that can be used where you can speak very, very softly into a mechanism and it allows the non-English speaking defendant to understand the interpretation without disrupting the proceedings. That’s something for the future. We put in our budget the figure of $95,000 because that is what we feel would be required to equip all the courts with that equipment. In all the years that I have been doing the budget for the court, with all kinds of equipment, my philosophy has been to replace equipment on an incremental basis, two here, two later, two later, so that we don’t have all the equipment getting in a state of disrepair at the same time, and have to come back periodically with a $95,000 request. I’m just simply here to tell you that if you feel it is more appropriate for us to have, say two, rather than do all these at once, that’s perfectly acceptable to us. But, we are going to need to start the replacement, and I think with a minimum of two. The only other item that I would like to call to your attention–

Councilmember Sutton: Judge, before you get away from the 4220--

Terry Dietsch: Pardon?

Councilmember Sutton: Before you get too far away from 4220, are there others who are using this equipment that you are proposing to purchase?

Terry Dietsch: Yes.

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, others like in the near area? What counties are using it?

Terry Dietsch: Yes, as a matter of fact I think they have one in Circuit. Almost, well, I can’t say this for certain, Judge Knight really is our computer guy, I think, at this time, an exceptional number of courts have switched to this system. I don’t know, it’s been a while since we’ve replaced recorders. Rosemary, would you know the difference in cost per unit? There’s not that much difference, is there?

Rosemary Norbury: No. Juvenile would have two units.

Terry Dietsch: What is the cost per unit? But, at any rate, Mr. Sutton, that is going to have to be done.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay. Is this just an estimate on what it costs? Or have you had an opportunity to price this out some kind of way or another?

Terry Dietsch: Well, this is a pretty close estimate. If you look at 95...what would that run, about $13,000, 13 something like that per year?

Unidentified: Per year.

Terry Dietsch: Yes, sir, Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Judge, did you say these devices will have the translating mechanism included now? Or that’s going to have to be added later?

Terry Dietsch: No, that would be additional. But, we don’t intend to do that right now.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay.

President Winnecke: Mrs. Abell?

Councilmember Abell: Judge, how much would two of these cost if $95,000...I don’t know how many all are, so, how many?

Terry Dietsch: How much would two cost?

Councilmember Abell: Yes.

Terry Dietsch: I think, if my math in my head is–

President Winnecke: About $26,000 or $27,000.

Terry Dietsch: –about $13,000--

Councilmember Abell: Per part?

President Winnecke: Per unit.

Terry Dietsch: That’s for the entire unit. That’s for the recording machine and the transcriber and everything.

Councilmember Abell: I have another question. Would any of this possibly be included with JTAC project?

Terry Dietsch: No. I don’t, no, I think not. I would be happy to check that.

Councilmember Abell: I would appreciate if you would just call and find out if there’s any chance they would be interested in contributing to this.

Terry Dietsch: Certainly. I would be happy to.

President Winnecke: Other questions of the judge on this issue or others before we move on? Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, I did have a question, since we’re hitting this for the first time through this budget hearings. On the law books, have we ever talked about buying all law books at one time, and then distributing them to who needs them? That would possibly give us the biggest discount on those books. You’re talking about buying one set, Circuit Court’s going to want a set, the Law Library is going to want a set, everybody comes to us asking us. I wondered, could we buy them all at one time, whether it’s out of the Council budget, or the Commissioners budget, put all those monies toward buying them all at one time.

Terry Dietsch: Well, but I don’t understand what you mean by buying them all at one time. You can’t buy them all at one time, because they come out periodically.

Councilmember Tornatta: You would buy the subscription at one time.

Terry Dietsch: No, no, you’re billed, for example, every year there are updates, which we call them supplements, okay? And they send you the supplements, because you put them in the back of the book. Well, they charge you for those, okay? If there are seven sets of supplements, they charge you for seven sets of supplements. Then, later on that year, they may come out with a new volume, and if they do, then you’re charged for the volumes. But, you don’t set a price at the beginning and say, law books for this year are going to cost us $22,000 and pay that. It doesn’t work that way. If that’s what you’re getting at.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, I’m getting at if you say you’re working on a commitment with this company so that you have a certain price that you’re going to pay, okay?

Terry Dietsch: No, no, no, no, no.

Councilmember Tornatta: Let me rephrase my question.

Terry Dietsch: Okay.

Councilmember Tornatta: You said you’re working out a deal with a specific company for your law books, right?

Terry Dietsch: Hopefully, so that they will not increase above a set percentage per year.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. Now, if everybody got on that same plan, or a better plan because they knew that we were going to purchase more products from them at one time, would that not lower our price, or potentially give us a better deal?

Terry Dietsch: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know, we’ve not explored that. That’s something to think about certainly.

Councilmember Tornatta: That’s my point. We’re going to be asking, all these companies make these books, there’s what two or three companies that actually do this process. So, if we got on with one of those companies and said we will purchase all our books through you, and we want a set deal, maybe a two year deal, maybe a three year deal, so that we can have some type of idea.

Terry Dietsch: Do I think they would do that? No. No, I don’t think that. I don’t think they would do that. People are in the business to make money, Mr. Tornatta, as you know.

Councilmember Tornatta: I agree, but they’re also in the business to negotiate. A lot of times when you’re talking about $100,000 worth of books that we buy, you could talk about some negotiation point, if they want the $100,000 piece of pie.

President Winnecke: Judge, I had two questions. One relates to the CASA and the Guardian Ad-Litem line items, what the difference, can you explain the specific difference in those two? As I understand they’re kind of similar.

Terry Dietsch: Judge Niemeier is more conversant with that.

President Winnecke: Okay, that’s fine.

Brett Niemeier: As Judge Dietsch mentioned earlier, we received an unfunded mandate, starting in July, where the court has to appoint either a CASA or a Guardian Ad-Litem in every child in need of service case. Quite frankly, that is not possible. But, with the eye to the future, and hoping to fulfill that obligation, and also to protect cases that are going to go up on an appeal, those cases where we’re certainly going to get appealed on, we have to appoint CASA’s or Guardian Ad-Litem’s. CASA right now has approximately 80 children on a waiting list. That’s months out before a CASA can be assigned. In those cases where I feel an appeal is imminent, I’m going to have to appoint a Guardian Ad-Litem. Guardian Ad-Litem’s actually get paid for their services, unlike a CASA, who volunteers for the CASA organization. That’s one of the reasons for the increase in the Guardian Ad-Litem account. Quite frankly, their services had been increasing lately as far as what they charge the court. We don’t have as many people out there who want to do that. At one time probably, when I took office five years ago, we were getting bills at $35-$40 an hour, now people are not willing to do that anymore. Attorneys are charging us $75-$100 an hour.

President Winnecke: So, the line item for CASA, specifically, is for someone who oversees the CASA volunteers, is that correct?

Brett Niemeier: Yes. It’s part of their operating budget.

President Winnecke: Right, okay.

Brett Niemeier: Yeah, it does not go to any volunteers. It’s just their staff.

President Winnecke: Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Were these new requirements mandated by the state government beginning in July so that we’re paying for them now? Or will they start January 1?

Brett Niemeier: They started in July, and we’re paying for them now. Of course, we haven’t seen really much effect yet, since we’re only, you know, just a month out.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

Councilmember Raben: Do you recall, in fact, if you’ll recall as recently as last Wednesday we made an additional appropriation for just this.

Unidentified: (Inaudible. Mike not on.)

Councilmember Raben: Yes.

Brett Niemeier: Yeah, Guardian Ad-Litem.

President Winnecke: Judge, while you’re here, you might expand on some of the comments that I made earlier about the discussions between the county and the Youth Care Center about potential arrangements with, for juvenile offenders.

Brett Niemeier: The court is very interested in developing a relationship or arrangement with the Youth Care Center to provide more secure detention for juveniles, so that they can be kept locally, instead of going to Vincennes. That’s where the majority of them are sent to right now. One of the line items that you’ll see is that we asked for another car this year for transportation. I will be glad to give up that request if you build us a detention center. You know, we have a car right now that we’re taking to Indianapolis at least twice a month, has over 170,000 miles on it. Quite frankly, I don’t think I would get in it and drive it to Indianapolis twice a month, but that’s what we’re having to transport our juveniles in. So, we would have some small savings by having our own detention center, but I think the more important question is, is what do our kids deserve in this community. If we’re really here to try to serve them and rehabilitate them and become productive members of our community, then we need to keep them here locally so that they can be, receive the services from a lot of different organizations in town, so they can work on issues within the family, try to get them straightened out before they turn 18, so we don’t fill up that new jail. I think that it’s long overdue, but we need a detention center here locally. I know President Winnecke said that we may save money, that may be awfully optimistic, I don’t know if we’re going to save money by doing this, but I certainly hope that we can at least contain costs in the future, and not spend anymore. Without any doubt at the size that we’re looking at right now, it would ultimately be a savings to this county five years down the road. Now, I can’t say that initially for this first year, but we submitted $1.7 million, I think that we can get fairly close to that, even if you later agreed to enter into a contract with the Youth Care Center so they could expand.

President Winnecke: Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: One quick question. I guess, you’re going to be coming with maybe a more detailed presentation in the near future. Will that be prior to the close of budget hearings? Will we come back to this?

President Winnecke: I think some of that’s predicated–

Councilmember Raben: Before September?

President Winnecke: Some of that is predicated upon the specific financial negotiations that are going on between the Commissioners and the Youth Care Center. I know Mr. Deisher has been involved in a couple of those meetings, and I think, at least on my latest conversation with President Crouch, I think they are getting closer. So, I do anticipate additional information coming forward, sooner rather than later.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I guess, I do have one concern before we address this concern. I want to explain that I’ve always been a great advocate of the Youth Care Center. I think we’re doing a lot better in regards to our children in putting them in custody with that organization than for instance Vincennes. That’s called the boys school, what do they actually call that?

Brett Niemeier: The boys school would Department of Correction. That’s Southwestern Indiana Regional Youth Village.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. But, there’s some of us that have addressed concerns in regards to spending public dollars for not-for-profits and private organizations. So, as you move forward, if you can balance it in regards to the grant, the up front money or per diem, I would like to see the per diem side of it. I think that looks cleaner, and, you know, then we’re only paying for our actual costs.

President Winnecke: I would just offer as a comment to that, I mean, I think that’s a very legitimate point. I would say that the estimates that the county has received preliminarily on what it would cost to remodel the existing jail, for instance, as a county owned and operated facility, anywhere from seven to ten million dollars, I believe are the numbers that the Commissioners have received. We’re talking about making a much smaller contribution on the front end to help the YCC move forward with it’s project. So, I think at the end of the day, if you analyze everything, its’ going to be a savings, and certainly a benefit to the young offenders who, many of whom have to go out of county.

Councilmember Raben: Again, I’m not arguing that. It may be our best option, but I would like to see it both ways. Maybe a balance between the two and see the per diem cost would be–

Brett Niemeier: We’ll be able to provide that to you.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. Thank you.

President Winnecke: Any other questions of Judge Niemeier?

Brett Niemeier: Okay. Thank you.

President Winnecke: Thank you, Judge. I do have one additional question of Judge Dietsch.

Councilmember Abell: So do I.

President Winnecke: Okay. Is there, and maybe it’s in the Sheriff/Jail budget, I don’t know, is there a line item anywhere having to do with equipment on this end for remote hearings from the new jail?

Terry Dietsch: That is, that’s not in the courts budget.

President Winnecke: It’s in the Sheriff’s budget? Okay.

Terry Dietsch: Is that how it finally ended up, Eric? Okay.

President Winnecke: Thank you. We’ll get to that later on.

Terry Dietsch: Alright. I will put in a plug for the juvenile request for a new car. We made that request last year, and withdrew it because of your financial problems. Oh, and by the way, Mr. President, last year you indicated that perhaps there might be some other way to do that. Were you talking about capital funds of some kind?

President Winnecke: I don’t remember what I said last year. I’m sorry.

Terry Dietsch: If that’s available, we have no objection to that.

President Winnecke: I got ya’. Any other questions of the judge? Mrs. Abell?

Councilmember Abell: Judge, could you speak to the Computer Network Specialist at $75,000?

Terry Dietsch: Let me tell you why we did that. We did that last year, and, Mrs. Abell, you know more about this than I do, obviously, there’s a difference of opinion about computerization at the present time. We put this item in our budget for fiscal 2005, and we informed the Council at that time that we put it in there because we didn’t know what was going to happen. Okay? Nothing happened, so, obviously, we didn’t get that money, and we didn’t want that money. The same thing holds true this year. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I don’t want to come up short, you know, and I’m not saying I think this is necessary. You know more about that than I do. You’ve worked with Judge Knight, and several other people, have you not?

Councilmember Abell: Yeah, and I was just wondering, I was not privy to where this has gone, and I thought maybe you had some information that I didn’t.

Terry Dietsch: No. No, Ma’am. I do not. I do not.

Councilmember Abell: Well, I would like to put a plug in for the courts that they need this person.

Terry Dietsch: Yeah, I just approached this from a budgetary standpoint.

President Winnecke: Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, one last question, line item 3730, Continuing Education, how much money do you have in that fund right now?

Terry Dietsch: Ms. Norbury will tell you. The bulk of that money isn’t spent until the beginning of September.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay.

Terry Dietsch: The latter half of–

Councilmember Tornatta: Did you encumber any money into that line item?

Terry Dietsch: No. No.

Councilmember Tornatta: You didn’t?

Rosemary Norbury: There’s $2,819.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, I didn’t know if you ever encumbered money in that line item.

Terry Dietsch: No. No.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay.

Terry Dietsch: You’ve given me an idea, if it’s possible.

President Winnecke: Other questions of the judge?

Councilmember Abell: I have one more question. Judge, this is another question you may not be able to answer, but I was in the court building, and I couldn’t help but notice tremendous renovations, do you have any idea who’s paying for those renovations?

Terry Dietsch: The Building Authority.

Councilmember Abell: Okay.

Terry Dietsch: The courts certainly aren’t going to pay for them.

SUPERIOR COURT SUPPLEMENTAL ADULT PROBATION

President Winnecke: Okay, let’s move on to page 170, Superior Court Supplemental Adult Probation.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, I guess, I would just ask the, on line 3930, Other Contractual.

Terry Dietsch: Oh, okay. We pay miscellaneous expenses, perhaps some testing equipment. We pay when the probation officers supervise work, public work, they are paying for that. What other kinds of supplies come out of that?

Rosemary Norbury: Any type of needs that our probation would use.

Terry Dietsch: Anything they need.

Rosemary Norbury: If they take a photograph of their person.

Terry Dietsch: Yeah. It’s all just simply miscellaneous items that are necessary in the operation of our probation department. You know, it could be from taking a person’s pictures, to getting cups for urine tests, anything that might come up.

President Winnecke: Okay.

Terry Dietsch: Oh, and also, as I told you in years past, from time to time, when we know we have sufficient funds, we will buy a big ticket item, like a copy machine out of this. So, it doesn’t have to come out of the General Fund. That’s what we use that for.

President Winnecke: Other questions or comments for the judge on this particular budget? Okay, thank you.

Terry Dietsch: Okay. If anyone has any questions between now and the next scheduled meeting, which is when? The 23^rd?

President Winnecke: I did forget about Drug Court. Do you want to speak to that? Page 110.

Terry Dietsch: No, I think–

President Winnecke: Oh, he’s coming. Okay. Okay, thank you.

Terry Dietsch: Thank you.

DRUG AND ALCOHOL DEFERRAL SERVICE

President Winnecke: Prosecutor, page 37 in your hymnals.

Councilmember Raben: Drug and Alcohol, did you mean to pass over them?

Stan Levco: We can do that one too.

President Winnecke: Oh, I’m sorry. Drug and Alcohol Deferral, that will be a brief one. Sorry, Stan.

Stan Levco: That’s okay.

Councilmember Abell: What page is that?

President Winnecke: Page 108. I apologize.

Deloris Koch: I’m Deloris Koch, the new director of the DADS program.

President Winnecke: Welcome.

Deloris Koch: Thank you. We have added some increases to certain line items, starting with Office Supplies, we increased only by $200. One of the big differences is with our computers we’ll able to print more in-house. We anticipate to cut out having pre-printed envelopes, fee statements, things that are printed outside on carbon, we hope to begin printing all of that in-house, and cutting out some of those costs. One of the big differences is that with the Indiana Judicial Center regulations has caused us to create, modify and produce many more forms than we were accustomed to before. Also, with the increase in clients over the past several years, that’s meant a lot more printing, we use paper more than we used to. Also, the regulations say that we have to give copies, every form a client signs they have to have a copy. So, we are printing and copying a lot more. Another thing that has increased that is we’re demanding more frequent reporting from our referral agencies, and many of those reports come in on fax. So, we’re also using more fax paper and printing. So, that’s also going up. On Postage/Freight, obviously, increased cost in mailing, increased numbers. Again, the effort to communicate with all the agencies that we refer to, information back and forth means more mailing. The, I believe last year, I’m real sure that we had to come back and request more money to be able to pay for postage for the rest of the year, after it had been cut. The next item that we increased was for Computers, and as you may notice last year it was zero dollars, and we’re asking for $10,000 this year, or next year. We do have new computers, all of our counselors, everyone, all the staff in the office have new computers, we have Internet capability, we have e-mail. We are discussing with a consultant modifying a client monitoring software package that he has done for other counties. We’re just trying to modify it to our needs. His estimate for setting that software package up for us is $3,600. We anticipate that we can get a grant from the Indiana Judicial Center for up to $2,500 to reimburse us for that part of it. The other expense would be scanning our old cards. We started the process last year, or actually this year, but we only made it up to 1991 and ran out of money. We would like to continue to scan our old card files, so that we can destroy the old card files and have all of that on disk. We would like to start from ‘92 up to the present. Our goal is to have all electronic files on our clients. We still have to have paper files, but most everything would be in the computer, would be accessible in the computer. We have great plans for that once we get it going. It’s been kind of a slow process, but we’re still working on it. It’s a process that started last year. I thank Mr. Tornatta for his help on that. But, that’s why it’s such a large number compared to our previous, we just never had the computer capabilities before. It’s nice to be in the 21^st century by the way. Dues and Subscriptions is the next one. The main reason for that increase, other than the fact that certification for our professional counselors in our office, the costs, of course, keep going up, but the other reason is, some time ago Mark Graham is the third person in our office who will become certified as an addictions counselor. That process was started years ago. It is culminating now. All we have to do now is, he’s done all the testing, we’re waiting on the official word so that we can go ahead and pay for that certification. That means that we now will be paying for three counselors’ membership and certification fees and dues every year. The certification renews every two years. So, there will be an increase in that cost. The cost of training also keeps going up, and, of course, we have to keep everybody trained to keep the certification to be qualified to do the counseling side of it. That’s, as far as all the increases, all that we asked for.

President Winnecke: Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: Excuse me, I would like to, just if you could real quickly, tell us the efficiencies that maybe the staff workers have seen since we kind of got you out of the typewriter era.

Deloris Koch: We’re actually just learning to use what we have. We have taken, some of us have started some computer classes at Ivy Tech, through JTAC funding. Three of the staff will go in October to get another class. We’re just in the process of beginning to learn what it can do for us, to be honest with you. We haven’t relied on it essentially. We’re still in between both systems. We’re still doing everything written, recorded paperwork. So, it’s almost more work in some ways, but we have a lot of plans for how it is going to simplify things a great deal. It will keep us up on monitoring clients a lot better. As I said, the reporting is increasing quite a bit too. Reporting, both our reporting to the courts is getting better, but also reporting from the other agencies coming in.

Councilmember Tornatta: Do you have a drop date when you think you’re going to start to trust the system, the new system?

Deloris Koch: No.

Councilmember Tornatta: Because I know your office is a kicking and screaming group to go that direction.

Deloris Koch: Well, we’re not kicking and screaming nearly as much. We’re ready to go, but we just have a lot of details to work out on the software package to get it to the point where we can really use it to the full benefit. There will be a lot of adjustments done. Another part of the cost will be the on-going consulting services with this gentleman, Brian Slater, who will, hopefully, will be the one that will set this software package up for us.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay.

Deloris Koch: So, we’ll be tweaking it as we go. But, we anticipate that we can do away completely with the card files. The client files we will still have to keep, anything the client signs has to be kept. Progress notes will have to be kept. At least when we close a file we have to be able to have everything in that file. We have to keep them up to six years.

Councilmember Tornatta: Has that eliminated some of your storage issues or not?

Deloris Koch: Not really eliminated anything yet. No, not yet.

Councilmember Tornatta: When you put these issues on disk, do you see that that will start to eliminate those?

Deloris Koch: That will help, yes.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. How many years did they go through the first round?

Deloris Koch: We found cards as old as 1974.

Councilmember Tornatta: Through ‘91?

Deloris Koch: Up to ‘91, went through ‘91.

Councilmember Tornatta: Did you see an appreciable amount of paperwork gone at that time?

Deloris Koch: Not yet, we haven’t destroyed the old cards yet. We still have all the cards as of yet. We plan, next time we get a hold of Piranha they’ll be going.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, thanks.

President Winnecke: Other questions of Deloris? Mrs. Abell?

Councilmember Abell: On this Computer/Data Management have you discussed that with the computer people here in our building at all?

Deloris Koch: Yes, Ma’am, very much so.

Councilmember Abell: And they’ve approved this gentleman to prepare this software package for you?

Deloris Koch: As far as approved, there hasn’t been any objections. They’ve, Joe Anslinger’s been in with every meeting that we’ve had with this gentleman, and brought up certain questions and has been in the discussions. But, we haven’t officially hired the fella yet. We just now have, we’ve talked with him a couple of times. He’s showed us what it can do. We’ve talked about changes we want to make, and he’s made an estimate on the costs. That’s as far as we’ve gotten.

Councilmember Abell: Well, maybe, Tim, do you know anything about this at all?

Tim VanCleave: Very little.

Deloris Koch: Joe Anslinger has been involved in the meetings with us.

Councilmember Abell: You know, we pay a big amount to two or three different computer companies already, and I hate to see computer stuff start popping up in everybody’s budget. If we want to have a contract with GIS, Mark Rolley, or SCT or whoever, I think we’re going to have to stay under that.

Deloris Koch: One of the reasons we’ve talked to this gentleman is that he’s been able to set up for other court programs the same package. All he’s having to do is modify that package for us.

Councilmember Abell: I think Court View has a package that could probably work that came with the court program.

Deloris Koch: Yes, the probation....we have a little problem with getting kicked out of Court View every now and then. If I can’t have access, it’s not really going to help me much.

Councilmember Abell: I understand that. The county paid almost two million dollars for that package. So, we would sure like to use it. Thank you.

Deloris Koch: I appreciate that.

President Winnecke: Any other questions? Thank you, Deloris.

Deloris Koch: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Appreciate it. Prosecutor, page 37. I will just announce now for everyone’s planning purposes, after we get down through Prosecutor Pre-Trial Diversion, we’ll take a brief break. You may change tapes.

(Tape Change)

PROSECUTOR & GRANTS

President Winnecke: Okay, Mr. Levco.

Stan Levco: Okay, I’m Stan Levco, Prosecuting Attorney. There are three items in my budget that have changed from last year that I assume you’ll want to address, so let me say they are–the first would be–it’s not a new position. An investigator for the Adult Protective Services, called APS, but it’s one that because of a grant money running out that I am asking the county to partially fund. The other would be–

Councilmember Abell: What’s that line number?

Stan Levco: That would be 1450. The other one would be line item 3371 on Computer Hardware where we are requesting $15,000 for the purchase of a new server for Pros-Link with a software package for Indiana prosecutors. The final one would be 1083, 84 and 85 which are the matching grants that we’re asking you to fund. So shall I start first with the investigator?

President Winnecke: Sure.

Stan Levco: Essentially, I would just be briefly, but Gayle Angle is going to come up and speak much more authoritatively than I can. This is really an item that the Legislature gave to the prosecutors. It’s not–Adult Protective Services, although occasionally we file criminal charges isn’t really an integral part of the crime fighting part of the Prosecutor’s Office. It’s more helping adults who are in trouble. We have, because Vanderburgh County is a base center, we have six counties that we have to serve. We had a federal grant that money was cut out. We have four people in there. Two investigators, the secretary and the head of it. We’ve already voluntarily cut out the secretarial position, I’m not sure that was a good idea on my part, but I just didn’t want to ask you to have, you know, to fund two people. Perhaps I’m actually considering coming back and changing my mind on that, but what I have asked for at least for today is for you to fund the extra part of the investigator which is actually a total of only $9,574 more than you were funding last year when you were doing the matching grant and if it’s alright with you, I’ll ask Mrs. Angle to further explain that.

President Winnecke: That would be great.

Stan Levco: I know she has talked with many of you already.

Gayle Angle: Mrs. Angle is my mother, actually. Thank you. Good morning. First of all I want to thank everybody that I have talked to in the last couple weeks for taking the time to meet with me to give me an opportunity to tell you just how important this position is, not only to the Prosecutor’s Office, but to the community. As you can tell with the letters of support that we’ve received, we received a lot from people who are affected by what we do. But most importantly, for the endangered adults in our community, outside of children probably the most vulnerable population that we have. These individuals include elderly, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the mentally disabled. Those people have lived and worked in our community all their lives. As veterans they have served our country and we see a lot of veterans in what we do. I think they deserve–actually I think we owe them the right to be safe and to be protected in living in this community. When they are no longer able to take care of themselves or they are being abused or neglected by care givers and family members we are the agency that is called in to look into these situations. Without the adequate staff my biggest concern is that without that staff we lose that ability to intervene quickly in these situations and as a result I think people will continue to suffer needlessly and some people may even die. That is a big concern. We are understaffed as most agencies are understaffed, I understand that. However, the services that we provide cannot be duplicated by any other agency in our community outside of law enforcement. Believe me, when the Evansville Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department is on a scene where they have an 85 year old woman that can’t get out of bed living in an horrible situation, they want us there. My investigators who are here have the expertise and the training to be able to assess these situations. The beauty of it right now is that we’re able to get to those situations very quickly. Without the adequate staff that’s probably not going to be possible. The position that we lost is a key position in that it’s our support staff. That person answers the phones. Sometimes up to 20 and 30 calls a day. One day last month we received over 60 calls in one day. That person allows us to be able to be out in the field to do the work that we need to do. She enters the data that is required by the state to continue to get our funding that we already have. Up to this point we have entered almost 750 reports just in this year. Just reports from the Bureau of Developmental Disability, group homes, nursing homes. We’re all required to enter that data. So that is almost a full-time job in itself. I think the most important thing though is that it’s that human voice that we have in the office. We don’t have a voice mail. When people call and they want to give us a report it’s important to talk to someone. Sometimes it takes up to 15 to 20 minutes just to fill out one report. We have to gather a lot of information when we do our investigation so, you know, that’s a key position that we’ve lost and we’re going to have to restructure the way we do things in the office just with three of us. My investigators, we cover six counties. It’s about 2,200 square miles. The furthest we go is Derby, Indiana, 96 miles away where they’ll ask you what kind of car you’re driving if you need directions. So we go into some very rural areas and far away. We can put on 500 to 600 miles a month just on our cars just in mileage. Anywhere between 20 and 30 investigations–I’m sorry, it’s 30 to 35 investigations a month. That’s about a 38 percent increase from last year. The population that we serve is growing. You know, they’re living longer. The population between 80 and 95 will increase 56 percent in the next five years. You know, this is the bulk of the people that we see. Since the first of January we have done 76 investigations of people just in this age group. So the lack of adequate staff in our office in my professional opinion, I think, will put lives at risk so the money that we’re asking for is not a lot to maintain, I think, the safety of these individuals in our community.

President Winnecke: Thank you.

Gayle Angle: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Any questions of Ms. Angle? Mr. Wortman.

Councilmember Wortman: I think those requests are well worth to be considered.

President Winnecke: Okay, thank you.

Gayle Angle: Thank you.

Stan Levco: On 3371 Computer Hardware, this is a server that is already in place, but is apparently on its last legs. If you ask me a technical computer question I will refuse to answer it and ask Mr. VanCleave to answer it.

President Winnecke: Any questions of Mr. Levco on the technical question to which he has no reply?

Stan Levco: Okay. On the matching grants this is–we requested this last year and you didn’t see fit to give it to us last year, but I’m going to request it again this year. On 1083 which is–actually there is no change in that. That’s the drug program, I’m not asking for an increase in that. In the 1084 Victims Witness I am asking for $23,516. This is a deficit we’ve been running. It’s a very bizarre thing that’s happened is the reason is because we had a person in this position the last couple of years she worked in the Prosecutor’s Office her retirement benefits, the county has determined that her retirement benefits are coming out of that. So that’s bleeding that fund and it has been for a number of years. On the 1085 Stop Domestic Violence we’re asking for an increase of $7,995. That also has been operating at a deficit.

President Winnecke: Questions of Mr. Levco on any of these matching grants or other issues? Okay, thank you.

Stan Levco: Thank you.

PROSECUTOR IV-D

President Winnecke: Prosecutor IV-D.

Stan Levco: I haven’t asked for any more this year unlike other years.

President Winnecke: This budget, I think, is pretty–is flat aside from salary increases.

Stan Levco: Yeah, right.

President Winnecke: Mrs. Abell.

Councilmember Abell: Mr. Levco, what is the collection rate, percentage, that your office is doing and reporting back to the state that gives us some refunds on these IV-D cases?

Stan Levco: Oh, the percentage is 66 and two-thirds.

Councilmember Abell: No, I mean, the report that they give about how successful you are in setting up paternities and those type of things that relates to whether or not the percentage comes back to us. There is a report.

Stan Levco: Do you mean numerically in the state?

Councilmember Abell: This county–

Stan Levco: Where we rank in the state?

Councilmember Abell: Yeah.

Stan Levco: Low and I hope we are remedying that. I think we’ve had a change and I think we will, but it is low.

President Winnecke: Other questions in this budget? Okay then I think we can go to Pre-Trial Diversion, page 172.

PROSECUTOR PRE-TRIAL DIVERSION

President Winnecke: Again, this is pretty straight forward. I don’t know that there will be any questions or issues here. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Levco. Appreciate your time.

Stan Levco: Okay, thank you.

President Winnecke: At this time we’re going to take a ten minute break and we’ll reconvene at uh–we’ll round up 10:40. We’ll reconvene at 10:40.

SUPERIOR DRUG COURT

President Winnecke: Okay, we will reconvene.

Councilmember Raben: We’re going to need one more.

President Winnecke: Okay. We’ve got four.

Jeff Ahlers: Since you’re not voting I don’t know if it matters, does it?

President Winnecke: Me, you, Marsha and Troy. Okay, we’re going to begin with Drug Court, Judge Trockman has a court conflict so we’re going to move him up on the docket, as it were. Page 110 in your budget books.

Wayne Trockman: And thank you for accommodating me. I did ask two attorneys to allow me to leave for 15 or 20 minutes. This is the cash match which I appear annually to request. This is the–these are the Byrne funds that we receive. This covers about a third of the Drug Court budget. The total Byrne money covers about a third of the Drug Court budget and the county’s cash match on this grant is $31,919. You have the breakdown. It is almost identical to last year’s request except there is one–uh, there are two items. We’ve got about a $3,500 increase in office supplies. We bought some equipment, but the bigger item was $7,000. We reached an agreement this year with the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute where they significantly increased our funding and I’m going to be bringing to the Commissioners, soon I hope, a contract where we are going to enter into an agreement with Southwestern Indiana Mental Health to start providing services to dually diagnosed individuals who are in the Drug Court, and by that I mean those who suffer either from primary or secondary diagnoses of mental illness and we’re finding that’s a large–a much larger portion of our population than we realized in the beginning, so we’ve reached that agreement. Southwest is supplying half of the funds for that. We’re getting the other half from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute and, of course, the county provides its 25 percent match. So the total request is $31,919 and that is slightly higher than last year due to those two changes.

President Winnecke: Any questions of the judge?

Wayne Trockman: We had a graduation last night. Councilman Tornatta was there. Everyone is always welcome to attend. We broke 100. I think we’re at 106 graduates. We have only, and the Sheriff and Chief Deputy I know will understand the significance of this, we have only four re-arrests of all of our graduates in the five and a half years that you have helped to fund this community project. That’s a good number. Of course, that number is over a short period of time and obviously will change, but we’re having some degree of success thanks to your help.

President Winnecke: Other questions or any questions or discussion? Judge, thank you.

Wayne Trockman: Thank you for taking me out of order.

President Winnecke: Keep up the good work.

Wayne Trockman: Thank you.

PUBLIC DEFENDER

President Winnecke: Public Defender, page 86.

Steve Owens: Good morning.

President Winnecke: Good morning.

Steve Owens: We have requested or I have requested three additional–funding for three additional positions and it’s not quite as bad as it looks on the face of it. One of those positions is a Deputy Public Defender in Juvenile Court. As you know and as you’ve heard, Juvenile Court has an increasing case load. They’ve increased the number of courtrooms they’re running. We presently have three part-time Public Defenders in that court. We rotate roughly every third week. Although they actually end up being in there virtually every week. Their caseloads under the Commission’s standards set out by the Public Defender Commission are easily twice as high as they should be. The unfortunate thing is that the Public Defender Commission does not give us reimbursement for CSHCN’s cases, TPR and that sort of thing. The only thing that we do get reimbursement for if we are within the Commission guidelines is juvenile delinquency cases. I can’t sit here today and tell you that if you add a fourth Deputy Public Defender that we can absolutely bring that court into line with Commission guidelines and then be able to seek reimbursement for at least a portion of all four of those salaries and benefits. What I can tell you is that we are going to face in the very near future a mandate basically from the Public Defender Commission to bring all of our courts, Misdemeanor, Juvenile and Felony, within the standard guidelines. That’s going to put us in a position of doing one or two things. Either funding additional people in a large chunk at some point or essentially saying to the Council and the courts we can’t accept any more cases. I don’t particularly want to do that. I don’t think that’s a good policy and I don’t believe the courts are going to be real receptive to us telling them sorry, we just don’t have any more people. We can’t fund them, we can’t provide them because we cannot provide adequate representation. There has been a lot of talk about doing things in Juvenile Court to prevent them coming back as adult offenders. If we can’t provide the adequate representation to people that are in Juvenile Court, both as CSHCNS and paternities as well as delinquencies, we’re going to see some of those folks coming back. As Judge Niemeier pointed out, everybody now is entitled to a Guardian Ad- Litem and a CASA. I foresee as a result of that, that there are going to be more appeals in areas that are reimbursable. It’s an issue that the Chief Public Defender Association has taken up with the Commission. We are advocating that they change those rules, but given the level of state funding at the present time and given the fact that there are forty roughly counties who have not participated in the Public Defender Commission, I don’t see that happening in the near future. I do, however, believe that they are going to mandate that. So that position will be funded entirely by a new appropriation from the General Fund. I have also asked for a full-time Deputy Public Defender to handle felony cases. As some of you may know, we recently changed a position within our office, filled a vacancy and made that position a full-time Deputy Public Defender who handles nothing but felonies. That allows us to pick up at least double the case load he was handling as a part-timer. What I am proposing is that we take this position, make it a full-time position and eliminate a felony part-time position. The net increase would not be as significant as if we were funding this entirely from the General Fund as a new position. I think I set out it’s roughly, I think, a $15,000 a year increase in salary based upon what the projected salary for 2005 or 2006 may be. Finally, the other position that I’ve asked for is an Administrative Assistant, Office Manager, director of the office basically. My duties are split about 50/50 between handling a caseload and doing administrative functions and frankly I’m not sure that my time is better spent doing some of the administrative functions that I’m required to do as opposed to other things like mentoring, training, attempting to come up with other plans that would make the provision of indigent services better. What we would propose to do with this, and this is a position that has already been rated by the Job Study Committee. It’s a position that I have asked you on a couple of occasions to fund, and given the fact that the tight budget constraints that we have, probably what I would propose to do with this position is actually promote one of the secretaries or add to her duties and put her in this position. She would continue to fulfill secretarial duties as well as being an office manager. She would take on some additional duties. So, again, the net increase in terms of what we are presently paying that particular individual and what we would be paying them if we fund this position would not be as large as it would seem at first blush. We’ve also asked for increases in a variety of line items and one of the things that we’ve asked for is the Travel and Mileage. We’ve asked for an increase of $1,500. We have an investigator that is on staff who does a lot of travel. We have attorneys who are traveling, unfortunately, to and from Indianapolis for continuing legal education which is where most of the seminars are presented. And given the increased cost and given the number of people that are drawing on that account, I foresee that we’re going to need an increase and that is why we are asking for the $1,500 increase. Training budget, we have asked for a significant increase from $2,000 from last year which was approved up to $5,000 this year. And if you look at the printout that I assume that you get that we get, you’ll find that there seems to be a rather large balance within that account line item. One of the reasons for that is we incur--the bulk of those training expenses are incurred in September when we send a group of people to the death penalty seminar in Indianapolis. We are required by statute, by court rule, to be certified in death penalty litigation and each death penalty case if we have one requires two certified attorneys. What we attempt to do is send a group every year, a different group, so that we have overlapping certifications because it has to be done every two years. So given the number of attorneys who are required to have continuing legal education credit and given the number of seminars that are offered, we find that we’re running short in that particular line item and we’ll probably continue to run short. In an effort to somewhat alleviate that, we are investigating now having our office certified by the Commission of Continuing Legal Education so that we can provide in-house seminars to the Criminal Defense Bar, primarily my office, so that these fellows can get their continuing legal education credit here. We will be limited to the number of hours that we’re able to provide. We will not be able to provide death penalty training in-house, but in an effort to somewhat reduce the travel expenses of sending people to Indianapolis as well as the continuing education budget we’re going to try to do that in this location. The final three items are Computer Data Management and I almost hate to bring that up with Councilman Abell, but we have attempted to pretty much operate within the Courtview system. We’ve done that fairly successfully, but there is a number of things that we’re finding that we need. One is a scanner because we have a number of documents that are presented to us that we need to look at and scan and do a variety of evidence presentations. As you know, Circuit Court went to an evidence presentation system. We don’t have a laptop that we can actually put our cases and our exhibits on and go to court and hook into that presentation system. The only laptop in our office is privately owned. We use the tar out of it because we print all of our photographs off of that laptop because our networking system does not have the capability of doing that. Obviously, we also can’t pick up the desktop with us and take it to court. The OCR software goes along with the scanner and those are the three items that probably we are going to need to invest in to keep us with our counterparts in the Prosecutor’s Office within the next year. We’ve done without so far. We probably, truthfully, can do without for a while longer given the budget constraints, but we’ve put it in there nevertheless. Investigative Contract Services we’ve asked for $5,000 a year increase. Again, we are handling roughly sixty percent of all the new felony cases that are filed in Vanderburgh County. Most of those cases require some investigation. Under the Commission standards we should have two full-time investigators in our office. We don’t, we have one. We also contract with an investigator on a case-by-case basis. I foresee that this year we will again probably top out on our investigation expenses and our contracted services. Contract services are also going to be including things like expert witnesses, DNA, homicide investigations of that sort of thing. Finally, the last item we’ve asked for increase in is Pauper Expense. Pauper Expense in our office takes up mental health hearings, conflict cases, a number of outside cases that we have to contract out either because we are over our numbers for the year or we have conflicts. The ideal situation in a multiple defendant case would be where only one of the defendants is represented by someone who is salary. Unfortunately, we are not able to do that even though they treat our office as a firm. So what we’ve done is we’ve attempted to contract out only those cases where we have an actual conflict or where we can’t avoid the appearance of impropriety by having five attorneys in my office represent five defendants in a common criminal case. We’ve incurred about $40,000 this year in pauper expenses through today. Maybe a little bit more than that. I foresee that account running out by the end of the year and we’ve asked for a small increase for next year.

President Winnecke: Steve, I have a couple of questions. First, do you know and if you may not, Councilman Raben may, on your rent, why that is not included in the line item in the Commissioner’s rent budget?

Councilmember Raben: Because of reimbursements.

President Winnecke: Okay, thank you.

Steve Owens: That would have been my answer. My understanding was that’s the reason.

President Winnecke: Okay. And the other question relative to the Juvenile Court Public Defender request, did I understand you to say that you intend to eliminate a part-time?

Steve Owens: No. The Juvenile Public Defender is a part-time position. That would be an additional position.

President Winnecke: This is a part-time position?

Steve Owens: Yes.

President Winnecke: Okay. I’m sorry. Other questions or comments? Mr. Sutton.

Councilmember Sutton: Mr. Owens, we, I guess just with some of our earlier discussion was talking about this whole increase and the caseloads related to juveniles and any particular things maybe that you might attribute to this increase in the caseloads as you’re seeing it from your perspective?

Steve Owens: A more active juvenile court. I mean, I don’t mean to be flip, but it seems that Judge Niemeier has instituted a number of new programs. He is taking a more aggressive approach with other programs and it seems that the number of cases that are now coming through is greater than it was say five years ago. The other thing is in most of these CSHCNS paternity type cases, each parent is going to be entitled to a Public Defender. So since they’re on opposite sides of the fence, typically, that counts basically as two cases for us.

Councilmember Sutton: Perhaps maybe as we, a few years ago spent time as we saw the jail population continue as well a number of key people involved in the system sat down together and talked about and discussed ways of how to be a little bit more efficient, how to get that number down and maybe we’re at that point where on the juvenile side we need to do the same type of thing. If we’re continuing to see these increases because I’m not quite sure. You know, we’ve talked–I heard a discussion we had earlier talking about adding to the Youth Care Center being able to house more juveniles. I’m not totally sure if continuing to incarcerate and lock away is the total answer and it definitely doesn’t reduce the amount of traffic coming through your doors and who you have to deal with. It doesn’t reduce what is coming through Judge Niemeier, but I’m thinking there is a need here to really sit down with some of the key players like yourself and some of the others who are dealing with this issue to talk about how we can address this more proactively because it does seem rather apparent that the caseload continues to grow and you’re having needs, the courts are having needs. Just a number of different areas are being hit with this.

Steve Owens: I think you’re correct. I certainly wouldn’t object to doing that. I think Judge Niemeier probably is the person who could give you a better view as to why particular areas are growing like they are. We react, so to speak, to what the courts give us or what the courts tell us we’re going to need to do. To the extent that in Juvenile or Felony or Misdemeanor a person comes in and is entitled to an attorney. Once they are appointed to our office we sort of just have to take that case. I can tell you the numbers are growing. I can’t always tell you why. I think that the judge who sees that on a daily basis, especially in the juvenile area, could probably give you a better explanation than I can as to why those numbers are growing and how we can best address that.

Councilmember Sutton: We’re going to spend like around $1.2 million this year on Patient Inmate Care which is specifically the line item that deals with housing juveniles in a variety of facilities all over and it’s just the burden upon families, this community and this county overall as taxpayers is growing to an extent where we’ve got to really take a look at this.

Steve Owens: I don’t disagree with that.

President Winnecke: Any other questions for the Public Defender? Thank you, Steve.

Steve Owens: Thank you.

President Winnecke: See you in a couple of weeks. We’re going to change the tape as the Sheriff approaches.

(Tape Change)

SHERIFF

President Winnecke: Good morning, Sheriff.

Brad Ellsworth: Good morning, Council. I’ve submitted the budget. There are some increases, obviously. Most of those major increases are in direct relationship to the new jail and new personnel and it goes along with that. There are some reductions and those are also in relationship to the new jail that combine community corrections and the jail staff. Also there are, I don’t know if I’d call them increase, the request to reinstate some of the funds that were zeroed out in last year’s budget. I would answer any questions, if you have some, directly. There is one I’d like to address specifically and that’s on the automobiles or patrol vehicles. We were zeroed out last year and got no cars. Luckily, the cars we did get from 2004 came in late and that helped us but the milage is going up quite drastically on those. With that high milage also goes repair bills. I’d like the Council to take a close look at our fleet request this year. I don’t believe...it’s my understanding that the CCD funds...we used to...in history, we used to put in both places the CCD and with the Council and someone would make a decision which account to look at. I’m not sure if CCD funds are going to be available for that this year. I’ll take any questions that you guys might have and see if...

President Winnecke: I would start in the budget book on page nineteen. That’s line 1130-0104 Deputy Sheriff.

Brad Ellsworth: What was the line?

President Winnecke: 104. It that one of the new positions from juvenile?

Brad Ellsworth: It should be. I haven’t requested anybody new since that time.

President Winnecke: I thought it probably was but I just wanted to clarify that.

Brad Ellsworth: That’s correct.

President Winnecke: Okay. The other question I had, if I can find it real quickly, on page 22 line item 1920, Insurance for $16,100. I do not recall from any of our previous discussions over the years what that was. What is that?

Brad Ellsworth: I may have to be like the Prosecutor and check. I’m told that it’s additional life insurance for the deputies.

President Winnecke: Other questions or comments for the Sheriff? Well, I’ll continue while they’re thinking. For a half million dollars on the vehicle request, how many vehicles do you project you’d be able to purchase for that?

Brad Ellsworth: Probably ten.

President Winnecke: Ten.

Brad Ellsworth: Yes. Oh, I’m sorry. Twenty. We had talked about trying to get the replacement as we got none last year. I think, Councilmember Abell and I have talked about that and make the full request because we’ve been going on ten cars a year.

President Winnecke: Right.

Brad Ellsworth: Thank you, Councilmember Raben.

Councilmember Raben: What he meant to say is that he’s asking for twenty but would be happy with ten.

Brad Ellsworth: And a tricycle.

President Winnecke: Other questions relating to the sheriff’s budget before we move on to the jail budget?

Councilmember Tornatta: Training.

President Winnecke: Training, line item 3310. We could talk about that a little bit. That’s double what it was last year.

Brad Ellsworth: I think it had been $30,000. It had normally been $30,000. I’m kind of going off my rationale book also.

Councilmember Raben: If you look back on the history of expenditures, they were in excess of twenty-five in the past. We allocated fifteen last year and the spending, if you keep at the pace you’re going, it looks like it will be about twenty. Is there anything different or unusual going on there?

Brad Ellsworth: It doesn’t include probably the tens of thousands spent out of the commissary account on training, Councilman. We have a mandated forty hours training for the deputies and that just barely covers what they need. We have continued on-going training year round. Not just the basic but anytime there’s new laws that come in and new techniques, we have to train to that. I would venture to guess that we probably double anything that the Council puts in out of commissary, at least.

President Winnecke: And 3370, Computer?

Councilmember Raben: Real quick before you go to Computer, does that also cover the academy, too, for training?

Brad Ellsworth: That won’t be an expense. The academy in Plainfield is no cost to the department. Can you give me a line item?

Councilmember Tornatta: 3370.

Brad Ellsworth: What page for us?

Councilmember Tornatta: Budget book 24.

Brad Ellsworth: Repair, upgrades, maintenance on the current system.

President Winnecke: I just have one other question, Sheriff, on the same page, line item 3540 the Maintenance Contract. That’s a pretty healthy increase. What is that a result of?

Brad Ellsworth: Moving to the new facility, new maintenance agreements that will go with the facility.

JAIL

President Winnecke: Any other questions before we move on to the Jail? Okay, we’re moving on to the Jail - page twenty-five.

Brad Ellsworth: Again, personnel is a rather large increase. It increased to $50,000 from $10,000, line 1850 Union Overtime. Anticipating the addition of the new employees, holidays, time off. Jail expenses 2005 was put in at zero. We had traditionally been getting $60,000 was the average we were getting in past years. It was zeroed out last year and we put in $100,000 there. Gas and oil went to $10,000. New line item for transport since the jail will now have transport issues. Food is based on simple math of multiplying out the number of inmates times three meals a day. The Contractual Services is going to $100,000. Basically estimated what the jail doctor costs us and then doubling that for a jail dentist. Anticipating approximately the same price for having a dentist visit the jail.

President Winnecke: Sheriff, I’ll ask you a couple questions while we’re just carousing here. We spoke earlier about the equipment for the remote hearing. Where’s that in here?

Brad Ellsworth: Should be the Jail budget.

President Winnecke: Bond issue. Gotcha.

Brad Ellsworth: That’s what I meant by Jail budget but a different Jail budget.

President Winnecke: Line 2200 on page thirty, the $100,000 request for Jail Expense. What specifically catches into that line item?

Brad Ellsworth: Sheets, blankets, towels, pillows, mattresses, cleaning supplies.

President Winnecke: Okay, gotcha. Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: On page thirty-one, number 3520 Equipment Repair. Will not all that equipment be new? The request is for $25,000.

Brad Ellsworth: What’s the line item, Councilman?

Councilmember Goebel: 3520 on page thirty-one.

Eric Williams: Councilman Goebel, basically that’s going to maintain since most of that equipment will be new. What we are going to transfer over we’re going to try to refurbish and get it up to speed plus we want to have a pretty regimented maintenance routine on all that equipment so that we don’t get behind and find ourselves making big capital expenditures replacing equipment as opposed to keeping it in good repair. We are trying to get some maintenance things set up and on line.

President Winnecke: For the record, Eric Williams, Chief Deputy. Other questions or discussion points for the Sheriff on the Jail budget? Mrs. Abell.

Councilmember Abell: Sheriff, line item 3530 on page thirty-one Contractual Services at $100,000. What does that include?

Brad Ellsworth: We are anticipating that will include the jail doctor that makes his two visits a week to the jail site. We anticipate, as you know, we are going to have the dental operatory out there so we’re not transporting inmates to the dentist. We anticipate something similar in a dentist contract. That’s just an anticipatory amount doubling that.

Councilmember Abell: Okay. One other question. Uniforms at $10,000, is that for the inmates?

Brad Ellsworth: No, that’s for when we hire new employees to supply them with their agreed upon uniform.

Councilmember Abell: Does that not fall under the clothing allowance?

Brad Ellsworth: No. Clothing allowance is a yearly, I don’t want to say the word stipend.

Councilmember Abell: You can say it, that’s what it is.

Brad Ellsworth: The yearly...

President Winnecke: Allotment.

Brad Ellsworth: Allotment, thank you, that the employees get to keep their uniforms upgraded and fresh. That’s a contract issue.

President Winnecke: Mr. Goebel.

Councilmember Goebel: Just in general, do you anticipate maybe with the new employees we will have a lowering of the number of overtime hours we have to fund in the next fiscal year?

Brad Ellsworth: Well, going out to the new facility and not having worked there at all, we think we have the staffing analysis done. We always want to hope that...one thing we have to do is, again in the contract, the employee has the option to go comp time or to be paid for that. It’s hard for us and they can change that. It’s not a once year thing so that flexes. Sometimes they want comp time and sometimes they want paid for that. We’re trying to implement everything we can to reduce overtime across the agency but it’s hard to say. We hope so.

Councilmember Goebel: I do have a couple other questions related to the dental care issue. Do you have a ballpark of what percentage of medical issues at the jail really start as dental issues?

Brad Ellsworth: I’m informed that about 15 percent is probably dental.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay. I guess the follow up question is, have you been in any discussions with the First District Dental Society yet about how to get a dentist out there? Are you thinking that’s pro-bono work or you’re thinking they actually get paid?

Eric Williams: I’ve actually been doing a lot of the work on that issue and there is a contractual dentist that does this throughout the state. He used to with the Department of Corrections and that’s where we started talking initially. We also plan to approach several dentists in the community and our existing dentist whose done a really wonderful job for us in seeing our patients. What we hope to do is work out an agreement with them where they will come to our facility two days a week and perform the same services they did there only using our equipment at a flat structured fee. We think that the cost of the actual dentist will be recouped in the reduction in the actual medical expenses that we are paying right now. It’s basically going to be a transfer from fund to fund. The thing that we incur or that we gain out of that primarily is that we get to maintain security because the inmate never leaves the facility and we cut down the transport of people to and from and tying up deputies doing those kinds of things. We’ll do it all in house.

SHERIFF MISDEMEANOR HOUSING

President Winnecke: Okay, thank you. Other questions for the Sheriff? Okay, we’ll move on to Jail Misdemeanor Housing page 175. That’s 1850.

Brad Ellsworth: There’s a couple employees out of there that moved over out of the grant and into...there’s not enough money to cover their overtime even though they’re grant employees.

President Winnecke: Other questions or discussion for the Sheriff on Misdemeanor Housing? Mr. Sutton.

Councilmember Sutton: With the increases that you just talked about, does that explain the elevation in the insurance line? 

Brad Ellsworth: It should be the same for the same reasons.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay.

COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS

President Winnecke: Let’s move on to Community Corrections, page ninety-six. Sheriff, anything you’d like to offer here?

Brad Ellsworth: I guess the good news is that there’s a few reductions but most of that’s combined and put in other budgets and moved to other accounts to combine the efforts. The Copy Machine Lease, we requested $7,200. That was paid for out of community user fees currently and we’d ask that it be put in the budget. We can look at user fees on that and see if we can still cover that.

President Winnecke: Okay.

Eric Williams: Real quickly on the Community Corrections budget, I might add, that Council person Abell and myself had talked about, she’s our liaison and one of the things we were striving for is number one, making community corrections self sufficient through user fees when that becomes possible in the grant. We are striving towards that. With the combination of the two facilities under one roof and campus there’s going to be some shared resources. Things that makes sense to put under one contract and one place since they’re all in the same building. So, some of those reduction items you see where we’ve intentionally zeroed them out, they’ve been inflated other places in the budget so we can get them under one contract and one device. That’s what we talked about to gradually get those combined together where it makes sense all while not hampering our ability to get DOC grants. We want to make sure that project reflects the cost that it really does.

President Winnecke: I appreciate what you’re saying but I’m not seeing any reductions from...

Eric Williams: They are reductions in our mind, you zeroed them out last year anyway. They are out of our budget now and in user fees. As user fees continue to absorb more and more of the cost, certain things we aren’t able to absorb. Last year we absorbed the whole food expense for Community Corrections. We’re going to be in the process of renegotiating our food price. We think that price will come down. There’s a lot of things we are going to gain out of the combination of the two facilities being on the same campus and we’re just trying to get those budgets all cleaned up into one area so that they are easier to look at and easier to review for everybody.

Councilmember Goebel: Is there a way we can come up with another name for line item 3721, page 99. Certainly we can come up with something a little more creative. Line item 3721 on page 99.

Brad Ellsworth: What is it? Is it urine drops?

Councilmember Goebel: Yes.

Eric Williams: It is what it is.

Councilmember Goebel: Lab testing.

President Winnecke: Mr. Wortman.

Councilmember Wortman: Line item 4352 Maintenance & Repair $20,000. Shouldn’t that equipment and everything be under warranty for a year? The construction and all that? Probably wouldn’t include light bulb changing but, you know, some of that goes on the balance for the fixtures. Shouldn’t all that be guaranteed for a year to cut that maintenance down? You shouldn’t have a lot of maintenance right off the bat, should you?

Brad Ellsworth: You would hope. Is this Jail or Community Corrections?

President Winnecke: Community Corrections, page 99, 4352.

Councilmember Wortman: Line item 4352, bottom of the page, Maintenance & Repair. We’re not in the old building now.

Brad Ellsworth: I realize that but that is generally for equipment repairs. A lot of equipment isn’t going to be new. We are taking vehicles with us and radio equipment, and a lot of things. That is one that we can probably address and make a little lower. But just because it’s an entirely new building doesn’t mean a lot of the stuff we’re taking with us and some of the testing equipment and a lot of other things that go with it will be old equipment. The budget’s not going to allow for us to replace everything.

Councilmember Wortman: Okay, thank you.

President Winnecke: Okay, let’s move on to page 1...

Councilmember Abell: Can I ask one question?

President Winnecke: I’m sorry, yes you may, Mrs. Abell.

Councilmember Abell: What’s the telephone expense line item 3140?

Brad Ellsworth: It’s been told to me that’s the fixed lines they use with BI which is the ankle bracelet electronic monitoring. It has to be on the computer and a separate line.

SHERIFF MISDEMEANOR OFFENDER

President Winnecke: Okay. Page 174, Misdemeanor Offender. I think this is pretty straight forward. I don’t think there are any questions in here. Any questions or discussion for the Sheriff on this point? Okay, Sheriff. Thank you.

Brad Ellsworth: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Appreciate your time today.

Brad Ellsworth: Thank you very much. Good luck.

BOND ISSUE

President Winnecke: Thank you. We’ll need it. Page 192, Bond Debt Repayment. Mr. Fluty, do you want to switch seats? We’re in the home stretch here, folks. Mr. Fluty has our last three pieces of business for us. Isn’t he the lucky one. Beginning on page 192.

Bill Fluty: Any questions? That’s the bond repayments for Azteca and U.S.I.

Councilmember Sutton: In the payoff schedule on those, Bill, how much do we have left on U.S.I. and Azteca?

Bill Fluty: What do we have left to pay?

Councilmember Sutton: Right, what’s the number of years remaining on it and the outstanding balance on it?

Councilmember Raben: I think it’s 2011 on U.S.I., is it not, since we restructured that debt?

Councilmember Sutton: Right, we refinanced that.

Bill Fluty: 2015 is the maturity date for Azteca. There’s a balance of $1,520,000.

Councilmember Sutton: Wait a minute. One more time.

Bill Fluty: 2015. $1,520.000. We’ve been using $130,000 of COIT money because the TIF revenues with taxes haven’t been enough to pay that bond payment but it’s very close and we may be able to reduce that this year.

Councilmember Sutton: And the U.S.I.?

Bill Fluty: U.S.I. is 2010 and we pay that with $480,000 of COIT money and also surtax and wheel tax.

Councilmember Sutton: And that balance?

Bill Fluty: That balance has been refinanced and it was $4,310,000.

JAIL BOND

President Winnecke: Are there questions on those two bonds? If not, we’ll move to the Jail Bond, page 186. Any questions on this $2.5 million dollar expense beginning in 2006?

AUDITOR

Okay, we’ll move to the Auditor’s budget, page 7. Mr. Fluty, anything you’d like to point out to us as different or unusual?

Bill Fluty: Communications. We have $900 in there for website and traditionally we’ve paid that out of Other Supplies so we reduced Other Supplies down by $900 and moved it to a line item we thought better described it. We also have Computer/ Data Management which is just new computers at a cost for three new computers for next year.

President Winnecke: Has the Kronos Maintenance been moved to another line item? Another budget?

Bill Fluty: In the last couple years, many of the maintenance contracts have been moved into the computer services budget. It’s a trend and this is just one of those things. It’s still here, it’s just been moved into there and reflects more of what we’re paying on...computers in one central location for maintenance.

President Winnecke: Other questions or discussion of Mr. Fluty? Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: I just...Contractual Services?

Bill Fluty: That is $15,000 and that is for GASB 34. We haven’t spent any money out of that this year. They worked in connection with the State Board of Accounts that were in other counties and haven’t arrived here. That is starting up right now, as we speak.

President Winnecke: Any other questions or discussion for the Auditor? Mr. Fluty, thank you.

Bill Fluty: You’re welcome.

President Winnecke: No other business to come before us today. We will stand in recess until 9:00 tomorrow morning. Thank you all.

VANDERBURGH COUNTY COUNCIL

BUDGET HEARINGS

AUGUST 10, 2005

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 10^th day of August, 2005 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:01 a.m. by County Council President Lloyd Winnecke.

President Winnecke: Good morning. I would like to reconvene the 2006 Vanderburgh County budget hearings and I would like the record to reflect that each of the members of the Vanderburgh County Council are here. We’ll begin with the first order of business, the Levee Authority, page 187 in your budget books.

LEVEE DISTRIBUTION TAX

President Winnecke: Good morning, Bob.

Bob Mangold: Good morning.

President Winnecke: Do you want to begin? Sort of walk us through.

Bob Mangold: Oh, sure. Okay. My name is Bob Mangold with the Evansville Levee Authority. I’m the superintendent, so I am here to answer any questions that you may have on this budget.

President Winnecke: Just as a reminder, we voted to remove this budget from our levy. We hope that it will take effect in time for the 2006 budget, but it has not officially taken place yet, so we should still review this for all the technical and legal reasons. Mr. Tornatta.

Councilmember Tornatta: Bob, how are things going?

Bob Mangold: It’s going great.

Councilmember Tornatta: Is it?

Bob Mangold: It might as well be.

Councilmember Tornatta: Anything that we should expect in the next and upcoming year that you can foresee as far as something that would be a cost that would come before us?

Bob Mangold: No, not at this time. Everything that we have checked, all the new–all the pumps and everything in the levee system are all in good shape, so I don’t see anything really.

Councilmember Tornatta: And I know that it didn’t have a lot to do this summer necessarily with the rising water to my knowledge, but anything that we had in the spring or are we on schedule on all of our overtime and everything? Do we look pretty good right now?

Bob Mangold: We look real good right now. We really do.

President Winnecke: Mrs. Abell.

Councilmember Abell: The salaries and wages are not itemized in our budget book. Did you only include three percent for your staff?

Bob Mangold: Yes, we did.

Councilmember Abell: Okay.

President Winnecke: Okay, thank you very much.

Bob Mangold: Thank you.

DIVISION OF FAMILY & CHILDREN

CHILDREN’S PSYCHIATRIC RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT

President Winnecke: Department of Children Services and Division of Family Resources.

John Schroeder: Good morning. My name is John Schroeder. I’m the Assistant Director with the Vanderburgh County Office of Family Resources and Child Services. We are here–Virginia Combs is the division supervisor for the child services area and she is here to assist if you have questions specifically concerning this, but these are what the budgets are for. The pamphlets I gave you, there are two parts to it. We have two funds now. If you look on the left side the one for the Family & Children’s Fund, which is the bigger budget, the inside of the cover page is the request for each of the various accounts. There is a lot of other information in there concerning how we came by these and also information concerning what the Family & Children’s Fund does in a separate section behind that. Finally, in the back what used to be called, and I don’t know what the actual law is because it was called Senate Bill 400, but we’re required to give you two statements on that every year about what expenditures are paid towards what areas and things like that. So that is there. On the right side is the budget requests and documentation for the Children’s Psychiatric Residential Treatment Services Fund. This is one that was established a couple of years ago by state law. When they originally suggested to us what it was to be for they gave us certain information about the eligibility for these and we were told to determine what it should have been from those who were eligible for Medicaid and then we found out after that all took place and started going through that not only did the children have to be eligible for Medicaid, they had to be in a certified facility and there are not too many certified facilities in the state. We don’t utilize many of those so the actual costs that we’ve had in that particular account is much lower than was initially anticipated. We did not find that out until toward the end of last year, so we’ve had two years with the initial estimates. Now this year, as you’ll notice, it is much lower at $145,000 as opposed to the $800,000 to $900,000 that was initially proposed or determined. So those are the areas that we have and we were wondering if you had any questions or concerns about that or what you needed to hear from us.

President Winnecke: Well, I certainly appreciate the detail that you provided this morning. It’s a lot to soak up in just a matter of a couple of minutes. Any questions or comments? Mr. Tornatta.

Councilmember Tornatta: Is there anything that has a balance in all these funds? Do you have any documentation with balances in any of these funds?

John Schroeder: Working balances?

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah.

John Schroeder: The current working balance–normally that is in here. Normally we’re required to have a working balance of six months in there so that we can pay the bills as they come in. So–

Councilmember Tornatta: Do you have any balances over and–coming out of last year in the accounts?

John Schroeder: Yes, we did have a balance coming out of the account for the working balance situation and also then in the Children’s Psychiatric Residential Treatment Services Fund we had a large balance, but that was transferred to the–at least at the beginning of this year that major balance was transferred to the General Fund, the County General Fund, as the law is set up and said. But is that what you are looking for?

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, in the Family & Children, does that go into the General Fund as well?

John Schroeder: No, that carries over.

Councilmember Tornatta: That carries over.

John Schroeder: And operates as a working balance for the next year.

Councilmember Tornatta: Right.

John Schroeder: Because we’re getting, you know, large payments to make.

Councilmember Tornatta: And is that–were those taken into account?

John Schroeder: Yes.

Councilmember Tornatta: With these totals right here?

John Schroeder: That’s correct. Oh, yeah, that is how I always calculate it in. Any carry over balances are used in calculating the budgets through this year and for the next year.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay.

John Schroeder: But they do require us to in calculating those, calculate a working balance for the beginning of next year so that we would have enough.

Councilmember Tornatta: I see, you’re thinking 18 months out?

John Schroeder: Right, that’s correct.

Councilmember Tornatta: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Mr. Raben.

Councilmember Raben: Thank you, Mr. President. This may be more of a legal question that might require our legal counsel to address, but I wonder if it is possible to shift any of our Patient/Inmate out of our General Fund into this levy? You know, particularly the special needs where we’re paying a much higher per diem for psychiatric help and stuff like that.

John Schroeder: The only ones that we can make payments on normally are children who are considered these children under the age of 18 who are considered to be and qualify through the court as children in need of services, a term that’s used. One thing we do have and one thing that has happened is we have a number of delinquent children who are placed in institutions that the judge then also makes Children in Need of Services that we are paying for. As a matter of fact, for a few months this year we are paying more on delinquent children out of the Care of Wards and Institutions than we are for non delinquent children.

Councilmember Raben: Is it possible to look into that?

Jeff Ahlers: Yeah, you just want to know in terms of if there is a problem putting what...some of it or all of it into this budget?

Councilmember Raben: As much as possible. I mean, if possible I would like to put it all in there, but again, there are special cases where I think they would certainly qualify that we may not be picking up.

Jeff Ahlers: You said–

Councilmember Raben: As John said, some of them are.

Jeff Ahlers: Are you aware of anything that you think that would prohibit that from being done? You’re saying that part of it is already. Some of the folks that are receiving this money are incarcerated or inmates?

John Schroeder: No, they cannot be in restrictive confinement.

Virginia Combs: Our budget does not pay for detention, secure detention, of any children.

Jeff Ahlers: And I don’t think that is what Mr. Raben is talking about. It’s not paying for the actual security or detention. It would just be a matter of if there was someone who was in detention that would have a need for a certain care.

John Schroeder: As far as I know the state law indicates that we cannot pay for children that are in secure detention.

Jeff Ahlers: Okay.

President Winnecke: Mr. Wortman.

Councilmember Wortman: If I remember, years ago I think that was mentioned, but you can’t intermingle these here. I think that is something you’ve got to be awful careful with. That was tried years ago, I think. Mr. Ward was wanting that years ago.

Councilmember Raben: If you could, pull a copy of the statute and let’s just double check that.

President Winnecke: Any other questions or discussion? Mrs. Abell.

Councilmember Abell: Did you figure a three percent salary increase for your employees?

John Schroeder: Our employees are paid directly by the State of Indiana. They’re not in this budget. This budget is only for services provided to those that are children who are in our care.

Councilmember Abell: All of the employees including yourself and the other director?

John Schroeder: Yes, that is correct.

President Winnecke: Other questions?

Councilmember Raben: Just one quick comment.

President Winnecke: Mr. Raben.

Councilmember Raben: Just to make sure everybody understands to change these accounts to these correct figures for both page 137 and 138. They should be laying on your desk. As an example, account or page 137, the Family & Children, the correct figure is $17,146,300.

John Schroeder: The reason the difference is there is because this normally has to be filed and advertised before we get the information that has been checked and sent off by the state.

President Winnecke: Other questions? Okay, thank you.

John Schroeder: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Childrens Psychiatric Residential Treatment page 138.

Councilmember Tornatta: We just went over that.

President Winnecke: Yeah, we just went through that, too. Never mind.

Councilmember Tornatta: And these are, just to be noted, outside the tax levy. Just for those paying attention.

President Winnecke: Thank you, sir.

TREASURER

President Winnecke: Page 10, the Treasurer.

Z Tuley: Hi. Z Tuley, Vanderburgh County Treasurer.

President Winnecke: Good morning, Z.

Z Tuley: Morning.

President Winnecke: If you would just go through beginning with your 2000 level accounts unless you have something specific about an employee and we’ll have questions after that.

Z Tuley: I did want to call attention to the Copy Fees. Last year we were given $300. This is the Pacer, which is public access to the court electronic records. These are the pages that we have to review for bankruptcy pages and you’re charged by the page. We have had several Chapter 11's which can be very difficult which can be very time consuming, and a whole lot of paper to retrieve and a whole lot of paper to work at. I don’t think that $300 being set in this line is adequate. I have asked for $600. In 2004 we spent $760 and for this year in 2005 it looks like we’re going to run right around $500. So I have asked for $600 in this area. Some of you may be aware that Chapter or bankruptcy cases have been changing. Chapter 7's are going to be more difficult. They are going to force people to file the Chapter 11's and the Chapter 13's and this is where we have the more paperwork, the more involved, the more attorney advice we need and the need for the attorney to basically handle it for us. Chapter 7 is pretty cut and dried, but with the new changes in the laws we’re not going to see that many where there is going to be a rise in the 13's and the 11's. So I think that $600 is a good place to start. Even the attorneys are not sure how this is really going to impact the picture. The new law doesn’t take into effect until October. Training. Last year Training was cut. I do feel that it is very important for my employees to receive a brushing up of their computer skills and not just that, I think they need to be often reminded of how to deal with difficult people. We have an awful lot of that in the Treasurer’s Office, as you can well imagine, and if your imagination won’t take you there just come and see me during tax time and you’ll get a real clear picture of that. I think that we need to be educated and trained on how to deal with that and not let it get to you, and to conduct ourselves in a professional manner and not to be shouting back at taxpayers. So we didn’t get any of that training this last year, so I am asking for $1,000 in Training for 2006. On the Printing.

President Winnecke: How about Computer Data Management?

Z Tuley: I’m sorry, did I skip one?

President Winnecke: Yes, please.

Z Tuley: Oh, yes. We have the need to replace two computers. It’s running on Office 2000. We’ve got two of them in that shape. They need to be brought up-to-date and the $2,500 that’s about how much one computer costs with all of the works. You know, all of your Excel, your updated Excel, your updated Word and your updated Office Outlook and those things. We’re needing two. So I’ve raised it to $5,000 to cover two computers. On the Printing, we have seen some increase in printing. We now have what we have labeled the COLTS form that goes in with the tax bill. That’s an awful lot of additional printing. We’re still working on that law. I’m getting ready to meet with some of our local legislators to discuss the financial impact that the law has on all of the counties. Along with that, we recognize that the tax bills were kind of going to go skyrocketing because that also creates additional postage because you have an additional piece of paper that goes into that envelope. So for the 2005 bills that–well, it’s 2004 pay in 2005 we switched over to a label that was having to peel those off of your tax bill and use your own envelope so that the Treasurer wasn’t mailing out two enclosures which was two self addressed stamped envelopes so that the taxpayer could mail their payments back in May and November. So with that, the 2004 postage was $50,000. The 2005 postage was $26,800. So yes it drove up printing to pay for the label, but it reduced the postage more so. So I’m asking that printing be put back at $50,000. Last year, I think for 2004 it was at $50,000 and last year it was cut to $45,000 and I had to come back and ask for not one, but two appropriations in that line. Legal Services, this goes back to the attorney fees. Last year we had 15. I’m in need of coming before you now to let you know that I need another appropriation for legal fees. We have everything itemized, everything that you need to know. We’ve had large cases. We’re still trying to wrap up the convention center issue that was a huge bankruptcy case and that was filed in Florida. We have Buehler’s Buy Low on board. We have Bodkins, we have Pameco, all of these things have needed attorney attention and advice and like I said, that new law is going to go into effect for October so I expect the need for the attorneys to get more involved in the bankruptcy cases for 2006. So I am asking for $3,500. That’s just the best ballpark I could guess. It’s a really uncertain area as to how much it will go up. Then Office Machines, $2,000 doesn’t hardly get us anywhere. You can’t purchase a piece of office equipment for $2,000.

President Winnecke: What kind of office equipment do you need?

Z Tuley: What were we looking at? We had to ask for the scanner, the additional scanner.

(Comments made from audience)

Z Tuley: Didn’t we purchase that new fax machine this year? Okay, there may or may not be a need for an additional scanner in the office. We did replace the fax machine, so I am asking for $3,000 which is an addition. If I do have something that goes down I can come back and ask for an appropriation. This would be the only area that I feel that might have some room for flexibility. But all of the other increases that I have given you are pretty concrete.

President Winnecke: Questions or discussion for the Treasurer? Mr. Goebel.

Councilmember Goebel: Good morning, Z.

Z Tuley: Morning.

Councilmember Goebel: On your $50,000 item for Printing and Postage and all that. Are we in the future working on something because now we can go online and check our own bills and that, are we working in a direction where it might become paperless if people opt to go that route? That might save the cost.

Z Tuley: I think that’s a great idea.

Councilmember Goebel: I know it would be a mammoth undertaking. Like the debit option you have now and things like that, but is there any thought in other counties or anything like that?

Z Tuley: It would take a change in the law because the law says you must mail. On the COLTS form and the tax bill.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

Z Tuley: I have proposed that on the COLTS form because it would help reduce the postage again because it’s another piece of paper that adds weight. If the state still insists that we produce this that they make it available online and not go through the postage–or yeah, the printing and postage costs.

Councilmember Goebel: It seems like that would be the route to go.

Z Tuley: It’s a great idea.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

Z Tuley: Uh-huh.

President Winnecke: Mr. Tornatta.

Councilmember Tornatta: Z.

Z Tuley: Good morning.

Councilmember Tornatta: On the–you were talking about the printing. That does not include postage, right?

Z Tuley: Correct.

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, and who pays the postage?

Z Tuley: The Commissioner’s budget.

Councilmember Tornatta: How much did you say you were bringing down the postage?

Z Tuley: In 2004 it was $50,031 and in 2005 it was $26,870.

Councilmember Tornatta: So you cut it in half?

Z Tuley: Close.

Councilmember Tornatta: Great. Thank you.

Z Tuley: You’re welcome.

President Winnecke: Other questions? Comments? Thank you, Z.

Z Tuley: Thank you.

President Winnecke: See you in a couple of weeks.

Z Tuley: Okay.

COUNTY COMMISSIONERS

President Winnecke: County Commissioners. We’ll begin on page 79. Good morning.

Suzanne Crouch: Good morning. Thank you, Councilmember Winnecke, president, and other Council members. We have kind of a budget overview book that we presented to kind of give you a progress report on our different departments since the beginning of the year. Also you will find a list of the funds that the Commissioners have authority over with the past revenues that have been receipted in and then six month year-to-date, so I hope that will assist you in your budget preparations. County Commission budget, just a couple of corrections to the budget numbers. 3020 Southwestern Mental Health, that number needs to be increased to $756,297. That represents a 1.039 growth factor. We did not receive that–the Auditor’s Office did not receive that information until after the budgets were submitted.

Councilmember Abell: Would you say that number again please?

Suzanne Crouch: $756,297.

Councilmember Abell: Thank you.

Suzanne Crouch: Also, if you would go to line item 3531 Vision 2000, actually that should be Vision-e. The Commissioners, Vision-e, requested and the Commis-sioners approved an increase to $168,000. However, that $18,000 increase is to be split between the city and county, so that number should be $159,000.

President Winnecke: Any other changes before we go through these?

Suzanne Crouch: Those are the only changes on that particular budget.

President Winnecke: Okay. What I am asking everyone to do unless there is a personnel issue that you would like to talk specifically about is to begin with your 2000 level accounts and chat about any changes from the previous year.

Suzanne Crouch: Unemployment. That increase is to cover the cost of unemployment. I know Council realizes we’ve been back already once this year so that increase represents that. Part-time Help, we have requested money in Part-time Help. With only two employees when someone is out on vacation or a personal day it presents a problem for the office so we have requested that. Office Supplies, just an increased use of paper. We do provide the paper for all the offices, so that represents not just the Commissioners, but all the county offices. Demolition Fund, the Building Commission has requested that we put that money in for demolition of buildings that they are wanting to raze. Insurance, those are just projected increases. Those numbers were given to us. Soil & Water, I know that Mr. Ellison is here from Soil & Water, so he could probably address any more specific questions that you have, but that increase represents a three percent living increase and their Gas & Maintenance and then $2,000 for an intern–or $6,000 for an intern and $2,000 for Gas & Maintenance. The Emergency Medical, that increase represents what we’re anticipating. We’re anticipating that they’re going to ask for an increase in their contract for ‘06. They haven’t had an increase I think in about ten years, so that is what that represents. Increase in Postage. We anticipate that–well, we anticipate we’ve been told that postage costs are going up. The cost of stamps are going up, so that’s a 5.4 percent increase. They’re going up the first of the year. Travel has gone up, so we put that number in, a more realistic number. Telephone, we’re looking at going to a new phone system. While the initial–yes.

Councilmember Raben: Could we stay with Travel & Mileage?

Suzanne Crouch: Uh-huh.

Councilmember Raben: At one time I think the Commission had passed an ordinance or maybe it was just a policy on attending only state called meetings. Is that still in place?

Suzanne Crouch: I’m not sure. Do you remember when that was?

Councilmember Raben: I think it was probably five or six years ago. I’m sorry?

Sandie Deig: ‘98.

Councilmember Raben: ‘98.

Suzanne Crouch: I doubt if that is still in place. People do more than state called meetings and while some departments have Training line items that they take those particular trips out of, most offices just take it out of Travel.

Councilmember Raben: Alright, thanks.

Suzanne Crouch: Let’s see. Going down, I kind of lost my place.

President Winnecke: You stopped off at Telephone.

Suzanne Crouch: Telephone. Okay. All the joint departments, those were numbers that were given to us by the city on the city joint departments. The rent for space, the Department of Information Technology, that’s rent for space and that’s a 50/50 split with the city. Legal Ads, legal advertising, the $5,000 is not sufficient to cover the cost of that for the year. We place legal ads–

Councilmember Sutton: Suzanne, were you going to say something about GIS?

Suzanne Crouch: I’m not going to address that. Commissioner Musgrave is here, but I believe that they have asked to have all of their issues moved to tomorrow because Matt Arvay had a family emergency, I believe.

Councilmember Sutton: Who?

Suzanne Crouch: Matt Arvay.

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, it’s here on your budget. I mean, are they going to address it in their budget?

President Winnecke: I can address this here. There were some issues, apparently the Commissioners had ongoing questions of Mr. Arvay and the technical staff and Mr. Arvay was out of town on a family issue and could not return in time to get the questions answered for today’s meeting, so they will come to tomorrow’s meeting to answer any questions related to the GIS budget.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, my question is it going to be in this budget or is it going to be in Matt’s budget?

Suzanne Crouch: No, it’s in this budget.

Councilmember Tornatta: And when did it move to this budget?

Suzanne Crouch: It appears that–

President Winnecke: We moved it there last year.

Sandie Deig: No, it was in our budget.

Councilmember Sutton: Yes, it was in the Council budget.

Councilmember Abell: Suzanne, while he is looking that up I would like to ask a question.

Suzanne Crouch: Sure.

Councilmember Abell: Is this all of the computer expense, because we’re seeing it come up in other departments are putting computer expense in their departments? Is ACS going to have–how much are we going to spend on computers for the entire county?

Suzanne Crouch: And I’m going to have to defer to Commissioner Musgrave on that. That is the area she is really focused more on. The different Commissioners kind of focus in areas that we have strengths in so I’ll have to allow her to answer that.

Cheryl Musgrave: I’ll try to keep your place. Your question, Councilwoman Abell, is how much will the county spend on computers overall? To arrive at a number like that I would suggest that you request the Auditor to go through all of the computer line items for every budget that has been submitted to you and generate a report adding them all up and then include the separate GIS budget which is in the County Council’s budget and the ACS money which is in the Commission budget. But that would take the generation of a report in adding all those up.

Councilmember Abell: Well, I’m not privy to what the agreements are, but I have heard scuttlebutt that the departments are supposed to all go through GIS. If they’re all going through GIS why are we getting $10,000 and $15,000 from them if they’re supposed to go through GIS to get all their stuff, or is that not the way it is?

Cheryl Musgrave: I think it is a mixture of the two. For example, in the Commission budget you will see the court’s hardware and software and other licensing fees put in the ACS budget. You’ll see some licensing fees for various departments. Software licenses. Then you’ll see in individual departments you’ll see the licensing fees appear on their budgets and their own computer hardware purchases. But what I think you might be confusing is that for at least a decade that I am aware of, perhaps even longer, I think this policy was in place when I got here. In order to have a purchase order processed no matter where the money came from, your budget or ACS’ budget, ACS or its predecessor SCT, had to sign off on the purchase order and that policy, my understanding, is still in place. So in order to buy something you still have to run it through the administrative path that has been in place for more than a decade.

Councilmember Abell: Well, but for more than a decade there was a Data Board in place which is no longer in place.

Cheryl Musgrave: The Commissioners and the City Council passed the ordinance that formed the new organization, but the new organization awaits Council’s approval of it.

Councilmember Raben: Cheryl, when will someone come before us with that makeup and to ask for that passage?

Cheryl Musgrave: I suppose we could if you wanted us to, but I believe that was delivered to you by the last Commissioners sometime in December, but if you have lost it we can certainly surface it.

Councilmember Raben: No, because I had heard that, too. I guess there is somewhat of a meltdown within this building in regards to where we are going with computer services. But, no, we’ve not been approached by the prior Commissioners in terms of approving–

Cheryl Musgrave: I was not aware that they had lapsed in that sequence of events, so I will have the staff look for that ordinance and get that to you.

Councilmember Raben: Okay.

President Winnecke: Mr. Tornatta.

Councilmember Tornatta: So where is GIS Contractual going?

President Winnecke: It should go back to our budget.

Councilmember Raben: It should go back, yeah.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, so it is out of this budget?

Cheryl Musgrave: It was always in your budget from what I understand. It was not in the Commission budget for the last two years.

Councilmember Sutton: So we should eliminate that line 3314? It should come out or is that–

Cheryl Musgrave: See, I don’t have my glasses on.

Councilmember Sutton: Yes, it’s in our budget, too. We’ve got it at 234 in our budget.

Cheryl Musgrave: It is your pleasure whether you want it in the Council budget or in the Commission budget.

President Winnecke: I think it would probably be best placed back in our budget. Other questions relating to this? This issue or others?

Councilmember Tornatta: I would just like to inquire, you said 5.4 percent on Postage and Freight and it was marked at 350 last year. You’ve spent $192,000 so far this year. Five point four percent would put it at $372,000 and not $500,000. So do you know where you come up with the difference?

Suzanne Crouch: I believe that part of it is because of an election next year and part of it may be because of the changes that are happening with the precinct level that will require some additional postage.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, it wasn’t in your rationale. That was a concern and Z just told us that she saved us around $24,000 so I would anticipate that would make up for a big chunk of any type of addition. It would definitely make up the 5.4 percent. So I’m just trying to figure up without a rationale how we came up with that number. And on the Demolition Fund, what’s the balance in their account in the Demolition Fund.

Suzanne Crouch: I’ll have to check on that for you.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. I did talk to them and they did not have anything on the books as of yet to talk about any kind of Demolition Fund. We’ve not funded anything in that in the past.

Suzanne Crouch: Right, but this number did come from the Building Commission.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. But they have $100,000 in that account which is for these types of procedures so they would be happy–

Suzanne Crouch: Yeah, if they’re willing to take on county, you know, do the county razing out of their fund.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, it is for city/county, that fund, so it can be taken care of out of that fund. For Extra Help, do you not have more than one person in that office at a time?

Suzanne Crouch: We have two employees currently.

Councilmember Tornatta: Two employees. And does the Building Superintendent of County Buildings, is she also in that area?

Suzanne Crouch: Yes, she is one of the two employees.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. Just two employees out of there, okay.

President Winnecke: Okay, we left off before we got onto the GIS discussion, I believe that we’re down to Legal Services, maybe, or Rent.

Suzanne Crouch: Um, Rent, that was a number given to us by Mr. Rector. That represents the cost for the new Jail and Community Corrections. The additional cost for that. That increase.

Councilmember Raben: Could I, while we’re on that, Suzanne?

Suzanne Crouch: Uh-huh.

Councilmember Raben: I’m sure that cost would cover the Health Department space that has now been renovated for Juvenile Court. The old jail space, are we still paying the $16 or $18 a square foot as it sits empty?

Suzanne Crouch: Well, it’s not currently empty and we do pay $557,000 in rent.

Councilmember Raben: I mean, will we though for next year? I’m sorry.

Suzanne Crouch: We’ll be obligated for that rent, correct.

Councilmember Raben: But it should be–they ought to treat that like an example like they do hallways or common areas are about half the rate as occupied space because they are providing housekeeping.

Suzanne Crouch: That is certainly something we can talk to them about, but we also may be looking at renovating that space for other office uses.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, but it could. Just check on that just in case because we ought to pay about half the rent there that we’re now paying.

President Winnecke: Hold the discussion for a second while we change the tape.

(Tape Change)

President Winnecke: We may proceed.

Suzanne Crouch: Legal Services, we’re requesting an increase to $100,000. The county attorney is paid $70 an hour. The city attorneys are paid $150 an hour. That’s an issue that we probably need to address in the future. Legal Contractual, that is the County Attorney’s retainer. He does not take a salary nor does he take benefits.

Councilmember Sutton: So that’s, we move that from the 100 accounts?

President Winnecke: It’s zeroed out in the 100 accounts.

Councilmember Sutton: And then moved down here?

Suzanne Crouch: Right. Copy Machine Lease, that’s for the copy–well, that’s the copy machine in the Auditor’s Office. The Joint Department Purchasing, that is the number provided by the city. Occu-Med, we’re anticipating that will be a number that we will need for the drug testing that we’re doing of new employees. There may be a little bit of play there, a little bit of leeway there. Building Commission is a joint number that was provided by the city. Contractual Computer and SCT and Computer Facility Management I believe that will be addressed tomorrow. Office Machines, we have put in for a new copy machine. The one, for those of you that have been in the office if you’ve seen it or heard it operate, it’s kind of on its last leg. Transportation Services, we’re anticipating that contract very well may go up. We’re in the process of negotiating that for next year currently. The Southwestern Indiana Disaster Resistant, that is a number that you all did not approve so that will probably come out of this budget.

Councilmember Raben: Suzanne, could we go back to Central Dispatch, that request of $290,000?

Suzanne Crouch: What line item?

Councilmember Raben: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s 3890.

Suzanne Crouch: Uh-huh, question?

Councilmember Raben: Well there is a request of $290,000. We’ve been putting that budget in the 911 account. What is that $290,000 for?

Suzanne Crouch: Well, the 911 we only put $700,000 in there because that is what we’re projecting in revenues. We thought it was not fiscally prudent to put in more than what the revenues were projected to be. That would represent the difference.

Councilmember Raben: That account has been raising 900 plus, has it not?

Suzanne Crouch: Well, if you’ll look at your sheet that we provided to you it raised $700,000 in the past. Last year it did raise $900,000. When I inquired of the Auditor’s Office they said it was probably because there was more usage, but this year, if you look at our six month revenues it looks like that $700,000 is probably going to be a more accurate number for this year.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Sutton: Let me go back just a little bit on–I’m lost, give me just a second. On that Patient Inmate Care line item that was moved over to the Superior Court side, what is maybe the thought process there in terms of moving that over?

Suzanne Crouch: The Commissioners–it’s always been in the–well, I don’t know if it has always been, but it has been in the Commissioner’s budget for as long as I’ve been involved and the Commissioners have no access to juvenile records. That is something the courts does and then when they get the invoices they check them against their records. They literally bring the invoices to our department. We just make a claim up and send it to the Auditor’s Office. It seemed like an unnecessary step and would shorten the process if it in fact would go directly from the judge to the Auditor’s Office. We checked with State Board of Accounts, Tom Simpson with the State Board of Accounts, and he said that they had no problem with it as long as the judge was agreeable. Judge Niemeier was agreeable, so that’s why that change was made.

Councilmember Sutton: You know, the amount has been continuing to rise each year and we’re budgeting the same amount for next year as we’ve got this year. Did you guys kind of discuss maybe what that amount was going to–what you anticipate it was going to be?

Suzanne Crouch: I did talk to Judge Niemeier and I guess there are some changes taking place with placement of children because that–and he thought that the 1.7, at least that is what he shared with me, probably wasn’t too far off, but I presume he had addressed that with you.

Councilmember Sutton: Not necessarily on the projected amount, on how the number was arrived at, no he didn’t. So I didn’t know if you guys were–if you guys had discussion on how you come up with those projections since it has been on the Commissioner side for quite some time.

Suzanne Crouch: I don’t know how he arrived at that number. Perhaps he just did it based upon, you know, past numbers that have been submitted.

President Winnecke: If I may, I think what he had done was look at the previous expenditures and just trended, looked at the trends, and arrived at $1.7 million.

Councilmember Sutton: Um, also you mentioned earlier on that postage amount you were saying you are anticipating a 5.4 percent increase. Last year $350,000 was allocated and now you’re requesting half a million, so 5.4 wouldn’t quite be a half million, I mean it would probably come right around the neighborhood of about $372ish, somewhere around that range. Where there some additional expenses that were anticipated there over and above that 5.4 percent? You mentioned something about the election. How much are you kind of itemizing now for postage for the election to come up with that five–that half million dollar figure?

Suzanne Crouch: Well, I believe, did–Councilmember Troy Tornatta, did you say that we’ve spent $192,000?

Councilmember Tornatta: $192,000 to date.

Suzanne Crouch: So if we take that, you know, times two that comes up to, what, $384,000 and then you take the 5.4 percent on top of that. In terms of the election there will be mailings, we’re anticipating mailings to registered voters. We already have precinct changes. That has been projected to be in the neighborhood of about 30,000, so there is probably room to cut at that $500,000 amount.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, and with those numbers there put it at about 420 or 425ish is what those numbers if you would take what you were saying there with the increase and then the mailings as well. There are on the Office Machine area, that’s line item 4220, can you talk to us about that $15,000 that you guys are requesting?

Suzanne Crouch: That is an estimate at this particular point in time, Councilmember Sutton. We have requested a number from Computer Services for a new copier. We’re waiting for that number. Burdette also had looked at some numbers on a copier and they come up with 13 thousand something so we plugged that 15,000 in, but we’re still waiting to hear back from Computer Services on a copier.

Councilmember Sutton: Of course, one of the bright spots in the budget for next year we won’t have the Lodging of Inmates which is a good thing. Of course, we spent more than the $200,000 we had allocated for 2005. But, if I don’t include the 100 accounts and eliminate the Lodging of Inmates and then take that difference with the rent and I just eliminate that out, it’s a pretty hefty increase overall in your departmental budget, so I guess it needs as we are looking at likely targets and things to get the budget down, I guess there probably will be a lot of discussions here over the next couple of weeks because on one set of figures I’ve got your budget increasing about 20.2 percent over last year and that’s factoring in that Patient Inmate Care as well as if it were still in your budget. So it’s a pretty hefty increase you’ve got over next year.

Suzanne Crouch: And I would like to point out that a lot of the costs that are in here are costs for not just the Commission, but they’re costs for the entire county and they’re costs that we really have very little control over. One of them, the rent, you know, for the actual space of the Building Authority that we get from the Building Authority, so while I realize and appreciate what you’re saying, some of these are costs that we can’t really control.

Councilmember Sutton: Yeah, I know there are some that are non-discretionary items and then there are some that you guys actually have some direct input on.

President Winnecke: Mr. Tornatta.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. This might be a question for Commissioner Musgrave. I would like to know about, I can ask you this though, plans for the jail space. When do you think we’ll get an idea of what your plans are for the jail space area? The old jail space area?

Suzanne Crouch: We will–we’ve already received from Mr. Rector costs, some rough costs, on renovating that current jail space. We also have received from him some costs on long term bonds to actually fund that. We also have–and he is currently factoring what that would do to the square footage price, so hopefully within the next month or so we should have that information to you.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, because that would possibly play into what we would pay in the future.

Suzanne Crouch: That’s correct.

Councilmember Tornatta: Determining on when you would have that space ready. What about the Commissioner’s Office as it stands? Are we going to see anything different or changes that we’re going to be seeing a bill for out of that?

Suzanne Crouch: No.

Councilmember Tornatta: We won’t see any of that, okay. And then the last two questions are what are our plans for SCT and the Contractual Computer doubled. I didn’t know if we knew why? You know, the plans for SCT and why the Contractual Computer doubled.

Suzanne Crouch: If it pleases the Council, we will be able to address that tomorrow when Mr. Arvay is here. He has been pulled away or called away because of an family emergency in Ohio, so if it is alright we can address that tomorrow.

Councilmember Tornatta: On the Contractual Computer?

Suzanne Crouch: Tomorrow also.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, now what about the SCT contract?

Suzanne Crouch: And that would be addressed tomorrow also.

Councilmember Tornatta: He doesn’t make that decision.

Suzanne Crouch: But he has a lot of input and probably can answer a lot of the questions that you would have.

Councilmember Tornatta: He doesn’t make that decision.

President Winnecke: What’s your specific question? I’m not sure what–

Councilmember Tornatta: The question is what are the plans for SCT because we have a contract that expires if I’m correct in June of 2006.

Suzanne Crouch: That’s correct.

Councilmember Tornatta: And at that point we either have SCT or we don’t have SCT. So that is a Commissioner decision because they develop contracts so I’m asking what are the plans from the Commissioner with reference to SCT.

Suzanne Crouch: And I’ll defer to Commissioner Musgrave on that.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay.

Cheryl Musgrave: Um, the Commissioners along with the Mayor, the City of Evansville, contracted with a provider to provide a report regarding the computer services and this report will detail every computer service now currently provided by ACS. It’s hard to keep track of their initials. That report has been delivered only in draft form at this point in time and we await the final report. This is one of those reports we hope will be done in the next month. It will give the Mayor and the Commissioners some information as to whether or if they should pursue either a new contract, an extended contract, a difference scope of services, so no decisions have been made by the Commissioners with regard to their computer services. If you care to inquire of the Mayor what decisions that he has made regarding this that is, of course, your prerogative.

President Winnecke: When do you anticipate, I again, I’m sorry, I missed the completion of the report?

Cheryl Musgrave: We hope that it will be within the month. As you can appreciate, it’s a very detailed report. There are quite a number of issues to examine.

President Winnecke: And who provided the study? Or who is providing it?

Cheryl Musgrave: The study was funded 50/50 by the city and the Commissioners and is being provided by McCarter, Incorporated.

Councilmember Raben: Cheryl, I might ask if we’re going to have the discussion on computer tomorrow maybe if we could have a copy of the make-up of the new Data Board or what are we actually calling it today?

Cheryl Musgrave: I don’t know. I was not part of the decision making process when the last Commissioners adopted this. I remember it occurring. I remember opposing parts of it myself, but it was adopted really without much discussion by the last Commissioners.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. Well, is there a copy?

Cheryl Musgrave: Yes, there is a copy and that can certainly be provided to you. I will have our staff member get it to your staff member today.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, again, I ask that because I know it is a concern of a lot of the elected county officeholders as to where we are going with all this. Okay, thanks.

Cheryl Musgrave: Sure. And I’ll see you tomorrow.

President Winnecke: I did have a question, Suzanne. I’ve been trying to find the line item and it’s just I never remember the difference. Oh, here is one of them. Line item 3090 Urban Transportation. What’s the difference between that and–

Suzanne Crouch: Urban Transportation is EUTS and that’s represents the county’s funding.

President Winnecke: Oh, that’s EUTS? Okay, I’m sorry. That’s what I needed to know, thanks. Other questions of Commissioner Crouch? Okay, let’s move on.

Councilmember Abell: I have a question–

President Winnecke: Oh, I’m sorry.

Councilmember Abell: –but not of Commissioner Crouch. I would like to address something with Commissioner Musgrave. Commissioner, I have a copy of a letter that was sent to you and I commend you on asking these questions and I hope you have no objection with my sharing it. It was addressed to Vision-e on March 15^th. Maybe you’re aware of–

Cheryl Musgrave: Oh, their responses to questions that I had?

Councilmember Abell: Yes, if you have no objection I have copies for the rest of Council that I would like–

Cheryl Musgrave: That would be fine. It’s been a while since I read the letter so I’m not sure–

Councilmember Abell: I understand. I’d be happy to provide you with a copy of it if you want.

Cheryl Musgrave: Thank you.

Councilmember Abell: I realize that the county doesn’t fund Vision-e in its entirety. However, I think the questions that you addressed here were very much on point. I’m concerned about, if you’ll turn to the second page, there surely is something wrong if we’re paying, or Vision-e is paying health insurance for Ken Robinson to the tune of $22,400 a year and for Jim Holderread for $31,600. That must be a mistake. If it isn’t, they need to renegotiate their health insurance.

Cheryl Musgrave: As I understand the way this department or this organization works, they submit their budget to their board of directors and their board of directors signs off on it. They submit, in essence, a grant request to the Commissioners and to the Mayor for funding and that is approved. So if these are in error, then Vision-e made the error for they supplied this information to us.

Councilmember Abell: I realize these were responses from Vision-e. I’m concerned that the county is paying any of a fee that would include almost $11,000 a year to lease a vehicle for an Executive Director that makes an excess, well in excess, of $100,000 a year.

Cheryl Musgrave: I agree with you.

Councilmember Abell: I’m concerned that their employees got a ten percent salary increase and ours got $500.

Cheryl Musgrave: Yes, I agree with you.

Councilmember Abell: I think these are issues–

Cheryl Musgrave: I think that if these people were your employees you would not make the decisions that have been made that arrived at the numbers that are on this page. That is why I spoke against at the Commission meeting for Vision-e’s request for an increase above $150,000. I fundamentally object to the government funding this organization almost in its entirety based upon the city and county split and only having, I think, and I could be wrong here, between the city and the county maybe two appointments to the board. I object to that. I think economic development is incredibly important and I think that we may see more importance than we are getting in results here so I commend you in asking the questions that may lead to better spending of our money.

Councilmember Abell: I think we as Councilmen need to take a look at this part of your budget realizing it’s not necessarily your definite request.

Cheryl Musgrave: Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Abell: Thank you.

DRAINAGE BOARD

President Winnecke: Okay, let’s move on. The Drainage Board. Page–I have it, I’m sorry, 77. Any questions regarding the Drainage Board?

Councilmember Tornatta: I’ve done my paperwork, what’s the page number?

President Winnecke: I’m sorry, page 77.

Councilmember Tornatta: Could we do 135 for the Commissioners?

RIVERBOAT

President Winnecke: Move on to 121 Riverboat. Any questions there?

CCD/COMMISSIONERS

President Winnecke: I did miss page 135 of the Commission budget, I apologize. We can go to it next. Any questions of that? Suzanne, you might speak to the loan agreement request that is in the CCD.

Suzanne Crouch: That amount Commissioner Nix had projected, Since 2003, the Commission has invested seven million in the Old Courthouse for a new roof, over seven million for a new roof, for new windows and an energy system and that $450,000 that is currently in there does represent a ten year note for payment. Commissioner Nix estimates that it will probably cost five to six million to complete the renovation. That $650,000 represents a five million dollar note over a ten year period.

Councilmember Sutton: Commissioner?

Suzanne Crouch: Uh-huh.

President Winnecke: Mr. Sutton.

Councilmember Sutton: How much are we anticipating–how much is the CCD Fund generating annually approximately? I know we’ve got like a $1.7 million balance in there. How much is it generating?

Suzanne Crouch: About 1.6.

Councilmember Sutton: About 1.6 per year?

Suzanne Crouch: Uh-huh.

Councilmember Sutton: So we’re going to have a pretty healthy balance, I guess, over the next year and a half in this account?

Suzanne Crouch: Well, actually this year when we get to Local Roads & Streets, we prepared that budget anticipating additional COIT above and beyond the one million. We realize that’s probably not doable, therefore we need to cut about $800,000 out of Local Roads & Streets and we’re looking to move University Parkway to CCD and appropriate that this year. In addition we’re looking at a $700,000, potentially a $700,000 request for juvenile detention also, so that would take that $1.7 down to about $200,000.

Councilmember Sutton: University Parkway, how much is that going to be? Did you say?

Suzanne Crouch: I believe it is $875,000 which is in the Local Roads & Street budget.

Councilmember Sutton: But that’s not in here.

Suzanne Crouch: No, that would be an additional appropriation this year, later this year.

Councilmember Tornatta: Should we budget it?

President Winnecke: She is saying it would be appropriated in this calendar year.

Councilmember Tornatta: This calendar year.

Suzanne Crouch: We would come back to Council for the appropriation. We actually have it in the CCD, excuse me, in the Local Roads & Street budget. We were hoping that we would get additional COIT money, but realize that’s probably not a possibility so we would zero that out when you get to the Local Roads & Street budget and then come and ask for an additional appropriation out of our CCD balance that we have this year for that project.

Councilmember Goebel: Suzanne, what was that amount again that you’re going to request?

Suzanne Crouch: For the–

Councilmember Goebel: University.

Suzanne Crouch: –University Parkway, $875,000.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Other questions of the CCD?

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, real quick.

President Winnecke: I’m sorry. Mr. Tornatta.

Councilmember Tornatta: That’s okay. Building and Equipment. We’ve not put anything in that account. One hundred thousand dollars, if you explained it I missed it.

Suzanne Crouch: The Highway Garage has a lot of equipment that currently and over the years has been left out in the yard and hasn’t been housed and this is for an outbuilding to house the trucks, the equipment, to actually extend the life of the equipment and to maintain it in better condition.

Councilmember Raben: I would see that to be an important request. I mean, they do have a lot of equipment, valuable equipment, that sits outside and they are somewhat becoming very limited on garage space. I mean, they do need some extra area under roof. I would like to go back to just the Old Courthouse for just a moment if I could. You know, I guess going back, Suzanne, four or five years ago there was a lot of discussion on where we’re going with the Old Courthouse and I think this body at that time had agreed upon, you know, the term that we used then was sealing the envelope, new windows, new roof, taking care of leaks. I guess I question the need to spend six or seven million when we still really don’t know what the purpose of going forward is with that facility.

Suzanne Crouch: Well, you know, kind of an interesting little bit of trivia. When the Old Courthouse was built in 1890 it cost $440,000 to build it. We have invested a lot of money in the last few years. When the Commission took over at the beginning of this year we realized that, yes, that kind of big plan for the Old Courthouse hasn’t taken place. We reorganized the Old Courthouse Foundation Board and we reorganized it to include individuals that are experienced in fund raising and it is our belief and hope that there will be a partnership where we can raise some money also for that renovation. That Old Courthouse Board is also looking because they have monies in the Foundation and they’re looking at hiring a consultant to actually come up with an actual price and recommendation on what should be done with the Old Courthouse and then uses for the Old Courthouse. So they’re in the process of addressing that very issue and, you know, hope to have some kind of a response within the next few months.

Councilmember Raben: My next question would be, surely we wouldn’t begin any type of renovations until we found out what those uses or needs for the future are, would we?

Suzanne Crouch: No, but this is for next year.

Councilmember Sutton: So would this be a consultant paid for by this new board?

Suzanne Crouch: By the foundation board.

President Winnecke: The foundation has it’s own resources.

Suzanne Crouch: They have their own monies.

Councilmember Sutton: They’ve had some real difficulty before.

Suzanne Crouch: In the past.

Councilmember Sutton: Which essentially caused them to disband just by a lack of interest, being able to raise dollars. Have they identified some new or different sources? Just a real difficult time generating a lot of enthusiasm around that former board. I was just wondering what this new group has been able to do.

Suzanne Crouch: That is part of what they are in the process of doing, Councilmember Sutton. They also are looking at, because they do have their own funds, they’re also exploring the possibility of contracting or hiring a professional fund-raiser to assist them with that task. They’ve spent some time studying Allen County because Allen County has been very, very successful in actually raising money for their courthouse and I believe Councilmember Abell is very familiar with that because she sat on the original Old Courthouse Task Force and they also looked at Allen County. So there are some of those kinds of efforts going on. That is one of their missions and goals is to actually become more aggressive in raising money for that historic building.

Councilmember Sutton: The possibilities of, um, we’ve talked about trying to get additional tenants in that building, I mean, what are our prospects on that end? Are we getting any interest whatsoever?

Suzanne Crouch: That is going to be part of the mission of this consultant, in addition with the Old Courthouse Foundation Board is to try to come up with a plan on what still needs to be done and then what uses that building can be used for. Right now, while we spent $7 million if you go in the Old Courthouse, other than the bathrooms, there is still a lot of structural and cosmetic work that needs to be done in not only the rooms, but in the common areas also. So that’s the next step is to try to identify the uses for that building, whether it be to put government offices in there or whether it would be to go to the private sector, whether it would be to have a part of it that would be available for historic use and that is what they will be addressing here with the help of their consultant.

President Winnecke: Mr. Raben.

Councilmember Raben: Just for what it’s worth, I have never been a big advocate of moving more governmental offices over there. I think we’re going to spread our costs out and make them much greater. I think the square footage we’ve got here should always house or be as much as we need to house government. I don’t think government really needs to grow. I think we just need to become more efficient, but I do think that’s a great future home for the private sector and what other areas. I am curious though as far as you cited Lake County?

Suzanne Crouch: Allen.

Councilmember Raben: Oh, Allen, I’m sorry. What future uses have they found or have they found, what are they using their Old Courthouse for today?

Suzanne Crouch: I believe that, and Ms. Abell can probably correct me, but I believe they use a lot of it for the courts. They’ve actually renovated it into courtrooms and they actually conduct court in their building.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, okay. When you look real hard at what we’ve got now, the Sheriff is vacating 35 or 38,000 square feet. You know, surely that’s our future expansion if need to be under this roof. Again, I think when you spread government out further we’re going to see costs go through the roof and you lose efficiencies.

President Winnecke: I do have one question, really unrelated to the Old Courthouse or anything. Is there any budget line item of payment for election equipment, do you know? It was not in the Election Office yesterday.

Suzanne Crouch: I would have to research that.

President Winnecke: Okay.

Suzanne Crouch: Councilmember Winnecke, I’ll get back with you.

President Winnecke: Okay. It just kind of occurred to me last night as I was reviewing some of the items. It may be in somebody’s budget, I just haven’t found it yet. It’s something that we need to obviously have in. Okay, let’s move on to–

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, hold on. I wanted to get out of the courthouse.

President Winnecke: I’m sorry, I thought we were done.

Councilmember Tornatta: Sorry. In reference to any type of–in the past we provided Sheriff cars for our deputies and last year we bought none due the Sheriff. I didn’t know what your thoughts were on law enforcement and providing law enforcement with the tools that they need to do their services.

Suzanne Crouch: Well, I’m always willing to work with Council with our Sheriff to assist them in what they need, so I would be open to that.

Councilmember Tornatta: You would be open to talk about servicing that car issue?

Suzanne Crouch: I would be open to it.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay.

SUPERINTENDENT OF COUNTY BUILDINGS

President Winnecke: Okay, let’s move on to–any other questions? While Suzanne is here let’s just move on. We’ll skip just a little bit just for some efficiency here. Superintendent of County Buildings, page 90.

Councilmember Raben: Did you intend to skip over 185 and 111?

Suzanne Crouch: The Centre? They’re here and they can address that.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I didn’t know if you were going to represent that, okay.

President Winnecke: Any questions of the Superintendent of County Buildings budget?

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, uh, the $100,000 you’re just taking, you’ve spent $59,000 up till this point. Is that how we arrived at that number? Do we, how far advanced is that paid? Is that paid monthly, I assume?

Suzanne Crouch: Yes, and we’re just anticipating that the cost will go up.

Councilmember Tornatta: And–

Suzanne Crouch: Maybe not since we’ve got that new energy savings system.

Councilmember Tornatta: That’s a good thought.

Suzanne Crouch: Yeah.

Councilmember Tornatta: Is there any encumbered dollars in this fund at all? Do we know?

Suzanne Crouch: I would have to check. In the utilities?

Councilmember Tornatta: Are there any balances?

President Winnecke: In the Utility line item?

Councilmember Tornatta: Or Contractual Services.

Suzanne Crouch: I would have to check.

Councilmember Tornatta: If you could provide us with balances in this account. In fact, any balances that you have in these accounts, that would be helpful.

Suzanne Crouch: Okay.

President Winnecke: Okay, 147 Local Roads & Streets.

Suzanne Crouch: And John Stoll is here.

President Winnecke: Okay.

Suzanne Crouch: I will let him speak to that budget.

President Winnecke: I tell you what. We’ll take maybe a–

Suzanne Crouch: Cum Bridge and Local Roads.

President Winnecke: We’ll take a ten minute break. We’ll resume here at 10:25.

Suzanne Crouch: Okay.

President Winnecke: Thank you.

Suzanne Crouch: Thank you.

VETERANS ADMINISTRATION

President Winnecke: We have a special request to move, because of some time issues, we’ll start with the Veteran’s Administration. This will be a short request.

Suzanne Crouch: And before that, Mr. Gerard did send word up that on the postage, one of the reasons that it is so high is because the Assessors have to send out Form 11's next year. So that will be a significant cost and what we can do is ask them to project what they believe that cost will be. Thank you.

President Winnecke: Mr. Acker? Page 78 in your budget books.

Mark Acker: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

President Winnecke: Good morning, Mark. How are you today?

Mark Acker: Pretty good.

President Winnecke: Anything you’d like to offer about your budget? Its pretty straightforward.

Mark Acker: I think its pretty lean and mean and ready for you to approve.

President Winnecke: The Memorial Day services have historically been in the Commissioner’s budget and that’s been moved to this budget, so that’s the –

Mark Acker: By statute, the $2,000 for programming for veterans for Memorial Day.

Councilmember Tornatta: So you’re saying there’s no raise in this budget besides the salary lines?

Mark Acker: I would hope.

Councilmember Tornatta: Excellent.

Councilmember Sutton: How is the building holding up over there?

Mark Acker: It’s, the air conditioning is great. It’s a good system and the bathrooms are nice. Its turning out nice, good paint job and it should be ready to go for the public.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and the last question. I always try and ask you this. How many dollars do you think you raised total for the –

Mark Acker: Total for our work in the work office?

Councilmember Tornatta: Uh-huh.

Mark Acker: Now you’re asking me a number – I know it, I can’t tell you per se. Its over 24 million dollars of monies that come back into the community through Veteran’s work, whether it be through voc/rehab, education, comp., pensions, and other annuities that come in from the Veterans Administration that we do. We’re ranked third in the state in proficiency.

Councilmember Tornatta: And that’s a good number, too. Thank you.

Mark Acker: Yes sir.

President Winnecke: Any other questions of Mr. Acker? Thank you. Have a good morning.

Mark Acker: Thank you.

LOCAL ROADS & STREETS

President Winnecke: Now Local Roads & Streets, page 147. Good morning, John. How are you?

John Stoll: Pretty good. How are you?

President Winnecke: Good.

John Stoll: Did you say 147?

President Winnecke: Yes. Just about every line item on that page is an increase. If you don’t mind just kind of giving us a quick overview of the reason for each of these increases.

John Stoll: Some of these accounts, Mike Duckworth will have to address because the Tires & Tubes, Garage & Motor, Bituminous Materials, and Sand & Gravel are all for the County Highway Department. I guess the first one that my department deals with is Traffic Lights. The reason that’s going up is we have more traffic lights that have been installed, most recently, St. George and Oak Hill, so that accounts for that increase. We’ve added the training accounts to cover some of the travel for our department. The Traffic Department is set by the city and we budgeted the increases based on the data they provided. Legal Services was added to deal with miscellaneous road related legal questions that we have. Previously, that had gone through the Commissioners budgets but since they pertain specifically to road issues, that was added in this year, I should say for 2006. The next one that I deal with in my office is 3930 Other Contractual. That is for our contractual road resurfacing and repairs. Then the next one that I deal with 4741 Eickhoff-Koressel Road and as Commissioner Crouch said, we can zero that out and those funds, that will be paid out of CCD. And then the final one from my office would be 4823 Oak Hill and Bergdolt. We requested the increase to 300,000 in anticipation of right-of-way, engineering right-of-way acquisition services and the preparation of legal descriptions for that project. And then Mike would have to address the remainder of the accounts.

President Winnecke: Mike, you want to come on up? Hit the ones off the top?

Councilmember Raben: Real quick, while we’re waiting on Mike. Back to Traffic Lights, probably just five years ago the county was only maintaining one traffic light.

John Stoll: I believe we’ve got 12 or 14 now.

Councilmember Raben: Forever, St. Joe and Mill was the only traffic light in the county.

Councilmember Tornatta: Do you have a number of the balances in any of these accounts as well?

John Stoll: I could get it. I don’t have it here with me.

Councilmember Tornatta: We need to have, in fact, balances in any accounts that have money outside of what they’re budgeting. We need to know any of those numbers like on Equipment Lease & Rental, to this date, we don’t show that there’s been any money spent and $60,000 was dedicated to it last year. So we would start with $60,000 coming into next year if no monies were spent out of that and you’re asking for 60,000, so we could essentially cross that line out.

John Stoll: That would be one that Mike will have to address because there again, that’s for their equipment. I don’t deal with that.

Councilmember Raben: That’s for a new gradall –

John Stoll: – particular account in this fund.

Mike Duckworth: I’d be glad to address the accounts that are related to – first of all, Mike Duckworth, Superintendent of County Highway. Good morning. Local Roads & Street funds that are germane to the area that I deal with, everything from Tires & Tubes down to Training. Account 2220, Tires & Tubes, as we have purchased more heavy equipment, more – I think in the 2004 budget there was $240,000 encumbered over to this year and we just received a new gradall for our digging projects along roadways and culverts and those kinds of things. Those tires and tubes are much more expensive than just your regular single axle, double axle truck. So those costs for our mowing equipment and that kind of thing has increased. Garage & Motor, this equipment is equated to the mowing equipment, anything that breaks down that was not currently under warranty. Of course, we do our pricing and try to get the best possible cost we can on those repairs but many times it is sole vendor because the equipment that we have to have repaired comes from a particular vendor and we’re pretty much at their mercy regarding parts and those kinds of things. Just recently we had a John Deere mower down that they had to get a part from Holland in and we had a three week delay. So we’re trying to address those issues and keeping some things in stock, the things that wear down the belts, the generators, the motors, so that we can have a fast replacement and get those pieces of equipment back on task, on the roadway, and its going to take that type of a minimal increase to keep that fund operating. Bituminous Material 2530, of course, not only have we continued our paving projects, in doing stretches of roadways and those kinds of things but we also implemented the first county pothole blitz this year to try and initially get out after a snow removal, get out after the wear and tear on the roadways to patch those roads that are needed. And I can address any of the others that you have questions about.

President Winnecke: 3630 Equipment Lease & Rental.

Mike Duckworth: Equipment Lease & Rental, the $60,000 that Councilman Tornatta alluded to, we have passed on and you’ll see in the budget that we’ve decreased an amount of concrete street repair from our budget over to the Engineer’s budget to have some of that work contracted out. Much of the dollars that were utilized out of this account as well as the concrete account was utilized for your subdivision concrete repair work, getting the mixer, getting the concrete delivered, getting the milling machines out to do some of the repairs. We’ve not concentrated on those because, like I said, its right now, under contract through John’s account. So although it appears – we’re doing things seasonally. We’re in the paving mode now while we have dry conditions. We’ll get into the bottoms and doing the shoulder work and the milling of certain kinds of problems where we will have to rent some of the bigger equipment that we don’t have here later in the fall. And that’s just the way that I directed the work force and that as we work through these, that fund will be utilized.

President Winnecke: To Councilman Tornatta’s earlier question of our County Engineer, I mean, is there a cash balance in that account, are you aware?

Mike Duckworth: In the rental account? Yes, I believe – I don’t believe its been touched at this point because, like I said, we have, we’ve concentrated on other accounts to work out of until we get to the fall when we’re going to be doing our milling and patching and some of our minor concrete repair that we’re going to have to do.

President Winnecke: So I guess the two followup questions I have: one, how much cash is in there? And secondly, how much would you project to spend from that cash balance for those projects that you just talked about?

Mike Duckworth: I believe its all, in that particular account, is there at this point in time. It would be tough for me to estimate how much we would use because we’re currently working through our work orders that people have requested for problems that exist, whether its culvert work or whatever the case may be. What we’re trying to do in-house is utilize the equipment that we have so that we don’t have to use that money, but I’m not to the point now in this first year of operations since I’ve been there of understanding what equipment we may need here this fall to do some of the additional work. For instance on Lynch Road, we’ve got some major problems there on our shoulders of the road, we may have to rent something that’s going to enable us to reach down and fix some of those drainage problems. Its those kinds of things that haven’t been priority but are going to be once we get the paving and some of these other things that are seasonal out of the way.

President Winnecke: Okay, other questions? Mr. Wortman?

Councilmember Wortman: Possibly, Mike, that might be, if we have a heavy snow, additional equipment to lease, too, that would be in there, wouldn’t it?

Mike Duckworth: Well, of course, you know last year we had our biggest snow in December of the year and that’s definitely something we would look at that account to utilize some of those dollars out of. I can’t anticipate that, so I tried not to spend money out of some of these accounts through the first part of the year understanding that from October on we’re going to have to be looking at how we’re going to prepare for snow removal, whether we’re going to have to go in and rent some equipment to take care of some of the bigger jobs that we need, if we get another 20 inch snow or whatever the case may be. So I try to leave some balances in there. That just happens to be an account that I think we’ll be working more out of in the fall and the winter than we would what we’ve done up to this point.

Councilmember Wortman: You know I mentioned before and I think I mentioned with the Commissioners, possibly think about the farmers out there, they’ve got big equipment now and they could utilize a lot of mowing, give them a contract as long as its reasonable and you have to take care of the insurance, too, and then the same with snow, and that way that would help alleviate your –

Mike Duckworth: Exactly, and I think the only problem that I’ve seen in that up to this point, and I’ve got to get with Ted Ziemer, in my investigations, there’s not been a proper contractual scenario set up to where we can pinpoint and identify those farmers in those areas where we may need some assistance that would help us clear those areas, and that work needs to be done. We’re currently working through a priority route with our snow routes, identifying those. We’re going to be pre-treating roads to hopefully mitigate some of the problems that have cost us with ice and shaded areas and some of those areas in the future, as well as identifying those areas that, you’re right, farmers or other contractors that may be willing to do some of that work would be available. We have a contractual services account that we would look to for some of that but if it takes getting other equipment out there, this would definitely be an account that we would look at.

Councilmember Wortman: You want to elaborate on this new way of doing things prior to ice storms coming, and all that?

Mike Duckworth: If you will look at the packet that the Commissioners provided to you, there’s some pictures that, just to give you an one-minute synopsis on what we’re attempting to do, I look at how the state of Indiana attacks and mitigates snowfall and accumulation of snow and one of the things that they’ve always used is salt brine. There’s other communities throughout Indiana that are doing this. It is relatively – it costs about two and a half cents a gallon to actually spread this and it is a pre-treatment, which means that by working through technology and our information systems that we now have in place, and by the forecasts that we get, we will be able to understand not only when fronts are coming in by the hour, but also we’ll be able to identify things like, with the technology that we’re implementing, pavement temperature, so we know when freezing is about to take place and we will apply not only brine, but other chemicals such as, believe it or not, beet juice, which is non-corrosive, which is not going to tear our trucks up like calcium chloride would do, but it burns as hot, if not hotter, than calcium chloride does. So we will be spreading that type of a liquid material that will adhere to the pavement. We lose about 60% of the salt that we put down if we pre-treat with salt, but this will adhere to the pavement to where we think we can mitigate what we have to go out and remove down the road. So I think it will definitely enhance what we’re trying to do and hopefully, we can do that before a front gets in and it will help those school busses get around in the county.

Councilmember Wortman: Yeah, when I was out there I was impressed by your procedure doing that.

Mike Duckworth: Thank you.

Councilmember Sutton: Say, Mike?

President Winnecke: Mr. Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: On line 3160 on Radio/Pagers, your request is at $5,000, now you’re through the mid-part of the year here, this year. We’ve only used like $493, so not much usage there, now your request this year mirrors the request that was in for last year but I was trying to get an idea of what –

Mike Duckworth: What page, please?

Councilmember Raben: Are you in Highway?

Councilmember Sutton: Maybe I’m getting ahead too fast.

Mike Duckworth: Let me just address that. About six weeks ago I started working with Cingular and changing out our phones, our cellular phones and some of our radio systems because towers have changed. And the old equipment that we’ve got are not recognizing the existing towers. Us being a 24-hour operation, I may have a foreman and a truck or people removing trees from a roadway or whatever at 2:00 in the morning out in the bottoms and I’ve got to be able to have access to those people, and they’ve got to be able to have access to our office and to other foremen and supervisors. So I started that process in spending some of that money six or seven weeks ago and frankly, I’ve really had problems working with this vendor in getting some of that worked out. So that money is looking at to be spent to update some of our existing phone and radio systems.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, I guess that’s what I’m trying to get out, are you moving away from the old equipment and are you anticipating that this new equipment, and are you anticipating that this new equipment that you, is this something that everyone will get or just certain people on your staff? How are you intending to make that available because in the old days of pagers, you probably had a few more people who would have those.

Mike Duckworth: Are you talking about the cell phones?

Councilmember Sutton: Right.

Mike Duckworth: Well, we are in a different age, but the cell phones that we’re replacing, basically, are every supervisor’s cell phone. And, of course, coming out of that would be the cost for their service as well as their equipment. In addition to that, we are implementing, I think, Commissioner Musgrave has helped us through getting GIS implemented into our system so that we can pull up a snapshot of some of these areas where we’re working on to better understand where right-of-way issues and those kinds of things are, as well as vehicle locator systems, so if we have a major snow system and we have vehicles down or whatever, that we’re able to follow their progress as well as the public actually being able to go on the Internet, lodge complaints, have concerns sent to us, as well as watch the progress of where those snow plows are and how close they are and how close they are to their area. So all that is an overall plan to bring us up to date. I said when we got there after reviewing what was there, we were in, you know, maybe the early 90's and we needed to at least get into the 21st century as far as how we gather information and how we take that information and best utilize it to be more efficient.

Councilmember Tornatta: Great idea.

President Winnecke: Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: If you could discuss Other Contractual. We show spending –

President Winnecke: What page are you on?

Councilmember Tornatta: We’re back to Roads & Streets. Okay, Other Contractual, 3930, we budgeted 700,000, it shows you spent roughly $13,000. Is this a bill we’ll normally see at a later time other than when this was proposed?

John Stoll: Yes, right now we have a $275,000 concrete repair contract that’s ongoing and we also have a $230,000, I believe it is, contract for repaving. And then we are also looking at a couple other projects depending on what the Commissioners want to do that would pretty well allocate the remainder of those funds.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and then under the Bituminous Materials, this might come back to Mike, but we proposed 975,000 to that area, do we have a balance in that or are we going to see some big bills coming out of it? We would see the season to be over, what, in October, normally?

Mike Duckworth: I’d say by October we’re going to be pretty well done with what we’ve done. There are some bills that, what do you show?

Councilmember Tornatta: It shows about $95,000.

Mike Duckworth: Well, there’s actually two Bituminous accounts. One in Local Roads and one in Highway. But I will tell you that we are near completing the 25 point whatever miles that the folks came to the road hearings and complained about. And we covered every one of those in each district that were complained about. So we’re about to finalize on that. Its going to leave us a little bit to maybe do some other things that have come up because of things like construction projects that have happened in areas where construction companies haven’t been as user friendly of our roadways and we need to look at how we’re going to go back and mend them. The first thing we’re going to do is try to get the contractor to come back in and fix what he has torn up. And the second thing is, if not, we can’t leave the roads in some of these conditions that they’ve left them in, so we’re going to have to do some patching in some small areas. So we think we’ve left enough in those areas to do those kinds of things. In justification on the little bit of an increase with oil and the prices, we are currently on a two-year contract that froze those numbers for this year but we don’t know really what to expect next year. That will determine how much more paving we’ll be able to do in 2006.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, 4310, Road Equipment, we put 175 in there, in the past, in 2004 we spent 126,500, in 2003 we spent about 39,000, and so we budgeted 175 last year, we’re looking to budget 175 this year, –

Mike Duckworth: I’ll spend every nickle, and let me tell you why. If you look at the overall – we put together a five year budget projection of replacement vehicles that we’ve got to deal with and I’ll give you an example. We currently have crews going out to our work sites in retired Sheriff’s vehicles that have an excess of 250,000 miles on them and I’m borrowing parts to put those together. Its no way to send a crew out, so we’re going to have to get some pickup trucks. We’re going to have to look at a, we got a new roller this year that was a 1986 – replacing a 1986 model. If you look through that five year budget projection, you will see that we have numerous amounts of equipment with excess of 150, 200,000 miles or an exorbitant amount of hours on them. And we put together a plan to slowly but surely replace a few each year so that we’re building that base back up and that’s the other justification for our $100,000 out of CCD for that building. It makes absolutely no sense to spend $240,000 on a piece of equipment and sit it outside, you know, during the snow and the rain for it to deteriorate and not to work. And this is a shell of a building. This is not the bells and whistles. Its basically to get a number of these pieces of equipment out of the weather so that we can extend its life. And that’s, you know, we didn’t increase that but we’re going to use every nickle of it to replace those that need to be replaced.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay and maybe comments, since you’re here, of the people, I’ve had several people come to me who have dealt with the, been in different areas where they’ve talked about consolidation and different things, but the one thing they talked about is roads and streets and how well your guys have done to come out there and work with the people in their specific locations of issue, and go through and take care of them in a way that they felt like they were A, taken care of in a prompt manner and they were satisfied the entire time, not only from the first contact to when it was going to be taken care of, the length of time, and the end product. So just take that back to your guys. Its been –

Mike Duckworth: I appreciate that very much. One of the things that I’ve noticed coming on this position in early January is the fact that there is this misnomer about how administrative people and teamsters work together, that there is this wall between them. I’ve not found that. I’ve not found that whatsoever. We are, I think, a good team. I have employees coming to me on a regular basis with ideas of how to improve, how to save and how to better do things and I think that’s the atmosphere that we want to keep not only in our shop but with the general public as well, because, I mean, we’re going out and we’re improving roadways, they’re concerned about their driveways and how their approach is going to be and whether or not its going to scrape their car when they come in. And we want to work with them on that. And I think if you lose anything when you become bigger, is that personal touch and I don’t want to see that happen. If that’s what consolidation means, maybe I’m not for it but I think you have to look at the overall picture and I hope that that is something we would never get away from.

Councilmember Tornatta: Thank you.

President Winnecke: Mr. Wortman?

Councilmember Wortman: I think the main thing is, make sure you keep Darmstadt Road in good shape.

Mike Duckworth: Well, its funny that you mentioned that, Mr. Wortman, because I want to tell you that one of the things that we are currently doing is we’re working with Darmstadt in a partnership, not only for paving, not only for snow removal, but for weed cutting as well. And we have a good relationship with them as well and Mr. Work and I, we conduct business very well together as well.

Councilmember Wortman: Well, we appreciate that.

COUNTY HIGHWAY

President Winnecke: Let’s just go right to page 122, we’ve kind of gone back and forth on some of these issues, this is County Highway, Mike. Probably, the questions would start on page 125. If you want to briefly go down, like beginning with Gas & Oil, those six items there.

Councilmember Tornatta: Real quickly, on the employment side, are we cutting out two accounts? 1006 and 1007? I just didn’t see a number on it.

John Stoll: We’ve switched those to the Cum Bridge fund and that was since the Highway Fund is generally short on funds and the Cum Bridge typically has been better funded, we figured that was a better location to pay those two employees.

Councilmember Raben: You know, I might, in an effort to save time here, a lot of this is going to be set by the state, too, so we really don’t know what we can and can’t approve here until really its about the last hours before we approve our budget in September. So I don’t know if we need to spend a lot of time within this budget or not.

President Winnecke: Well, if you could just go –

Mike Duckworth: Yeah, I’ll just give you kind of a thumbnail or –

President Winnecke: Thirty seconds or less, starting on –

Mike Duckworth: Uh, 2210 Gas & Oil, I don’t think anybody has to tell you that, you know, gas prices have risen and, you know, being a 24 hour operation, we have to have the fuel to operate our vehicles and that’s the best guestimate I can give you as far as what I thought it may mean to us as far as those lines items are concerned. Tires & Tubes, minimal increase regarding the wear and tear. On some of our older, we have two other older gradalls that the that the bridge crew uses as well as highway and it seems like there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t have one that we have to have moved to have a tire replaced or, you know, a tube replaced, so that’s a $5,000 increase. Uniforms, there is a current, that’s 2,300, a contract through Cintas and I think that’s also a part of the contractual agreement with Local 215. This Bituminous Material increase from 75 to 85,000, 2530, is warranted I believe due to what I anticipate, since we’re coming off of a two year contract going into a new contract of what the increase in those oil prices may cause that increase. Utilities, $4,000 increase. I don’t think there’s any other real significant increases other than we did add Legal Services. We have vehicles that throw salt that incidents take place and the Commissioners decided that those, and I’ll let them speak for themselves, but this is a new account. But those issues should be budgeted in the different departments to maybe better get a handle on how they’re used and who is using them. And that can change from year to year, of course. Concrete, I would tell you that 2560 is what I alluded to earlier, a decrease from 60,000 to 10. There still is some sidewalk and concrete street repair that, small projects that we will do. And, of course, out of that concrete account we do use it in setting some culverts and some ditch areas.

Councilmember Tornatta: You have it at zero.

Mike Duckworth: No, it went from 60 to 10. 2560.

Councilmember Tornatta: No, its zero.

Councilmember Abell: 2560 is zero.

Mike Duckworth: Are you saying currently?

Councilmember Tornatta: No. Well, if you have any encumbered dollars in there then you could use that, but at this point in this budget, it shows zero for next year.

Councilmember Sutton: You’re gone to the Cumulative Bridge account.

Mike Duckworth: I’m sorry, I skipped over. My mistake.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, let’s get back to this account. I just want to know, are you planning on using calcium chloride this year?

Mike Duckworth: No, I’m going to use the beet juice and salt brine.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, is that going to be under the calcium chloride?

Mike Duckworth: Yes, it’s a burning agent, basically.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. I understand that. 2580 is Calcium Chloride, and we’re showing right now we budgeted 100,000 last year. We spent roughly 48,000 so far or until June 30th, and we’re budgeting another 100,000 in that account. Is that what you’re putting your beet juice and everything under?

Mike Duckworth: Well, that’s salt as well, that we use on the roadway. The $48,000 has to do with the amount of salt. Now, of course, from January to this point, we’ve not used that. I –

Councilmember Tornatta: Royce just asked this, where do we keep the beet juice?

Councilmember Sutton: Is that going to draw some rats?

Councilmember Tornatta: Where is the garden that we can use for this?

Councilmember Raben: I think the question is, you’re going to pay for the new agent out of this line?

Mike Duckworth: That’s exactly right. That and the road salt.

President Winnecke: Okay, any other questions? We’re getting a little slap happy here.

Councilmember Abell: Concrete is at zero, where are you going to get the money to do the little concrete work that –

Mike Duckworth: In the next account, yeah.

President Winnecke: Any other questions before we move on? Thank you, Mr. Duckworth. We’re going to hit Cum Bridge now.

Mike Duckworth: Well, that would be me.

President Winnecke: We’re going to change the tape.

(Tape Change)

Councilmember Sutton: Before you get away from that discussion on how you plan on melting this ice, aren’t there some concerns about the runoff from that into waterways and how that affects...

Mike Duckworth: Not with the beet juice, there is calcium chloride. That’s one of the reasons we...it’s more environmentally friendly. It’s a better agent on your trucks. It won’t deteriorate your truck beds like calcium chloride would. So that’s what we’re going to treat with. We’re doing it by spraying it directly on the roadway. Now, we can also add it to the salt to burn the salt hotter. It’s a variety of strategies depending upon the weather system that comes through. Whether you’re dealing with what temperature, whether it’s ice, whether it’s snow, whether it’s preventative, whether it’s pretreating...whatever the case may be will determine how you treat your roadways.

Councilmember Sutton: I know that one of the on-going concerns is the runoff into your waterways and how it affects the fish and wildlife.

Mike Duckworth: The beet juice that we are looking into has been completely cleared as a safe agent. Jasper uses it and there’s other communities in Indiana that are using it that swear by it.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay.

Councilmember Tornatta: Can we change the name of 2580? Just maybe melting agent or something like that just to get calcium chloride out of the...if it’s a problem, then we shouldn’t have it listed.

Mike Duckworth: It’s a strategy and an opinion. I will tell you that the city has all of their salt treated with calcium chloride, currently. What they have in stock they’re going to use and I would not, knowing now what I know, I would not use that. But, you’re exactly right, none of our salt is treated with calcium chloride. If we treat our salt, it would be with the dispensers that we already have that will apply to the roadway or directly to the agent as we dispense it.

Councilmember Tornatta: Right. At that point, if there’s some words in our budget, as before, we’ve taken them out and maybe put a melting agent or something of that nature so we get the calcium chloride out of the system.

Mike Duckworth: I think that’s more appropriate.

CUM BRIDGE

President Winnecke: Let’s move on, please to page 129 and Cum Bridge. a lot of these are going to be items we have touched on already with slight increases in materials, Gas & Oil, Garage & Motor, and Concrete, to Mrs. Abell’s earlier question. Anything you’d like to add to the discussion that might be able to help us understand these requests better?

Mike Duckworth: Well, they address everything from materials that we use to replace guardrails and culvert pipe and concrete flowable fill for culvert work. Out at the garage and motor are signage and safety equipment. In this budget, we do have a new account for Training. As we purchase new equipment for our mechanics and for the types of snow removal and those kinds of things, as you go through these new procedures there has to be training attached to it and we want to be on the right side...not only when we invest the money, but the best practices and how we utilize it.

President Winnecke: Did you want to touch on Motor Vehicles and Miscellaneous Equipment, as well?

Mike Duckworth: In that five year budget projection, we are going to put a tandem with a flow bed and I want to explain briefly what a flow bed is. For many of your pieces of equipment, when you have a bed that dumps, you also use that bed in other capacities such as to dispense salt and those kinds of things. These flow beds allow you to eliminate some of the equipment you buy - your spreaders and those kind of things. It has included with it a mechanism that you swing around so you don’t have to take the time to take all that equipment off and remove it. It’s equipped with the bed and it’s part of the equipment. You not only save in the amount you’re spending but you save in the time and effort that it takes to change those beds out. You may be spreading rock one day to spreading salt the next day. You don’t have that time to get your mechanics in there to change that out. That’s the new age of how we’re doing things to be more efficient and that’s all inclusive in these requests for these tandems with these flow beds. We are also adding a bucket truck. We are using a 1981 bucket truck that was purchased used for our tree work. We have to clear and fall is another time we will be out trimming trees and getting limbs and things out of the school bus and vehicle way. That truck is a 40 foot lift; we probably need something a little higher due to the age of some of our trees in the county to trim those back. That’s included in that as well. As well as things like a road saw and those kinds of things. We do have included in those items, replacement of those vehicles that I talked about with in excess of 250,000 miles on them to ensure that our crews get to their workplaces safely.

President Winnecke: Questions for Local Roads & Streets, I mean, Cum Bridge? Mrs. Abell.

Councilmember Abell: On page 127, line item 3370 Computer/Data Management. What is that for?

Mike Duckworth: We are currently changing over how we gather information and how we exchange information with the public. We are going to have any active website that citizens can lodge complaints with us. We can do seasonal information and road closings and all those kinds of things so electronically people can visualize what’s going on in our department. This...I’m trying to think where were at...this $6,000 would be utilized for the upkeep of that system as well as our AVL system that tracks our vehicles. It’s going to include our printers, copy machine that our lease has run out, that lease will come out of that as well.

Councilmember Abell: Is any of this webpage maintenance, setup and service and whatever included in ACS or GIS or whatever other computer packages we have going on out here?

Mike Duckworth: Since I’ve come onboard, and we can go through the alphabet with ACS and CST and ABC. I’ve utilized them in my operation more as a clearing house to provide me with the information on how we purchase equipment, on the proper equipment that we’re going to purchase is not going to be outdated the minute we purchase it, the technical advice and how to set up our programs and those kinds of things.

Councilmember Abell: I guess my question is, if we are already paying a company that has the expertise of taking care of a web page and we are already paying a company that gets special pricing on these things, are you going through these people or are you going direct?

Mike Duckworth: No, I’m going through them, through GIS, through Matt Arvay and his group.

President Winnecke: Any other questions? Mr. Sutton.

Councilmember Sutton: So it that...the county has it’s own website. Is this going to be separate or linked to that?

Mike Duckworth: It’s linked.

John Stoll: Whenever they set the web pages up for the county, they gave each one of us a link. Assuming Mike has someone on staff that can update it, like right now Pat Seib in my office continually updates the web page, but it’s all coordinated through the computer services people here in the Civic Center.

Councilmember Sutton: Did you talk about Legal Services?

Mike Duckworth: Yes.

President Winnecke: That’s when vehicles that spew beet juice or whatever...the wild world of sports where spewing might damage other vehicles and their claims against the county and they felt that it was more appropriate that those claims go through this office...the legal services be flowing through here.

Councilmember Tornatta: You take care of rock chipped windows and all that stuff as well? And who pays for repairing those issues?

Mike Duckworth: The claim itself?

Councilmember Tornatta: Uh-huh.

Mike Duckworth: Well, I guess a self insured part of our budget that is covered through that so if we damage someone’s car, it would come out of that account.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay.

Councilmember Sutton: You did touch on this a little earlier on the training as you are preparing for updates. Is this training that is offsite like Indianapolis or is this training that can be brought here?

Mike Duckworth: It’s both. This would include conferences such as, believe it or not, there are snow conferences where you go and basically go over what other communities are doing. You network with other communities as to what’s worked for them instead of reinventing the wheel. There are training situations where we do bring mechanics or vendors in to train our personnel in regards to the equipment that we have. Some of that comes along with the purchase agreements that we have for some of this equipment. Some of the older equipment, when we get to the point where they are changing parts out, there has to be some training that comes in. For instance, we sent four mechanics out to Town & Country Ford because of a new six liter engine that’s coming in the next group of vehicles that we are purchasing. We wanted to get them trained and acclimated to what’s going on. I guess the answer to your question is, both. We bring them in when we can to keep the cost down, but there are conferences that we would go to out of town.

Councilmember Sutton: Do you have a list of what these conferences are going to be for next year that you’re intending on going? You don’t have to name them but if there is a list that maybe you could provide for us.

Mike Duckworth: Yes. Most definitely.

John Stoll: A lot of those are sponsored through Purdue, the LTAP Center up there. Like Mike said, we send people to the annual Bridge Conference in January or February. They have an annual Storm Water Drainage Conference and periodic other conferences throughout the year that are typically at Purdue or in Indianapolis.

Councilmember Tornatta: Can you explain the difference in the bridge inspection from the past years because that’s elevated quite a bit. As well, I’d like a figure on the balances in each of these accounts that you have as we speak.

John Stoll: What is the account number?

Councilmember Tornatta: 4354 in Cum Bridge.

John Stoll: The $18,400 that was shown for the expenditures this year is a carry over from prior years. Basically, the bridge inspection contracts are set up on four year periods. They do an inspection twice during that four year period. I believe our last contract with R.W. Armstrong was right around $90,000. That would have been signed back in probably 2001 maybe or 2000, but they only bill it when they do the inspection so we get billing only every other year. I bumped it up to $100,000 for next year on the assumption that the prices will have gone up, plus we have a couple more bridges that have been added to the inventory since that was done. I can get you specific numbers on that, but realistically, it was $90,000 in 2000 or 2001 and it was bumped up to $100,000 on the assumption of cost increases and additional bridges.

Councilmember Tornatta: And we don’t know how much we have in the account right now, right?

John Stoll: I suspect it’s zero because the consultant just finished up the inventory a couple of months ago and I suspect they billed out all that we had remaining on the PO for 2000-2001. I can get you that number.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, thanks.

President Winnecke: Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: No, he covered the question I had.

President Winnecke: Okay. Any other questions on Cum Bridge? Thank you, gentlemen. Burdette Park 113 in your hymnal.

BURDETTE PARK

Steve Craig: Steve Craig, Manager of Burdette.

President Winnecke: Morning, Steve.

Steve Craig: Good morning.

President Winnecke: Steve, I don’t know if you have any specific personnel issues that you’d like to address but, if you’d like to begin in your 2000 level accounts and chat about the changes this year over last year.

Steve Craig: Okay. The one is Fuel & Butane and it’s just the prices according to our vendor is going to go up next year. It’s stuff we use in two buildings that we still heat with propane and then it’s used in our concession stands. Gas is projected to go up and that’s kind of self explanatory. Our laundry includes our chalet, EMT shack, our first aid at Day Camp and Discovery Camp. Every year they’ve gone up and I think we need this to cover it. Sand & Gravel, we haven’t had any money in this account for, I think, two or three years and we are out of money that we tried to carry over. We’ve been hoarding it and I need some sand and gravel to take care of my gravel lots and the campground is getting in pretty bad shape. I wouldn’t need this every year, but I’m at the point where I don’t have any to purchase rock and that and I need it. Office Supplies is $200 and we need this to make it through the year. We come up a little short every year. Medical Supplies, I’d like to take the $2,500 that I’m requesting out of my budget over and above what we got last year. I think I may have a source that we can get a defibrillator without going through the general fund.

President Winnecke: So you’d like to see this back at $1,500?

Steve Craig: Yes, sir. Telephone, we are trying to get high speed internet access to our Discovery Lodge and then we would like to expand it to other parts of the park. This is a thing that we’ve had several requests from companies and people using our park and we think it will be a good avenue to draw people out to the park in the sense that if the Discovery Lodge would have conventions or seminars up there. This is something that has been requested from us. This money would go towards the monthly payment of having the high speed internet access at Burdette Park. Utilities, they keep going up on us and that’s what we project we are going to need for next year. We spent right at $118,000 in 2004, so this would push us up just to cover about what that is. I suspect we might run out next year. Computer Hardware, according to the computer services, the two computers we have in our office are five years old and the printers are ten. These are the two computers we run our reservations system through. They have had several glitches this year and they have suggested that we should replace both of them. If the computers would go down and we would lose a year of reservations where we wouldn’t have any idea except to go through receipts and that, it would be a disaster.

President Winnecke: Didn’t we upgrade the hardware when we upgraded the software for the reservations out there?

Steve Craig: I don’t think so. The printers are ten years and we got the computers five years ago.

President Winnecke: You don’t remember when we bought the reservations software a year or two ago?

Steve Craig: I don’t recollect it.

President Winnecke: If you could double check on that. I thought we did the hardware when we upgraded the software, too.

Steve Craig: Okay. Advertising - I put down that we would like to have $10,000 more. According to the master plan and the Scheele/Irwin study that one of our problems of drawing people to our park is that we are under marketed and it’s something that every time they do a study, they tell us that we’re not marketing the park enough and that we should spend more money in this area. It’s not a lot compared to what other parks do use but it’s what we thought would help us. We also get money from other sources that match what we have so sometimes this money, even though it might be $10,000, could add up to more than that if we can get some matching funds. The last one is our Office Machines and we need to replace one of our copy machines that’s 14 years old going on 15. The service contract is expiring this year so when it goes down, we will be at the mercy of the company. They’ve told us this year the couple times they came out to work on it that it’s going to be hard, if not impossible to replace on this copy machine as it will be 15 years old next year.

President Winnecke: Any questions for Mr. Craig? Mr. Goebel.

Councilmember Goebel: Steve, on the Advertising. Is that basically for the O’Day center or just your park in general?

Steve Craig: It’s for the whole park. It’s for everything from brochures to advertising on the radio to billboards, but it is to advertise for the whole park.

Councilmember Goebel: That Center is pretty well booked, isn’t it?

Steve Craig: Yes, through Memorial Day until the end of Day Camp it was used every day either through the Day Camp or rented.

Councilmember Goebel: I think as word of mouth goes around you’re probably not going to have any trouble renting that facility because it’s a nice one.

Steve Craig: At the present time we are trying to market some during the week. We’ve had companies like Vectren, Deaconess and that come out and have events. The weekends are pretty well booked through the year but there are openings through the week so that’s something we’re looking at and trying to rent it more during the week.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay. Thank you.

President Winnecke: Any other questions for Mr. Craig?

Councilmember Sutton: As we look at the revenues on the pool, we’ve been relatively flat. What we’ve got this year on the pool is at $107,000 but we hadn’t had much activity at that particular point in time. Surely, it would end up the year a lot higher that what it’s looking like for the first six months. I guess my point is, it appears that the growth area for us is the park rental side and that’s where we are seeing the larger increases. You’ve discussed several times about some of the plans or thoughts about how we can further increase our opportunities to bring in more revenue to the county with additional chalets. Obviously, there’s some up front costs involved there and some of the rentals involve just parties and other things, but with these weddings and receptions and things like that, the park is really being utilized in a pretty heavy way. I don’t know what thoughts we may have for next year in how we capitalize on that so we can continue to see that revenue grow along those lines. Not to say that the pool isn’t an important part of the park, but we just aren’t seeing the growth like we’re seeing in some of the other areas.

Steve Craig: On our project list that we did in Power Point for...we are in the process...we’re going to take a couple of our screened in buildings and we’re going to enclose them so we can use them twelve months out of the year. That’s giving us more rental capabilities in the winter. We are wanting to build a new chalet and to take our seminar building, which was the former manager’s house, and turn it into a chalet which will give us more opportunity to have income twelve months out of the year instead of just three or four months during the season. The aquatic center has done extremely well when it was open. Of course, we had four days in June when Arlene was here that it rained steady for four days. Then we missed eight days in July. Today the pool is closed and it’s going to be 94 degrees but the kids are in school. We’ve lost that three weeks several years ago and it makes the pool look like it isn’t doing as well as it might have been doing five or six years ago but we’re not open as much as we used to be either. When it’s sunny and hot, we’re full; when it’s raining, we’re not. It’s as simple as that.

Councilmember Sutton: In the marketing side that you mentioned...the advertising budget, are you just emphasizing the park as a whole or are you looking at some specific things? Obviously, on the rental side we are pretty booked there. So what’s kind of the plan that you’re wanting to emphasize?

Steve Craig: Everybody you talk to has different ideas on how you advertise. What we got into this year is that we kind of advertised the park as a whole. It had an aquatic center theme on it, but what we want to do is make people realize that Burdette Park is there and we have a lot more than an aquatic center. Like I said, we are getting ready to do a business to business advertising where we’re telling companies what we have to offer outside of the summer. They can plan Christmas parties, company functions, seminars, etc. during the winter. We are trying to expand it to where we are making the park accessible to the public for twelve months out of the year instead of having people think it’s just a three or four month venue where they come to the aquatic center and that’s it.

President Winnecke: Other questions of Mr. Craig? Thank you, Steve.

Steve Craig: Thank you, Lloyd.

President Winnecke: Okay, I believe...

911 EMERGENCY SERVICE

Suzanne Crouch: 911 and were done.

President Winnecke: Oh, 911, I’m sorry. I think, if you just want to touch briefly on how you see the revenues sort of flowing into this.

Suzanne Crouch: Well, we just took the six month receipts and looked at that and doubling it and that’s how we came up with the $700,000. It’s probably a little bit of a conservative number but I don’t think it’s off too terribly much. We did not think it was fiscally prudent to put a larger amount in there, more than what our revenues were simply because then we are going to start eating into the cash balance which will probably be needed in the future for capital improvements.

President Winnecke: Just as a reminder, this is funded through a 35 cent fee on all land lines in the county. That 35 cent fee comes to this body or the county and we fund our 1/3 portion of central dispatch from this fund. Mr. Tornatta.

Councilmember Tornatta: Is there a balance in the telephone? We show that nothing has been spent out of that account at this point.

Suzanne Crouch: I’ll have to check on that for you. We typically...it’s a contract so we end up spending it. It might be a semi-annual billing but I will check the balance of that.

Councilmember Tornatta: We also show that we haven’t spent close to that amount so I didn’t know if there was a reason why we were trending up in that account.

Suzanne Crouch: I’ll get that for you.

President Winnecke: Before we move on, I don’t think there are any other questions, I’ll tell you that the Central Dispatch Board, of which Mrs. Musgrave and I are each members, would like to see an increase in this fee for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which there’s really no mechanism in place to fund any capital improvements. If the telephone system breaks next year, neither the city or the county would be in position financially to replace that. That is something that the Central Dispatch Board will be coming to the County Council relatively soon with a request on an increase on that. So you may want to think about what kind of increase you are comfortable with. Right now it’s at .35 cents and we are among the lowest in the state. As I recall, it has not changed since 19...in roughly 20 years. Just food for thought as we move down the road here. Other questions of the Commissioner while she’s here?

Suzanne Crouch: Would you like to take hotel/motel operating and convention center?

President Winnecke: Sure.

Suzanne Crouch: Kathy LeBarron and Jenny Collins are here from the Centre to address your questions.

President Winnecke: Thank you for your patience.

THE CENTRE

Jenny Collins: Jenny Collins, I’m the Finance Director for the Centre. Anybody have any questions?

President Winnecke: Actually 185 and 111. 111 is the Centre Operating. Would you like to give Council a 30 second overview of how you see the year financially?

Jenny Collins: For next year the bookings...

President Winnecke: Well, maybe for this year and then projecting ahead for ‘06.

Jenny Collins: For 2005, we are slower than last year, unfortunately. For 2006, our bookings are already picking back up so 2006 is looking pretty good at this point.

President Winnecke: I’ll also offer to members of the Council that there is a lot of discussion between the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, Aztar, and the Centre about more joint marketing and sales efforts. I think that will help all the entities that have sort of a dog in this fight. Mr. Goebel, did you have a question?

Councilmember Goebel: I was just going to ask, you indicated that revenues were down this year, to what might you attribute the decline this year?

Jenny Collins: The biggest thing being the convention...The Heartland Dental Convention that we weren’t able to get here this year that we had in the past. It brought huge dollars into us for food and beverage.

Councilmember Goebel: The efforts that are undertaken to try to attract more convention business here, are we kind of taking the lead on that or are we looking for the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to take the lead? How do we go about extending those efforts to get in some of those conferences and workshops and large gatherings?

Jenny Collins: I think it’s basically a team effort at this point. I know I’m not in marketing, I’m in finance so I’m not...I know what’s going on but...I know that our marketing director partners with the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. She works with the Exec. She works with Aztar. They go to these different areas in the state trying to bring more conventions to our area. I believe it’s a team effort, not so much any one person as a whole.

President Winnecke: Other questions? Okay, thank you. I’m sorry.

Councilmember Goebel: I guess this could go for anyone. How many groups or conventions do you think we may be getting as a result of the LST coming? Do you have any idea on that? If you can’t answer, I understand.

Jenny Collins: No, I’m sorry.

Councilmember Goebel: I didn’t know if the building would be used for any of those groups or not. It would be wonderful to know or to have happen. Thank you.

President Winnecke: Thank you, ladies. Okay, Legal Aid.

Kathy LeBarron: Mr. Winnecke, Mr. Goebel might address his question to the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

President Winnecke: They will be here tomorrow so we’ll throw that out to them. Legal Aid - 117 in your song book.

(Tape Change)

LEGAL AID

Sue Ann Hartig: I’m Sue Ann Hartig, Executive Director of the Legal Aid Society. Here with me today are three board members, Kelly Lonnberg, our Board President, David Guerrettaz, is Vice President and David Kent, member. I don’t believe we have any changes to speak of except for Computer Hardware & Software and one personnel matter. That personnel matter I’ll defer to the Board President to address in just a second. Most all line items, we’ve kept our request the same as last year. We do go through ACS for our computer needs. We try to keep our computer equipment the same as that of the court system. I don’t know where they’re at or what the details are. I know they had just completed a, they had leased their equipment and I have not checked with them to see where they are at on that, but we need to keep the same quality and caliber of computers that the courts have because we interact with them and have the Courtview access. Our computers are, I believe, all four years old. Previously the board had adopted a policy where we were going to replace half of the computers every two years. We haven’t done that because the courts didn’t do that and we wanted to stay in sync with them. We do have a web presence. We’re part of the city/county web site. A volunteer created that web site for us several years ago at one of the United Way Days of Caring and we now have two employees who have gone through the ACS training and can make those changes and updates to the web site in-house. Do you want to address–

Councilmember Abell: Can I ask you then what is the $5,000 and $2,500 Computer? Is that to replace computers?

Sue Ann Hartig: Yes, that’s if we do need to.

Councilmember Abell: Okay.

Kelly Lonnberg: If you want to address the–we do have one kind of revamping of a staff position funding issue that has come before the board. The board has been concerned that if Sue Ann Hartig doesn’t maintain this position we would have a difficult position in replacing her because she holds in addition to a full case load of representation of low income people in civil matters, substantial administrative responsibilities and does not receive any additional stipend for that as Executive Director. The board looked at that and the concerns they addressed with that, and decided to revamp our budget to rearrange the United Way funded portion of our budget to add a $5,000 stipend to the Executive Director position. That is not any request for additional city or county funds because it does come out of the United Way portion of the budget. We approved that proposed by United Way. We took it before our board and then we took it to United Way. United Way is supportive of that and has approved it. We took it before the Job Study Board and they approved it. We think that it is appropriate as compensation for the additional responsibilities of that and will also then provide us an incentive in the event that we have to replace that position. At this point our two staff attorneys would have no incentive, of course, to step into those additional responsibilities because it wouldn’t mean any raise in pay for them to do so. So we think it’s an important future planning move for the board. Does anybody have any questions regarding that?

Councilmember Sutton: Has that come before Council?

President Winnecke: It’s come before Job Study.

Kelly Lonnberg: Yes, and it was approved.

Councilmember Sutton: When do we anticipate that it will come before Council?

President Winnecke: Uh, I don’t know. It came before Job Study three weeks ago, two weeks ago. I just have kind of an observation more than a question and it has to do with all things, Postage. We’ve talked a lot about the increased price of postage especially relating to the Commissioner’s budget and several of us kind of commented along with various other departmental pieces of mail that we receive we frequently get your mail, your correspondence through the mail. I would just ask that you look at, whenever possible, using sort of the interoffice.

Sue Ann Hartig: Oh, I thought–certainly, I thought we were doing that.

President Winnecke: I think in some cases you might be, but again it’s just we’re very cognizant of postage here today, of all things.

Sue Ann Hartig: Sure, I understand.

President Winnecke: That would be really helpful. Other questions or comments for Sue Ann? Thank you very much. Thank you for your patience.

LOCAL EMERGENCY PLANNING COMMISSION

President Winnecke: Local Emergency Planning Commission. Any questions or comments?

Councilmember Tornatta: I’m just running onto the next little office we’re looking at.